The Phantom Menace

I see no point in writing about all the ways THE PHANTOM MENACE goes wrong. I could make jokes at its expense, but funnier people have done so. I could enumerate its flaws, but more perceptive people have done so. I could ignore it, but I have young boys – so that’s out.

Instead, I’ll focus on the one thing THE PHANTOM MENACE gets right: its depiction of the adventures of jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I could have gone for a whole film of Liam Neeson’s sage master and Ewan MacGregor’s enthusiastic apprentice swashbuckling their way through the galaxy. The actors share a chemistry that makes us believe they’re friends and comrades, they have the athletic ability to make us believe they’re capable of the fights and stunts we see in the film, and they possess the charisma to make us want to believe in them.

I’ll see this movie again - as I said, I have young boys – and I’ll see it again after that. When I do, I won’t focus on the film in front me. Rather, I’ll imagine the film that could have been. That oughtta get me through.

Holiday

HOLIDAY is a perfect movie.

It comes from great source material, a play by Philip Barry (who also wrote THE PHILADELPHIA STORY). Donald Ogden Steward who adapted THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, wrote the screenplay. The great George Cukor, the man behind ADAM’S RIB, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, and A STAR IS BORN, directed. It starred Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, and Edward Everett Horton led the supporting cast. Folks, you can’t screw this up.

And the people behind this one didn’t. The story, about a self-made man who falls in love with a young woman of privilege, provides a wonderful platform for Golden Age Hollywood banter and set pieces that radiate goodwill. Everything and everyone looks fabulous, Grant and Hepburn make their lines pop, and Horton assays yet another performance that backs his claim to the title of Best Supporting Actor Ever.

A digression on Horton: this guy really is the Best Supporting Actor Ever. He had perfect comic timing, a marvelous ability to move from stuffed shirt to Bohemian to calculator to hapless goofball without a hitch, and a gut-level likeability that has few parallels. I first noticed Horton in LOST HORIZON, which I saw nearly twenty years ago. Ever since, his appearance on the screen has upped the amperage of every picture in which I’ve seen him. The guy is just plain tops, and his picture should be on the poster of all the films in his body of work.

Back to HOLIDAY. My only question is why it took so long for this film to appear on my radar. It’s as funny, beautiful, and engaging as BRINGING UP BABY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. Why doesn’t it have the same pull on the popular imagination? Never mind. It only matters whether this film works for you. Give it a chance: I guarantee that it will.

College

Buster Keaton’s COLLEGE begins well enough, with a nicely paced comic bit involving a high school commencement speech, a rainstorm, and a wool suit. Unfortunately, it slows down as soon as its protagonist (Keaton) gets to college.

The character, you see, was a high school bookworm. Once in college, he decides to go out for sports. We’re expected to believe that the lithe Keaton is so incapable of athletic endeavor that he must have some kind of neuromuscular disorder, and we’re supposed to laugh at his hapless attempts at sport.

Problem is, I’m not a fan of laughing at people, and I didn’t laugh at Keaton. And since I didn’t laugh at him and never really believed in him, I didn’t care by the time he had to use his hard-won skills to rescue his ladylove. But even if I did care, the film’s epilogue would spoil it for me. I hate to get into spoiler territory (even if the film in question is 81 years old), but this film’s penultimate shot conveys such cynicism and bitterness that it sucked whatever goodwill the film had built right out of it.

Over the course of his career, Buster Keaton made some the greatest films ever. Sadly, COLLEGE is not among them.

Gates of Heaven

Errol Morris’s GATES OF HEAVEN improves with time. The more I think about it, the more I like and respect it.

It’s a documentary about the pet cemetery business, focusing on two ventures: one failed and one successful. A man who thought his dream was greater than mere business reality led the failed venture. A man who put business first led the successful one. As a study in contrasting business styles, it makes sense. But I think it’s going for something more.

I think that GATES OF HEAVEN tries to get at the nature of dreams, be they dreams of eternal union with one’s beloved pets, dreams of pursuing noble ventures, or dreams of financial, artistic, or even emotional success. While the whole pet cemetery (I keep wanting to type “Pet Sematary.” Thanks a lot, Mr. King.) thing mystifies me (bury it in the back yard, have a good cry, and move on, already), the need to dream sits right in my wheelhouse.

For isn’t that the uniquely human thing, the trait that sets us apart from everything else? Every animal eats, sleeps, procreates, and even reasons to the extent that it can. Only humans dream of a better day. Only humans fear failure or build philosophies of success or need to reconcile the hard, cold truth of death with the intuitive sense that there’s got to be more to life than, well, living.

GATES OF HEAVEN, doesn’t tell us, “This is the nature of dreams.” Rather, it works like a zen koan. It invites to observe it, consider it, meditate upon it. Like a koan, it opens itself to us as we open ourselves to it. GATES OF HEAVEN is worth the effort.

The Girlfriend Experience

So the closing credits scroll on THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE and I turn to my wife and say, “I don’t know anything about these characters that I didn’t know in the first fifteen minutes.”

Sasha Grey plays a middle – high class hooker. She appears to be primarily concerned with running her business and cultivating her clients, and making as much money as she can as fast as she can. Chris Santos plays her boyfriend, a personal trainer who appears to be primarily concerned with running his business, cultivating his clients, and making as much money as he can as fast as he can. Hovering over them and their clients is the financial meltdown of ’08.

And that’s it, really. As the film goes on and its characters’ fortunes change, they appear to remain essentially the same people they were going in. One could argue that Grey’s character learns a life lesson along the way, but I submit that anyone in her line of work would have learned that particular lesson long before the opening credits hit the screen.

Perhaps the film works less as a drama and more as a (if you’ll forgive the overused phrase) tone poem. THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE evokes a sense of uncertainty and longing, one that permeates not only the lives of its characters but American society in the dark year of 2008. That’s fine, but hey, I was in America in 2008. Take me somewhere new.

Sherlock Holmes

I never believed that Robert Downey, Jr. was Sherlock Holmes. I never believed that Jude Law was Dr. Watson. I never believed that Rachel McAdams was anyone other than Rachel McAdams. I never believed. I never believed. I never believed.

Perhaps the movie was spoiled by the previews that came before it. Seeing Robert Downey, Jr. doing his shtick as Iron Man made me realize that the guy’s been playing the same character since the superlative KISS KISS BANG BANG. By the time he came onscreen in the feature, I was already done with him.

Perhaps it was spoiled by its seeming love for Victorian London, surely one of the most depressing combinations of city and era in history. As the film went from one CGI vista to the next, I sensed that it was trying to wow me, or at least draw me in. Instead, I merely thought, “The English exploited the world merely to fund that $#!^hole?”

Perhaps its casting choices killed it. McAdams is roughly ten years too young to be her character. Mark Strong, as the villain, is so much better than everyone else that he made me wonder why he isn’t starring in major motion pictures. And the leads, well, they are who they are and they play who they are.

Then again, the problem may have been the story. There’s all this business about an ominous raven, which we know (since this is a Holmes story) is just so much jerking us around. The pièce de résistance of the villain’s evil scheme is to bring the US back into the empire. Oh, the horror! Soccer! Fish and chips! “Spaced,” “Fawlty Towers,” and “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”! Give me a break. By the time the movie gets around to flat-out ripping off The Da Vinci Code, I was through.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoyed the heck out of it.  Then again, she'd happily watch Robert Downey, Jr. fold socks, so your mileage may vary. I wanted to like SHERLOCK HOLMES. I was ready to invest in SHERLOCK HOLMES. But I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief.