Searching for Bobby Fischer

Joe Mantegna.  Joan Allen.  Ben Kingsley.  Lawrence Fishburne.  David Paymer.  William H. Macy.  Laura Linney.  Anthony Heald.  Dan Hedaya.  Austin Pendleton.  Tony Shalhoub.  Even if you don’t know anything else about it, this cast should be enough to get you to queue up Searching for Bobby Fischer.

Setting the cast aside for the moment, Searching for Bobby Fischer is a wonderful film, and one I revisit every few years.  In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t written about it before.  Bobby Fischer, as you may recall, was the greatest chess prodigy of his time.  He was (and is) also a deeply maladjusted man who went on to lead what appears to be a very unhappy life.  Josh Waitzkin, who is real, was a chess prodigy whose family spared him that fate.  This is their story, based on the book by his sportswriter father, Fred.

It’s a story about Josh, and the pull he feels among the various adults who try to mold him, to teach him, to love him, to push him.  More importantly at this stage in my life path, it’s about parenthood and helping your child grow into himself without forcing him to grow into you.  Fred (Mantegna, in the role that made me a lifetime fan), you see, is awestruck by his son’s talent.  He tells a teacher (Laura Linney, just starting out), “He’s better at this than I have ever been at anything in my life.  He’s better at this than you’ll ever be, at anything.”  Joan Allen, as Bonnie Waitzkin, fears for what her husband and the men he trusts might unwittingly do to her son.  And Josh (the fine Max Pomeranc, who has not gone on to pursue a career in acting) just wants to have fun, play chess, be a kid, and please his parents.

The film cuts to the secret heart of parenting, which is that nobody actually knows what they’re doing.  All we have are our own experiences of childhood, maybe some books we’ve read, and our instincts.  We as parents have our passions and our ambitions.  We can get carried away.  Sometimes, we can’t find the line between our children’s best interests and our own.  Fred blows right through it, and Bonnie, as a good partner must, reels him back.

The film works as a life lesson, but it also works as a simple narrative.  Josh seems real, as do the people in his life.  Josh's chess education and matches feel important and thrilling, even for those of us without a deep appreciation of the game.  The conflicts build from the characters, as opposed to being inflicted on them because good screenplays are supposed to have conflict. This is a compelling film, one that has me laughing, crying, and thrilling, as appropriate,on queue.

But back to the "life lesson" stuff: Searching for Bobby Fischer offers real wisdom, and it has taught me different lessons as I've moved along my life path.  I love this movie, and I look ford to discovering what it has to teach me when I'm a grandfather.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

I remember seeing THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION when I was a kid. I remember liking it and have always had a special place for it even as I've grown fuzzy on the details of what it's actually about. By the time I fired this film up again last week, all I had to go on was a general feeling of goodwill, Jeff Goldblum in a cowboy shirt, and John Lithgow hamming it up. How would the film stand up to adult eyes?

Quite well, I'm happy to report. BUCKAROO BANZAI is that most difficult of creations: whimsy, pure and simple, that avoids being overcome by itself. The film lines up Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, and Clancy Brown on one side and John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya, and Vincent Schiavelli on the other, tosses a Maguffin between them, and then gets silly. It layers sight gags over character gags over situational gags, keeps the villains just villainous enough to serve as foils for the heroes, and generally invites its audience to sit back, grin, tap its feet, and groove along.

I enjoyed the heck out of it, and I can't wait to see it again in another twenty-five years.

Rookie of the Year

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR is the kind of innocuous kids' movie that dreams small dreams: it only wants to entertain young baseball fans without inflicting too much pain on their parents.

It succeeds, I suppose. It entertained my young baseball fan and didn't inflict too much pain on me, but that doesn't make it a good movie. Its star, a kid (at the time) named Thomas Ian Griffith, knows two expressions: happy and dumfounded and sad and dumbfounded. Its action is ridiculous, it story paper-thin, and its adult-themed jokes too risque.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR isn't a failure because it sets its sights so low. If you don't have a young baseball fan in the house, however, don't bother.

Blood Simple

I enjoyed BLOOD SIMPLE for its audacity, for the skill with which is was made, and for the memorable performance of M. Emmet Walsh, a character actor whom I'd seen a million times but whose name never stuck until now. (Run, sentence, run!)

BLOOD SIMPLE, the Coen brothers' first movie, is a Texas noir with a sleazy bartender, a sleazy bar owner, a sleazy bar owner's wife, and a sleazy detective. That's a lot of sleaze, and the amazing thing about this movie is how it makes you care about these people as they betray, slay, and dismay one another through the course of the picture's tight 96-minute running time. There isn't a thing about this movie I don't like, from its performances to its photography to its pacing to the labyrinthine story. This picture's a treat.