Diary of a Wimpy Kid

My beautiful and brilliant wife was delighted when I volunteered to take the boys to DIARY OF A WIMPY KID.  She’d read the books along with our oldest son and liked them well enough, but she just couldn’t see how anyone could make a good movie out of the material.

Win and win.  Not only did I score points with my bride of nearly eighteen years, but I laughed all through the movie.  DIARY OF A WIMPY KID hits all the right notes, finds comedy in situations that would be sad or uncomfortable in less capable hands, and turns out to be a good time at the movies for all concerned.

Here’s the deal:  Greg Heffley is about to begin his first year of middle school.  If there’s one thing he knows about middle school, it’s that the experience is a Darwinian struggle for social survival.  Everything revolves around one’s standing on the social ladder, and his job is to do whatever’s going to move him up and avoid whatever’s going to move him down.  Never mind everyone telling him to be himself and find his own way: he’s going to be the top dog, even if he has to overcome the handicap of constantly being surrounded by wimps, nerds, and losers.  And, of course, being a wimpy kid himself.  With a diary.  Even though he expressly told his mom that needed a journal.

The film chronicles his year, and it does so with just the right touch.  The mean older brother (Devon Bostick) seems more goofy than cruel.  The out – of – touch parents (Steve Zahn and Rachael Harris) are out of touch in a way that parents will find amusing.  The wimpy, nerdy, loser friends (Karan Brar, Robert Capron, Grayson Russell) are misfits, but they’re depicted so kindly that we smile in comic sympathy rather than writhe in discomfort.  Greg Heffley (Zachart Gordon) himself – insecure, calculating, meaning well but oh so childish, is both our hero and our audience surrogate.  We know who he is and why he makes his mistakes, and he simultaneously wants to make us laugh, give him a hug, and send him to his room.  And then there’s Angie, wise beyond her years and the only person in school who really, truly Gets It.  Chloe Moretz (who played Hit Girl in KICK-ASS and here steals yet another film) is, assuming she doesn’t fall prey to the joys of chemistry, going to be a huge, huge star.

So I’m a big fan of DIARY OF A WIMPY KID.  It helped me score points with my wife, enjoy some time with my kids, and gave me something to chuckle over even days later.  Much to my very pleasant surprise, this film is a winner.

Woman in the Dunes

You need to see WOMAN IN THE DUNES as soon as you can.

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s masterpiece works in so many ways that it’s hard to determine where to begin.  You can see this movie as a really cool, extra-long episode of The Twilight Zone.  You can see this movie as a parable of the human experience.  You can see it as an anticapitalist illustration of the plight of the working man.  There’s so much here: the pressures of society, the sexual politics of courtship and marriage, the tension between our animal and intellectual selves, the brutal leveling of Japanese society.  And that’s just the first pass on the story.  The camerawork, the lighting, the music, the willingness to exaggerate points of view and ideas in light and sound, the achingly erotic and the terror of nightmare – it’s all here. 

Told in outline, the story seems to cry out for a Rod Serling introduction:  “Imagine, if you will, a man.  He carries a driver’s license, a library card, cash – the things he uses to reassure the world that he is who is.  He’s out for a walk in the dunes, followed by an afternoon nap.  But when he awakens, he’ll find himself … in The Twilight Zone.”  He learns that he’s missed the last bus.  A passing local offers to guide him to a home where someone will take him in for the night.  The home is in a deep pit in the sand, and he climbs down by rope ladder.  There’s a woman there, and she happily cooks him dinner and fans him while he eats.  Later that night, he awakens and sees her shoveling sand outside.  He goes back to sleep.  When he awakens that morning, he sees her again.  She’s sleeping on her tatami mat, her nude body dusted with sand and glittering in the morning light.

The rope ladder is gone. 

I’ve given you the teaser.  Now, I’m heading into spoiler territory.  If you’re intrigued but don’t want to know too much, now’s the time to click away and put this film at the top of your queue.

You’ve been warned.

Ok, back to it.  It’s too hard for a woman alone down at the bottom of that pit.  She can’t keep up with the shoveling and she needs a husband.  He’s it, and there’s no way out.  The villagers sell the sand and lower rations down to those who produce, so welcome to your life’s work.  At one point, he asks, “Do we shovel sand to live, or do we live to shovel sand?”  Well that’s just it, isn’t it?  If you aren’t fully invested in what you do, if your job is just a job, if you’re trapped, well, then what?  Are you doomed to labor so someone else can profit from your misery?  Does the whole point of your existence become the continuation of your existence?  And what if you buy into the trap?  What do you do if you get a chance to escape?  There’s a Japanese saying which roughly translates to, “The tallest nail gets the hammer.”  Do you put your head down and fit in?  Do you keep shoveling?  Do you have a choice?

This is the kind of movie you wish you could have seen in college, when you had all night to stay up and talk through its ramifications.  You know, however, that you couldn’t have gotten it, not really, while you were still in college.  You could have related to vision of the woman (or, later in the narrative, the man) with the light dusting of sand.  But the role of the individual in the family and the family in society, the web of responsibilities among all the players?  These are just ideas to you.  You need to live them for at least a decade or so for them to sink in.

I haven’t even gotten into the technical aspects of the film, the way it creates a living world in the sand, the way it photographs sand as a metaphor for responsibility or uses its dissonant music to jar the audience while reinforcing the narrative.  Here’s a film that understands points of view so clearly that it shows us not only what its characters are seeing, but what they’re focusing on and what they’re feeling and what they’re thinking about.  The camera isn’t just a clever audience surrogate here: the camera reflects and directs, it’s organic to the proceedings, a part of what’s going on.  You’ve heard of the God’s Eye View?  In this film, the camera sees what God sees.  Oh, and the lighting.  Wait until you see the light on the sand on the body – one of the most memorable images put to film.  Watch shadows play across faces and flashlight beams glare down brutal humanity in its cruelty and hope for redemption.  I would pay real money to see this movie broken down shot by shot.

So if you’re young, see WOMAN IN THE DUNES and marvel at the photography and the music and the construction and the story and the ideas.  If you’re older, see this film and marvel at the photography and the music and the construction and the story and the ideas and the truths and hopes and perceptions and vitality of the cycle of life.  See WOMAN IN THE DUNES and marvel.  See WOMAN IN THE DUNES and never be the same.

The Furies

Only a fool or a hero would name his ranch The Furies.  T.C. Jeffords is both.

New Mexico, 1875ish: T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) rules over one of the biggest ranches in the territory.  He’s larger than life.  He’s a hero on the range.  And he’s spending money faster than he’s making it.  His daughter, Vance, is unamused.

His daughter is Barbara Stanwyck.  She loves him.

But

you

do

not

mess

with

Barbara Stanwyck.

Which is the film’s strength and its weakness.

See, here’s a movie that takes these two iconic actors, Huston and Stanwyck, and sets them up in this great conflict: he’s promised her the ranch, but he’s burning through its resources so fast that the promise is turning empty.  She loves him, but she has to fight him to save his legacy and save him from himself.  And it’s great stuff, it really is.  The Furies gives us two smart and capable people and lets them have at it, and it’s here that it really shines.

But The Furies tries to have it both ways.  See, it gives Stanwyck this love interest who does things like slap her to put her in her place.  She accepts this, which seems totally out of character both for the young Ms. Jeffords and the actress playing her.  When she kissed this guy after his assault, my jaw hit the floor.  I expected her to put a knife in his gut – or, at the very least, swindle him out of house and home.  I mean, this is Barbara Stanwyck we’re talking about, here!  But no.  Later, there’s some business about the guy telling her that she’s going to shut her mouth and do what she’s told, she accepts it, and I sat there agog.

I’m not saying this isn’t a good story.  I’m certainly not saying there aren’t some great things here.  I’m not even saying that this isn’t a reasonable portrayal of how someone of Stanwyck’s character’s age and background might behave.  I’m saying that, given what I (admittedly, as much a prisoner of my time and culture as the next guy) know about women, it’s inconceivable to me that a woman like Stanwyck’s Vance Jeffords would respond to abuse as she does in this film.

So enjoy the foolish hero.  Enjoy the resourceful heroine.  Wince at the cavalier attitude toward domestic violence.  This is a flawed picture, but it works nonetheless.  The Furies is a damn fine western.

Kick-Ass

I didn’t laugh all the way through KICK-ASS.  Sometimes, I’d remember that young children sat in the audience, and the horror of that realization’d take me out of the film.  Then something ostentatiously ridiculous or violent or vulgar would occur, I’d laugh again, and I’d rock along quite happily until I happened to glance over, once again, at those little kids.

KICK-ASS is not a movie for children.  It’s bloodily violent, so foulmouthed it’d take a sailor aback (Sigh.  The Navy has changed.), and too graphically sexual for prepubescents.  It’s also hilarious.  From star Aaron Johnson’s perfect mix of idealism, enthusiasm and awkwardness to Nicholas Cage’s ridiculous Adam West imitation to Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s geeky riff on Mr. Glass, the character work here is spot on.  Add Mark Strong’s deadpan villainy as a New York mafioso and young Chloe Moretz as the astonishingly vulgar Hit-Girl, and you have one of the best comedies to come along this year.

Here’s the setup:  Dave Lizewski (Johnson) is a teenaged comic book nerd who wonders why nobody ever steps up, puts on a costume, and actually tries to help people out.  He decides to take the plunge and, for his trouble gets beaten, stabbed, and run over by a car.  But after months of hospitalization, a reinforced skeleton thanks to all the plates and pins installed after his massive trauma, and major nerve damage leaving him nearly impervious to pain, he’s ready to try again.  He’s ready to become Kick-Ass, defender of people who need defending, rescuer of kittens, getter of the girl, etc.  And it isn’t long before he meets Mr. Big and Hit Girl, a father-daughter team whose idea of quality time is dressing up in costumes and killing thugs.  So basically, he gets everything he wanted.  He’s got cool hero friends.  He lands his Mary-Jane.  He occasionally kicks ass.  And he finds himself in the sights of Mr. Big (Strong, a gifted character actor who needs to stop playing villains before it’s too late).  Mr. Big, of course, is ready to finance a nemesis.  And there we are.

Based on the trailers, I expected this movie to be violent and vulgar and over the top, but I didn’t expect it to be so funny.  Watch Strong and Mintz-Plasse argue over their plans for movie night.  Watch Johnson stumble from one adventure to the next, and watch him take on the baddies with gear that appears to be made from tin foil and lawn chairs.  Watch Cage apply his eye makeup before a big night of fighting crime, and watch Moretz do pretty much everything she does.  You will laugh and laugh and laugh.  Then you’ll cringe for a while.  Then you’ll laugh some more.

Either that, or you’ll cringe and cringe and cringe, then maybe laugh for a while.  Your mileage may vary.

Regardless, you must respect this film’s audacity.  KICK-ASS isn’t afraid to go for broke, and it delivers a rousing time at the movies.

Just don’t bring your kids.

What's Up, Doc?

You like screwball comedies? I like screwball comedies. I like it when everyone wants the McGuffin (or McGuffins, as the case may be), and hijinks ensue. I like it when the operator drives the poor sap crazy with her machinations. And I like it when the operator discovers, much to her surprise and delight, that she has a heart of gold.

And I really like when the whole thing is set in San Francisco, one of the greatest and most photogenic cities in the world.

So really, the only way WHAT’S UP, DOC? could have dropped the ball would have been to have one of its characters leap out of the screen and punch me in the nose.

Here’s the deal: four people bring four identical overnight bags to the same hotel. One holds rocks that mean a lot to an academic because he intends to use them in an important presentation; one holds rocks that are important to everyone because they glitter nicely in the light and are surrounded with worked gold; one holds underwear, which matters to the person who owns the underwear; and one holds a cache of top secret documents which may or may not be the Pentagon Papers. The movie is pretty much a game of musical overnight bags, the loser getting stuck with the underwear, and away we go.

Director Peter Bogdanovich does a great job of keeping all the balls in the air, perfectly executing classic screwball bits while keeping track of the locations and ownerships of various bags, hearts, and miscellaneous bits of clothing. He casts great actors like Barbara Streisand, Madeleine Khan, and Austin Pendleton in critical roles, and they help buttress a weak Ryan O’Neal leading performance as the hapless academic who’s no match for (really) anyone.

WHAT’S UP, DOC? made me laugh out loud. When I wasn’t laughing, I was rolling along quite pleasantly. This is solid screwball, lots of fun, and a good time at the movies.

How to Train Your Dragon

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a perfectly fine children’s entertainment.  It does well with standard themes of divergence and acceptance, courage in the face of expectations as well as of danger, and the father/son dynamic.  It’s exciting enough for older kids and not too scary for younger, and it kept my kids talking about it for the rest of the evening.

Here’s the setup: young Hiccup lives in a Viking village constantly beset by dragons.  Unfortunately, he’s the smart and skinny kid in a brawn-centered culture.  He’s never going to wield a 75-lb mace in battle against a flying menace, so how will he find his place as a true Viking?  Ok, the title gives it away, but still.  The film tells its story briskly, hits its beats right on schedule, keeps things moving along.  I watched it while juggling three kids, two sodas, one of those enormous tubs of popcorn, a box of stale nachos and inedible cheese sauce, and a packet of Raisinets.  That’s multiple trips to the bathroom, more than one shushing, and two detours to the lobby so my preschooler could practice his “frog jumping” as the mood struck (Hey, that’s why we sit in the back.).  It was still fine.  When a story speaks to familiar themes and rigidly adheres to standard structure, you don’t need to see every scene to stay with it.

So enjoy the artwork and dig HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON for what it is.  There are worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

Fellini's Roma

There’s something you need to know about FELLINI’S ROMA and you need to know it right up front.  FELLINI’S ROMA isn’t about anybody.  There’s no hero, no villain, no 2^nd act crisis and 3^rd act resolution.  Nothing happens; at least, not in the sense we usually mean when we discuss narrative film.

FELLINI’S ROMA isn’t a documentary, either.  It doesn’t set a scene, introduce us to players, and watch events unfold in a (hopefully) dramatic and interesting way.  It’s just – well, it’s just Rome.

But it isn’t just Rome: not really.  It’s Fellini’s Rome, or the parts of Rome that Fellini finds most interesting.  There’s Rome the Romantic, an idealized city that exists as not much more than a fantasy in the minds of Italian schoolchildren in the countryside.  There’s Rome the vulgar, Rome the sad, Rome the painted whore under an umbrella, slowly baking in scant shadow.  There’s the Rome of the hippies, of the workingmen, of the Church, and of the ancients.  There’s even the Rome of the apostates and the casually lost, the bright young men with futures and the masters at the top of their games.

FELLINI’S ROMA is like a slideshow, an experience meant to create a feeling of Rome rather than of a character in Rome.  If you can relax your expectations and go with it, it offers something of the experience of the wandering tourist.  Perhaps you speak the language; perhaps you catch only bits and pieces.  Scenes flash by on the road or in the piazza, and you come away not with a series of photos or cleverly written travel piece, but with a feeling, an impression of what it means to live there, what it means to visit, what it means merely to pass through on your way to someplace else.

Will you enjoy it?  I don’t know.  Should you see it?  Absolutely, for FELLINI’S ROMA will give you a sense of the city like no other.  It’ll give you a sense of the city as felt by a man who has contemplated it, dreamed it, lived it for years.  It’ll give you a sense of Rome.

Wit

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.

--John Donne

Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson), a formidable professor of English Literature and authority on the works of Donne, has metatastic stage IV ovarian cancer. As she informs us, there is no stage V. She's an academic, a researcher and thinker. She doesn't hesitate to submit to an experimental treatment that probably won't work, but that will yield valuable data for the researchers and thinkers treating her. She has no relatives. She has few friends. Her only pillar of support is her wit, defined as her "intellectual ability or her facility of thinking." (Wiktionary)

Get ready for a hard movie. I've spent little time in hospitals, submitting to one minor surgery over two decades ago. I was in at 6:00 am, done by 10:00, and out at 5:00 that evening. But those hours between regaining consciousness at 11:00 and getting picked up at 5:00 stand as some of the loneliest of my life. Vivian Bearing spends hour after hour, day after day, in the dehumanizing role of just another guinea pig in a teaching and research hospital. No one cares for her wit. No one gets her jokes. No one's intimidated or impressed by her knowledge or carriage. And studying the contemplations of a great poet is different than contemplating for onesself. I haven't spent much time in hospitals, no, but WIT put me there and led me to some contemplation of my own.

Margaret Edson, who'd worked in a hospital, wrote the Pulitzer-prize winning play upon which this production is based. Mike Nichols and Emma Thompson adapted it for the screen, with Nichols Directing and Thompson starring. They did a magnificent job of avoiding the staginess of some stage - to -screen translations, and Thompson reaffirms her standing as one of the very best actresses of her generation. I believed in Vivian Bearing from the moment I saw her. She scared me; she impressed me; she motivated me to pull my copy of Donne's collected works down off the shelf and thoughtfully peruse his Holy Sonnets. Most importantly, she touched me.

All I know about the experience of cancer treatment I know from reading Jim Beaver and watching this movie. I pray to God that if I should ever hit that unlucky lottery, my wit can get me through.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

I don’t know how to write about GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA.  It isn’t particularly … anything.  Not particularly bad; not particularly good; not even particularly mediocre.

It’s just there, competently made mid-nineties kaiju product, boasting excellent miniatures and battles that captured my boys’ imaginations.  It’s adventure stuff, the kind of stuff I generally enjoy, and it rocked along well enough.  But it’s so slick, so blandly competent, that I can’t get an angle on it.  There’s no in, nothing to write about.  This Godzilla provokes no thought, creates no empathy, offers nothing more than pretty pictures of carefully designed monsters stomping their way through well made sets.

The premise is simple enough: Japan creates a giant, robotic Godzilla to do battle with the real thing.  There’s a conflicted heroine, a little girl in need of a mommy figure, and a likeable bioengineer dad for some human interest.  Oh, and there’s tension on the team and all that kind of thing.  But there’s not much else.  The battles rage and buildings fall and Godzilla roars and the human arcs go as we’d expect.

Here’s a film that inspires no jokes, no ruminations, nothing beyond simple entertainment.  It’s fine for what it is, I guess.  I’ve already mostly forgotten it.

The Machine Girl

A Japanese schoolgirl with a prosthetic Gatling gun for an arm takes on the Yakuza.

I’ll just say that again: A Japanese schoolgirl with a prosthetic Gatling gun for an arm takes on the Yakuza.

Reading that, you probably thought one of two things: 

A) Give me a break!

B) Where have you been all my life?

If you fall into Category A, stop reading now.  THE MACHINE GIRL is what you’d expect from a movie about a Japanese schoolgirl with a prosthetic Gatling gun for an arm who takes on the Yakuza.

If you fall into Category B, have I got news for you!  THE MACHINE GIRL is everything you’d expect from a movie about a Japanese schoolgirl with a prosthetic Gatling gun for an arm who takes on the Yakuza!  Dismemberments!  Decapitations!  Destruction of human bodies in ways that defy the imagination!  So much arterial spray that you cannot help but laugh out loud at its sheer and utter awesomness!  Oh, did I mention ninjas?  Not just any ninjas, but a crack junior high school ninjitsu team, complete with Spirit Pyramid?  And at the end, when she winds up with a katana in her hand, you know who forged it: that’s Hanzo steel, baby! 

That’s right.  THE MACHINE GIRL is absolutely awesome.  Comically gory, creepy in ways that only Japanese films can do, and loaded with so many stunts and gags and throwaway references that it becomes Tarantinoesque, THE MACHINE GIRL takes its supercool premise as far as its supercool premise can go.  This is exploitation done right.

If you only see one movie about a Japanese schoolgirl with a prosthetic Gatling gun for an arm who takes on the Yakuza this year, make THE MACHINE GIRL that movie.  It’ll blow you away.

Airplane!

Several months ago, I set out on a project to watch all the AIRPORT movies, followed by the AIRPLANE! movies. I always knew that AIRPLANE! was funny, but I was interested to learn how much of it was a direct satire of AIRPORT and its descendents and how much of it was original comedy.

It turns out that while AIRPLANE! does mock many of the AIRPORT films’ iconic moments, much of its comedy is refreshingly original. With its 2 jokes / minute pace, it needs more material than even four AIRPORT movies can provide. AIRPLANE! mocks religions, cultural imperialism, disco, great films, and the aviation industry itself. It’s great fun, and it kept (the older members of) my family laughing from beginning to end.

Ineterestingly, AIRPLANE garnered a PG rating even though it boasts a fair helping of sexual innuendo, drug jokes, nudity, and profanity. Today, I think this film would merit a solid R. How did we allow our society to become more restrictive in the last 29 years?

The Girl from Monaco

About ten minutes into THE GIRL FROM MONACO, I knew everything that would happen in this movie.

I was completely wrong.  I love that.

THE GIRL FROM MONACO tells the story of Bertrand Beauvois (veteran character actor Fabrice Luchini), a famed defense attorney who has come from Paris to Monaco for a major trial.  His client hires him a bodyguard (Roschdy Zem) who knows everything about the city and all the people in it, and mostly wants to keep them away from Beauvois.  But Beauvois notices Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), a local weathergirl, and she notices him.  Christophe the Bodyguard (remember, he knows everyone) is not amused.

And why would an unbelievably beautiful young woman go for the rumpled, aging Beauvois?  And in the middle of a trial, no less?  Why is she always carrying that video camera, anyway?  Most vexingly (to Christophe, at least), why would a sensible man like Beauvois allow himself to get so thoroughly, embarrassingly infatuated that he’d forget his position, his duty, himself with just one look into Audrey’s eyes?

Well, whatever you think the answers to those questions are, you may be right.  Or not.  I got them wrong. 

But the fact that this film is smarter than me is only part of its charm.  The rest lies in the relationships between and among the three main characters, relationships that develop in unexpected and delightful ways.  There’s also beautiful Monaco, a protagonist both sophisticated and simple, and a tone that somehow manages to keep things in the realm of light comedy while dealing with situations that develop into anything but.

THE GIRL FROM MONACO took me places I didn’t expect to go and showed me a good time getting there.  I’d see her again.

Invasion of the Astro-Monster

Last night, I sat down with my kid and saw a great science fiction movie.  It features an interloper from another world, one who masquerades as a native.  The alien is a spy, representative of a race that has come to the planet under the guise of peace, but whose hidden agenda is the plundering of the planet’s resources.   The alien, however, falls in love with native ways, joins forces with the less-advanced indigenous species, and plays a crucial role in fighting off the invaders.  The alien’s help, along with the might of the creatures of the exploited planet, drives off the invaders and saves the day.

The alien is Miss Namikawa of the Xians.  The native creatures who, in a rush of Gaian solidarity, repel the invaders are Godzilla and Rodan.  The film is INVASION OF THE ASTRO-MONSTER, a first-rate Godzilla film of the Showa era, directed by Ishiro Honda, written by Shinichi Sekizawa, and featuring special effects by the great Eiji Tsuburaya.

This is a fun, fun, motion picture.  It features an American actor named Nick Adams who is there solely to boost international box office.  It has nonthreatening, yet villainous, antagonists in the evil Xians, who covet Earth for its water.  Its creature designs are first-rate, its story rocks along pleasantly, and its alien spy (played by Kumi Mizuno) is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.  Godzilla even does a happy dance after one mighty victory, an addition the director protested but made the final cut because Eiji Tuburaya insisted that it would “make the children happy.”

I’m telling you, the only thing that could have improved this movie would have been an introduction by Tom Hatten.  INVASION OF THE ASTRO-MONSTER is good, clean Godzilla fun.

(500) Days of Summer

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER is sweet and fun and delightful from start to finish. It’s a film that’s very much in love with film as a medium, and it tells its story with a joy and gusto that evokes a profound happiness to be alive.

I’m not saying that everything in (500) DAYS OF SUMMER is sweetness and light. This is the story of a failed relationship, after all. But the thing about this film is how it embraces life, its ups and downs. When star Jason Gordon Levitt realizes he’s in love and the film shifts into fantasy, what happens next strikes me as a daring, creative, and ultimately insightful journey into the high that results from that first connection with somebody special. When things go sour and he finds himself inhabiting the films of Ingmar Bergman, the film again takes a daring, creative, and insightful journey into the depths of heartbreak.

I love a movie with guts, and I love a movie with joy in its heart. Put the two together, and you have something special. (500) DAYS OF SUMMER is just such a movie. I can’t wait to see it again with my wife.

Trucker

Dudeman.  Dude man.  Dude, man.  Dude-man.

I’ll never forget flying into Los Angeles International, waiting at the curb, and overhearing a guy begin a sentence with, “Dudeman.”  That’s the moment I knew I was home.

James Mottern, who wrote TRUCKER, gets the California dialect.  When its star, Michelle Monaghan as the titular trucker, begins a sentence with an exasperated “Dudeman,” I’m right there in the California high desert, right there with her, and she’s someone I know.

See, I’m from the pickup trucks and rifle racks part of Southern California.  This film, set in that part of the state, understands the people who live there.  In particular, it understands Monaghan’s character, Diane Ford, realized in a performance that leads me to reevaluate the actress as a serious force.   Ford owns her own rig, owns her own home, spends far too much time doing too much heavy drinking with Nathan Fillion, a married neighbor.  She’s not ready to care for her long since abandoned 11-year-old son, dropped into her lap when his father’s cancer has grown too strong for him.

I know that you think you know where this film is going: Heartwarm City.  But TRUCKER’s more honest than that.  Ford doesn’t blossom into a fairy princess after a few quick lumps.  And her son never has been and never will be a treacly, tow-headed boy.  But these people have got to figure something out, and the film takes them there without betraying them, their milieu, or itself.

TRUCKER’s an honest film, closely observed and carefully made.  It had me at dudeman.

The Informant!

I’ve had it with the films of Stephen Soderbergh. They seem so affected, so aware of their own cleverness. THE INFORMANT!, for example, glides along on this bouncy muzak that makes me feel like the film thinks it’s smarter than the people in it. Since the people in it made suckers out of us, we don’t have to work too hard to close that circle.

THE INFORMANT! tells the quasi-true story of Mark Whitacre, played by Matt Damon as some sort of goofball moron genius. The film adapts Whitacker’s book about his time as an FBI informant, helping the Bureau build a price-fixing case against agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland while simultaneously embezzling millions and millions of dollars from his employer.

I think it’s going for archly humorous, but it simply comes off as arch. Eventually, it got under my skin, giving me the kind of uncomfortable feeling I associate with observing one person belittle another. Consequently, I distanced myself from the film and merely waited for it to end.

After the disappointments of BUBBLE, OCEAN’S THIRTEEN, and THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, I'm done with this filmmaker. I just don’t see what he brings to the table.

Moon

I hesitate to tell you much about MOON.  It’s a film that parcels out information a little at a time, leaving it to the audience to piece things together.  The film takes place on a mining installation on the far side of the Moon.  Fully automated, the installation requires one man to fix things, to deal with the unexpected, to do the kinds of tasks that only men can do.  The job comes with a three-year contract and, as the film begins, Sam Rockwell has two weeks to go.  Two weeks to go, and he may be losing his mind.

No, this isn’t the Overlook Hotel in space.  Nothing that obvious.  Rather, it’s absorbing, engaging, thought-provoking science fiction.  In fact, it reminds me of a tale out of the Golden age of Science Fiction, like something Philip K. Dick or Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov might have written.  Sam Rockwell, quickly climbing the list of my favorite actors, shines.  And the world, the Moon, created here is fully realized and perfect to the last detail.

That’s it: that’s all I think I can say without giving anything away.  If you like science fiction, if you like movies, you must see MOON.  This is an outstanding film.

The Invention of Lying

THE INVENTION OF LYING is both profoundly smug and intellectually dishonest.

It’s profoundly smug because it mocks Judaeo – Christianity while so proud of itself for its cleverness that it fails to see the cheapness and lack of sophistication of its attacks. It’s intellectually dishonest because, like all beauty and the beast stories, it operates on the underlying assumption that it is for the beautiful to judge beastliness.

In the film, Rick Gervais plays a man living in a world in which no one has ever lied. There is no fiction; there is no acting; there is only objective truth. Of course, a world without imagination is a world in which no one could imagine new inventions or scientific theories, but that’s not important right now. The fun part, or at least the part which the film thinks is most fun, is that it’s a world without religion. Because, after all, religions are tissues of lies.

But Gervais invents the lie. He lies to ease the passing of his beloved mother, and people overhear. Those people tell other people and, before you know it, Gervais has written down the ten principles of religion and taped them to the backs of a couple of pizza boxes in a heavy handed mockery of the Ten Commandments. One lie leads to another and to another, and soon the image of Gervais with the Pizza Boxes has transformed into something like a crucifix. Gervais himself is made up to look like Jesus. And we in the audience are expected to laugh at the yahoos simple enough to believe in an invisible man in the sky.

Gervais also lies to attract Jennifer Garner, a woman whom I’m told is beautiful (but I just don’t see it). She’s meant to grow and mature and see that real beauty, real desirability, lies within. But she has no inner beauty. In fact, she has no redeeming qualities of which the movie makes us aware, leading us to believe that Gervais himself sees only the beauty without. This, of course, is the Beauty and the Beast conundrum. Beauty is supposed to see past the beast and perceive the lovely soul within. But the beast sees only the beauty, which puts him in the position of demanding that which he is unwilling to give: loyalty to the soul and not the appearance.

THE INVENTION OF LYING isn’t funny, it isn’t romantic, it isn’t good. In fact, it’s the worst movie I’ve seen since TIMELINE. Pass this one by.

Ghost Town

GHOST TOWN is a charming romantic comedy.

I hope its makers gave M. Night Shyamalan a cut of the proceeds, because it unapologetically rips off THE SIXTH SENSE.  Ricky Gervais plays a misanthrope who wakes up from surgery to find that he can see dead people.  One of the dead people, Greg Kinnear, needs the misanthrope’s reluctant help in protecting his former wife from marrying some Baxter, and away we go.

I laughed.  I cried.  But I’m an easy laugh and an easy cry, so that’s not very interesting.  What is interesting are Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear, who are fantastic in this picture.  GHOST TOWN hands them the same challenge: create characters who are basically pricks, but make them sufficiently likeable so the audience will care long enough to watch them change.  I’m not sure how they do it, but they do.  It’s marvelous stuff, and great fun to watch.

Technically, the film looks blandly fine.  It’s glossy, slick, and professional: standard, high quality, Hollywood fare.  Toss in a few glamour shots of Manhattan’s fall foliage and a couple of time lapses of the city lighting up and darkening down to spice things up, and you have a nice presentation of a funny, effective film.

Will GHOST TOWN change your life?  Absolutely not.  But it does what it sets out to do and does it well.  You could do worse.

The Return of the King

I'm amazed.

I just couldn't get in to THE RETURN OF THE KING.

I think it was all just too much. Every time someone named some location, he did it so portentously that he seemed to be deliberately hamming up his exposition for the benefit of the viewer. I wanted another character to say, "Oh, yes. I've heard of it. I'm told they don't let people smoke in cafes there anymore." The battles went on and on and on, with the occasional head nod to the concepts of fear and battle fatigue, but with the characters so unaffected by their constant dances on death's doorstep that I came to suspect mental dysfunction. The emphasis on the Eowyn storyline felt even more like an example of commerce over storytelling than it had in previous chapters.

And once the spell is lost, ROTK just seems silly and overblown. I found myself wondering more about how Sauron fed and disciplined his troops than about whether the plucky hobbits would save the day. I groaned nearly every time Legolas spoke. I shuddered at the inconsistent levels of power demonstrated by various villains as the need arose.

That's not to say that there isn't some great stuff here. Peter Jackon created a sense of life in the faded shadow of a once-great empire. The meticulous care given to costuming, set design, and the craft of world creation pay dividends in the creation of an immersive land. The story appears to be told about as well as it can be told.

But once the spell is broken, it's broken. I expect that the next time I see this film, it'll be in a couple of years (when I deem my oldest to be ready for the violence). Hopefully, the experience will help me see ROTK through his eyes. I'd like to believe again.

The Two Towers

I remember feeling disappointed with THE TWO TOWERS upon its initial release.  I felt that the film suffered from the decision to make the dwarf a comic relief character.  I didn’t care about the Aragorn / Eowyn romance.  And the Treebeard stuff, well, it just pulled me right out of the picture.

This time around, I reacted differently.  I still didn’t care for the use of the dwarf in comic relief, particularly as the jokes weren’t funny.  I continue to think that Miranda Otto represents a significantly better find than Liv Tyler.  But Treebeard looks great on the small screen and I found myself marveling at the film’s seamless blend of practical effects and computer animation.

I did notice, however, that this film could serve as the foundation for a couple of pretty good drinking games.  Every time Frodo apologizes to Sam or Sam to Frodo, drink up!  Ok, maybe just the first five or ten times.  Any more than that, and the activity could go from game to contest to disaster pretty quickly.  Or how about every time Elijah Wood emotes the addicting / controlling influences of the Ring by rolling his eyes back and giving us a half-Elvis lip curl?  On second thought, that would just lead straight to disaster.

Disregarding the tedium of Sam & Frodo’s tramp through the woods, this picture delivers on its promise to return us to the carefully imagined, thoroughly detailed world of its predecessor.  It moves the story along, keeps the good guys good and the bad guys bad, and generally represents a great time at the movies.  I’m ready for THE RETURN OF THE KING.

Sweet Smell of Success

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, a noirish assault on Walter Winchell starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, is funny and sad and gripping and unpredictable, right to the very end.  It succeeds on every level.

Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, a press agent and general-purpose scumbag who reminded me of a smarter version of NIGHT AND THE CITY’s Harry Fabian.  Falco lives in fear of and subservience to J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), the Winchell character.  And if Falco’s a scumbag, Hunsecker’s a flat-out villain.

Whoah.  Wait a minute.  I just figured something out.  I’m done with the “review” part.  It’s a great movie.  See it.  You’ll love it.  There.

Here’s the more interesting thing.  SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS was released in 1957, after Winchell’s career had gone into decline in the wake of the Army-McCarthy hearings.  See, Winchell had abetted Joseph McCarthy and had no problem slapping the “Red” label on those who crossed him.  When McCarthy’s star fell, it left Winchell vulnerable.

Vulnerable to whom?  Perhaps to a man like Clifford Odets, a playwright who had named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee and lived forever after in shame because of it.  Odets, who was called in merely to polish a script that was nearly ready to shoot, spent four months completely reworking it.  He made SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS subtler, tenser, sharper.  He wrote a film that feels like a dagger aimed at the heart of Walter Winchell.

One year later, the weakened Winchell crossed Jack Paar, host of the Tonight Show and the face of television.  Paar destroyed him, forever sealing the ascendancy of the new medium.

I don’t know which is more interesting, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS or its place in the history of American mass media.  Regardless, there’s no denying that this is a fantastic, fantastic movie.  See it at your earliest opportunity.

Cheri

Roger Ebert talked me into seeing this movie with his elegant review, linked here.

It took me a while to settle into it. Sure, everyone loves Michelle Pfeiffer, but how could I get into watching her falling in love with some poncy French Byronesque figure who wasn't, well, me?

Because she's Michelle Friggin Pfeiffer. Don't let her beauty distract you from the fact that she's an extraordinary actress. Under the direction of Stephen Frears (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, THE QUEEN, MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS, among others), she absolutely shines as a woman who knows enough to know better and knows to not care.

Through her, the story's world opened to me. While I still couldn't understand how any woman could go for a man so manifestly unlike myself, I could immerse myself in Belle Époque France. I could enjoy observing the interplay of Ms. Pfeiffer and the formidable Kathy Bates. And I could catch myself up in a world of right decisions for wrong reasons and wrong decisions for right.

By the film's end, I lived in its world and cared about its people and wanted them to be ok. Even if I did think Michelle could have done better.

The Fellowship of the Ring

I saw THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (FOTR, hereafter) upon its initial release.  I saw it again when the long form version hit DVD.  At the time, I loved it.  But it has been a few years since my last viewing.  How does it hold up?

Wonderfully.

This picture is note-perfect.  It begins with an introduction to a Middle Earth and Hobbiton that bathes in golden light, the epitome of the pastoral fantasy.  It goes from there into a series of adventures of ascending danger and importance, adventures in which we understand the actions that led to them, the people involved, and the stakes at hand.  The adventures occur in a world wholly fantastic and entirely believable, one with a history alluded, not explicated.  This is a world in which people live and have lived.  It’s a world about which we care.

And the characters, which might seem silly in less capable hands, breathe here.  Anyone can make fun of wizards and dwarves.  By playing the material straight, however, FOTR makes us believe in these fantastic people.  We sympathize with their fears and delight in their heroics.  We believe.

I loved this movie then; I love it now.  I look forward to THE TWO TOWERS.

Julia

I read the reviews. I read about the awards. I read how great a movie JULIA is.

So it must be me.

I couldn’t stand it.

Here is why.

The eponymous Julia is such a vile, self-centered train wreck of a human being that she lost me in the first twenty minutes. When the story got to Act II, I’d ceased caring for her. When it reached the halfway point, I loathed her. When it finally got around to trying to get me on her side, I’d disengaged. I so disliked being around this protagonist that she ceased to be real to me, becoming instead just another character in a film through which I was slogging because I’m a guy who likes to see things through.

I lay some of the blame on Tilda Swinton, an actress whom I’ve always found off-putting. She’s a pro; doing a pro’s job to the specs of the script, the director, and (clearly) the critical community; but there’s something about her that has always kept me from getting on her side. Most of the blame, however, lies in the script. It creates an irredeemable character, then dares us to stay with her long enough to see if she takes a shot at redemption. But there’s a word for people who stay around the irredeemable: victims. I don’t play that game.

But perhaps you do. Or perhaps you’re just a more forgiving cat. Or perhaps you won’t find some of the film’s situations so profoundly horrifying that you can’t get past them. If so, I’m told that JULIA is a first-rate thriller with a can’t-miss performance. Knock yourself out.

Gymkata

GYMKATA wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.  Don’t get me wrong: it was pretty bad, but somehow I thought it’d be worse.

GYMKATA imagines a world in which the US Government would recruit an elite gymnast into the spy game, put him through a quick montage and set him up with a girlfriend, then turn him loose to save the world through gymnastics.  The athlete’s unique fighting style, his gymkata, comprises a potent weapon against evildoers foolish enough to stock pommel horses, uneven parallel bars, and lots of chalk in their lairs and killing fields.  After all, who can stand against a warrior so fierce his he needn’t even strike his opponents – a warrior who need merely wave his hands and feet in their general direction for their bones to snap and their bodies to go flying?

Yeah, it’s silly, but c’mon, you’ve gotta give it points for creativity.

And speaking of creativity, the people behind GYMKATA made some surprising and delightful creative choices.  Yes, beyond the sequined black cat suit worn by the love interest.  They filmed on location in Zagreb, giving the film some real beauty when I expected only matte paintings and the distinctive flora of the greater Ventura area.  They had the guts to actually set up a pommel horse in a town square so the hero could fight cannibals as only a master of gymkata can.  And they put together an extended sequence in a damned village of the insane that, while not actually creepy, tried really hard to be creepy.  Toss in some ninjas (The great thing about ninjas is that they wear face masks, meaning you can use the same five stuntmen over and over again.), a little arterial spray, and the aforementioned love interest in a cat suit, and you’ve got yourself a fun little movie.

So pay no attention to the fact that leading man Kurt Thomas while a great gymnast, made for an unconvincing actor and stuntman.  Pay no attention to the fact that the film is supposedly set in the whitest, blonded part of Central Asia.  And pay no attention to the fact that GYMAKATA’s plot is yet another recycling of The Most Dangerous Game, but with less logical consistency than many other versions. If you’re willing to take the film on its own terms as a cheap, silly, mid-‘80s adventure romp, you just might dig it.

To my surprise, I kinda did.

The Night of the Hunter

I love how THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER rocks along as a reasonably creepy thriller for forty-five minutes or so, with an interesting villain, hapless victims, and tough kids in peril. And then, whammo! Forty-five minutes in, the whole picture takes a sudden left turn into the world of German Expressionism.

I’m tellin’ ya, I half expected those kids to try and seek refuge in the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

OK, look, you already know that Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell ranks among the great screen villains. I knew that, and I hadn’t even seen the movie yet. What I didn’t know, and what THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER showed me, is that Robert Mitchum would have made a first-rate silent film actor. Even without the power of his distinctive voice, Mitchum’s face and frame carry so much weight, convey so much menace behind such a friendly façade, that I can picture him holding his own not only against the great Lillian Gish in this picture, but opposite her in the heyday of her silent career. Put this guy in an unreal world of portentious nature and avenging motherhood, and it’s no surprise that THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER became a classic.

In the Loop

I need to see IN THE LOOP at least two more times.  I missed too much dialogue because I was laughing too hard.

IN THE LOOP is a dialogue-based comedy about the runup to the Iraq War.  Well, the movie never specifically calls the war in question the Iraq War, but it leaves little room for doubt.  It centers on a hapless, minor British cabinet minister who, by saying the wrong thing in a radio interview, becomes a pawn of forces in London and DC.  I’d say he’s a pawn of forces he can’t imagine, but they’re right there in his face, calling him a twit (British) and an idiot (American).

Hey, I hear ya: you’ve had it with witty, dialogue-based political comedies.  I know the market’s swamped with ‘em, but I’m here to convince you to pluck this one out of the deluge.  If you’ve ever wanted to hear “Love, Actually” used as a pejorative, here’s your movie.  If you’ve ever wanted to hear someone accused of sounding like the Nazi Julie Andrews, here you go.  If you’ve always known, in your heart, that opera music is really just subsidized … foreign … vowels, haul your tail down to the video store and pick up this movie.

Now, I’m done with typing.  I need to spin this film again.

Timeline

Michael Crichton’s Timeline read like a movie treatment.  I didn’t mind.  Crichton, after all, had no qualms about his status as a mainstream writer.  He crafted marketable thrillers, which is no mean feat.  He also managed to work the fruits of his research into them, using a vehicle like Timeline to give the reader a crash course in medievalism.

The filmed version of Timeline eschews all that medievalist nonsense, other than to use it as a pretense to move from one action bit to another.  It’s aided in this by able performers Paul Walker (who earned my goodwill through the underappreciated RUNNING SCARED), Gerard Butler, David Thewlis, and Neal McDonough; as well as a Brian Tyler score that tells us exactly what to feel and when to feel it.  But action without context has no meaning.  TIMELINE the film fails to create the context that will make the audience care who’s killing whom and why.

See, here’s the deal: a team of medievalist archeologists travels back in time to France in the 1350s.  An English force menaces the village and keep of Castlegard, and the film’s intrepid heroes join forces with the Frenchmen to save the day for, uh, French stuff.  But so what?  What’s so bad about the English, anyway?  I mean, I like Newcastle Brown Ale.  Add that the English lord prosecuting this particular attack is genre favorite Michael Sheen, while the French leaders are no-names, and I’m thinking, ‘Blimey, let’s save these Frogs from eating snails and turn ‘em on to the glories of shepherd’s pie.’

Which, of course, leads us to the problem with taking sides in any feudal-era battle.  As a member of the peasant class, what do I care which nobleman is oppressing me?  Whether it’s a Valois or a Plantagenet stealing the fruits of my labor, I get ripped off either way.

Whoah, settle down, Trotsky.  This isn’t about to become an explication of dialectic materialism’s application to the medieval era.  I’m just sayin’.

Back to the movie.  TIMELINE gives me perfectly acceptable heroes, but it gives me no reason to root for them, to believe in their cause.  Neither does it teach me anything about the medieval era in general or the Hundred Years’ War in particular.  In other words, it fails to achieve any reason for existing.  Give this one a pass.

Groundhog Day

GROUNDHOG DAY is a perfect movie.

You can watch it with the sound off and it works just as well. You can watch it while distracted and it works just as well. You can put the kids to bed, dim the lights and kick on the surround, and it works just as well. It’s seamless.

Plenty of movies are seamless, of course. GROUNDHOG DAY stands apart because, in addition to being seamless and funny and quotable and all that, it’s a near-perfect depiction of samsara.

Hey, wait a minute! Somebody else already wrote what I was going to write, but better! Here’s the relevant passage from a piece on Bill Murray in The Onion AV Club:

… “samsara”—the endless cycle of birth and rebirth that can only be escaped when one achieves total enlightenment. In the film, Murray’s sarcastic, self-serving weatherman is forced to repeat a single day out of his life until he comes to terms with the Four Noble Truths: 1) Life is suffering (but that doesn’t mean you have to add to it by being a jerk). 2) The origin of suffering is attachment to desire (so don’t spend your days robbing banks, stuffing your face with danishes, and trying to bamboozle your way into Andie MacDowell’s pants). 3) There is a way out (by dedicating your time to bettering yourself), and 4) it involves following the “eightfold path,” which means revoking self-indulgence and becoming a “bodhisattva”—someone who acquires skills and uses them in the selfless service of others (like changing an old lady’s tire, saving kids who fall out of trees, and performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking victim). As a result of Murray’s generous acts, he receives the love of the whole town—a oneness with the universe—and is allowed to evolve past the cycle of samsara to nirvana.

That is all.

Pandora's Box

Some women are trouble.  You can tell just by looking at them.  Louise Brooks is trouble.

In PANDORA’S BOX, Brooks plays Lulu, a woman who begins on top of the world.  She has a lovely apartment, a great wardrobe, and a sure-fire way to keep the meter reader happy and reporting her consumption as something very close to zero.  I wouldn’t call her a slattern, or even a hooker, really.  Rather, she reminds me of a girl with whom I once had the following conversation:

“You sleep with pretty much everyone.  Why?”

“When guys are having sex, they’re happy.  Me – I like to see people happy.”

(NB: This girl went on to develop into an exurban, Volvo-driving soccer mom.  Thanks for the update, Facebook!)

Lulu’s all about the happy.  If it should happen to net her a high standard of living, so much the better.  Problem is, the people in her life don’t see things quite that way.  For them, sex is freighted with emotion.  Before long, those emotions start doing serious damage.

Hence, my opening comment about dangerous women.  Someone like Lulu doesn’t even need to try to be dangerous.  The simple reality of her approach to sexuality in a world that sees things so very differently makes her radioactive.  She hurts people without knowing why.  People retaliate for reasons she cannot understand.  Ultimately, even her style of basic kindness turns against her.

And Louise Brooks, whose checkered personal life must have influenced her performance, brings her to life.  She captures our imagination and breaks our hearts, keeping us in her corner right to the very end.  Lulu’s someone she makes us want to get to know, even though we know she’s nothing but trouble.

I Vitelloni

Federico Fellini’s I VITELLONI (The Guys) captures the desperation and sense of stunted ambition that comes from being stuck in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Trust me on this. I’m from a small town in the middle of nowhere.

But there’s something this film doesn’t know, and it’s something I didn’t realize until fairly recently: there’s a lot to be said for staying in, or coming back to, one’s small town. See, I got out of my town as fast as I could, making my way to the nearest metropolis I could find. In the nearly twenty-five years since, I’ve made every effort to live in or near big cities, cities alive with culture and history, cities where ideas matter, for it’s in cities where I belong. But the magic of the Internet has reintroduced me to a set of people who’ve chosen an entirely different path: the ones who stayed, or who came back.

The kids I grew up with in that small town, the kids who are now parents and grandparents, contractors and firemen and teachers (and even the editor of the local paper), share a profound sense of place, of belonging. They’ve known one another for so long that few secrets can hide among them. When you’re young and the world beckons, such a future seems stifling. Now, there’s something about it that I find very appealing (he thinks as he writes, jet-lagged, in the early morning hours. I’d probably feel the walls closing after, oh, maybe Week Two.).

I VITELLONI doesn’t know this, but perhaps it isn’t supposed to know this. It is, after all, a movie about The Guys, young men hearing the call of the great wide world but who, for one reason or another, never actually get on that train to go find it. Perhaps, in the end, they’ll be glad they didn’t.