Broken Flowers

The blog has been relatively quiet lately; sorry for that. With a famly vacation and various summertime activities, it's been hard to break off the time to write up my impressions of the movies I've seen.

That said, something's better than nothing, so here's a quick jot about Jim Jarmusch's BROKEN FLOWERS:

I'd like to take a moment to celebrate one sequence from the movie.

When Murray visits old flame Sharon Stone, he finds himself in the middle of a Nabokov novel. Thing is, he realizes it; but neither Stone nor her eminently available daughter (aptly named Lolita) are in on the joke. Murray's deadpan delivery acts as the perfect counterpoint to the ridiculousness of his situation, and the whole affair is entirely successful.

Much like the rest of the film.

SpongeBob Square Pants: The Movie

So, here's the thing about SPONGEBOB SQUARE PANTS: THE MOVIE: it's not as bad as you think.

The picture begins with a pirate ship at sea. They spot a floating seachest, open it, and are delighted to find tickets to the SpongeBob movie. They break into a terrific chanty-style rendition of the SpongeBob theme song, and before you know it we're in Bikini Bottom, home of the titular sponge.

The story itself is your basic quest tale, with fun turns by guest voice actors such as Jeffrey Tambor, Alec Baldwin, and Scarlett Johansson. It's pleasantly diverting stuff, but there's something about it that both sells this movie and takes it completely over the top. SpongeBob has unmasked the villain, but the forces of evil are closing in on him anyway. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, he breaks into a rock tune (written and performed by Twisted Sister's Dee Snider), a guitar materializes in his hands, and before you know it, he's freeing the city by shooting laser beams out of aforementioned guitar while simultaneously rocking the house. This is bona fide silly fun, and I loved its audacity of concept and cleanliness of execution, right down to the sampling of David Lee Roth's scat from "Just a Gigolo."

I don't know if I'd call this a pleasant surprise: I expected it to be odious and it turned out to be only ok. Nevertheless, I'll chock this one up in the "win" column. Omilybooblyzeeblybop!

The Simpsons Movie

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE begins with the Simpsons in a theater, watching "The Itchy and Scratchy Movie."  During the movie, Homer stands and shouts, "This sucks!  Why should we pay money to watch something we can see at home for free?"

Truth be told, I can think of only one good reason: you're on vacation, it's raining, and you need to get out of your hotel room.

Coincidentally enough, I'm on vacation with my family in Northern Michigan, it was raining the other day, and we needed to get out of our hotel room. So there we sat, enjoying a dazzling digital projection of THE SIMPSONS MOVIE and having a pretty good time. THE SIMPSONS MOVIE is a slightly raunchier-than-usual longform episode of "The Simpsons," which is either the highest of praise or most neutral of statements, depending on how much you like "The Simpsons." I like it just fine, and I chuckled throughout the running time of the film. THE SIMPSONS MOVIE never quite took me over into belly laugh territory but, if it's raining and I'm just looking to get out, I'll happily settle for a steady stream of chuckles.

I'll happily view it again when it comes on TV and I can watch it at home for free.

Duel

I'd been meaning to see DUEL pretty much forever. I knew it was
Spielberg's first picture, and that was enough to get me to queue it
up. Had I known that Richard Matheson had written it, however, I'd've
queued it up much sooner than now. Matheson, of course, wrote some of
the best episodes of The Twilight Zone. How could I have missed his
involvement in DUEL?

DUEL plays like a long-form Twilight Zone episode. A man is cast into
a stressful and eerie situation and the drama goes from there. It's
successful, in that it takes a premise that makes one think, "How are
they going to spin this out for an hour and a half" and manages to
work that premise to great effect. Dennis Weaver, as the hapless
everyman, does fine work, and the movie grabbed me from the opening
shots.

DUEL is a winner.

Godzilla and Other Movie Monsters

GODZILLA AND OTHER MOVIE MONSTERS, which purports to be a documentary about, well, Godzilla and other movie monsters, is basically a clip show. The film keeps the clips coming fast enough to avoid copyright entanglements while giving a brief overview of giant monsters in film, an overview spanning THE NIEBELUNGENLIED to JURASSIC PARK. It should
be dreadfully dull, but wry narration and a droll sense of humor keep the project afloat for nearly two hours of running time.

This one won't rank among my favorites, but it's a reasonably entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.

Grizzly Man

I'm trying to decide whether GRIZZLY MAN is a very good movie or a downright brilliant one.

The photography alone is very good; Herzog's calling our attention to the photography is brilliant. The insights into Timothy Treadwell are very good; Herzog's editing of Treadwell's soliloquoys is brilliant. The film's balancing on the thin line between fascination and morbid voyeurism is very good; Herzog's occasional steps across the line are brilliant.

GRIZZLY MAN is a collaboration between Herzog and a dead man, a dead man who left hundreds of hours of (mostly self-shot) footage behind. Timothy Treadwell, Herzog's collaborator and the titular Grizzly Man, is disturbed, sympathetic, angry, profoundly innocent, and absolutely in love with Nature. Treadwell's the kind of guy who would've loved MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. He anthropomorphizes bears, foxes, even Alaska, seeming to believe that if he just loves them enough, they'll love him back. But bears are bears and nature doesn't love him back. It's a lesson Herzog understands but Treadwell may never have learned.

GRIZZLY MAN'S power comes from the juxtaposition of Treadwell's innocence, Herzog's wisdom, and the stupendous beauty of Alaska and the grizzlies Treadwell was foolish enough to try to befriend. Because Treadwell was a fool, he shot footage of these bears unlike anything I've ever seen. He got right up next to them. He talked to them, scolded them, even swam with them. He seemed to make something of a pet of a local fox. He lived his dream, right up until he (and his apprehensive girlfriend) died in a grizzly's hungry maw. Amazingly, Treadwell's camera was running (lens cap on) at the time of his death, and Herzog shot some oblique footage of himself listening to the couple's final minutes. In the end, Herzog doesn't share those minutes with us. Instead, he advises the keeper of the tape to destroy it, as it's simply to horrible to own. It's better to remember Treadwell as he was: innocent, foolish, and enveloped in beauty.

And it's that beauty I'll remember long after I've forgotten Treadwell's name. Thank you for a brilliant movie, gentlemen.

Man With The Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929) begins with a declaration that reads: The film Man with a Movie Camera represents an experimentation in the cinematic transmission of visual phenomena without the use of intertitles, without the help of a script, and without the help of a theater. This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature." 'Great,' I thought. 'Here comes an hour of self-important, Marxist twaddle.' Only MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA isn't an hour of self-important, Marxist twaddle. It's an energetic experiment with filmmaking, full of vigor and delight in the tools and techniques of the form.

MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA chronicles 24 hours in an agglomeration of Ukrainian cities. "Chronicles" may not be the correct term, however. "Riffs on" may be more accurate. This film loves to play with multiple exposures, creative editing, and the mounting kinetic energy of quick cut after quick cut to give us a portrait of life, perhaps as lived and perhaps as dreamed, in the Soviet Union of its day. It's moved along by a delightful and wholly original score, performed by the Alloy Orchestra from Vertov's notes, that both speaks to the action onscreen and manages to remain intrinsically fascinating. This is a just a neat, entertaining glimpse into a different time and place. I was sorry when it ended.

Army of Shadows

Jean-Pierre Melville's ARMY OF SHADOWS is a brilliant, brilliant movie.

Released to failure in 1969, when it films about the French Resistance were decidedly not à la mode, ARMY OF SHADOWS now enjoys the full Criterion treatment, with a magnificently restored picture and crystal-clear sound. It's a tense, exciting, moving picture, and it captured my imagination from the first frame to the last.

The film begins at the Arc de Triomphe. It's just after dawn, and the street is quiet. Soon, we hear the sound of marching, then the music of a band. What kind of Frenchman gets up before sunrise to march in a band? No kind - only the Hun would do something as crazy as that. And then we realize that this is a Nazi band, the occupation is on, and things can't be good. From there, we meet Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) a nondescript engineer who's being checked into a Vichy prison camp. He's just another middle-class guy, nothing special, but he becomes one of the hearts of this film, a character whose matter-of-fact, world-weary heroism packs more punch than that of a thousand action heroes.

It's important that we buy into this guy, because he's going to take us to some dark, dark places. ARMY OF SHADOWS is not a movie about romantically heroic Frenchmen clearing the way to victory, but fatalistic operators who kill with implacable horror and struggle to die with something approaching dignity. Moreso, it's about people living with the hovering spectre of betrayal, torture, and death, and ARMY OF SHADOWS winds us tightly in the tension of that existence and never lets us go. This is a film whose big action set-piece is basically three stonefaced people sitting in or standing around a truck, and it's a setpiece that had me on edge from beginning to end.

While this movie works strictly as a spy thriller, it's also a brilliant exploration of both leadership and human perception. Leadership, because its leaders aren't made of ribbons and external authority - they're made of quickness of wit, intensity of purpose, and ability to execute. It's fascinating to see how their power relationships develop, and how much their followers rely on them for their very lives. Perception, because it carefully explores how the human mind frames and parses reality, particularly in a scene I'll refer to as "The firing range," in which we see a character's recollection of the action as filtered through his perceptions at the moment of remembrance.

The more I think about this movie, the more I like it. ARMY OF SHADOWS is a must-see.

The Hot Chick

I'm wrestling with an ethical conundrum. Is it ok to post comments on a film you haven't seen all the way through?

After suffering through the first fifteen minutes of THE HOT CHICK, I came to believe that Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, and even the fine-in-THE NOTEBOOK Rachel McAdams not only personally hated me, but were actively seeking to destroy my family. I remember sitting in my basement, stunned, not sure whether to be more horrified by what I was seeing on the screen or the fact that my wife and older son were both laughing out loud. For the first time in my married life, the open road beckoned ...

So I went upstairs and did the dishes. What, I'm going to run away in a Ford station wagon?

But I don't know if this counts as an actual contribution. Maybe the movie gets better. Maybe it eclipses DUCK SOUP in inspired comedy. Maybe watching it all the way through is like reaching out one's hand and touching the face of God.

But I doubt it.

THE HOT CHICK opens with prologue whose production values make the BABYLON 5 pilot look like THE SOPRANOS. Then it takes us to the present, Rachel McAdams, and an act of cruelty so vicious that it provoked burning hatred in my heart. That's right - burning hatred for Rachel McAdams, in a comedy! And yet there was my wife, laughing right along at her later antics, blithely delighting in the petty cruelty of McAdams and her posse. Before you know it, we're suffering through Adam Sandler putting in a cameo in which his greatest contribution is to recycle an old SNL bit that wasn't funny the first several times. So much entertainment, and Rob Schneider, the supposed star (who didn't even bother to shower for the benefit of the crew), hasn't even shown up yet!

When he does show up, wait'll you see him drink a Slurpee straight from the dispenser! It's comedy gold! I'll tell you, when my boy laughed, it felt like a betrayal. "I've shown you YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN! We've laughed together over STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.! Now this? Who are you and what have you done with my son?"

Oh, no, now I'm beginning to hammer away at the keyboard. I may not be able to get my mind back on my work. Not only has THE HOT CHICK already threatened the fabric of my family, now it's trying to ruin my job. This movie is evil, I tell you. Evil!

Big Deal on Madonna Street

"Big Deal on Madonna Street" is a heist movie with a twist: our thieves are a gang of loveable but hopeless incompetents who couldn't steal a handbag from an old lady. It's supposed to be funny, and it does elicit a chuckle here and there, but it's never quite as funny as it wants to be. Ah, well.

Rabbit-Proof Fence

I tend to look askance at "issue moves." They have this way of putting the issue before the movie, seeking more to educate than entertain. This isn't to imply that movies shouldn't educate - rather, it's a reaction against the hamhandedness that normally accompanies such education.

Thus did I approach RABBIT-PROOF FENCE, a film that's about either the Australian government's earlier policy of reeducating part-Aboriginies and separating them from their heritage or three Aboriginal girls on an awesome journey of escape and endurance.

The film begins as the former, with Kenneth Branagh the genuine but cruelly wrong government official in charge of the relocation and reeducation program. "If only these people knew what we were trying to do for them," he laments. It's hamhanded and, in a separation scene, overtly manipulative to the point of agitprop.

Once it becomes the latter, however, it turns into a better, more effective film. The three girls are heartbreakingly tough and vulnerable, the villains generally well nuanced, and the whole thing thoroughly gripping entertainment.

Ultimately, I think RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is just ok. With a little less agitprop and a little more adventure, the film could have both entertained and scored its points much more effectively.

Shadow of a Doubt

Uncle Charlie's coming for a visit. He's been away for a while, engaged in "business," and now here he is, flush with cash. Charlie's happy to see her namesake uncle, whom she adores in ways both appropriate and inappropriate. Things are about to go very wrong.

And there's the setup for a thriller that's disturbing, engaging, and, yes, thrilling. Joseph Cotton plays Uncle Charlie as a classic sociopath: charismatic, evil, and utterly remorseless. Teresa Wright, as the younger Charlie, does a wonderful job of showing the scales falling from her character's eyes. The film itself winds us tighter and tighter, and the last fifteen minutes had me thoroughly on edge.

Simply put, I enjoyed every frame of SHADOW OF A DOUBT. What a delight.

PS There's a scene in the movie in which Cotton takes Wright to a seedy bar to tell her what's what. As I watched this movie on the Metro last night, someone sat behind me at that very moment. My fellow passenger smelled just like that bar: before I knew it, I was enveloped in the smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol. Talk about an immersive viewing experience!

Cinderella Man

I enjoyed CINDERELLA MAN. Though I'm now comfortably ensconsed in the upper middle class, I grew up poor. Consequently, I have this constant sense that the wolf is always at the door, that my fortunes could shift in an instant and before I'll know it it'll be all I can do just to feed my family. CINDERELLA MAN's first act was all my fears played out before me, and I couldn't help but empathize with the Braddocks' plight.

Once I bought Braddock, it was easy to buy the rest of the movie, a process aided by the film's excellent photography and production values. I rooted for these people, I booed the delightful Craig Bierko, and I lost track of time for a solid two and a half hours. Consider me a satisfied customer.

Tokyo Story

The more I think about TOKYO STORY, the more I like it.

It's a simple story. Grandma & Grandpa leave their provincial home and come to Tokyo to visit the kids. The kids are busy, and the visit does not go well.

Some audiences may find the movie difficult to approach because it's very Japanese. Its characters do not boradcast their every emotion. They don't yell. They don't burst into song. They don't weep majestically. They smile, and bow, and hurt. In other words, they do the kinds of things that people do all over the world, bu they do it within the bounds of their cultural paradigm. Audiences who are willing to attune themselves to that paradigm will discover a movie that's uncomfortably close to home, that speaks to the ways marriages work and the ways generations deal with one another. They'll discover a movie that speaks to the creeping sense of discontent we sometimes feel creeping up on us, and they'll discover a movie that addresses all of these themes in a thoughtful, compassionate, and adult manner.

TOKYO STORY is a serious movie, well made and performed, that earns its place in our imaginations. It is time well spent.

Return of the Jedi

RETURN OF THE JEDI is the film where the wheels came right off the Star Wars franchise’s cart.

It begins promisingly enough, with an all-grown-up Luke ready to wield the lightsaber in defense of his friends and general goodness. But before you know it, we’re back in another Death Star attack, somebody shrunk the Wookies, and after all this time we find out that Darth Vader is just another old fat guy. This movie has absolutely nothing going for it in terms of character or plot, and the only response it can wring from us is a sense of discomfort over Luke & Leia’s earlier flirtatiousness.

My boy’s going through a huge Star Wars phase right now, but I can’t go there with him. I love, love, love the first Star Wars movie, conveniently entitled STAR WARS: it’s everything an adventure film should be. Nothing else, unfortunately, comes close.

The Keys to the House

THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE wants to be, tries to be, a moving little drama about a journey to manhood and father - son bonding. It begins well, with an intriguing premise (haunted runaway dad reclaims custody after 14 years) and likeable actors, but the journey to manhood isn’t particularly compelling and the father-son bonding is pretty much complete only 2/3 of the way through the movie.

This is a drab film, drearily shot, with nothing to engage the eye while the mind wanders. The actors do their jobs well enough, but they’re hampered by a directorial affection for long, motionless silences – there’s a reason why they’re called motion pictures, buddy. If you’re going to have people just stand or sit there, you’d better have good reason and you’d better not do it often.

In a recent CHUD interview, Paul Greengrass compared a major American studio picture to an orchestral symphony. THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE, a small Italian production, tries to be a charming little chamber piece, but it plays a dull tune on drab instruments. Ignore the palms on the DVD cover and give this one a pass.

Black Snake Moan

BLACK SNAKE MOAN didn't get much traction in theaters, though it garnered positive reviews. I can probably sum up the reasons why in my wife's response to the film when she saw the disc arrive in the mail: "Isn't that the one where Samuel L. Jackson chains the girl from THE ADDAMS FAMILY to a radiator? I'll pass."

Well, yeah, Samuel L. Jackson does chain the girl from THE ADDAMS FAMILY to a radiator, but the movie isn't about hot "old black man / chained white chick" action (though I'm sure there are many web sites that are). It's about finding out who you are, whether you've forgotten or simply never knew. It's about dignity, and it's about a particular slice of Southern culture that's as alien to me as a Mongolian yurt, yet feels familiar and comforting.

Here's the deal: Sam Jackson is a farmer and blues musician who has the blues so bad, he can't even play the blues. He leads a blues kind of life: he looks like a bluesman, with his little pot belly and fringe of white hair; but it's been so long since he's picked up a guitar that he can barely remember what it feels like. Sam lives outside a small Delta town, and in that town lives Christina Ricci, the town whore. Not hooker, mind you - she's free. But she has no impulse control, and when things go wrong and she winds up bleeding and unconscious on the side of a country road, Sam finds her. And then he, well ... but it seems like a good idea at the time!

Now no one can deny that that's a great, pulpy core for a story. But that's not what makes the movie. What makes the movie are the sense of time and place it creates, a South both real and archetypical, a South that's far more interesting than the one I lived in for 15 painful months (Ask me about the restaurant that really did have a menu that said, "Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner."). The wonderful, bluesy score takes some credit for that, as does the perfect set and costume design. Samuel L. Jackson certainly deserves his share of the credit, reminding us that, yes, this guy is one fine actor when he brings his A game. And Christina Ricci delivers a brave, demanding performance that changes her status from "girl from THE ADDAMS FAMILY" to "amazing actress from BLACK SNAKE MOAN."

Director Craig Brewer's previous film was HUSTLE AND FLOW, which was brilliant. With this followup effort, he proves that he's not a one-shot wonder. He's a unique and assured voice of the South, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say next.

Bob le Flambeur

I found BOB LE FLAMBEUR thoroughly captivating. It's held together by the titular Bob (Roger Duchesne), a guy who reminded me Burt Lancaster right up to the moment when he dons a tuxedo, at which point he reminded me of George Clooney. Bob's a high-roller, which is another way of saying he's a gambling addict, and you know what always happens to gambling addicts: they lose. Once, long ago, he'd been part of a heist (presumably to cover his debts) gone wrong, but saved the life of a police officer during the arrest. Now he's done his time and he's generally a good guy, but he loves chance so much that he has a slot machine in his closet. And, of course, you know what always happens to gambling addicts.

BOB is a film that deals in shades of morality and people who choose just which shade they'll be. It deals with nobility and weariness, and it offers one of the best heist setups I've ever seen. Jean-Pierre Melville shoots it with just the right combination of glitz and grime, and I believed everyone and everything I saw on the screen before me. What a treat.

The Empire Strikes Back

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is a perfectly fine movie, but I have one major problem with it: it isn’t really a movie. It’s two-thirds of a movie, with a great buildup to a third act that never actually happens.

I know, I know, EMPIRE existed to serve up RETURN OF THE JEDI, but I don’t care. Films should exist on their own, as self-contained entities, even if those entities exist as part of a larger whole. Even if we know another film is coming, we should walk out of the theater satisfied with the narrative experience. EMPIRE forces us to do without that satisfaction, however, leaving us with a cliffhanger that leaves so much unresolved that we feel we wasted our time in watching it.

Some people feel that EMPIRE is best of all the Star Wars films. These are the kind of people who think that all buildup with no payoff is a good thing. As for me, give me my climax and send me home happy.

Take Me Out to The Ball Game

Busby Berkeley's TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME, starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Esther Williams, is utterly, atrociously, horribly bad.

Kelly, Sinatra, Williams, and the supporting cast don't act - they merely mark time between uninspired musical numbers. The story, your basic love triangle, isn't interesting because there's no real sense that any of these people even like one another. The comedy falls flat, Kelly's dancing is tied down by his costars, and not even the pool number can do much more than put a check in a box.

Here's the setup: Kelly and Sinatra are, basically, Ruth and Gherig, a couple of ballplayers on the vaudeville circuit between seasons. Gher-, er, Sinatra is all smiles and enthusiasm, while Kelly's all about the money and has fallen out of love with baseball. When these guys finally show up to spring training, there's bad news: the team's owner has died, leaving it to his stripper wife, who ... oh, wait, that's from a better movie. This movie's bad news is that the owner had died and left the team to his niece, a woman who, dontcha know it, has a talent for and knowledge of baseball. You can fill in the rest of the dots from here, but why bother? It's the middle of summer - why not just go to a ball game, instead?