Three films a day

#73, 4/30 – Drive Me Crazy (1999) (dvd)

Obviously, every movie-watcher has weaknesses. Many of my weaknesses (e.g. Milla Jovovich, Jennifer Jason Leigh,  Terence Stamp, Ron Livingston, Canadian films and actors, Australian comedies) are pretty well known. I try to keep my odd appreciation for formulaic high school romantic comedies out of view, though, for a probably self-explanatory reason: they all suck. Such details really don’t stop me, though..

Drive Me Crazy rather unapologetically lifts itself from that Patrick Dempsey vehicle (and, well, classic of the genre), Can’t Buy Me Love (which, of course, is pretty much just another retelling of Pygmalion). Within two minutes (three, if you’re having a bad day) it’s all very clear what’s going on, what will happen, and why. But that’s Hollywood for you. The trick, of course, is making it interesting. And Drive Me Crazy only mildly succeeds there. Call me silly, but I think this movie would have been better suited for Dunst (another weakness), though she was busy with Drop Dead Gorgeous—which I haven’t seen—and the kinda-cute-and-forgettable, Dick, I guess.

But it still works out. Not as well as the surprisingly effective Taming of the Stil—er, Ten Things I Hate About You, also from 1999, but hey.

Of course, in recent years Hollywood gave us an honest-to-goodness remake of Can’t Buy Me Love, but I haven’t bothered to watch it; and I won’t rent it, but if I run across it on cable (assuming I get cable again) one night and I’m in the proper mood….

Actually, I’m hoping some idiot producer greenlights a remake of Loverboy. That, I would watch.

#72, 4/24 – Elektra (2005) (gitn)

And I thought Daredevil was bad…

#71, 4/23 – Primer (2004) (dvd)

I think the most remarkable thing about this movie is how faithfully it reproduces the insular world of engineers. I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with and around engineers in the last 10-15 years and I knew within the first five minutes of this film that (director/writer/lead actor) Shane Carruth must have been a part of this world; the dialog simply was simply too right for him to have merely come at this from a complete outsider’s perspective.

It’s not a great movie, though. It’s fascinating, yes. Heck, I watched it twice this morning. Carruth wanted to make a movie about people, and to some degree I think he succeeded. But I also think he spent a little too much time with the plot and not enough time with the characters. It’s a very short film at 78 minutes, and perhaps if he’d spent even five more minutes dealing with the lives of Aaron and Abe, independent of each other (or at least independent of the experiment), I would be singing this movie’s praises all over the place. Yeah, I know the movie is about Aaron and Abe and what the events of the film do to their relationship, but they obviously have lives outside of one another and I wish we’d seen more about that. I even understand why Carruth made his choices. Again, though, I just wish he’d added little bits and pieces here and there.

He reportedly made this movie for $7000, by the way. And it’s so much better than some of the movies made with budgets 10,000 times bigger.

#70, 4/23 – Bad Education (2004) (dvd)

I find it weird that just as Almodovar has improved his treatment of his female characters, he goes and makes a movie with virtually no women in it.

I liked it as a film, despite his reliance on plot twists which seemed almost unnecessary. Maybe I’m being unfair. Either way, it’s worth seeing. I’m too tired to say anything else coherent about it right now.

#69, 4/17 – Winter Solstice (2004) (tofw)

I admire the attempt more than I like the result (though I did like it), but that’s sometimes perfectly fine. It left me feeling incredibly sad, though I’m not sure why.

Maybe I miss New Jersey more than I realize.

I have more to say, and maybe I’ll get around to saying it one day.

Update: Maybe even today, a few minutes after I made this post in the first place.

The awkwardness of certain scenes was almost spot-on (almost, though it couldn’t quite conjure the feeling as tangibly as Funny Ha Ha did). And the little gashes across the soul which loss can leave are shown pretty well. I think the movie falls in on itself at times, but again, I admire the attempt.

I’m pretty sure this is the first movie starring Anthony LaPaglia I’ve liked since 29th Street. It’s such a shame because I like the actor quite a lot, but I’m often left cold by the scripts he’s chosen. Honestly, not even my admittedly strange interest in LaPaglia’s fellow Aussie, Radha Mitchell, could save Dead Heat.

[@Century CinéArts 6, ~12:30pm]

#68, 4/17 – Vera Drake (2004) (dvd)

I liked this one despite some misgivings with its characterizations and (yes) choices. It still had an emotional weight, a center which I can’t deny, which made the whole affair heartbreaking.  I don’t think it was up to the level of All or Nothing, but I’m glad I saw it.

#67, 4/16 – When Will I Be Loved (2004) (dvd)

There must be a movie I’ve seen this year which I hated more.

Hmmm.

Nope.

#66, 4/16 – Man on Fire (2004) (dvd)

Most Hollywood movies are incredibly formal affairs which adhere to whichever genre they’re a part of. Musicals, spy thrillers, Oscar contenders, romantic comedies, and most of the other types of film we get from SoCal each have a set of rules and expectations which you have to accept if you’re going to get anything out of them. Sometimes (e.g., House of Sand and Fog), I’m offended by the film’s slavish devotion to these rules. Other times, I’m entertained by the same tendencies. I never said I was consistent.

Man On Fire is not a work of art (hell, how could it be? It comes from Tony Scott, easily one of the most uninspired filmmakers working), but it’s amazingly faithful to the form and surprisingly worth the time because of it. Like with the by-the-book romantic comedy Wimbledon, you know what you’re getting the second  the movie starts. And it’s pulled off with this single-mindedness which is relaxing and reassuring: We know everyone is going to get what they deserve. There’s no mystery here. No tension. No emotional involvement. It’s a Calgon movie which manages to become exactly the escape that people seem to think movies should be. It’s not engaging, but it’s still entertaining.

I can get with that on occasion.

So let’s give it up for John W. Creasy, New Jersey boy and world-class murderer. Oh, and Tony Scott, amazingly shitty director (dig the horrible use of the score, the nifty editing tricks which really added nothing to this film, and the heaping helping of very. obvious. symbols), but an excellent craftsman and a master of the Hollywood form.

#65, 4/14 – Hellboy (2004) (dvd)

To (roughly) quote PTP: "Anyone can do mindless, but can you make it entertaining?"

Hellboy bored me to tears. I should have stayed away, but after reading Zacharek’s positive review of Sin City (in which she mentions her regard for Hellboy) I figured it was worth a shot. After all, I like Zacharek. She is my favorite critic. And more often than not, when we connect with the same movie, we see it in a similar light. That’s always a good sign.

All the same? Boring.

I now have a much greater appreciation of the Spiderman and X-Men movies.  Heck, I’m willing to crown the second X-Men movie as the masterpiece that it is. Stuff blew up and I cared! Is that too much to ask for?

#64, 4/12 – The Rules of the Game (1939) (dvd)

And sometimes the choices directors make aren’t the right ones. Mind you, I loved the version of the film I just saw. But it should be noted that it’s not the "director’s cut".

An interesting thing, that. Renoir’s first cut of the film ran a little over 90 minutes. After he premiered it, he cut it to 81 minutes, due to the incredibly poor reception it got at its premiere at La Colisée. The version on the DVD, which comes from a 1959 restoration done with Renoir’s blessing, but not his direct involvement, is 106 minutes. Those twenty-five minutes literally change the movie, especially at the end, making it more satisfying for me.

Funny, huh? My enjoyment of this film is as much down to the choices Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand make as those of Renoir.

#63, 4/12 – Southern Comfort (2001) (dvd)

A simple, subtle, rich, very human documentary.

I’ve become more and more aware recently that filmmaking is a collection of decisions. When I dislike a film, more often than not, it’s because the implications of the decisions being made truly disturb me. Just yesterday, while defending my admittedly harsh reading of Sideways, I kept talking about Payne’s choices. Every shot, after all, is an attempt to convey something to the audience. So, it bears asking, I think: what are they trying to say and why? Why is this scene supposed to be funny or sad or poignant or whatever else? Why is the music playing? Why are these "badass" women going to pieces?

When a filmmaker’s choices trip my alarms, I’m very unforgiving. I don’t need everything made to be "art" or "deep" or "serious" or "meaningful", but everything created says something about life, about people, about the world. I hold filmmakers accountable for that, regardless of their surface intentions (in fact, I’m more likely to be put off if the thing posits itself as "just" entertainment). This is why I like bubblegum like Sky Captain or Wimbledon (which, I admit, have very little to say about anything) while recoiling at the "hip" viciousness of Mr. Tarantino’s movies.

For me Southern Comfort, as a film, succeeds because the choices made were the right ones. Every single time. Robert is not presented as a cause, a creature, or a caricature. He’s not on our screen to be laughed at, or championed. Robert is Robert. Or, as he says himself in the film: "Hey, I have the same dignities, I have the same indignities that you have. I deserve to be treated like anybody else." Precisely.

If I can ever make a film even half as perceptive and respectful of basic humanity, I will be pleased with myself. It’s not easy, you know. It’s not easy at all.

#62, 4/12 – The Weather Underground (2002) (gitn)

I think that part of The Weathermen phenomenon that was right was our understanding of what the position of the United States is in the world. It was this knowledge that we just couldn’t handle. It was too big. We didn’t know what to do. In a way, I still don’t know what to do with this knowledge. I don’t know what needs to be done now. And it’s still eating away at me, just as it did 30 years ago.
– Mark Rudd

In sophomore year of college I had a teaching assistant in my intro to American history class named Catherine Burns. She consistently told us in section that "you’ve got to see the spider!" She was always so excited when she said it, too, her South African accent coloring her words in this, well, sexy way. (Hey, Catherine was hot. What can I say?).  You’ve got to see the spider.

I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about, truth be told. No matter how often she said it, it never got through to me just how interconnected the events we studied were. When people talk about history they tend to look at things as if they existed in compartments: "the civil rights movement", "the  American Revolution", "the Cold War". All these things are presented (and often studied) with no connections back into the rest of the world. But each time we were only looking at a leg, meanwhile there were seven more and a whole body, too.

This movie understands that. It’s no classic, mind, because it only barely touches on the context around Weathermen, but it understands that it’s there. The Black Panthers and the Paris 1968 uprising are part of the same creature. The filmmakers (and more importantly, their subjects) got this.

Rudd’s statement above is a pure beauty, in my opinion. Not only do I empathize with him (I’ve only had the understanding to which I think he refers for, oh, three years, maybe, and it’s driven me crazy), it touches on the one thing which I think most left-leaning documentaries have missed: "it was too big". Of course it was too big. It’s startling. And that’s exactly where Michael Moore (for instance) fails. If he himself gets how big it is, he failed to convey it in his latest movie. Utterly.

This movie reminded me of something. I won’t live to see such a thing, because I doubt anyone currently alive has the proper perspective to pull off something of such a scope yet, but I hope someone eventually makes a Ken Burns-sized^*, documentary about the world after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I know that I’m drawing fairly artificial lines of demarcation (so forgive),
but all the same, there is no period which fascinates me as much as 1945 to 1985: the anti-colonial uprisings in places like Kenya and Algeria; the social unrest all over the world in the mid to late 60s; the unfulfilled dream of the United States of Africa; the dirty war in Argentina; Cuba. I could go on for days. Dear god, what a fascinating stretch of years. A documentary which looked at the events, placing them in proper context instead of relying on our trite old shorthands and stereotypes. Something which seamlessly blended in the art and commentary, from Czech filmmaking in the 60s to punk in the 70s. OK, wow. Actually, it’s much too big for a documentary. It needs to be a something of a hypertext: a narrative, with multimedia links. It would take someone years to compile such a thing, and a reader weeks to get through it. But it would be gorgeous.

Hey, Catherine, I see the spider now.

^*Ken Burns-sized, but certainly not Ken Burns-approached. I find his stuff overly sentimental and, well, let’s leave it at that.

#61, 4/10 – A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) (gitn)

OK, at this point I’m ready to make this pronouncement: There is horror and there is South Korean horror. I don’t get it, but the three South Korean horror films I’ve seen have left me thoroughly disturbed. Strangely, I’m not entirely sure I actually enjoyed a one of them, but each has been memorable, and worth multiple viewings.

First was Tell Me Something, with its body-switching and icky murder scenes and god knows what else that I’ve successfully blocked from my memory; I want to see it again, yet I’m also kind of scared to. Then came The Isle—a quiet, oddly beautiful yet altogether nasty picture—which has, possibly, the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen on film, because hooks in flesh freak me out (Wait: I just thought of something more disturbing. Gee, thanks Gaspar Noe. You prick). 

And now there’s this twisting, very interesting (and, I ain’t ashamed to say it) mildly confusing (until the very end) film which I found oddly engaging. One of its strongest suits was its photography, which was, I think, remarkable:
      

I need more South Korean horror. Just not right now. It fucks with my head.

#60, 4/9 – That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) (dvd)

For some reason I don’t have anything to say about the movie right at the moment. I’ll share my impressions later, I’m sure. I will say this: One of the features on the Criterion Disc was lovely indeed. After I watched the film I got to see snippets of corresponding scenes from an earlier filming of the novel and I got to read the original (well, translated, but close enough) text from the book. Nice.

OK, one more thing: I think I try going into movies without knowing anything about them so I can enjoy their little surprises. I had no idea, going into the movie, that Conchita was played by two different actresses.  A lovely touch, really, to symbolize the different sides of her character.

#59, 4/8 – House of Sand and Fog (2003) (dvd)

I hated it. Hated. I tried very hard to like it, but I can only give a "serious" Hollywood movie so much leeway before I get angry at its attempts at manipulation. Yes, I know, I really liked The Hours, a film which certainly has its share of heavy-handedness, but that’s a movie where the strings are far, far less apparent. Or maybe I simply connect better with a story about depression than one about mankind’s obsessive relationship to property.

In the end, I guess that’s it: I couldn’t connect to it. I didn’t find anything worth connecting to in it. Which is odd, because a tragedy of this form (lives ruined over a property dispute) would normally appeal to me. A lot. Maybe it was all the little Hollywood-isms that drove me to distraction. I wanted to hunt down the director and kick him repeatedly for using the score as a blunt object.

Regardless. Hated.

Let us never speak of this movie again.