Three films a day

#174, 10/28 – Capote (2005) (tofw)

Will I get in trouble if I call Philip Seymour Hoffman (simply Phil, to me) the son of God? Oh, I will? Nevermind, then.

I’m scanning my brain and at the moment I can only name one other film I’ve seen Phil in this year, and it was that Mr. Ripley thing. I don’t think I’d said so at the time, but what a monumental waste of talent that film was. I mean, here you had Cate Blanchett, Jack Davenport, and Phil and you shunt them all behind the utterly boring trio of Damon, Paltrow, and Jude the Overrated. What a mess. What an absolute mess.

This film does not make that mistake. If you’re gonna have Phil, Catherine Keener, Bruce Greenwood, and Chris Cooper in your movie, you damn well should make them central, and this picture certainly does.

Recently I had movie-related conversation (with the same friend who loves the look of Days of Heaven, actually) which touched on how some documentaries cross into callous exploitation. In a way, Capote explores this very notion by showing us a title character who is so self-absorbed that the ghoulishness of his documentary-like undertaking completely eludes him.

I don’t know much about Truman Capote as a person (and how could I have? I never met him). I also don’t know if Gerald Clarke’s book on him painted the person Dan Futterman, Bennett Miller, and Phil crafted for us on the screen. But I look at it in more general terms than that, anyway. I see the film as an exploration of what happens when certain personality types become documentarians. And it’s a sober, scary portait, buoyed by fine performances from everyone. Especially Phil.

You know, I’ve never seen Richard Brooks’ adaptation of In Cold Blood. I suppose I should do that.

[@Century 12 Evanston]

#173, 10/26 – George Washington (2000) (dvd)

Sometimes the coincidences kill me. I was talking with a friend some night last week about how I was looking forward to seeing The Conformist, given its reputation as a stunningly beautiful film. This lead us to talk about the most visually arresting films we can remember seeing. I went, perhaps a bit hastily, with John Alcott’s impressive work in Barry Lyndon. (Though I think I really might have to go with Georgii Rerberg’s cinematography on Zerkalo. Plus, well, I still have The Conformist in my head, and maybe.) She chose Nestor Almendros’ gorgeous photography for Days of Heaven. Definitely a great choice.

Oddly though, as a movie, Days of Heaven has always been overshadowed in my head by what I consider Malick’s whoa(!) picture, Badlands. This may have something to do with my strong preference for Martin Sheen over Richard Gere. Or the fact that when I first met a certain ex-girlfriend she looked almost exactly like Sissy Spacek does in Badlands. Or I could just have some odd Starkweather thing going on. Badlands. “Nebraska”. You dig what I’m saying. Regardless, I think I might buy them both on DVD in upcoming months (I’ve already chosen my October DVD), so I can watch them each at my leisure.

Anyway, this is all my long-winded way of saying that Malick’s second feature film has been on my brain. A lot. So much so I thought I felt some of its style in this movie, though I figured I was just looking for connections where none exist. Heh. I don’t give myself enough credit. After the film finished I turned on the commentary and listened to writer/director David Gordon Green talk how Days of Heaven influenced this picture. Indeed! (Oh! I didn’t even realize until just this moment when I checked Green’s credits that he’d also directed All the Real Girls.)

I like Green’s sensibilities as a director, and the choices he tends to make. George Washington manages to step into the bizarre world of children in a way similar to Lynne Ramsay’s wonderful 1999 feature debut, Ratcatcher. Like Ramsay, Green is a director I think is worth getting excited about. I hope they each continue to produce stuff I like.

(Apropos to nothing, except my mention of “Nebraska”, right at this moment “Johnny 99” is the greatest song ever written. It won’t be in an hour or two but right now… yep.)

#172, 10/23 – Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) (tofw)

(Another movie I’m giving five stars to. Christ.)

George Clooney has finally won me over.

Sure, I liked him well enough when he played that charming, misguided Doug Ross fella on that NBC TV show about doctors in some obscure midwestern ‘burg. But, I’m petty. And I got tired of hearing everyone love on him. Especially when he was sporting that horrible haircut. Jesus.

And so, out of my pettiness, though not entirely conciously, I’ve found myself slighting Clooney or giving credit to anyone who wasn’t him. Case in point, I rather liked Three Kings, and heaped praise on writer/director David O. Russell and just about anyone else involved with the film. I mean, anybody. Sure, I said positive things about principals like Marky Mark, that crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube, and Sofia Coppola’s marginally talented husband. But hell, I phoned the key grip and thanked him. Twice.

No love for Clooney, though.

With Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Clooney’s directoral debut, I concentrated every last iota of my joy with the film on Sam Rockwell. (And, I still would contend, almost deservedly so. Charlie Kaufman’s script was probably his most consistently enjoyable yet, and Clooney put out a pretty riveting film, but… Rockwell. It was all about Rockwell.)

I can’t avoid praising ol’ George for Good Night, and Good Luck. Well, rather, I won’t dare slighting him here. Sure, I could easily get away with playing the not-Clooney game since this movie sports a most delicious cast—including Patricia Clarkson (who, let’s not forget, I heart) and David Strathairn (who I also heart). But the joys of this film—and even if it is quite soberly done, the one word I must use when talking about it is joy—are down to the choices and actions of folks behind the scenes. Including Clooney. (And the key grip. Dude, expect a call.)

About a third of the way through this movie I blindly scribbled in my notebook “Spine-tingling. Good, precise, tense filmmaking”. And it was. It is. The stuff on screen freaking crackles for most of the movie (though there’s one newsreel clip which I think cost Clooney and company a bit of momentum towards the end). When you get down to it, I think Good Night, and Good Luck is more engaging than Confessions…, which, let me tell you, is bit of a feat. (Yes, I initially typoed that as “feet”.)

The movie itself is a polemic, sure as day. And I suppose its transparentness might turn some off, especially those who don’t think that the Bush administration’s actions (let’s call it fear-mongering followed by a stomping on the rights of people) are really all that bad. Or those who may believe that the media have done an even halfway decent job reporting. Clooney’s film very simply says that commentary and the analysis of conflicting or inconsistent bits of data are very much a part of the news. And they always have been. I agree.

This was just a good movie to experience.

Yes, George Clooney has finally won me over.

Took him long enough.

[@Century 12 Evanston]

#171, 10/21 – The Conformist (1970) (dvd)

That this movie isn’t out on DVD is a bit of a crime and yet kind of wonderful.

My interest in tracking it down ballooned in August when, just a little while before he died, the great film blogger George Fasel wrote of it:

Let us put aside for a moment that The Conformist (1970) is the most magnificently photographed, scored, choreographed, and costumed film made—ever, anywhere—because while those are not insignificant achievements, there is more to this work by Bernardo Bertolucci, who finished it when he was just short of thirty. It is also the most evocative and stirring political movie of the post-World War II era, a framing of the emptiness and deindividualization which was the goal of fascism and how that experience played out in one particular life. I first saw it more than thirty years ago and was deeply moved and impressed; this time around, I was floored with admiration and astonishment.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t even finish the paragraph. I got to “anywhere” and stopped and crossed my fingers that the film would be showing in my fair city some time soon. I didn’t want to read what else Mr. Fasel had to say simply because I like walking in to a movie without knowing what themes others have picked out of it. Seeing the movie without those other voices in my head makes reading criticism—which I always do after I’ve seen the movie and usually after I’ve written my bit here, too—that much more enjoyable to me.

Anyway, it took two and a half months but, I am fortunate to have seen the movie now. And I’m all the more fortunate to finish reading his insightful, wonderful piece about the film.

He mentions the dancing—connecting it to other Bertolucci films, even—and that’s something I’d noticed myself. I’m especially in love with the little dance Stefania Sandrelli puts on near the beginning of the film, though its the subtle use of color in the dancehall scene near the end which will stay with me for a long, long time.

In one way, yes it’s great that I couldn’t just grab this from Netflix or GreenCine, that I had to see this in a theatre. It is a breathtaking piece of cinema, and the first viewing of it should be in an auditorium, I think. Still, it’s a shame because there are a number of images from the film I wish I could hold on to. Little bits and pieces I wish I could see over and over.

[It also reminds me that during the summer I promised myself that from October on, I could buy one DVD a month. I haven’t chosen my October disc yet because I’m kind of paralyzed by choices. I plan to write a small computer program to do the choosing for me (yes, I’m serious), but before I get around to that, I have to figure out what to get. Hmmm.]

[@ the Music Box Theatre]

#170, 10/20 – Sullivan’s Travels (1941) (dvd)

I struggle to catch my thoughts about this one accurately. Every time I write something it comes out in a way that emphasizes one angle (e.g. how I’m not so pleased with a bit of racist humor near the beginning) or another (e.g. how McCrae’s John L. Sullivan reminds me of that Greek girl Jarvis Cocker sang about in “Common People”) more than I mean to. I’m not so sure I’ll have any better luck now, but still I’ll try.

It’s the Preston Sturges factor, I think. He and I have had a sometimes rocky relationship, and it’s certainly at one of its low points right now.

Sturges was a good filmmaker, really. But certain moments in films like this and The Palm Beach Story trouble me enough to affect my enjoyment. Worse, I can’t say I agree with Sturges’ seeming message. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think he went past the reasonable “escapism is good” all the way to the utterly unsupportable “filmmakers should stick to escapism”.

Or maybe I’m just overly sensitive on this issue. In any case, despite my best efforts to get behind the dynamic duo of Lake & McCrea, I can only say I liked it.

#169, 10/17 – SuicideGirls: The First Tour (2005) (gitn)

For any of you who mightn’t know, SuicideGirls is a web site that is, as the SundayTimes apparently put it, “[p]art alternative community and part pin-up showcase”. It’s a great idea, but I’ve never bothered to be a member. Maybe that’s why I didn’t know SuicideGirls had a “burlesque” show. Or, that they toured. (The things you find out while looking for a movie to watch. )

Frankly, I wanted a different movie than what I got, but that’s on me, not on the filmmaker.

See, here’s the thing: The SuicideGirls site is, in my opinion, part of a recent trend in “adult” entertainment. And I would love to see a documentary about that trend. Or, in this case, at least how something like SuicideGirls connects to the larger picture. No such luck here.

Instead we get this, which plays like an extended episode of HBO’s “Real Sex”. I don’t consider it very informative documentary, but it’s a a very slick promotional tool. very smart one, too. The models all come across very well and the camaraderie vibe comes through five by five.

(Oh. I did a quick Google search right before I was going to post this. I didn’t know about the site’s recent PR problems. Interesting. At least one of the models in the movie has since defected.)

#168, 10/16 РOrph̩e (1949) (dvd)

Jean Cocteau is something of a revelation for me. I could struggle for weeks to explain the hold this film had on my imagination. I won’t bother. Take my word for it: this is a magical piece of filmmaking, and it was well worth my time.

#167, 10/15 – Salaam Bombay! (1998) (dvd)

If you’re ever wondering who in the world could dislike this or that nearly universally-adored movie, I’m your guy. Rather, I’m that guy. Case in point, Monsoon Wedding. I tried to like it. I really wanted to like it, but somehow I was never able to get into it. I never really got into the characters. I’d like to give it another go, because I rather respect Mira Nair’s vision and capabilities. But, yeah, I’m not just the one person in the world who doesn’t like Monsoon Wedding, I’m the person crazy enough to argue that Nair’s earlier Mississippi Masala, flawed though it may be, is a more satisfying picture. Maybe I’ll watch them back-to-back one night, just to make sure.

I had a little fear, then, going into Salaam Bombay! simply because it’s another film everyone I know loves. Fear not, friends, I love it too. Hey, I can’t be a contrarian all the time because that would be boring. I try very hard not to be boring.

Nair shows an honesty and a respect for the characters which is absolutely essential to a film like this. And what I think Monsoon Wedding lacks, that pull, is exactly what this film has in great abundance. I kept finding myself saying “Oh no, don’t let this happen”. And, well, whatever I didn’t want to occur usually did. I was emotionally tied up with Krishna. How could I not be?

(Mild Spoiler)

It wasn’t til the final shot, actually, when I was crying along with poor Krishna, that I realized how much of a debt this film owes to Truffaut’s debut, The 400 Blows. Alas, this is last we’ll ever hear of Krishna, and we know full well that Antoine Doinel grew up all right. It’s weird that I care so much about a ficticious character, isn’t it?

#166, 10/14 – Bewitched (2005 ) (gitn)

Much to my surprise, Will Ferrell (whose movies I tend not to care for), bought some of my good will on the strength of Anchorman. Yes, I said the strength of Anchorman. That movie, more than any other, saved him from being confined to the Forbidden Zone of “comedic” actors I want nothing to do with. I was rooting for Bewitched at least partially because of Ferrell’s co-star, too. After what I consider a disastrous 2001, Nicole Kidman has won me back a little with her efforts in The Hours and Birth, you see. But the movie did have one big obstacle to overcome. Actually, make that two. First off, it’s yet another big screen adaptation of a tv show. And, worse yet, it’s directed and co-written by Nora Ephron, whose last solid script, in my mind, came in 1983 (1989, if I’m feeling a little nostalgic).

Alas, Ephron hacked this thing up worse than I imagined possible. First, she essentially ripped off the cutesy Bell, Book, and Candle and set it in Hollywood. But then, just to be fun, she got our characters involved in a remake of Bewitched (which, keep up, is essentially a rip-off of Bell, Book, and Candle, anyway) and let the laughs happen from there. Right. Except there weren’t nearly enough laughs to sustain it. Kidman and Ferrell aren’t to blame. They did their best. But the script is as by the numbers as Bell, Book, and Candle (bad) and without the charm of Bewitched (worse).

At one point Kidman’s character says “I don’t know why we’re doing this, but it’s fun.” I suppose that’s the overarching idea: they had fun doing it. And if so, I’m happy for them. Alas, I didn’t have very much fun watching it. Shame, really.

#165, 10/12 – Happily Ever After (2004) (dvd)

OK, see, I can’t look at Yvan Attal’s movies very critically. I mean, hey, he’s married to Charlotte, the daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, and I just love her face for some weird reason; he obviously likes soccer; he puts music I like to listen to into his movies (Sparklehorse and Jonathan Fire*Eater in the same movie?! Be still my heart!); and he’s just got this seemingly silly nature about himself—or at least the personas he steps into on screen—that I find interesting. I would like to sit down somehwere with Yvan Attal and talk about, um, whatever he’d like to talk about (except his wife—that would be rude). I doubt the two of us would agree very often (except about his wife, and I swear I wouldn’t bring her up), but that’s neither here nor there.

I mean, sure I know that My Wife is An Actress has its share of weaknesses, but it had Charlotte, Ludivine Sagnier, and Terence Stamp. If we’d just let those three work together more often, world hunger would be a thing of the past.

Happily Ever After is probably just as weak a movie—if not weaker, because, hey, no Ludivine—but I give it some slack because it has to overcome one very formidable issue: Contemporary French romantic dramedies kind of suck. All of them. Especially the ones that have scenes on a beach (which this one, fortunately, does not; though there is a swimming pool scene, and that’s close enough). But, Yvan Attal. Johnny Depp (you’re so cute when you parlez en Français, Johnny!). Charlotte. I can’t hate that kind of movie, no matter how limited the ideas in the script. Plus, that strangely beautiful piano version of “Paranoid Android” that just came in out of nowhere (I’m too lazy to look it up, but I bet it’s done by Brad Mehldau, whose piano version of “Exit Music” was my favorite thing about Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful). And you can’t slip two Velvet Underground songs into a movie without me noticing.

Yes, for you Yvan, I’m willing to overlook a lot. How’s Charlotte doing?

#164, 10/11 – Kiss The Girls (1997) (gitn)

OK, so it’s a thriller which means you probably know what I think. But let’s do this, anyway: the script has some basic problems that I’m almost willing to overlook. Almost. Alas, the story itself made me cringe because it takes a bit too much voyeuristic joy in this idea of gifted men trying to catch gifted men who collect, well, gifted women. I am not so much a fan of this. That one of these gifted kidnappees eventually gets to play sidekick in the hunt for the gifted kidnapper doesn’t let the story off the hook.

Plus, you know, Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman should agree to never work together again. I actually like her quite a bit. Him, too. On paper they’re a duo worth seeing. But this and High Crimes are proof enough that when they get together bad things happen.

Oh well. If I’d realized this was related to Along Came a Spider, I never would have bothered. Though it’s always fun to see Morgan Freeman in that black Porsche.

#163, 10/9 – Shame (1968) (dvd)

Shame is about a marriage and a war. That is a fraying marriage seen through the prism of a war shown without context. Sometimes you have to remove a thing from some of its details, just to show what it is. Actually, perhaps context is the wrong word here. This is a war without metadata. We don’t know which entities are fighting, or which side is to be reviled. We don’t know what anyone’s justifications are (beyond such typical prattle as “liberation”). Hell, we can’t even tell them apart. All we know is that this serious business and it’s been going on for quite some time.

The married couple, Eva (the always-wonderful Liv Ullmann) and Jan (Max von Sydow) , are much more tangled up in each other than in the politics of the situation. They were violinists in a philharmonic before the war came. Now, they live on a small island together, away from everything. Well, everything except the war.

The day before I caught Shame, I’d watched the Minivers riding out a German bombardment of England. Fear, tears, jangled nerves. And we had the moment where reality hit poor Toby, the little boy who had, at one point, seemed happily fascinated by the ideas of war. All poor Toby could do, as he clung to his mother in the bomb shelter, was cry and cry. Suddenly he got it. It was my second favorite part of the movie, outdone only by the surprisingly effective rose competition scene minutes later.

Oh, but Shame’s bombardment scene blows Mrs. Miniver’s away. One morning, in the midst of this war, our couple gets awakened by explosions. We don’t know, or care, why this attack is happening. It just is. All Jan and Eva know is that their place—an isolated house with a greenhouse and chicken coop on the property—is under threat. Lacking a bomb shelter—or a basement, for that matter—they have one option: Leave. So, they scramble to the car (the oft-broken car, I should say) and toss their belongings (previously packed) into it. As they’re doing this, they realize that they don’t have any food, and so with the explosions still coming, it’s left to Jan to kill a chicken. By shooting it with his rifle (to which Eva responds, just like I did, “Who ever heard of shooting chickens?”). Jan is determined, however, because he won’t dare do something as personal as beheading one; it’s just not his way. So Eva sets up a chicken as a target. Jan, somehow looking quite foolish with his rifle, takes a bead from maybe two feet away then fires. And misses. Eva yells “There it is. Shoot it!”. Jan, turning towards the car, says “I’m not shooting chickens. Someone else will take care of them.” Eva, running to the car herself, spits “I’m so sick of you I could die.”

It’s an absurd moment, and the almost I Love Lucy-esque comedy of it is not lost on director, actors, or audience. But it never loses touch with the underlying menace, the chaos, and the terror. And the scene just keeps going, building from there. Chaos and death. Not the suggestion of death, the actual face of it. Stunning images. Absolutely stunning. (If you don’t know it, let me just say, I love Sven Nyquist.)

But Shame is about much more than war. The marriage itself is where this movie really does its work. While they’re lost in the chaos of a struggle we’re never allowed to understand, they’re also tied up in a much more meaningful (to them) confrontation. And even though we have a context for their actions, they can seem as randomly cruel as the stuff done with guns and bombs.

Bergman is just amazing.

#162, 10/8 – Mrs. Miniver (1942) (dvd)

Fanatics always find something silly do, almost as a way to test and demonstrate their devotion. Certain baseball lovers, for instance, dream of visiting each and every ballpark, just to say they did it. Me, I try to watch 200 movies a year. (Well, I did it unintentionally last year, and I’m on pace to do it again.)

But it occured to me this morning that another silly quest is right there for me. I could try watch every Best Picture Oscar winner (better still, because that gets easy, every film that’s been nominated). That would be fun, wouldn’t it? No, actually, it wouldn’t. Not for me, anyway. My taste is not compatible with Oscar’s at all—especially these days—and such an exercise would just be plain old masochism. There are still some Best Picture winners I’d still like to see, though. Marty comes to mind. (For those of you who aren’t trivia buffs, Mrs. Miniver took the Best Picture Oscar and five other Academy Awards in 1943.)

Watch me geek out about actors again: The fabulous Teresa Wright, one of my favorite actresses from this era, co-stars in the movie. She does not share any scenes with the also fabulous character actor Henry Travers, but his character (Mr. Ballard) is the reason her character (Carol Beldon) gets introduced into the movie. I’m entertained by this because in 1943 Travers would play Wright’s father in Hitchcock’s superb Shadow of a Doubt. (And not only is Travers great in that movie, he spends the whole time chatting with Hume Cronyn about ways in which they can murder each other! Character actors can be so much fun.)

Miniver is William Wyler’s fairly careful (if melodramatic) study of life during wartime (unsurprisingly, the message is clear: This ain’t no party). He focusses on class divisions and then dissolves them gently as the bombs fall. And mostly it works.

#161, 10/7 – Yi-Yi (2000) (dvd)

Welcome back to “No plot? No problem!” (maybe that’s what I should have called this blog), where how much I appreciate a movie is often directly proportionate to its level of character focus. We love slow, deliberate films here (just not too slow. Stalker, bless its heart, was too slow), the kind which require attention but are endlessly engaging.

Yi Yi, a beautiful, existential Taiwanese film, is a nearly perfect expression of what I love about movies. It’s sprawling, wonderfully visual, patient, character-focused, and human. It touches on loss, reconnection, cruelty, luck, the nature of knowledge, and so on and so on. I feel like I’ve been giving away five-star ratings like candy recently (three of the last five movies I’ve seen, actually), but I think I’m just on a good run of form with the movies I’ve been seeing. Let’s hope it keeps up.

#160, 9/30 – A History of Violence (2005) (tofw)

More than a week after seeing it, I still don’t quite know what I think so I’m just going to wing it.

For better and worse, David Cronenberg makes unsettling movies. (Originally the word I was going with was “creepy”, but I think “unsettling” better covers it.) Summon a highlight reel from his films and you’re due for exploding heads, menacing gynecological instruments, a thoroughly degenerating Jeff Goldblum and things I’m much too gentle to mention here. His images did the work of putting you off. Although it does not use the same approach, A History of Violence is not really a departure. In fact, it fits perfectly with everything he’s done before.

Sure, there aren’t many moments of pure on-the-screen Cronenberg-ian body horror. No gashes in the legs or stomach to insert interesting items into. No graphically-realized, thoroughly disturbing transformations (unless you count the process of being killed, of course). And only a couple frames of nasty head trauma.

But the unsettling part is still there. It’s just not expressed in startling or disturbing visuals, where you expect Cronenberg to do his heavy lifting, but rather in tones that come through the visuals. I thought maybe I was reading too much into a pure thriller until I read an interview the director did for Salon. He was asking what I thought he was asking.

Genetically, I have to say yes, it’s obvious that people have a propensity for violence. It comes from our animal past, our need to survive. But we also have that other thing, that imagination, that ability to abstract and say, “Well, we can imagine a world in which we don’t do these things that we find abhorrent—by negotiation, by diplomacy, by compassion, by empathy.”

Then the only violence in the world would be the kind we have recently seen, natural disasters and other things we can’t control. But we never seem to be able to attain that, and the devil part of it is, it’s because we don’t really want to. Is it because somewhere we feel that violence is a good thing, that we need it, that it’s necessary, even given the evolved species that we are?

Canadians, man. They just have this knack for make interesting and disturbing films. I think some of this is simply because they get to watch us all the time. I mean, crikey, if I had a next-door neighbor as wacky as the United States of America, I’d have written six terribly disturbing novels by now.

[@Century 12 Evanston]