Black & White World

You can tell by the lines I'm reciting, I've seen that movie too.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Verso sera (1991)

Comments coming soon.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Protagonist (2007)

Compelling and well-paced documentary from Jessica Yu, profiling four disparate men and the defining moments in their lives—a bank robber, a terrorist, a martial arts enthusiast and an evangelical ex-ex-homosexual.  That’s not a typo—he’s gay, he went through a phase where he believed he was cured, and then came out of that phase and embraced who he is.

Each subject is the protagonist of his own story, and Yu threads the stories together according to ancient Greek dramatic structure, through phases like Provocation, Opportunity, Turning Point, Catharsis, Reversal, and Reflection.  Puppetry and scenes from Euripides in Ancient Greek serve as transitions from one phase into the next, and while I really enjoyed the inventiveness of the puppetry, the Ancient Greek slowed me down a little.  I really appreciated the idea of it—maybe more than anything else I didn’t care for the translation that was laid out in subtitles.  The wording was so literal as to make it difficult to follow even in English, for example these opening lines:  “Tell it still.  There is pleasure in hardships heard about.” I mean, I get what it means, but it’s as if it needs an extra translation.

I was reminded a little bit of Errol Morris’s Fast, Cheap and Out of Control a few times, just in the randomness of the four stories and how parallels could be drawn between them.  I thought it was odd that the story of the martial arts enthusiast was less life-and-death than the other three stories, and in fact kept thinking that his story was going to take a tragic turn any moment, but it didn’t.  On the other hand, the subject (Mark Salzman) is such an enthusiastic and engaging storyteller, full of humor and energetic outbursts, and I wouldn’t dream of losing his story.  And his more mainstream run-of-the-mill story is a bit more relatable than that of the terrorist or the bank robber, for example, and helps tie in the viewer with all the other stories.  Really a fascinating piece.  Recommended.

1776 (1972)

“This is a revolution, damn it, we’re going to have to offend somebody!”

As surely as Christmas Eve is a time to sit down and watch It’s a Wonderful Life, my Independence Day holiday would not be complete without sitting down to watch our forefathers sing, dance and rebel in 1776. 

As the years go by, I find I have less to say about it.  So, this might be a cheat, but if you’re looking for a review, have a look at last year’s.  Or the year before’s.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Advise & Consent (1962)

Director Otto Preminger had a well-deserved reputation for constantly pushing the boundaries of Hollywood censorship—The Moon is Blue, Anatomy of a Murder and The Man With the Golden Arm were all banned and/or not approved by the MPAA; Exodus credited blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (released simultaneously with Spartacus which also credited Trumbo, which effectively ended the blacklist).  Occasionally, the controversy overshadowed the film itself (The Moon is Blue is reportedly pretty tame, which I recall became a plotline in an episode of M*A*S*H; Exodus is said to be overlong and dull; Anatomy of a Murder might have been very cutting edge for its time but comes off as misogynistic and simplistic today.

Advise & Consent doesn’t fall victim to that Preminger curse, however.  While the plot does tend to get muddled around the midway point, there are enough unexpected twists along the way to keep the viewer engaged and guessing.  The subplot about blackmailing a senator about his homosexual past is maybe even more controversial for its time because the closeted senator is a sympathetic character, a good guy—any suggestion of gay characters prior to this were almost always evil sadistic villains.

Performances are uniformly excellent, not a weak link to be found.  Charles Laughton’s final role is a memorable one, the irascible South Carolina minority leader and Senate Pro-Tempore.  Both Franchot Tone and Lew Ayres are memorable in their respective roles as President and Vice President (at the outset I said, “America is being run by 1930’s B movie stars!").  Walter Pidgeon, Don Murray, Paul Ford, Henry Fonda, George Grizzard, Peter Lawford and Gene Tierney all battle for screen time as well, each as good as the other.  Look for Betty White and Inga Swenson (later famous for playing Kraus on TV’s Benson) in small but memorable roles as well.  Political insider movies like these seem to hold up pretty well over the years, maybe because the inner workings of Washington DC haven’t changed much over the years.

The Music Man (1962)

What better way to take the bitter taste of the disturbing Lust, Caution out of my mouth than to watch a good ol’ classic American musical?  Great antidote.

The Music Man is one of my all-time favorite musicals.  In most cases, I would prefer to sit and listen to the original Broadway cast album than watch the movie, for a couple of reasons:  first, the cast album is just performed better.  The singing in the movie, by and large, is mediocre and poorly recorded, and the energy level of everyone (Preston excepted, perhaps) is really low.  The cast album practically springs to life in front of you.  The movie also has Buddy Hackett, another reason to avoid it.

Still, you can’t sit down and watch the original Broadway production (how I wish I could, though!), so when I get the itch to actually see the show, I must turn to the movie.  The songs are 95% excellent (5% = “Being In Love"), and Robert Preston is a powerhouse as Harold Hill.  I don’t like the quality of Shirley Jones’s voice quite as well as Barbara Cook, but she’s a great choice for Marian the Librarian, just the right mix of feisty and uptight.  Paul Ford and Hermione Gingold provide many giggles as Mayor and Eulalie Shinn.  What little Ronny Howard lacks in pitch control he more than makes up for with enthusiasm.

One thing the movie does that bugs the crap out of me, though, and it happens during two separate songs.  First, during “Rock Island,” the patter song at the beginning between the salesmen, there are two insert shots of the train wheels clicking along on the tracks, TWO insert shots mind you, as if to tell the audience, “See?  They are chanting just like a train!” Actually, there are THREE of these shots, one is of the whistle, I think.  Then during “Pick-a-Little Talk-a-Little” they do it again—even though there are some excellent overhead shots of the ladies of River City in their feathered hats clucking away, the producers can’t seem to resist tossing in a couple of shots of chickens—random shots of chickens, mind you, these are not chickens that happen to be walking along the street or anything, this is an insert out of nowhere—in order to let the audience know, “See, these women are like old hens clucking away, do you get it?” That shows an extraordinary lack of faith in your audience.  If you can’t figure out that “Rock Island” sounds like a train without a picture of it, I doubt there’s much hope for you.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Se, jie (Lust, Caution - 2007)

My expectations for this film were way off.  I make it a habit not to read reviews of movies I haven’t seen because I avoid spoilers, even small ones—in most cases, the less I know about a movie going into it, the better.  In this case, though, I might have done well to read up on it a little going in, because I was quite unprepared for how brutal the film would be.  I was expecting a “forbidden love” story, and instead found something quite different.

As disturbing as I found the film to be, I never looked away or considered for a moment turning it off—I had to find out how it turned out.  It is, like most movies made today, far too long—the first hour in particular drags on and on.  Scene after scene after scene of ladies playing Mah-jong.  But once the action picked up, it grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go, and maybe that was because I was lulled into a false sense of security by all the Mah-jong and this “forbidden love” storyline that I was certain was going to start any minute now.

The film is essentially an espionage thriller.  I didn’t make the connection to Hitchcock’s Notorious until thinking about the movie the next day—in the Hitchcock film it seemed so much more palatable for Ingrid Bergman to whore herself out to Claude Rains, maybe because Claude seemed like such a mensch: non-threatening, asexual.  Lust, Caution is a much more realistic and frightening take on the same basic plot.  Tony Leung is mesmerizing, quite unlike I’ve ever seen him before, and Wei Tang in an extraordinary film debut is unforgettable.  It’s not one I’m likely to watch again, but it stuck with me for a long time.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

George Washington Slept Here (1942)

Lightweight, familiar fish-out-of-water comedy about a couple from the city moving to the country and their trials and tribulations renovating an old farmhouse.  It pre-dates Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by a good six years (and The Money Pit by about forty), but the humor is pretty much the same, and fairly predictable.  The scales are tipped from mediocre to good on the strength of Jack Benny and Ann Sheridan, and a likeable supporting cast as well.

Benny rarely seemed comfortable with his leading ladies, but he and Sheridan have a very nice rapport here; they make a fun and believable couple.  Percy Kilbride ("Pa Kettle") is the scene-stealer here, with his dry and deadpan delivery.  Reportedly Benny had a hell of a time keeping a straight face any time they did a scene together.

Like a lot of comedies in the ‘40s, it gets a little over-complicated towards the end and veers off into the silly territory more than once, but overall a fun romp and not a bad Sunday morning movie.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Key Largo (1948)

They say 90% of good directing is casting.  In the case of Key Largo, that is certainly true.  For his post-war story of quiet heroism against the domestic enemy of organized crime, he reunites some of the biggest names from the ‘30s gangster films—Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, and the great Edward G. Robinson.

Key Largo is best remembered for its teaming of Bogart and Bacall, but they fade into the background compared to Robinson, Trevor and the venerable Lionel Barrymore.  Bacall in particular seems uncomfortable in her role.  Her least convincing act is when Nora is called upon to attack Rocco and pummel him, scratch his face, spit on him.  Bacall reacts almost robotically—maybe she just wasn’t comfortable actually attacking Robinson, but that scene rings false.

But that’s one small failure in a film filled with successes.  Of all the great performances here, only Claire Trevor copped an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the alcoholic moll, which she rightly won.  Robinson was overlooked once again, as was Barrymore.  According to IMDB, Huston was unable to come up with an ending for the film. It was Howard Hawks who offered the final shoot-out on the boat, a scene originally conceived for To Have and Have Not.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (2006)

Here’s one I really wanted to like.  I’ve come to really enjoy Jeff Garlin from his work on Curb Your Enthusiasm, he’s an incredibly engaging and funny actor.  His work here is great, and there is the germ of a really great movie here—a story that hasn’t been told very much from a man’s perspective:  the story of a lonely, overweight guy who eats to compensate for his loneliness, and his search for romance.  It’s a story that’s rather familiar from a woman’s point of view, but not one that’s often told about a man.

The worst mistake the movie makes is the casting of the odious Sarah Silverman as the woman Garlin takes up with (a very skinny girl, I noticed—heaven forbid even the lonely, chubby guy should find love with a full-figured gal).  Silverman is so thoroughly unlikeable, even though she is not doing her usual offensive envelope-pushing schtick, that the viewer is relieved when she dumps him.  Garlin was probably going for sympathy there, but he didn’t get it from me—he’s better off with Bonnie Hunt.

Most of the movie has a real-world feel to it, maybe a slightly skewed or quirky version of real life, but real life nonetheless.  Then it occasionally veers off into surreal territory; many sequences feel as though they are intruding on the film from some other movie.  There are moments of real honesty, though.  My favorite image in the movie is Garlin, sitting on the hood of his car (in what comes off like an homage to Seinfeld, he has found a perfect parking spot in front of Wrigley Field and refuses to move his car for the rest of the movie), quietly eating a sack full of junk food and staring at the moon.  I wish the movie contained a little more of this poignancy.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

Lars and the Real Girl is a study in suspension of disbelief.  If the viewer is able to buy into the film’s premise, even as a fable or an allegory, then the result is a charming, bittersweet tale of a lonely and shy young man, and the lengths he goes to in order to find acceptance and love.  But buying that premise requires greater faith than I have in me as a viewer, I’m afraid.

The premise is this:  Lars (Ryan Gosling) is so cripplingly shy that he can’t even bear to have dinner with his brother and sister-in-law.  He spends his nights alone living in the garage of the house he grew up in; during his days he barely functions at his cube job.  This all starts to change when Lars sends away for a Real Doll sex toy, names her Bianca, and introduces her to his family as his new girlfriend.  While he has clearly had a serious break with reality, his social skills do begin to improve, and his doctor recommends to his family that they let this Bianca situation play out for a little while.  At that point, I was on board with the idea.  But as the movie goes on, and the whole town begins to get into the act—inviting Bianca to parties, having her join volunteer organizations, etc.—it gets farther and farther outside the realm of plausibility.

The performances are what save the movie; in the hands of a lesser actor than Ryan Gosling, I might have turned off the DVD in frustration, and indeed hurled it across the room.  The always reliable Patricia Clarkson plays his doctor, which maybe serves to make her ludicrous advice a bit more palatable.  If it had ended differently, I might have been left with a good feeling about it, but it didn’t seem to me that Lars learned anything, or that his mental health improved at all.  He’s the same mentally disturbed young man he was at the beginning, maybe a little better at communicating with other people, but no healthier.  The movie was billed as a comedy in all the trailers, but it’s actually profoundly sad.