It took us until number 43 to hit a movie we own, but haven't actually watched before. I'm sure there's more. Why would we buy a movie we've never seen, you ask?
1. This was the first movie released under Quentin Tarantino's imprint, Rolling Thunder.
2. It's a Criterion Collection DVD, the imprimatur of which at least makes you feel highbrow.
3. Our local video store was closing and it cost basically nothing.
This is a phrase that I'm loath to use, but Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express isn't quite like any other film I've ever seen. The idiosyncrasy of the film starts with its impressionistic visual style. Set in Hong Kong, much of the film is shot in flashing blurs of color and movement. The impressionist flavor carries over into the performances, which feel like we're only ever seeing glimpses of the real people underneath. Rather than remove the audience from the goings-on, however, the feeling of watching this film go by out of the corner of your eye makes it all the more intriguing and enticing.
The story, such as it is, is split into two discrete halves. In the first half, a baby-faced cop named Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who is mourning the loss of his childhood romance with a girl named May, spends a chaste night with an enigmatic drug smuggler in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin). In the second half, an outwardly straightlaced cop (identified only as 663) (Tony Leung), privately despairing over the airline stewardess who ditched him, is pursued by a quirky shop girl, Faye (Faye Wong).
Other than our protagonists' occupations and rebounding relationship status, the stories are connected by the strange kind of loneliness one can experience in the middle of a dense city. Bitter-sweetly romantic and slightly off-kilter, the film is able to capture that ineffable feeling in a way that feels both real and oddly charming.
At the risk of sounding too British, the film is a lovely time.
But, do we feel the need to watch it again? Not really. Like an impressionist painting, I'm content with the images that half linger in my mind.
One of the crown jewels of American film's true Golden Age (the 1970's), Chinatown is a uncompromisingly harsh deconstruction of the film noir.
Part of the Holy Trinity of iconic Jack Nicholson performances (guess the other two*), Mr. Front Row at the Oscars himself stars as J.J. "Jake" Gittes. A former Chinatown cop making ends meet as a private dick, Gittes gets hired by a Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray to follow her husband, a Water Department executive, to discover if he's having an affair. Gittes does his job. But then it turns out that Mrs. Mulwray may not be the Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway, excellent). And Mr. Mulwray ends up dead. Before he knows it, Gittes is trying to figure out what (if anything) this all has to do with LA's water supply and Noah Cross, Mulwray's former partner and Evelyn's father (played by a frighteningly serene John Huston). To give away more of the plot would be a sin, as this film has one of the least expected twists of all time.
Working from a lightning in a bottle script by Robert Towne, director Roman Polanski skillfully navigates the audience through the morass of LA corruption - while still making the viewer tantalizingly play catch up. The master stroke of Chinatown is that the scheme Gittes attempts to reveal isn't some "criminal" enterprise to sell drugs, guns, or women. It's instead part of the ordinary corruption, compromise, and coverup that the Powers That Be engage in without reprisal or shame, all in the name of progress.
You get rich enough, you make LA big enough, no one is going to ask where the bodies are buried. At the end, it doesn't matter what your intentions are, so much as whether the right hands were shaken. In the end, it's all Chinatown.
Our next film, Chocolat, could not be further from the hard-edged cynicism of Chinatown.
Johnny Depp only eats artisanal handcrafted chocolate. Because of course.
Julia Ormond - who looks likes she was transported from 1950's MGM picture - arrives in a small French village with her little daughter in tow and opens a chocolaterie. As her arrival coincides with the Lenten season, she quickly makes enemies of the puritanical Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina). He's right to be concerned, as her very presence - not to mention her exotic chocolates laced with chili peppers - opens up the repressed souls of the quaint villagers (Judi Dench, Jean Reno, Lena Olin, etc.). Johnny Depp also shows up as a fellow wayward traveler and apparent kindred spirit, sporting an Irish brogue and no makeup.
If you've ever seen a movie ever, even the kind they show on TV, you can guess how this all plays out.
It makes no matter, the movie never tries to be more than it is and is simply satisfied to skate by on its charm. Which is enough. Just like a decent piece of chocolate, it may be nothing special, but is still damn good in the moment.
FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER
NEXT UP: CHUNGKING EXPRESS
*McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Jack Torrance in The Shining.
We are (believe it or not) cleaning out some shelf space, which (ostensibly) is the purpose of this thing. Still haven't counted what we have left to go, but you can expect a rundown every ten films or so to see where we stand.
Let's face it: last week truly and undoubtedly sucked in the real world. So what better way to forget the pressure cooker bombs, fertilizer plant explosions, and ricin-filled letters of today than to watch a movie set in a dystopian future where every country but Britain has collapsed and oh yeah everyone is infertile for some unexplainable reason? Ah, the escape of the cinema!
Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men is hard to watch in the best possible way.
Set in London, 2027, no children have been born in almost two decades. The youngest person on Earth, Baby Diego, has just been stabbed to death senselessly after he (like the childish reality star he is) rudely refuses an autograph request. Theo (Clive Owen), a minor bureaucrat with a bottle stowed safely in his breastpocket, stumbles into a terrorist bombing. Then, he finds himself hooded, dragged into a conversion van, and face-to-face with his terrorist-cum-pacifist ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore). Unwillingly recruited into reviving his activist former self, Theo is soon escorting an illegal immigrant, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to the Human Project, a possibly mythical collection of scientists working on the infertility problem on an island outside the fascist British government's control.
I don't want to spoil the plot for those who haven't seen this yet, so I'll stop there.
What you should know is that this film is a master course in authorial and directorial restraint. The world of the film is doled out systematically in bits and pieces - direct exposition, unless necessary, is strictly avoided. Long tracking shots from Theo's viewpoint are preferred over cutting between different characters. Resisting the urge to stage shoot-em-up exciting action set pieces, the battles in this movie are viewed through Theo's lens as a series of unsettling, senseless existential threats - which (I can only imagine) war must really feel like to the noncombatants. Rather than answering every question it raises, the film trusts the audience and gives it enough information to fill in the missing pieces on its own. By plunging the audience into Theo's world without a safety net, Cuaron creates a visceral and truly discomfiting viewing experience. Especially discomfiting in that the world of Children of Men doesn't feel all that different from our own.
Nearly equally as masterful as Cuaron's direction is Clive Owen's performance. Owen is not one of my favorite actors, but seriously, the man was born to wear a trenchcoat and the hangdog expression of bitter disappointment Theo bears here. Restrained as well, Owen gives us just enough to know the pain underneath without diluting the strength of will necessary for his character.
Did I mention Michael Caine's indelible performance as Jasper, the heroic hippie pothead? No? I'm an asshole. He's great too. But he's Michael Caine. It goes without saying, amiright?
We really appreciated this blog for a reason to watch these performances and this film again. It really is a masterpiece.
Whether to keep it is a tougher question. I'm not sure we've watched it since buying it in 2007 or so. And, as I stated to begin, it's a tough movie to watch. Not one we're likely to watch again for the fun of it. But. It's so damn good. And because it wasn't a major hit nor crowned with laurels at the Oscars, I'm not sure it will be easy to locate in non-digital form in 2027 (at which point, yes, I sincerely doubt we'll be watching films on DVD). Just to be safe, we ought to keep this one.
FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER
NEXT UP: CHINATOWN
PS: A list of our first 40 films, with keep or pitch verdicts and links to all reviews will probably be up first.
N64 made everyone a Bond fan with GoldenEye. If you're of a certain age (roughly 25-35), you probably (and happily) wasted a solid year of your life playing this game relentlessly with three friends. I've seen most of the Bond movies (at least bits and pieces of them) over the years, but none of them matter nearly as much to me as mutliplayer GoldenEye in paintball mode.
This may be why Casino Royale is my favorite James Bond movie. Famous for ditching (or at least, minimizing) the overstuffed trappings of the 007 franchise, the first film of the Daniel Craig era demands attention in its own right rather than coasting on the sails of former glories.
It declares its purpose from the get-go with a brutal assassination shot in grainy black and white: this is Bond without the bullshit. Close on the heels of that haymaker of an opener comes one of the best action sequences ever filmed: a parkour-influenced chase of a bombmaker (played by the amazing Sébastien Foucan). My favorite part has Foucan lithely sliding through a narrow opening in a construction site, while Craig just bulldozes right through the drywall - a great metaphor for his "blunt instrument" Bond.
Over the course of the movie, that blunt instrument gets sharpened into the scalpel with a taste for dry martinis that filmgoers know well, despite his many iterations. The transition from bare knuckles to french cuffs makes more sense than it has any right to, which is really the movie's greatest achievement.
The plot is still quite overstuffed - I'll confess that so much happens it's hard to remember what is happening, if you know what I mean. But it lends itself to mutiple repeat viewings that way. It's also broken up into essentially four distinct acts: Act I: Becoming 007; Act II: The Ocean Club; Act III: The Poker Game; Act IV: Venice. So when you just can't make it through the whole thing on Friday night, there's a logical place to stop and pick up the next night (like we did). Plus, the ride's so much fun.
Also, Eva Green: best Bond girl ever or best just in general ever? You be the judge.
So, explanation for our long stony silence: our DVD player died. That's right, folks. Our rampant ReViewing Habit killed the combo DVD/VHS player we got for a wedding present nearly eight years ago. After that, our other habit (proscratination) set in and we never made it Best Buy to replace it. Finally, we remembered the DVD burner we had down in the basement and promoted it up to the bigs. So, we're back. Until we drop the ball again.
Martin Scorsese really hasn't made as many mob movies as people think. In fact, he's probably made as many music documentaries as crime films. But when his subject concerns La Cosa Nostra, the man is on all cylinders. Casino, our thirty-eighth film, belongs to this canon, but strains under the weight of its spiritual big brother, Goodfellas.
In Casino, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci reunite for a look at rise and fall of the mob in 70's and 80's Las Vegas. DeNiro's Sam "Ace" Rothstein is a man with a taste for pastel suits. The ulimate gambler, he's recruited by the Midwestern mob bosses to run the Tangiers in Vegas. Pesci's hotheaded (gee what a shock) Nicky Santoro is sent out west as well, to "keep an eye on things" - which mainly consists of burying problems in the desert. Sharon Stone's Ginger ropes Rothstein in despite her coke habit and obvious gold-digging, but can never let go of her true love, the dirtbag pimp Lester Diamond (James Woods, playing to type). Unfortunately fitting in with the coked-out mob wife archetype, she spends most of the movie ruining things and screaming hysterically.
In a bold move, the movie unfolds largely through voice over. This quasi-documentary approach investigates the ins-and-outs not just of the mob's operations but of these people trying to navigate a world in which they don't quite fit. There is a surplus of interesting detail here, which builds an indelible sense of time and place. All the same, it also makes the film a little cold and hard to connect to. Some scenes feel more like dramatic reenactments than things that are actually happening. Not helping matters is its somewhat padded running time.
That being said, the core performances are great across the board and handling a story this epic in scope is not easily done. It's three hours well spent.
But maybe not nine or twelve or fifteen hours well spent. Two viewings is probably enough. Very good movie, but not one we plan on re-viewing any time soon.
There are too many famous lines in Casablanca, it was impossible to choose one for the headline. So choose your own adventure, Constant Reader:
Although whoever made that video somehow missed these gems:
UGARTE: You despise me, don't you?
RICK: If I gave you any thought I probably would.
RENAULT: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
RICK: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
RENAULT: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert. RICK: I was misinformed.
After life intervened with our ReViewing Habit for the past week or so, we get to start things back up with a legitimate and enduring Hollywood classic, Casablanca. I mean, just look at the poster:
It just screams classic.
For me Casablanca is The Great Gatsby of Old Hollywood. No, not the Baz Luhrmann version. (You should be ashamed - but, yes, I will go see it.) I'm referring to the actual book. Gatsby isn't my favorite novel, but I think its nearly perfectly written - or as close any writer has ever come to the Platonic ideal of The Great American Novel. Casablanca is that for classic Hollywood. It's not perfect, it's not my favorite film, or even my favorite of the classics, but it does everything well that the big studios did well.
For those who haven't seen it yet, here's the gist. Humphrey Bogart is Rick, a cafe owner in unoccupied French-controlled Morocco during World War II. At the time, Casablanca is essentially a weigh station on the refugee trail from occupied Europe to Lisbon to, ultimately, America. One day, Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa - who broke Rick's heart back in Paris before the Nazis came to town - shows up at the cafe with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Laszlo is on the run after escaping from a concentration camp. The Nazis are tracking his movements and while they apparently can't get to him in technically free Casablanca, they want the local prefect, the fantastically corrupt Captain Reinault (Claude Rains) to make sure Laszlo doesn't get on the plane to Lisbon. Rick has to decide: help Laszlo or win back Ilsa?
This is the type of story Tinseltown was made to tell. Humphrey Bogart is the definition of the American movie star: the rogue with a heart of gold. Ingrid Bergman, afforded a surplus of rapturous soft focus close-ups, is not only insanely gorgeous but just anxious enough to give the film an underlying sense of urgency and tough enough to explain how she could love both Bogart's elusive Rick and the passionate Laszlo. It's set in an exotic locale, sumptiously filmed on studio sets populated by a bevy of terrific character actors in glamorous attire. Everyone has something smart or at least smart ass to say when it matters. An atmosphere of mystery and romance hangs over the whole thing, but a sense of humor abides. And when the crowd sings La Marseillaise at Rick's? C'mon. Nationalism at it's finest and most inspiring.
Is it melodramatic? Yes. Are the racial politics more than a little suspect? Sure. Is it believable? Not always. Wouldn't the Nazis have just killed Lazlo the moment they saw him rather than casually chatting with him over champagne cocktails? Probably. Is there fog in Morocco? Not very often, I'd wager.
It doesn't matter. This is Hollywood - you will love every single second of it.
Big fans of the Buffy TV show probably think of the film as fans of the modern Marvel filmverse think of the original Captain America movie, i.e., like it is a redheaded stepchild:
And, yes, I posted a clip from this before. So sue me. I love the Cap.
Confession: Neither of us watched the Buffy TV show. I know, I know, pop culture nerd card revoked. We both kinda sorta watched an episode or two at some point but never got into it. Tonally, its a whole other universe from the movie. In fact, I had no idea Joss Whedon wrote the original movie, since the vibes of the two are so different. That being said, the movie is a damn good time. To be honest, I went into it thinking it would be a pitch-er (this is from Ms. ReViewing Habit's collection). But Kristy Swanson changed my mind.
I'm actually quite serious about that. Swanson is excellent in this movie. She feels like a real person, while her character could have easily fallen into a lazy, gum-popping stereotype. And I can think of less attractive people. Why has she basically been in nothing since?
Anyway, you all know the story at this point, which is set up by an admittedly clunky prologue. Buffy (Swanson) is a Valley girl cheerleader who discovers she is the latest in a long line of vampire slayers. Buffy is trained under the, er, watchful eye of a mysterious stranger named Merrick (Donald Sutherland) and aided by bad boy (you can tell by the soul patch) motorcycle enthusiast Pike (Luke Perry). She faces off with some dudes not at all shy about hamming it up as vampires: Paul Reubens, David Arquette, and Rutger Hauer. There's some mythological thing about how Buffy and Hauer's uber-vamp, Lothos, are connected throughout time or something, which I don't really care about it or get (maybe the TV show gave a clearer explanation) but that's all you really need to know.
The pleasures of Buffy aren't in the plot, though. It's the little details littered throughout. Buffy's barely there parents. A hilariously clueless and new agey basketball coach. The way Swanson says "duh." Perry's befuddled reaction to Arquette floating outside his second story window. Paul Reubens saying: "Kill him a lot." Paul Reubens dying. Paul Reubens, generally.
Work.
It's all total camp, but just the right side of camp.
Also there are some great "is that...?" moments* in this movie: Two-time Oscar winner Hillary Swank as one of Buffy's mall-frequenting girlfriends and Ben Affleck in a non-speaking role as a basketball player on the visiting team, among others.
It's a good time AND something you can pop in around Halloween when The Shining feels like too much of a slog. I have no idea how well it sets up the iconic TV show that followed, but it's good enough for our purposes.
Captain America, on the other hand, was burdened with setting the table for what would become the biggest superhero movie of all time, The Avengers. Marvel even it made obvious in the title, for god's sake. Not to mention, Captain America has to start in World War II, so it's got to be a period piece and a war movie at the same time. So, yeah, tall order.
Does it succeed? Fitfully, but yes. For the first hour or so, you can feel the creaking machinery of the plot trying to work the Red Skull's efforts to unleash the power of the Tesseract (see: Thor), which will be key to The Avengers plot, into the journey of Steve Rogers from 4-F pipsqueak to supersoldier.
Weird, right?
Also making the first act of the movie a little awkward is that Evans' head is superimposed onto a much smaller body before the experiment that bulks Steve Rogers up into Captain America. It's not quite Uncanny Valley distracting, but I was so fascinated by it the first time I saw the movie it kind of took me out of things.
But when the stories intersect and the Captain (perfectly cast Chris
Evans+), drops the soul-sucking propaganda work he's forced to do (in a
brilliant sequence!) and finally mixes it up with the Red Skull
(perfectly cast Hugo Weaving), the movie hums. A tune I quite enjoy, to
boot.
It's not a giddy amusement park ride like Iron Man, nor does it have the luxury of existing on another universe to excuse any over-the-top comic elements, like Thor. It's a little too reliant on CGI. It's sometimes plodding. But, it's ultimately satisfying in the old school adventure picture tradition. And it has a terrific ending which effectively sets up the Avengers. (By the by, I think ol' Cap works much better in the context of the Avengers than as a solo character - at least on film).
And, yes, Captain America is one of my favorite characters, so I'm pretty much genetically predisposed to like this. Hell, I liked the terrible 1990 B-movie version.
FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER
NEXT UP: CASABLANCA
*That's the best I can do for a phrase capturing the strange pleasure of seeing a famous actor or actress in a movie in which you didn't know/expect them to be.
+He played the Human Torch in the (bad) Fantastic Four movies as well. How is that fair?
Few films or TV shows achieve a reasonable simulacrum of a real workplace, populated with people who would actually work there and whose conversations are mainly about their jobs and not their private entanglements. (Grey's Anatomy excepted, of course). Rarer still is a movie that also manages to layer in complicated, adult relationships on top in way that seems co-existent with, not predominant over, the characters' work lives, plays with BIG IDEAS, but does not forget to keep us entertained. In other words, all the things Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom fails at, this film excels in.
Written and directed by James L. Brooks - or James Hell Brooks if you, like me, were introduced to the man by his producer credit on The Simpsons - Broadcast News is a prophetic (for 1987) look at the rapidly diminishing world of, um, broadcast news. The plot (such as it is) centers around a "love" triangle between Holly Hunter's producer, Jane Craig, Albert Brooks as her best friend/favorite reporter, Aaron Altman, and William Hurt as a doltish but driven anchorman, Tom Grunick. But that's really overstating it, because these people are pretty much incapable of loving anything but their jobs - which in Hunter and Brooks' case is that ephemeral thing called telling the truth and in Hurt's case is selling himself.
The real clash is between news for news' sake and news for fame. None of them is looking for love so much as the next big lede. Or the chance to anchor the weekend news - minus the flopsweat.
Speaking of which, Albert Brooks* is great as always - he's that guy who says what you wish
you would say but suffers all the consequences you know would befall you if you did. He has an absolute heartbreaker of a scene here and just nails it. William Hurt is perfectly cast as a guy who you should just hate but he gives his character enough humility and enthusiasm to win you over - no matter how stubbornly. It helps explain why Hunter falls for him, even though he is basically a walking embodiment of everything she can't stand. Hunter is really fantastic in this movie. She's stubborn and ideological - obsessive (and she takes issue with that word) to the point of specifically directing a cabbie's every turn and speed - but she has some deep and unexplained vulnerability that boils to the surface in her private moments. Not to mention an effervescence she allows herself to exude when the time is right. She really owns this film, giving it her heart and soul.
It's a rich film that goes down light. Dynamic clashes of ideas and personality set off against dashes of sweet and bemused longing. It's a rewarding viewing experience and we highly, highly recommend it for those who haven't seen it.
Also, today, I turned on CNN and saw a reporter walking through a CGI graphic of the papal conclave. So, I think Brooks might have been on to something about the sorry state of the Third Estate. "A lot of alliterations from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!"
BUT, we haven't watched this in a long time. It's an excellent, if not great, film. But not one we foresee popping in at 9:37 PM on a Wednesday night when the kids are asleep.
(RELUCTANT) FINAL VERDICT: PITCH
NEXT UP: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
*It's not quite a MICHAEL F'IN KEATON level of adoration yet, but I'm becoming a bigger and bigger Albert Brooks fan.
Have you heard of the Bechdel Test? In order to pass, a movie has to check three boxes: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man.
Bridesmaids aces the Bechdel Test. In doing so, it strikes a mighty blow for the cause of fully realized female film characters and for women, generally. But more importantly, this happens:
In all seriousness, Bridesmaids taps into a strangely ignored but rich comedic vein. At least for me, women's relationships with each other are inherently more complicated (hence: interesting) than two dudes being dudely together (which is approximately 97% of comedies these days). Focusing a comedy on the status and personality conflicts among a group of bridesmaids is therefore a pretty damn good recipe for funny.
Or maybe I just really wonder what you ladies are talking about when you go powder your noses together. Amiright, fellas? (Cracks open Bud Light, puts hand in underwear, watches a rerun of an old football game).
Anyway, you've seen this movie by now, so you don't need me to tell you its hilarious. Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, and Melissa McCarthy FTW, etc. etc. And OMG!!11!! RHODES! (Chris O'Dowd) is THE perfect guy. You can't beat a movie that's set in Milwaukee and features a Wilson Phillips cameo.
The star of the movie, though, has got be the groom-to-be, Dougie (Tim Heidecker).
Guy literally says two words the entire movie: "I do." He is the ultimate Baxter. Thankfully, however, he isn't left at the altar. Well done, Dougie, well done.
Also: Why has nobody done a "pooped in my wedding dress" scene, before?
The Break-Up may be the weirdest Hollywood romantic comedy of all time. It doesn't shy away from its title at all. It really is about a break up. An awkward, uncomfortable, protracted break up. For that, it deserves credit, because its a pretty brave and bold inversion of what the viewer expects. But there's a reason romantic comedies don't usually feature two people who don't seem to like each other.
Besides a short prologue showing the meet cute between our leads, Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston, at a Cubs game, there's almost nothing to establish these people as an actual couple. Sure, there's a dinner party with their respective families (including very funny supporting turns by John Michael Higgins and Vincent D'Onofrio (yes, him!) that almost feel like they're from a different, broader movie). But immediately after that dinner, we have a historic and realistic row between the two - an argument that is viscerally acted and plays out unrelentingly in real time. The upshot of the fight is (you guessed it), a break up. Problem is: these two co-own a pretty killer Chicago condo and neither wants to give it up. Also: maybe, okay, yeah, they still have feelings for each other a little bit. So they break up but keep living together while kinda sorta dating other people, which works out about as well you expect. A series of misunderstandings and things left unsaid eventually drives them further and further apart and they really, truly break up.
There's an ambiguous run in between the two at the end that suggests maybe the spark could be rekindled. But (admirably) the film leaves it at that.
A few weeks ago, there was a story on This American Life about a couple that had been together since they were in college. Turning 30 and thinking about marriage, they decide to put it off for 30 days so that can sleep with some other people for the first time. They called it their "rumspringa." 30 days turns into 60, then 90, and then they go their separate ways. Towards the end of the interview, the guy being interviewed suggests that if he ever gets married, he would want to have the marriage either renew and void every seven years to make sure both are still in. Ira Glass recoils at that and makes a great point:
I don't know what I think of that. Because I think, actually, one of the things that's a comfort in marriage is that there isn't a door at seven years. And so if something is messed up in the short-term, there's a comfort of knowing, well, we made this commitment. And so we're just going to work this out. And even if tonight we're not getting along or there's something between us that doesn't feel right, you have the comfort of knowing, we've got time. We're going to figure this out. And that makes it so much easier. Because you do go through times when you hate each other's guts. You know what I mean?
Watching The Break-Up again, this statement feels very, very true. The fights in this movie feel like fights we've all had with each other over the years (notice the use of the royal "we" here: I, of course, never fight with my beloved and adored better half). The reason Vaughn and Aniston don't make it work here is because they have an out. They don't say the things they would say to patch things over or smooth things out if they felt compelled to make it work. So they end up passing each other (CLICHE ALERT) like ships at night, over and over.
It's an interesting movie. Occassionally funny. Honest in its intra-couple vitriol. Tonally, a little all over the place. Worth watching once or twice. But not worth owning. In fact, I have no idea why or when we bought it.
Michael Moore made himself famous with his first documentary, Roger & Me, a devastating look at how GM singlehandedly destroyed his hometown of Flint, MI. (SPOILER ALERT: Don't watch if you love rabbits). Since then, Moore has brought his schlubby blue collar persona and wry sense of despair and moral outrage to address some of the biggest issues of our time, to greater or lesser effect (your mileage may vary). Whether you love Michael Moore or hate him tends to accord with your
personal ideology, but his skill as a filmmaker can't really be questioned. He basically invented the modern political documentary
Also, he made the video for Rage Against the Machine's best song (IMHO), so he's got that going for him:
In our thirty-first film, Moore takes on America's obsession with guns. Ostensibly inspired by the worst act of school violence in our history (well, at least, prior to the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary), Bowling for Columbine asks over and over again: what is it about America and Americans that makes us kill each other with guns at such incredibly high rates?
I say "ostensibly" because while the movie is framed as if it's about Columbine and what caused it, Moore spends precious little time considering that particular tragedy. There is a haunting and powerful segment featuring surveillance footage of the attack - with 911 calls from frantic parents and students as the only soundtrack. And a sequence featuring two Columbine survivors "returning" the bullets embedded in their bodies to K-Mart headquarters in Troy, MI. But Moore quickly moves outside the narrow scope of Littleton, CO to consider gun violence in America generally.
Note to self: Do not cross this dog.
Moore's exploration of that subject is intriguing, frequently hilarious, but at the same time maddeningly diffuse. There's a lot here that feels true about the violence in our culture: (a) our increasingly violence-on-demand foreign policy (represented by bombings and installing dictators by Moore, but one can't help but think drone attacks today); (b) our long fraught history of white supremacy and racial tension; (c) a commercial culture based on fear (articulated succinctly and persuasively by Marilyn Manson, of all people); (d) anti-government militia movements; (e) a high school culture that lets lost souls get lost; (f) welfare to work programs that are taking parents from their kids; and (g) an out of control and insanely well-funded NRA. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts. In the moment, whatever Moore is exploring at the time seems a convincing explanation, but then we're whiplashed into some other explanation that doesn't really cohere or seem relevant to the specific example of Columbine.
The best example of this is probably Moore's comparison of the US and Canada. Both countries are similar culturally and have a huge ratio of guns to population. But there's almost no gun violence in Canada. In an amusing sequence, Moore illustrates how much safer Canadians feel by walking into the unlocked homes of unsuspecting Torontoans.* When someone suggests that greater racial homogeneity in Canada might explain the difference, Moore immediately swats that down with hardly a comment. BUT he's just spent a big chunk of Bowling for Columbine's running time (including a South Park-esque cartoon history lesson) talking about how racial tension in the US might lie at the root of our gun culture! That quick refutation of his own argument just confuses me to this day - especially when his film closes on a befuddled NRA President Charlton Heston essentially admitting (and instantly wishing he didn't) that we white people need our guns to keep the less desirables at bay.# I don't think that's a terribly persuasive explanation for why we kill each other like crazy, but its an interesting enough argument that you either need to really make it or tear it apart. (Side note: Does anyone know if the NRA being founded the same year the KKK was outlawed is anything other than mere coincidence? It's an interesting tidbit Moore drops without (maddeningly!) really following up on).
That lack of focus and the episodic nature of the film ultimately leaves the viewer a little lost on the point of it all. It doesn't sap the effectiveness of some of the individual moments, especially a disturbing and transfixing interview with James Nicholls - brother of Oklahoma City co-conspirator Terry Nicholls (I'd like to see that interview extended into a feature of its own). But, at the end, I was left a little cold. (And, while I'm sympathetic generally to Moore's point of view, the self-mythologizing man of the people in oversized fishing cap schtick feels a little hackneyed after all these years.)
All the same, Amelia has used individual clips from this teaching, so we plan on keeping it for educational purposes only.
FINAL (MIXED) VERDICT: PITCH for Home but KEEP for School.
NEXT UP: THE BREAK UP.
*Also hilarious: The Canadian woman who boasts about not locking her doors, despite having her home broken into twice. Dear Canadian Lady, Take the hint and buy a deadbolt. Sincerely, Cynical American.
#Heston ironically says this in front of a Touch of Evil poster, wherein he is famously (mis)cast as a Mexican cop.
Long before PT Anderson ruffled thetans with The Master, even before South Park did its infamous "This is What Scientologists Really Believe" episode, Steve Martin brought us MindHead:
MindHead, which (as you may have guessed) is a parody version of the Church of Cruise, keeps it together for Eddie Murphy's main character, the erratic and eccentric action star Kit Ramsey by drilling into him the following "happy premises":
HAPPY PREMISE NO. 1: There are no aliens.
HAPPY PREMISE NO. 2: There is no giant foot trying to quash me.
HAPPY PREMISE NO.3: Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't.
MindHead is a minor satiric subplot to Steve Martin's (dare I say it?) second best film (nothing will ever touch The Jerk), Bowfinger.
Martin plays the titular character, Bobby Bowfinger, a struggling producer/director of Z-movie schlock. Bowfinger gets a golden screenplay from his accountant, Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle): a sci-fi action epic called "Chubby Rain" - which is a title I can imagine Michael Bay directing and also now makes me think of this:
After clumsily interrupting a lunch meeting with a high-powered producer played by Robert Downey, Jr. and mistaking sarcasm for sincerity, Bowfinger sets out to make a movie with the biggest star in the world, Murphy's Kit Ramsey. Problem is: Ramsey has zero interest in Chubby Rain - despite Bowfinger's best efforts at faking as a fellow MindHeader.
No matter, Bowfinger has a solution! Action movie stars just run towards and away from stuff, right? Why not just make the movie without its star knowing he's in it?
So that's what they do. "They" including: a hilariously melodramatic Christine Baranski as the film's resident diva; Heather Graham in her sweet spot as a not-so-innocent Ohioan who "isn't from Ohio"; slack-jawed Kohl Sudduth as the beefcake villian; Jamie Kennedy as the general fix-it man and cinematographer; and the best crew $2,000 can buy (i.e. 4 illegal immigrants who quickly become a crack team of film geeks).
But nothing compares to Murphy's performance in the dual roles of Kit and his twin brother Jiff, whom Bowfinger hires as a Kit stand-in. Murphy is on fire the whole movie - it's a Beverly Hills Cop/Coming to America level performance. Here he is as Jiff, which is just a brilliant comedic creation:
Bowfinger accomplishes a lot of things. It's: a smart satire of Hollywood; an ode to the talentless dreamers of the world; some self-effacing image rehabilitation for Murphy; pokes a stick in the ribs of a notoriously humorless cult; and it takes the Laker girls down a peg. But above all: it's funny. And isn't that all that really matters.
FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER
NEXT UP: BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE*
*Expect a slight delay as we procrastinate on this one.
That pun headline is so bad it's good...right? Sorry, I got nothing.
Watching Seth MacFarlane flopsweat his way through the Oscars may have sucked all the funny out of me. Speaking of which...we rarely hit the theaters these days (after all, we have all these DVDs to watch) and when we do, its usually a kid's movie, but here's our quick reactions:
Of the Best Picture nominees, we saw Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained. Amelia saw Les Mis as well. Our votes would've gone to Django. Argo was a very good, entertaining movie, so no complaint about it winning, though it seemed there were more deserving options. Ben Affleck gave a good speech and seems like a good guy (he was the bomb in Phantoms, yo!), but he should've won something for Gone Baby Gone instead.
Christoph Waltz and Quentin Tarantino made us happy, even though Tarantino looked like he just drank a liter of Jagermeister after snorting blow off a stripper's toes. Which is to say, he classed the place up.
Jennifer Lawrence falling and getting right up made our night and she is (I'm sure) great in Silver Linings Playbook, which we've yet to see.
Daniel Day Lewis talking off the cuff to Meryl Streep > Captain Kirk and Sound of Music jokes.
I'm sure Amour is a great movie. But I don't want to weep like an abandoned child for two hours, which is what all the clips make me think would happen to me if I watched it.
We agree with Brave winning Best Animated Feature, though our daughter would probably have voted for Paranorman (with which she is somewhat disturbingly obsessed).
Sound dudes have really great hair, apparently.
Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried can't sing live either, huh.
Why was the orchestra not allowed to come? So they could play that hilariously impolite Jaws music without shame as desperate winners try to express earnest emotion?
Kristin Chenoweth: agreeing to do that seemed like a good idea at the time, huh?
Are Neil Patrick Harris, Tina Fey and/or Amy Poehler, or Steve Martin available next year?
There isn't much to say about these films that wasn't said already in our review of The Bourne Identity. The only "big" change between Bourne the 1st and the 2nd/3rd installments is the replacement of Doug Liman (also known for Go, Swingers, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith) with Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93). Greengrass is known for his handheld documentary feel...but I don't think that strays too much from the tone and style Liman established in the first edition. But Greengrass' style - particularly in Ultimatum - will probably be visual shorthand for gritty action thrillers for a while.
Either way, all of the elements that made the first film great are there, just amped up. The shadowy government conspiracy that drives the plot gets even more labrynthine over the course of the two sequels. Ultimatum features an especially puzzle box story line - one which begins before Supremacy ends and then ties it back together. The action is more hectic and high stakes. And the supporting roles, the Joan Allens and David Straitharns and Albert Finneys of the world, are given meatier material to work with.
Also, Julia Stiles.
Julia Stiles checks her IMDB page to make sure that's her in the Bourne movies.
I remember thinking it was weird that Julia Stiles was in the first Bourne movie in a pretty inconsequential role. She was big in teen movies at the time and just seemed out of place. Then she showed up in Supremacy in a few pivotal scenes. And then she becomes super important in Ultimatum. She's all like: Hey, just hanging out 'cuz this movie seems kinda cool...yeah, I guess I'll show up for a sequel...and BOOM! major character in trilogy send off. She played a long game, and it paid off. Well, played Julia Stiles. Well played. (For the record: nothing against Julia Stiles. She's okay, I guess.)
One interesting thing that occured to me watching these in a row for the first time: drowning as a symbolic thread throughout. Bourne is found in the first movie, floating in the ocean nearly dead. In the second, (SPOILER ALERT), he lets go of Marie underwater. In the third, (MORE SPOILING) he is shot as he plunges into the East River. Even in the horribly misguided fourth installment, The Bourne Legacy (don't and won't own), we meet the Poor Man's Matt Damon, Jeremy Renner, underwater somewhere in Alaska or something. I'm sure there's something deep to say about how our government's secrets and lies will eventually submerge us all or something and that's what the movies are about. But I'm just an idiot watching DVDs at home, so who cares what it all means? Just kind of cool that the movies tie together that way.
FWIW, ranking the films, having watched them all again, I'd go: (1) Ultimatum; (2) Identity; and (3) Supremacy. But they're all KEEPERS.
When I think Sean Connery, I think Indiana Jones' dad. Needless to say, I'm not a James Bond guy.
I like the spy movies which focus on the minutiae of day to day spooking, like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or The Good Shepherd or Austin Powers. Given the choice between a conspiracy thriller like 3 Days of the Condor or an action packed globetrotter like Die Another Day, I'm taking 3 Days of the Condor every time.
All of which is a long way of saying, The Bourne Identity is my type of spy movie. But with more fight sequences.
Remember when people thought it was weird to cast Matt Damon as a lead in action movie? Yeah. That was stupid. On the upside, those people gave us this:
Damon plays Jason Bourne - which will probably be how 99% of moviegoers remember him despite great turns in everything from True Grit to The Informant. Or, at least, Damon plays a guy who is sometimes known as Jason Bourne. Washing up unconscious and bullet-ridden on a fishing boat in the Atlantic, Bourne has no memory of who he is. Following the only clue he has - a bank account number embedded in his hip - Bourne pulls a bunch of currency and stack of passports out of a safety deposit box. Soon after, he's throwing $20,000 at a stranger named Marie (the fantastic Franka Potente) to get him to Paris and away from the shadowy government agency that is chasing him. Bourne pieces a lot of it together, facing off with a retinue of great character actors (Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Walton Goggins!*, Clive Owen, to name a few) along the way, and earns himself and Marie some small peace - at least until the sequel (NEXT UP!).
The Bourne Identity is distinctive mainly for what it doesn't rely on. Namely: CGI; crazily implausible stunts; hyperactive close-ups and smash cuts. All of which are (sadly) staples of the modern action picture. Instead (despite its fairly ridiculous amnesiac assassin premise), the movie takes a gritty, bare-knuckle, these-people-could-do-this-stuff approach. And it pays off in spades.
There's a ton of great little touches that make everything seem grounded and real. Such as Bourne ripping an emergency map off the wall to plot his exit from American embassy security or quickly surveying a road atlas and interrogating Marie on her vehicle maintenance before the world's best car chase featuring a used Mini Cooper.
The wheels are a little splashy.
In no small part, the film works due to Damon's performance. Like Harrison Ford (and Bruce Willis, when he isn't just coasting) Damon has that eery ability to simultaneously to be an in-over-his-head regular Joe and a superhuman badass killing machine without cognitive dissonance splitting your brain in half. Cementing the Harrison Ford analogy, I think this scene is the most hilariously unexpected development in an action movie since Indy shot that dude with the swords in Raiders:
I think its safe to say that without Jason Bourne, the Daniel Craig iteration of James Bond would have never happened. As a proud owner of a Casino Royale DVD (yes, the only Bond movie we own), I'm good with that.
FINAL VERDICT: Keeper.
*If you're not watching Justified on FX, you should. Get it together, friend.
Before we begin, we must apologize to you, Dearest Reader, for the relative sparse output as of late. There are several explanations for the lag between the last post and today: (1) we're lazy; (2) we're busy; (3) Justified, Downton Abbey, The Americans, and The Walking Dead; and (4) we're lazy.
Bottle Rocket stars Luke Wilson as Anthony Adams and Owen C. Wilson (yes, that's how he's credited)* as his best friend Dignan. Anthony's fresh out of a mental hospital for "exhaustion" (though as his baby sister aptly points out, it's odd that he's exhausted despite not having a job or any responsibilities). Following Dignan's 25 year plan for their future as master criminals working for Mr. Henry (casting coup James Caan), Anthony and Dignan team up with rich boy Bob Mapplethorpe# (Richard Musgrave) to knock over a book store. On the run from Johnny Law, which ain't no trip to Cleveland, they hide out in a middle of nowhere motel somewhere in Texas. There, Anthony falls in love with a housekeeper named Inez (Lumi Cavazos, charming). No spoilers, but the team disbands and heads their separate ways. That is, of course, until they reunite for (drum roll, please) one last BIG SCORE to prove their worth to Mr. Henry. And they wear awesome jumpsuits.
I gotta get me one of those jumpsuits.
When you've become used to the highly manicured full scale picture book
films Wes Anderson produces these days, it is sort of a shock to watch
the relatively low key goof of a heist movie he made for a debut. Sure, the DNA of what would be the Wes Anderson style is there. Emotionally stilted characters with a slightly off kilter view of the world. Meticulous attention to detail. Terrific and unexpected music choices. Characters with bizarre names like Future Man. Futura font (which unfortunately is not a font type for blogger). All the same, there is a shaggy dog sensibility to this movie and relatively "normal" characters, both of which will be excised from future Anderson films. Perhaps that's why I like it so much. It isn't too neat and perfect (which I think is a fair criticism of, say, The Life Aquatic). That little rough around the edges makes the movie both funnier and more emotionally satisfying.
I also have a pet theory that Owen Wilson, who co-wrote this, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums with Anderson, was the one who injected the "heart" and "lightness" into those movies. I like this theory because: (1) it cuts against Wilson's tabloid image as a drug-crazed sex weirdo and (2) it explains why I felt totally detached from and unmoved by The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited. I did, however, love Moonrise Kingdom and The Fantasic Mr. Fox. So maybe my theory is B.S.
Anyway, this movie is funny and charming and not nearly as stand-offish as Anderson's more recent ouevre, if you're not a fan. Check it out.
FINAL VERDICT: Keep it.
NEXT UP: The Bourne Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum (TRILOGY TIME, BITCHES!).
*The "C" stood for class, which he lost when he made Shanghai Knights. Oooh, BURN! (Shanghai Noon was a perfectly acceptable Western karate buddy picture but LONDON! Royalty? Disbelief no longer suspended).
#No relation to the artist. I think. Unless this is a joke I don't quite get. Which is possible.
Blow is the true story of George Jung (no relation to Carl), the Massachusetts boy who brought Pablo Escobar's pure Colombian cocaine to our fair shores in the 1970's. Played by Johnny Depp in a succession of increasingly horrible blonde wigs, Jung lights out for Manhattan Beach, California in the late 60's with no particular plan of action; just knowing he does not want to be a sad-sack working class Joe like his dad (Ray Liotta). There, he meets Paul Reubens' Derek Foreal, the effusive owner of a hair salon for men. With Foreal's connections, Jung quickly becomes the king of pot in Manhattan Beach. From there, "Boston George" is only a short stint in federal prison with a Colombian cellmate away from (as he puts it) "a bachelor's in weed to a PHD in cocaine." Using a small fleet of private planes, Jung starts smuggling Escobar's coke to the US, making enormous amounts of money, landing a beautiful Colombian wife (Penelope Cruz), and a having a gorgeous daughter in the process. Of course, it all falls apart, as it always does.
There is an undoubted surface appeal to Blow. Director Ted Demme keeps things moves briskly, with a canny sense of the styles and moods of the decades in which the film takes place. There's also a smart refrain to the film's narration: Jung keeps describing his life in different periods of time as "perfect" - which begs the question of why the hell he didn't just stop there. Depp is in fine form, self-assured, ambitious, but vulnerable - he's good at showing a guy who is totally out of his element but wants to project complete control. And Reubens makes things interesting whenever he's on the screen.
"Today's secret word is: benzoylmethylecgonine."
However, a second look reveals that the movie is more style than substance. And a lot of that style feels secondhand. The opening sequence showing Jung's childhood can't help but recall the beginning of GoodFellas (no doubt Liotta's presence doesn't help that impression). A later scene with a coked out Cruz flipping out in a fast-moving car also is reminiscent of the end of that flick. Of course, you can't see a movie about cocaine in the 70's/80's, especially one set in Florida for a good portion of its running time, without seeing shades of Scarface. Even the music feels cribbed. Compare:
With:
For the record, the song is "Rumble" by Link Wray. (Though I guess you can't really claim anyone "stole" from Tarantino, the master thief himself.)
So, while the movie is enjoyable, it all sort of feels like something you've seen done better before. Nor does it help that Jung - the supposed protagonist - really doesn't seem to possess any redeeming qualities, besides he says he loves his daughter a lot. We kept thinking: this guy is just clueless, self-deluded, overly-ambitious, and money-hungry. In fact, the film's saving grace could have been a bait and switch moment at the end, where you think he might get a redemptive moment, which is quickly (and rightfully) snatched away. That saving grace is undone, however, by immediately plastering a picture of George Jung's real face over the closing credits as some sort of hero.
Also dimming our enthusiasm of the movie was the knowledge that its director would die just a year after its release from a cocaine-induced heart attack. Ted Demme showed real promise with this film and the 1994 dark comedy The Ref. It's too bad.