Three guys with beards
I watched three movies this weekend, directed by these guys:
Archive for January 30, 2006
Labyrinth (1986)
Another movie everybody has seen but me. Even though it was directed by Jim Henson, I was surprised by the number of puppets involved. I was overwhelmed by them: I think even more than in the all-puppets-all-the-time The Dark Crystal, but I haven’t seen that since it was in the theaters and I was 11, so my puppet tolerance may well have decreased in the intervening years.
Jennifer Connolly is very young here, and her accent is strangely British, which I suppose has to do with the movie being shot in the UK when she was at a linguistically impressionable age.
Labyrinth was mostly written by Monty Python’s Terry Jones and in retrospect you can see his handiwork. Certainly the interest in quests and fairies and dwarves, et al. The film has its absurdist and amusing bits, but it’s not really Python-quality in most places. At the same time, I think I understand the nostalgia that a lot of people have for this film, down to the not-half-bad musical extravaganzas such as “Dance Magic Dance,” although I will complain about the difficulty inherent in parsing the song’s title. Is he commanding the magic to dance? Is he suggesting that the dance magic should dance? Maybe the dance should do the magic dance? Very hard to tell.
I was impressed with a lot of the pre-CGI tech of the film, especially after watching the making-of featurette on the DVD. The Goblin King’s bubble-juggling, the various larger-than-life puppets, and the Escher-iffic set piece at the end are all worthy of accolades.
Somewhat disturbing is David Bowie’s Goblin King package, which is a little too leotardinously exhibited for an ostensible kids’ movie. Also, his hair is Joe Dirt mulletistically bad. If you find my coinage of “leotardinously” and “mulletistically” gratuitous, be grateful that I refrained from coining “spandexticular.”
Interesting item: The eagle-eyed Jessica noticed from the making-of that the choreographer of the ball scene, Cheryl McFadden, was the exact same person who later called herself Gates McFadden and played Beverly Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Do I need any other reason to marry her (i.e., Jessica, not Cheryl/Gates)?
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Caché (2005)
Jessica and I saw this the night it opened in Philly, and the theater was packed. I know it’s been getting good reviews, but I’m not really sure why this particular audience — primarily the city’s oldfartserati — was at this film. Because it was French? I can’t imagine these people were fans of the Michael Haneke oeuvre (Code Inconnu, Time of the Wolf, The Piano Teacher), but what the hey.
I am very reluctant to say much about Caché, because I think the less you know about it going in, the better. Not to single her out, but particularly don’t read Cindy Fuchs’ review in the City Paper. As usual, she gives too much out in order to fill up her allotted word count. (Not that I haven’t done the same thing.) Suffice it to say the title, which means “hidden,” refers to a surveillance camera and some increasingly worrisome videotapes.
I am fairly certain that 90% of this audience absolutely hated this film. They were looking for the standard French kiss-and-slap, and this wasn’t it at all. They walked out mumbling and confused. Granted, it’s also the way most of them walked in.
Caché is Haneke’s best movie, and the best 2005 release I have seen. Just achingly tense and troubling on so many levels. Daniel Auteuil is always great, but he’s perfect here. Juliette Binoche is very strong in what’s essentially a minor role as Auteuil’s wife.
The film contains one of the most genuinely shocking scenes I’ve ever seen. The movie builds and builds, and you think you’re ready for whatever they can throw at you, and then WHOA. (The collective reaction of the packed oldfartserati audience was something to experience indeed.) I have been unsettled for days. Anyway, don’t see this if you’re old, you don’t like films about unending dread, and/or you like most modern French cinema; you won’t like it. Otherwise, wowie zowie. So good.
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Dead Calm (1989)
According to an Oprah I saw once around when Far and Away came out, this is the movie Tom Cruise saw that made him want to costar with Nicole Kidman in Days of Thunder. I don’t remember a lot of couch-jumping love-declaratory foofaraw with that particular Oprah episode, so I’m pretty sure this was before he was straight. This is satirical and I should not be sued.
Nicole has very curly hair in this film. That is putting it politely; it’s really extremely frizzy in a bad ’80s perm sort of way. She’s a frizzbucket. She’s still fairly cute, but very young (22), and only approaching gorgeous when her hair is wet and thus de-frizzed.
The film is fairly simple but effectively tense: Nicole and Sam Neill are sailing the South Seas on their nice medium yacht when they come across a schooner in distress and a distraught Craig Bierko, who rows over and says everybody is dead on the other boat. Sam rows over to take a look, and then Craig goes crazy and takes over the yacht and Sam is stranded on the other (sinking) boat with a bunch of dead swingers, and Nicole has to run around on the yacht and try to load the shotgun and poison drinks when Craig isn’t looking, all the while trading secretive and meaningful Morse code with Sam over their busted radios.
I was really glad to see Craig Bierko in this, and I thought he was terrific. He’s one of those solid B-list actors that I have always liked and rooted for, and this was a nice part — a fairly high-profile crazy-guy role — for him, and he nailed it, just scary and teetering on the edge between laid-back surfer and I-will-snap-at-any-time murderer-rapist.
Except the final credits rolled, and to my dismay, it wasn’t Craig Bierko at all, it was Billy Zane. Whom I hate. I had to re-evaluate my whole approach to the performance, and it turns out, it wasn’t that great. Smirky and lazy and not that compelling. For shame, Billy Zane.
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