Magic shaving
This cool little movie has the charm and feel of a short by Mèliés or Blackton (both of whose films are eminently worth your time) from the turn of that other century.
Archive for Movies
Crazy monkey surprise
Try the crazy monkey surprise!
I pretty much loathe Mel Gibson-directed movies. However, I’m intrigued by his Mayan-language Apocalypto, the new trailer of which is out. Which you should watch (the trailer, I mean), not just because I’m intrigued, but because about 6 frames before the monkey is a crazy surprise, not as totally related to the aforementioned monkey as I may have implied. This will not stop me from re-implying.
The Ref (1994)
This is no great shakes, but it was better than I thought it would be. I found the salty dialog amusing for the most part. In general I like the kvetching Kevin Spacey module, featured here, better than the subdued Kevin Spacey, featured in Pay It Forward or The Shipping News. I think Judy Davis, who must have the record for the Australian in the most Woody Allen movies (four by my count), is awesome, and I’m probably likely to think more favorably of movies she is in. I sort of even liked Naked Lunch.
This is primarily a vehicle for Denis Leary to be Denis Leary, and a little definitely goes a long way with him. 93 minutes of him is about 84 minutes too much. What’s with the Mrs. Robinson pose on the DVD box?
And what’s with the weird upbeat ending? These people hate each other, and should continue to into infinity. Supposedly this originally ended much more appropriately, with Leary getting caught and going to prison, but test audiences hated it. Morality is a harsh mistress.
It seems like I’ve seen a lot of movies lately about crime bringing people together. Maybe all movies involving crime do that to some extent. Any outliers?
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Match Point (2005)
What does it take for me to like Theodore Dreiser, born exactly 100 years before me and similarly full of frustratingly unfulfilled potential? Apparently, it takes Woody Allen to film An American Tragedy filtered through the triplequadruple-action lenscharcoal of Chekhov, George Stevens, Patricia Highsmith and Dostoevsky. And yeah, there’s probably some Bergman in there too, this being one of Allen’s more seriouser endeavors.
There’s also a lot of Crimes and Misdemeanors involved, which I like and recently resaw. Crimes is regarded as Allen’s masterwork by people who aren’t me (how can you top Annie Hall?). But I feel like this movie has just as much to say about transgression as C&M, with very little of the to-my-ears repetitive and fluffy rumination. It also takes a different tack to the problem of sin in an amoral world. The power that be is not God or legally-blind rabbi Sam Waterston’s nebulous higher power — is God nebulous because he’s blurry? — but dumb luck.
I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers’ one-note, callow fancy-lad characters in movies like Velvet Goldmine, The Governess, and Titus (and did you know he just played Elvis on TV?!?), but he’s got an edge and a depth to him — a depthy edge — here that really works. I cannot speak to his work in Bend It Like Beckham but I believe Jessica disliked MP primarily because of the BILB connection.
Jessica hates BILB. Someone is going to have to unbend it, and I’m afraid it might be me.
Scarlett Johansson’s role is a little different for her as a down-on-her-luck actress who temporarily makes good. It was a little hard to buy her character change toward the end of the film, but I appreciated the depthy edge she was trying for.
Did you ever think you’d live to see Woody Allen embracing CGI? By my count, this makes the third movie of his (following Everyone Says I Love You and Deconstructing Harry) that features critical scenes augmented with computer graphics. It kind of makes you wonder what Zelig would be like if he made it today.
Links:
- Match Point: Amazon | IMDb
- An American Tragedy: Amazon | IMDb
- Crimes and Misdemeanors: Amazon | IMDb
- Annie Hall: Amazon | IMDb
- Cabin Boy: Amazon | IMDb
- Velvet Goldmine: Amazon | IMDb
- The Governess: Amazon | IMDb
- Titus: Amazon | IMDb
- Elvis: IMDb
- Bend It Like Beckham: Amazon | IMDb
- Everyone Says I Love You: Amazon | IMDb
- Deconstructing Harry: Amazon | IMDb
- Zelig: Amazon | IMDb
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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Hitch (2005)
We watched this the other day, but I haven’t got around to posting about it, so why not now?
I had misgivings going in, given the recent Will Smith track record, and I’m not talking about Willennium.
(I’m really trying to make this bulleted list start below the picture. So far I have not been successful. Maybe if I add a bit more text here? Okay, that works on my machine. Your mileage may vary. Offer not valid in Tennessee.)
Here’s the last seven movies he’s done prior to Hitch:
- Shark Tale
- I, Robot
- Bad Boys II
- Men in Black II
- Ali
- The Legend of Bagger Vance
- Wild Wild West
Will (I feel like I can call him Will) was pretty good as Mohammed Ali, but it wasn’t a great movie. When We Were Kings (which Will had nothing to with) had 100 times the heart and emotional depth. Okay, so Ali was mediocre, but not awful. Can anyone dissuade me from the notion that all of the rest of those movies are jaw-droppingly bad?
So yeah, misgivings. But I gotta say, I wasn’t as un-entertained as I thought I would be. Will is a nice mix of stud and doofus, and completely likable. His movie is sort of a dude’s version of Emma-meets-Clueless, if you can imagine such a creature. There’s also a soupçon of Cyrano de Bergerac in this story of the matchmaker for hire who isn’t as smooth at making his own matches.
Make no mistake, this film is total fluff, and it has its problems. In what world does accountant Kevin James end up with heiress socialite Amber Valletta? The world of implausible romantic comedies, that’s where. The speed dating thing at the end seems like it belongs with another movie, say How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, a lesser variation on the same theme.
Links:
- Hitch: Amazon | IMDb
- Shark Tale: Amazon | IMDb
- I, Robot: Amazon | IMDb
- Bad Boys II: Amazon | IMDb
- Men in Black II: Amazon | IMDb
- Ali: Amazon | IMDb
- The Legend of Bagger Vance: Amazon | IMDb
- Wild Wild West: Amazon | IMDb
- Emma: Amazon | IMDb
- Clueless: Amazon | IMDb
- How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: Amazon | IMDb
Dressed to Kill (1980)
Dressed to Kill is a deeply stupid movie. Brian De Palma knows his way around a camera; it’s just a shame that that camera has to be filled with film. The wordless sequence of seduction at the museum (the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stuck in the middle of Manhattan) is terrific. It’s a whole story, told completely by images and Pino Donaggio’s score. It’s great, and it’s sandwiched by crap.
The parts that are stolen from Psycho are great, in Psycho. The opening shower scene is pretty much the definition of gratuitous, and why bother with an obvious body double?
The dialog is pretty much nonstop awful. Cringeworthy awful. I have already blocked most of it out, or I would provide examples.
The big twist is only a surprise if you haven’t seen the aforementioned Psycho.
It’s another early ’80s movie with Keith ‘Christine’ Gordon, who seems to be here to get a version of Mr. De Palma into the story. Otherwise, mostly pointless.
I’m glad Brian was tryin’ on this one. He’s reaching for greatness. It’s just that he missed, by a lot.
Happy Endings (2005)
This wasn’t bad, but it could have been a lot better. There’s a lot of muddled, messy relationships. Parentage is disputed, or kept secret. Nobody really loves anyone else, or maybe they do. It’s a Don Roos picture, so everyone is high-strung, with the exception of Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays a femme fatale on a long con with wealthy Tom Arnold and his gayish son, who works at the restaurant of Steve Coogan, whose partner may or may not have been the sperm donor for a couple of no-sugar moms. Steve also, back in the day, fathered a child (that he doesn’t know about) with his step-sister, who grows up to be Lisa Kudrow, abortion counselor, who gets blackmailed into helping a film student make a fake documentary about a massage-therapist-as-sex-worker, so that he, the film student, will tell Kudrow the name of the baby she gave away.
I was actually with all of this complicated business for about two-thirds of the film, but it got excessive in the third act. I was also put off by the snarky titles that came up from time to time to tell us about the characters histories, as well as their fates. I don’t know; the same idea worked terrifically as voiceover in Amélie and Y Tu Mamá También. Maybe I just grow weary.
As Jessica points out, the problem with movies like this is the world is too small. Everybody’s a little too intricately related (related and related-related) with everybody else. Call it Magnolia syndrome.
Also, I admit that I don’t know how to end this review, happily or otherwise. Let’s leave it there.
