showtrmp Reviews

Private Romeo (2011)

Unbelievably good

[10/10 · 10 January 2013]

Any gay person will tell you that one of their main problems (granted that they survived adolescence unscarred and are reasonably well-adjusted--that's a big "granted") is that there is no real "language" for romance between two men, or two women. Gay people generally hide their sexuality during the period when others are learning how to express it, and once a gay person has determined to strike out on his or her own, there isn't much in the culture to let them know how to approach another person of the same sex--what the rules are, what to say, what signals to send and how to read the other person. And most "gay movies" that try to fulfill this function are gimmicky and/or maudlin--people in them don't talk like human beings.

"Private Romeo" solves the problem by using the play still regarded as the last word on young romance--William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"--and putting the words of Shakespeare's young lovers in the mouths of two men--cadets at a military training academy. In a sort of limbo while they await orders for transfer, the cadets are (for some reason) studying "Romeo and Juliet" in their classes, and they begin to lapse in and out of the play in their daily lives, as Sam (Seth Numrich) and Glenn (Matt Doyle) meet, fall in love, and play out their destiny in a way that parallels Shakespeare in some ways and departs from it in others. Their classmates follow suit, echoing Shakespeare's world in another way--all of the roles are played by men, and several of them switch from one role to another without any fuss or directorial signaling (after Mercutio's death scene, he simply becomes Capulet).

All of this is accomplished without a trace of self-consciousness. The actors behave in a way I don't believe I've ever seen in a modern Shakespeare adaptation--their movements and inflections are completely contemporary, yet the language comes out of them easily--it never seems jarring or archaic. The actors are trained (Numrich and Doyle appeared in "War Horse") so that they do the play honor yet still make it work as a modern movie. Numrich is a convincingly ardent Romeo--when he meets his Juliet at a late-night beer-and-cards bash (substituting for the Capulet ball), he circles him warily, making tentative gestures at his hand and (eventually) his lips ("give me my sin again"). Doyle's Juliet, the center of the movie, registers the moment of Glenn's surrender wonderfully, and from then on he lives only for his love. His face becomes so eager at the thought of Romeo that we long to see it stay that way--the moments when it collapses and shatters with pain become almost unbearable. None of the other students react in conventionally "homophobic" ways--Tybalt (Bobby Moreno) is just another young men left in charge who has gotten full of himself, and who thinks that Sam and Glenn's liaison will disrupt order at the academy. And Hale Appleman's Mercutio is the most ambiguous reading of that role in quite a while--during the Queen Mab speech, we can't tell whether he is cautioning Romeo against the "dream" of gay love, or whether he has a thing for him himself.

Sorry to have gone on for so long, but this movie affected me in a very personal way, especially during the balcony scene--or, for that matter, any scene in which Romeo and Juliet are together. The movie does what flashier, "concept"-riddled Shakespeare films don't--it makes what now seems quaint and abstract in the play (the feud, the duels) seem electric. There is genuine tension and peril in the air, plus a tenderness that seems earned. Lines take on new meaning ("I do love--a woman", "Is love a tender thing?", and, especially, "Thy beauty hath made me effeminate"). Spoiler--no one dies here, not even the two title lovers, and yet the stakes are as high as ever. And not even the sternest Shakespeare purist could disavow this ending--especially not one who has seen too many screen homosexuals end in suicide (or too many real-life gay teens doing the same.)

Red State (2011)

Doesn't help at all.

[13 November 2012]

"Red State" is a terrible mistake. A hysterically ugly attack on Christian fundamentalism which becomes rather fundamental itself in its denial of all things human. During the running time of this movie, no one says or does a single believable thing. They are just stereotypes commenting on stereotypes, with lots of grimy art design and speeded-up camera-work to mask the hollowness. The plot (three teenage boys are entrapped and tortured by a fanatical religious cult) is just an excuse for a paranoid sermons, delivered with a sledgehammer. And the three teenagers are so incompetent when they (briefly) escape and get the upper hand that they lose all sympathy. As all horror movie fans back to the 1950s know (and movie makers have never learned), screaming, helpless people who make no effort to save themselves are not dramatically interesting.

Poor Melissa Leo must have been desperate for a paycheck. John Goodman (photographed cruelly, so that he resembles a bird of prey) is on hand to represent Government Bureaucracy and the Crushing of the Individual Spirit, in a series of speeches that make one feel queasy and embarrassed. There is no appreciable difference between this cinematic abortion and "Saw"-style torture porn, except for the self-congratulatory overlay of moral sanctimony. Except for a few of the violent scenes, this script could have come out of the 1950s.

Charade (1963)

The Best

[10/10 · 1 May 2012]

One of the most entertaining movies of all time, and I know I'm not the first (or last) to say so. Hailing from the days when Hollywood knew how to make light, sophisticated, thoroughly artificial entertainment. (When modern Hollywood tries, the results generally thud.) This movie has nothing to do with "reality" as we understand it; it's a playground for adults. Audrey Hepburn, as usual, wears faultless Givenchy clothes (on a translator's salary?) and tosses off endless Parisian-style bon mots without the slightest effort (everyone's favorite has got to be her summary of "what's wrong with" Cary Grant.) When her life is put in danger, she is just as intense as she was in the thriller "Wait Until Dark", but without losing her sense of humor. (After an unsettling sadistic scene where James Coburn corners her in a telephone booth and tortures her with lighted matches, she's discovered by Grant, who asks, "What are you doing in here?" "I'm having a nervous breakdown," she growls.) In fact, this movie may be unparalleled in its balancing of comedy and suspense. I find that those who condescend to this type of filmmaking as "irrelevant" or "unimportant" don't understand how hard it is to come up with truly entertaining fluff. When in recent years has there been a comparable example?

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

A brave attempt, overwhelmed by itself

[5/10 · 29 April 2012]

Someone might "need to talk about Kevin", but what is there to say? That seems to be the point of this madly ambitious, brave, foolhardy adaptation of Lionel Shriver's book about a mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton), whose son Kevin (Ezra Miller) massacres several fellow students at his high school, just days before his 16th birthday. We learn this fairly soon; much of the first half-hour of Lynne Ramsay's film is shot in a fragmentary, time-jumping style, with nearly wordless closeups of Swinton as she wanders like the undead through her miserable new existence. Neighbors stare at her, splash red paint on her porch, and in some cases physically assault her. Her new job is low-rung office dronedom. Every time she leaves her house she's tensed in preparation for another awful encounter; when she is accosted by one of her son's surviving victims (who is in a wheelchair) and he just wants to see how she is, she's pathetically grateful. In between, she ranges in her mind over key incidents from her marriage and motherhood, trying to determine what she did (or didn't do) to produce such a monster as Kevin, and whether or not there was a point of no return.

This is a strong, inherently dramatic subject for any movie. Yet, apart from a few striking moments, this is basically a fragmentary modernized version of "The Bad Seed", that hokey 1950s melodrama about a killer tot who was "doomed" genetically. Only now most of the dialogue has been taken away and replaced by "portentous" film-school collage effects which are more heavy-handed than speeches. The symbolic use of the color red (not exactly subtle) is used to cartoon extremes--a jelly sandwich is turned, through repetition, into a foul object. Everything is shoved into our faces; we're not allowed to interpret anything for ourselves. Yet we never learn what seems to be paramount--the nature of Kevin's crimes and their aftermath. (I don't mean they should have been depicted on screen, but there could have been a TV news update or something.) The best effects are the most underplayed, as when Eva receives a visit from two Jehovah's witnesses who ask, "Do you know where you are going to spend your afterlife?" "Yes, actually, I do. I'm going straight to hell. Eternal damnation, the whole bit. Thanks for asking," she tosses off breezily. In another scene, she's at a holiday office party and Colin, another desk jockey who has been eying her, asks her to dance. Needled by her good-natured refusal, he leans close to her ear and whispers, "Who do you think you are, you stuck-up bitch? Who do you think is going to want you now?"

Release (I) (2010)

Gay tragedy porn

[5/10 · 27 April 2012]

This prison drama was recently described on the message boards as "tragedy porn", and I can't think of a more appropriate term. No one in "Release" suggests a human being; all of them are sociological constructs designed for yet another demonstration of the waste and meaninglessness of life, a la Clint Eastwood. This is the kind of movie in which as soon as you see the female warden (Dymphna Skehill, whose performance consists of chewing her tongue while keeping her lips clamped together) proudly hang a framed certification on the wall, you know it's going to be smashed. (Authority is a sham!) And, topping even that, an inmate can't just be stabbed--he has to be stabbed with a sharpened crucifix! (Religion is all hypocrisy!). And so on, and so on. The story concerns a priest, Father Gillie (Daniel Brockleback) who has been jailed for ambiguous reasons and is suspected by the other inmates of pedophilia, which sets off a near-psychotic reaction in his teenage roommate (Wayne Vigo), a victim of abuse and (possibly) rape. Gillie is persecuted by almost the entire prison, led by Max (Bernie Hodges), and his only solace comes in a love affair with one of the guards (Gerry Summers, who is very appealing but seems too sensitive to have passed the screening process). Surprisingly, this affair is the element that comes off most believably, mostly due to the personal charm and naturalness of Brockleback and Summers. But with this setup, there's really nowhere to go but down, and everyone works very hard to make all the ghastly events that follow seem "inevitable"and "tragic". Unfortunately, we're given far too much time to think about all the implausibilities--such as why everyone listens to Max in the first place? We're told he's the unofficial leader of the prison, but we never feel it, especially since Hodges is the kind of actor who tries to seem "sinister" by whispering all his lines. And we're just supposed to accept that Vigo is "unstable", which explains why he's so easily manipulated into precipitating the final crisis.

Why is it that the movies that strive the most to be "gritty" and "realistic" come off as the most contrived? Wake up, filmmakers--"life is unfair" is not a daring or original message, and it won't come as a big surprise to the majority of moviegoers. When someone works this hard to pound us over the head with bitter truths, the glossiest old 1940s MGM musical seems a model of naturalism by comparison.

Mulligans (2008)

Gay Rural

[6/10 · 27 April 2012]

"Mulligans" is a pleasant enough example of a genre I have a certain weakness for--the gay/rural movie. While the more common urban gay movie tends to be about neurosis, overdramatics, and "witty" banter, the gay rural is generally less pushy and more disarming, with guarantees of pretty scenery and pretty male semi-nudity (often cued by nighttime swimming). The danger, of course, is that the director will get lost in the prettiness and forget to tell a story. "Mulligans" barely avoids this trap, although the story it tells is a lot less daring than the writer/star Charlie David apparently imagines. The movie is never actually painful to sit through, but we're all very familiar with the beats of the coming-out drama by now; the twist here is that the "torment" of the two men in question (Dan Payne as Nathan, a middle-aged, closeted golf enthusiast, and David as his college-age son's best friend Chase) is pushed to the sidelines--which is probably for the best, as the astonishingly beautiful David is a hopeless nonactor. (The only moment we feel sympathy for him comes at the beach scene near the end, when he tries to force tears and is clearly in agony from the effort). The reactions of Payne's wife, Stacey (Thea Gill) and son Tyler (David James) take over, simply because they're more unexpected. Baynham starts out giving a flawless impersonation of a slightly spoiled and entitled frat boy (like the ones in 80s movies and their latter-day imitators, such as "American Pie"). Then David, trying to sound casual, comes out to him, and Baynham--shaken, but trying his best to be broadminded--brings something unexpected out of the stereotype. It's a well-written scene, which seems to come from observation and probably reflects the experiences of many gays in the audience. The movies have rarely touched upon the relationships between gay men and their straight friends, which can be more solid and enduring than similar friendships with other gay men--the usual method is to pour on the wisecracks or play "is he or isn't he really straight" games.

The actual transgressive act between Nathan and Chase (don't those names scream Harlequin romance novel?) is awfully tame, even by gay rural standards. It's not just the brief vanilla sex scenes themselves--it's that there doesn't seem to be any new physical awareness or tension between the two characters afterwards--nothing breaks loose. Payne just carries on acting stoic and sensitive, in a 1950s soap-opera way, and David carries on posing and reflecting light, while we wait for the contrived scene revealing their affair. It comes even more awkwardly than expected, but at least the film's meditative rhythm gets stirred up, largely due to the exquisite Thea Gill's performance as Stacey, the only character who truly "arcs". Gill initially plays Stacey as a determinedly perky helicopter mom, full of nervous energy. Most of the humor and pace of the first half of the movie comes from her. When someone makes a conversational detour she doesn't care for, she says, brightly, "Okay then" and steers the talk firmly away, like a slightly hysterical cruise director determined to keep everyone happy and active. (It becomes a mini-routine). Once her world crashes down, though, it really crashes--she retreats into herself, and it's a little scary to see what that artifice was hiding. Gill brings a poetic intensity to her stunned silence--she'll really never be the same woman again.

Vigil (1984)

Certainly not like anything else

[5/10 · 23 April 2012]

SPOILER: I don't know when I've seen a film that was so beautiful and yet so utterly baffling. It's not like any other movie you'll ever see. Every single image is stark and brutal--the director, Vincent Ward, is trying to enter a primitive painting and make drama out of it. And he has a perfect setting--a sheep farm in New Zealand--that comes from Thomas Hardy's accounts, in which nature wages an unending, unfathomable conspiracy against the characters. It's in the actual story Ward tells that he gets into trouble. His 12-year-old heroine, Toss (Fiona Kay) witnesses her farmer father's death from an accidental fall (as he tries to rescue a sheep) and the camera sits on her impassive face for the first of several eternities. Her restless mother (Penelope Stewart) seizes the opportunity to put the farm up for sale. Her dotty grandfather (Bill Kerr) is like every dotty grandfather in the movies--he putters around, muttering feisty-old-goat aphorisms and tinkering with whimsical machines--and quickly becomes insufferable. Ethan, (Frank Whidden) the hunter who carried the father's corpse back to the farm, shows up again looking to replace the father. Toss and her mother are both attracted and repelled by him.

In one remarkable sequence, we see Toss experimenting with Ethan's gun. She looks through the gun sights and begins tracking Ethan through the house, as if she were ambushing James Bond. When Ethan sees her, he steps boldly toward her and removes the sight, which she had taken off the gun and is holding to her eye like a telescope. We are in D.H. Lawrence sexual-awakening territory now, but the combination of Lawrence and Hardy doesn't ignite the way it should--the director's austere manner (keeping everything at a distance) begins to seem remote and rather obscure. The scenes don't follow from each other; each one goes off on its own, and the characters shift attitudes and allegiances to no clear purpose. The performers start doing a lot of staring and squinting into the camera (for LONG periods) only Stewart makes any impression, as she's the only one who actually engages with the person she's speaking to (and the only one who seems to have any grasp on reality.) The last fourth of the movie is unspeakably depressing. We finally realize that this is the kind of film where explanations and logic are left out, and the resultant confusion is presented as "depth". Fascinating and infuriating, in just about equal measure.

Chanel Solitaire (1981)

A comedy classic

[5/10 · 22 April 2012]

There must be some sort of curse on Coco Chanel projects; the Katherine Hepburn musical, the recent Shirley MacLaine TV movie, and this early-1970s feature film are all unbelievably bad. This atrocity, though, is some kind of classic of unintentional comedy in its first half.

Marie-France Pisier displays all the charm and acting genius she showed in "The Other Side of Midnight" (less than zero) as Chanel, and the script does her no favors. Rehearsing for a singing competition, she asks her aunt (Brigitte Fossey), "Am I really very bad?" As we struggle for a response to THAT, Fossey provides it. "I wouldn't say very bad, just bad." Uh-huh. In this telling, Coco is an odd, petulant little snapping turtle who manipulates people into giving her what she wants. This includes Rutger Hauer as a titled speculator who puts Coco up in his mansion, and Karen Black as a courtesan (with one of the worst French accents ever heard in movies.) The presence of Black and Hauer, two of the oddest actors ever to appear on screen, makes this a must-see. (If you were lamenting a shortage of Rutger Hauer/Karen Black sex scenes, this is the movie for you.) Once the movie settles into the romance of Coco and Timothy Dalton (as a coal merchant), the fun rapidly drains out. I started fast-forwarding long before the "tragic" ending, only slowing down for Peter Allen's memorably overwrought rendition of the theme song (which we've heard violins massacring during the movie's slow patches--all 5000 of them.)

Lilian's Story (1996)

Her life wasn't mediocre, but this film sure is

[5/10 · 22 April 2012]

The great Ruth Cracknell deserves better than this sorry, dispiriting mess.

Based on a real "street celebrity" who recited Shakespeare on corners for a living, "Lillian's Story" has the structure of "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" or an old Hammer horror exploitation epic. Only it's given solemn art-film treatment and it pretends to be a serious examination of age, abuse, and mental illness. Lillian (Cracknell) was committed to an asylum for 40 years by her brute of a father (Barry Otto); she's sprung at the beginning of the film (why now?) by her squishy weakling of a brother (Otto again) and her aunt, and she moves into a seedy room in a red-light district, where she wanders the streets, disoriented and lonely, trying to make connections with the prostitutes and cab drivers, and flashing back to her horrific past (the younger Lillian is played by Toni Collette). The film is one of the worst-shot imaginable, with poor sound recording and ugly color (which shifts to a hideous decayed-lemon tone for the flashbacks). Even worse, each shot is so lingering and so weighted that the film end up as brutal to Cracknell and Collette as their hideous father was. We start to feel like voyeurs intruding on heavily-aestheticized horrors that don't make much sense. None of the guilty secrets revealed are terribly startling; they just feel lurid for luridness's sake, piled on in hopes of a Shocking, Overpowering Statement. The only respites are Cracknell's Shakespearean recitations; they point up the gap between Lillian's dreams and her sordid joke of a real life in a way the rest of the movie can't live up to.

Undertow (2009)

We take care of his body that God may take care of his soul

[8/10 · 22 April 2012]

Unforgettable, moody, and original (in a genre that has been flunking at the last of those adjectives), this Peruvian offering is both sensual and deeply moving, often at the same time. It takes a gimmicky premise and makes that premise seem the most natural way to tell this particular story.

An ordinary fisherman in a Peruvian village (which gets most of its living from the sea) is contentedly married to a lovely woman and expecting his first child (the first shot of the movie is of him resting his head on the mother's stomach, trying to hear the baby's heartbeat). He has the usual gaggle of slightly overcompensating macho friends with whom he likes to hang out, drink, and play soccer. He also has a male lover, a painter/photographer from the mainland who never seems part of any group and who is subjected to the usual provincial cold shoulder. The painter is a sophisticated modern artist plunked down in a primitive world. After a quarrel with the fisherman, the painter drowns, but his spirit cannot truly die; he hangs around, visible only to the fisherman, trapped between worlds until his body can be found and subjected to the burial rites he scorned when he was alive.

As Miguel the fisherman, Cristian Mercado is just right; although he has a taut physique from working, his looks are a little goofy and off enough to make his terror at not seeming "manly" credible. And Manolo Cardona as Santiago the painter has the kind of face cameras pray for, with piercing blue eyes that could haunt any man (or woman) forever. Santiago is something of a wraith even before he dies; he drifts about the fringes of society, snapping pictures and making periodic awkward overtures to the locals (such as offering to buy drinks after a funeral) which are self-righteously rebuffed. He's only fully alive when with his lover; it's as if a dam broke inside him. And Tatiana Astengo is so sensually easy and playful as the pregnant wife that the moments when she snaps and gives orders are unexpected and tonic. (Her husband swears on Miguelito--the newborn baby--that he isn't homosexual, her response--"Don't ever swear on him. Ever. Do you understand me?" leaves absolutely no doubt about it.) Director Javier Fuentes-Leon wanders around this little town, letting us in on all the nooks and corners, and paints a full picture of a society several decades behind our own in its thinking. There's a gay joke told by Miguel's friends in a bar which was cut and is on the DVD extras; I wish it had been retained, because it sums up the movie's theme--that these men can understand a man sexually desiring another man in an "emergency", but the thought of true love--i.e., tenderness--between men is obscene to them. Santiago's death is initially rather a break for Miguel--he can be with his invisible lover and still live up to his "duty" as a husband and father. Yet Santiago, who was a dirty secret before, is an even more powerless one now, and he has to bear the additional indignity of hearing himself scorned and denied by Miguel. It's hard to imagine a more perfect metaphor for the closet. The story comes to an emotionally satisfying resolution which also seems like a new beginning--one where the possible outcomes are as limitless as the sea.

Sun Kissed (2006)

Gay filmmaker all but disappears up his own navel

[3/10 · 21 April 2012]

A prime example of the self-indulgent, self-important, opaquely "arty" kind of offering that is destroying gay filmmaking. On the commentary track, the director makes references to Bunuel and "Last Year at Marienbad", which is never a good sign, and the fragmentary, senseless movie he came up with fully lives up to his pretentiousness. It's full of flashbacks, flash-forwards, quick inserts of violent incidents that might or might not have happened, and repeated shots of male/male outdoor hosedowns, which I guess are supposed to be symbolic of SOMETHING. In between, the two male leads engage in interminable bedroom question-and-answer sessions that are like an idiot's idea of Socrates. (I was waiting for someone to ask, "What flavor of ice cream would you most like to be?", as it was the only unanswered question left, but nothing in the film was even up to that intellectual level). The dialogue is delivered in a nasal, affectless California drone, which is probably the right choice for the "hypnotic", surreal effect aimed for--in the few scenes where the actors try to deliver genuine emotion, they are hopelessly bad. Under all the fancy maneuvers, there seems to be a "statement" connecting coming out with violence and repression, which we've all heard a thousand times. And don't be fooled by the marketing--the very brief sex scenes provided are clunky, overlit, and slightly embarrassing. A soap commercial would be more erotic.

From Beginning to End (2009)

Well...

[8/10 · 14 April 2012]

I'm not sure what to make of this film. It is undoubtedly the most romantic portrait of homosexual male incest ever put on the screen. The two (half) brothers in question stare tenderly at each other almost every second, say things like, "To understand our love, they'd have to turn the world upside down", and even exchange wedding rings (!!!). The film approves so much of this relationship that the only drama it can find is one brother's opportunity to study in Russia for the Olympics, which will separate him from his paramour for three years. There's some mild suspense as to whether this hiatus will push one or both brothers into a more socially acceptable (homo or hetero) sex life, then a rather abrupt ending. While it is refreshing that the movie avoids the usual Lifetime TV melodramatic approach ("We just...couldn't...STOP!!!"), it's rather bizarre that the brothers' relatives and friends never protest or even ask uncomfortable questions; everyone else in the movie just wants to avoid the subject. And the structure compounds the problem; the movie lingers on "poetic", eventually redundant scenes of the boys' childhood (long after we get the idea) then suddenly leaps forward several years (killing off two principal characters) to the start of their sexual relationship--we never really see the decision made, and the moment of no return seems to happen between scenes. The subject is raised, then glossed over with golden cinematography and a near-constant underscoring of "tasteful" neo-classical mood music (i.e., much piano noodling cushioned by aching strings) which stops at crucial moments. Is it seemly for an incest movie to be so inoffensive?

Boys Grammar (2005)

A cold shock

[8/10 · 10 April 2012]

A truly horrifying film--even if you know what's coming, seeing it executed may be too much for some viewers. When Gareth(the young gay protagonist) is pinned against a locker by Nick (the swimmer he's been admiring), the use of silence is almost unbearable; we hear him saying all the wrong things to Nick ("You like this human form?""Maybe") and the pauses reverberate with our silent protests (what is supposed to happen in Pinter, but rarely does). We can see the terrible decision the other boys make, yet thedirector skillfully draws out the next few seconds before the point ofno return is reached, until we're ready to scream. The actual act takes only a couple of minutes, but they're some of the longest minutes incinema. And the final shot on the dining room floor is deeply, deeply sad; it posits the idea that some people are so damaged they will take love from monsters.

1313: Boy Crazies (2011 Video)

There's nothing to spoil!

[1/10 · 10 April 2012]

What on earth? Somewhere along the way, David DeCoteau hit on one plot--buff wooden young man is inducted into homoerotic group of sneering vampires--and decided to drive it into the earth. This version features endless shots of the "hero", Trent, wandering around a vacuously glamorous L.A. mansion in a pair of tighty-whities under blue light, while frenzied disco-music works overtime to convince us something terrible is about to happen. Nothing ever does. Every now and then one of the vampires or their queen drops a few lines about how fantastic it is to be immortal and powerful; I don't know about power, but this movie certainly portrays how boring immortality must get. There are two complete showering scenes (the camera pans up and down the main "character"'s abs while discreetly avoiding anything non-PG-13), but one loses interest in the cast even as eye candy very quickly; "Last Year in Marienbad" was more dynamic. It's like a porn movie with all the sex acts cut out.

The Hunger Games (2012)

Left me a little hungry

[5/10 · 6 April 2012]

Suzanne Collins' bestselling young-adult novel is given a competent yet disappointing film adaptation, but that hardly matters; the film is a conversation piece to put alongside the book, and as such it serves its purpose. What has happened here is that the director and the scenarists have approached the book so literally--in the fear that stylishness or imagination might repel teenage fans--that the result has the reverential tone of the first two Chris Columbus-directed Harry Potter movies. This also means that the book's main flaw is duplicated in the movie; namely, that the intriguing setup is more compelling than the games themselves.

The first, briefly sketched scenes are good and tense and build up a suitable sense of dread; the reaping scene, with families lining up silently in an open field as if they were attending Shirley Jackson's lottery (in a sense, they are); the sudden arrival of manic Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), who looks like an airport gift-shop doll painted by someone on LSD; the initial scenes in the Capitol with its prancing, primping residents who could be extras from "Alice in Wonderland" wandering through the "Logan's Run" sets. Jennifer Lawrence grounds these sequences; her sculpted face, which can turn steely or vulnerable at will, seems to have everything extra burned out of it except the sheer will to survive. Once the games begin, though, the blood drains out (in more ways than one.) The shaky-cam is a disastrous choice; we're all used to it by now, and it's all too transparent as a way to camouflage the underage violence. If the first shot of the tributes leaving their posts were shot smoothly at some distance, the contrast between the pastoral setting and the animalistic battles would be truly terrifying. As it is, the filmmakers have shown so little interest in the other tributes that we barely react when the camera drifts over the bodies of those lost in that first deadly rush. Are Ross and company afraid that if they gave the other players "too much" personality we'd stop sympathizing with Katniss when she fights them? They needn't have bothered, because the author has let her heroine out of any truly challenging moral decisions. She only kills in self-defense, or when someone is attacking a "good" character. When she teams up with spritely little Rue (Amanda Stenberg), we're meant to feel torn, but then Rue is murdered by another tribute, whom Katniss then shoots dead. The scene is affecting (without pushing it) but we can't help noticing that now Katniss won't have to face the question of when (or whether) to kill Rue. What would have happened if Rue, Katniss, and Peeta had ended up in the final three? Structurally, the movie is thuddingly obvious; we know damned well Peeta and Katniss will survive to the end (so there can be a big "conflicted" last scene). And we periodically waste time with scenes of President Snow (Donald Sutherland) loitering lovingly over his perfect rose garden as he drops bits of totalitarian wisdom to a reluctant subordinate (Wes Bentley); these serve no purpose except to be "sinister", and Sutherland has reached the point where he can't be anything else. (The film stops just short of giving him a white cat to stroke.) There is one genuine accomplishment, however--Jennifer Lawrence spends nearly the whole movie running through the forest from her would-be killers--and she never once trips and falls full-length. As far as I know, that's a movie first.

Easy Living (1937)

Arthur in sable

[6 April 2012]

Another in the long line of extremely pleasurable comedies starring Jean Arthur--no one can make fluttery bewilderment more enchanting, and there's plenty to be bewildered about in this heavenly screwball farce. Arthur is poor, honest, hardworking Mary Smith, whose life is changed when a sable coat thrown out of a window lands on her head. She tries to return it, but the man who threw it, rich banker J.P. Ball (Edward Arnold), in a fit of pique at his wife's extravagance, insists she keep it, and even buys her a matching hat in a nearby store. The store's employees, assuming she's a fancy kept woman (the idea!) spread the word around town, and soon everyone in sight wants to be her best pal, not least of all Arnold's son (Ray Milland), who is trying to make his way in the world without his father's backing. Although scenes such as Arthur's dismissal from her job (for "ethical violations") have become dated (without losing their humor), the portrait of an entire city eagerly sucking up to a (supposed) rich man's consort in hopes something will rub off on them couldn't be more timely. The movie has some of the best choreographed pratfalls in the genre, not least of all in the celebrated Automat sequence, when the windows accidentally open and everyone scrambles for the free food. (It's slapstick Marxism). And Arthur's pleased yet skeptical reaction to the enormous hotel suite she's offered (it looks like it belongs in the Emerald City of Oz) is just right; she looks at the lily-shaped tub, which is crowned by a statue of a shrugging goddess, and comments, "Look at her standing there with her arms sticking out; I guess she doesn't know either.") The only wrong note (for me), is the performance of Luis Alberini as the hotel owner; his brand of dialect humor gets tiresome--I'd just as soon it was left in the thirties for good.

When Night Falls (I) (2007)

New Zealand knows how to do thrillers

[9/10 · 6 April 2012]

A delicious little homespun thriller that hearkens back to the isolated-cottage stage thrillers of the 1930s and 40s (it is set in 1932). The fact that it is set in an old house in New Zealand helps immeasurably--the opening shots make the house seem like the only one in the entire country. All the elements are familiar (escaped killer, locked windows, strange noises), but the director juggles them in unexpected ways.

The commentary on the DVD is highly enjoyable--Alex Galvin, the director, tells of how the house was pieced together out of eleven separate locations (including his own garage) and several of them were historically-preserved houses from the era. The traffic at those locations made the audio track unusable, and the film had to be re-synched from top to bottom (Tania Nolan, the leading lady, supplied the footstep noises for everyone). The limited amount of shooting time meant the lead actresses had to rehearse all their scenes, including fight choreography, for two weeks beforehand (as if it were a play) and then deliver in a few hours while lighting conditions were favorable. Perhaps most amusingly, modern telephones and signs had to be digitally erased, frame by frame (most painstakingly in a scene where Tania Nolan walks slowly down a hall with knife upraised, and there was a telephone behind her head which was wiped out, pixel by pixel, in each shot.)

Smash Palace (1981)

Masterful--but just try getting anyone to see it.

[9/10 · 6 April 2012]

This is one of those intuitive, risky movies that a viewer will either take to his heart, or reject completely. It is almost impossible to explain to friends how compelling it is--describing the plot, which involves psychological domestic violence and the kidnapping of a child, certainly doesn't make it seem appealing. Yet this film has a sensual, primal power that is always on the verge of exploding; if you connect to the movie in any way, you won't be able to take your eyes off it. It is set in a remote corner of New Zealand, which is endemic to the storyline--the seething sense of unease and frustration seems to bubble up from under the rocks. It has contaminated the marriage of Al and Jacqui--he's a native, a man's man who releases his energy in racing cars; she's a delicate, exquisite French woman who feels abandoned and frustrated in this harsh setting--she didn't know when she married Al what she was getting into. As their eight-year-old child Georgie, Greer Robson gives one of the best child performances I have ever seen on screen--her reactions to every situation are slightly off and goofy (like a real child), yet you never catch her trying to be adorable. In one of the most effective scenes, Al and Jacqui are arguing violently, and Georgie escapes through a window and huddles in Al's truck with the family dog; her haunted face tells us more than we would learn if the camera stayed on Al and Jacqui. (It returns a moment later, to find the two of them ending the argument with a round of angry sex--certainly the worst decision they could make, and one I don't think I've ever seen depicted on the screen before.) Jacqui leaves Al, and keeps him from seeing Georgie, which drives him a little mad; he kidnaps the child at gunpoint (again, her expression is searing) and shatters everyone's lives. Lawrence is amazing in the role; a lesser (or more Methody) actor would probably make the audience (especially women) hate him, yet you can't--you see how he just can't be apart from Georgie. The end, which I will not reveal, is somehow perfect for this story, although it doesn't resolve a thing; the final shot is one more closeup of Georgie's face, and we know she has already been jerked (cruelly) into adulthood before the age of nine. As Pauline Kael noted, "The rage of fathers deprived of their children--a situation few men experienced in the past--is no doubt a key madness of our age."

The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982)

Breathtaking

[10/10 · 5 April 2012]

Rapturous. A movie full of risks, yet steered with a completely confident hand. A small town in 1944 Italy is caught in the last stages of World War II; it is rumored that the American army is approaching to liberate them, and the Fascists holding the town have tightened their grip in response, mining all of the houses and ordering the populace to take shelter in the church. While most of the town complies, a few brave souls decide to venture out into the woods at night to try to locate the Americans themselves. What happens to them on the journey is shot through with horror and suffering, yet it is also as fantastical as "A Midsummer Night's Dream"--the townspeople have been through so much that life itself seems unimaginably absurd. And although the war has taken almost everything from them, it has also smashed class barriers and social restraints. Now at last (for example) the elderly Galvano can admit his love for the rich woman he could never think of approaching in peacetime.

Few films give us so many treasures; the heavenly vision granted to a young woman killed by soldiers in the instant before she dies; the improvised Communion in the village church, with the congregants dividing their own bread among them; the six-year-old narrator Cecilia (who, in a framing device, is telling the story in flashback as a young mother to her child at bedtime) finding a watermelon in the forest and smashing it with her bottom; a horrifying 15-year-old fascist who tortures and kills his victims in order to make his father proud; Cecilia tumbling onto a basket of eggs and, having been punished by her mother, spitefully smashing the two eggs that survived the fall; a teenage girl in the woods at night, hearing the distant blasts as her home is destroyed and remembering the first time she stripped in front of her bedroom mirror as she tosses away her housekey; the climactic series of one-on-one and two-on-two skirmishes in a wheatfield as the soon-to-be-defeated Fascists and the desperate townspeople--most of whom know each other, some of whom are lifelong friends--grapple to the death. It's slapstick black comedy, yet timed so well it just seems like the natural state of affairs in war--there's nothing arty or pretentious about it.

Face/Off (1997)

An "art" movie in the worst sense

[3/10 · 3 April 2012]

"Face Off" has an irresistible premise, a marvelous cast, a painstaking director with a distinctive, risky style, and nonstop action. Yet I found it abominable.

The ludicrous plot devices have been enumerated by many; they could be excused in a silly, trashy action movie in which a sense of parody is already built in. What happens here is some kind of first; John Woo's care and attention--his "art", some would say--does nothing but point up the inauthenticity of every scene. There isn't a moment that rings true, or that rings false in an entertaining manner. Everyone is familiar by now with the mass-shootout scene in which the hero enters a villain's lair with a single machine gun, dispatches dozens of armed enemies, and emerges unscathed; it's become a new convention. Here, said scene is shot in slo-mo and underscored with a rapturous soprano version of "Over the Rainbow". Woo is saying (pretentiously) that there can be no real beauty in the world anymore; everything is tainted and corrupt. And he lingers so lovingly on the multi-angle shots of evil thugs' bodies being pulverized that we start to feel like Malcolm McDowell in "Clockwork Orange", strapped to a chair with our eyes stapled open. We aren't entertained OR elevated, as Woo hopes; we're just being pushed around.

The movie opens with what in most action films would be a finale; John Travolta's haunted police detective, whose son has been murdered by a sadistic sicko (Nicholas Cage), chases him down at an airport hangar. There are so many flying stunts, crashing stuntmen, and noise that the movie has nowhere to go (without blowing up the audience). Eventually the face-switching premise kicks in, and the movie makes its first REAL mistake--it introduces that force-of-nature actress CCH Pounder (whose voice and temperament are reminiscent of an African-American Colleen Dewhurst), and asks us to believe that she could be overpowered and murdered by Nicholas Cage!!!! She would crumple him into a Brillo pad and use him to do the windows! If the movie had let her survive and serve as Travolta's sidekick, we might have had something to ground us. Instead, we're stuck with a movie full of John Travolta acting like Nicholas Cage and Nicholas Cage acting like John Travolta (just what I always wanted for Christmas) and stuffed with Woo's trademark overdirected destruction orgies, which critics and action fans have dutifully lauded with all the usual adjectives--"dazzling", "hyperkinetic", and, of course, "balletic." (ick is right). A climactic shootout in a church featuring heavily symbolic doves made me rather ill; this should have ended the movie, but we're thrown into yet another (by this time) yawn-inducing chase involving a powerboat. Can anyone guess the outcome? This may be the most exhausting movie ever made; it's all set pieces--it's like watching a musical with nothing but production numbers. Afterward, you just want to lie down and listen to elevator music for several days.

The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

Miss Piggy forever

[9/10 · 2 April 2012]

My personal favorite in the "Muppet" series (before the films started miscasting the furry ones as characters in ill-conceived film versions of children's books--I'm looking at you, "Treasure Island"!), this follows up the rural whimsey of "The Muppet Movie" with a trip to London--and gives the incomparable Miss Piggy the star treatment she deserves. Everything the pink one does is memorable--her exuberance at landing a job as receptionist to fashion icon Lady Holiday ("I'll TAKE IT! I'LL TAKE IT!...I'll sit, I can sit, I'm very good at sitting."), her scaling a building in evening gown and heels ("Next time they want stunts, they get a double"), her tap dance (in glass slippers!) her dismissal of the boobish Charles Grodin ("You can't even sing! Your voice was dubbed!") her honest hurt when Kermit breaks character to accuse her of "hamming it up" ("I am TRYING to save this movie!"), and, of course, that climactic motorbike ride. Let film critics talk of Fellini and Antonioni; my never-to-be-topped moment of cinematic nirvana consists of Piggy, clad in white, crashing a motorcycle through a stained-glass window. Diana Rigg, as Lady Holiday, is a perfect foil; she suggests a human Piggy slimmed down and gone cynical. (She tosses off a long, irrelevant monologue, shrugging, "It's plot exposition. It has to go somewhere.") Grodin, recruited as Kermit's rival for the pig's affections, doesn't blink once at the assignment. There are numerous featured bits for the other characters, human and Muppet; John Cleese and Joan Sanderson are married (of course) and more reclusive and upper-class British than anyone in any season of "Masterpiece Theatre". Fozzie gets more good-natured sidekick lines than usual (toying with a glass of champagne, he remarks, "You put enough sugar in this stuff, it tastes just like ginger ale"--it doesn't, I tried), and the Dr. Teeth band also gets their due in the "Happiness Hotel" production number. All this movie wants to do is make you happy--and if that's "corny", go back to your Clint Eastwood movie essays in gloom and leave me alone.

Minstrel Man (1944)

Wince-worthy

[3/10 · 30 March 2012]

Low-budget early B musical of 1940 that makes you alternately laugh and cringe at the datedness and the cheery, seemingly unconscious racism. Benny Fields stars as Dixie Boy Johnson, a supposedly world-famous minstrel-show performer whose wife dies during childbirth on the very night of his biggest opening yet. He reacts to this by letting his mouth droop, shifting his cheek muscles slightly, and embarking on a five-year booze-and-gambling fest across Europe. A convenient boating accident has the rest of the world thinking him dead; he changes his name and hides out in California, sending flowers to his abandoned daughter every year on her birthday and hovering in the background as she prepares to become a star herself. When she makes her own minstrel-show debut (playing his part in a revival of his big hit!) he's in the wings silently cheering her on; he eventually sneaks onstage (blackface and all), reveals himself to his daughter (how does she recognize him?) and the two of them duet on his signature song, which he was performing the night his wife died. The maudlin tearjerking would send Joan Crawford into gales of hysterical laughter.

Fields doesn't convince as a headliner; he sings in a monotonous croon that would put Mel Torme to sleep and his acting is a series of shrugs. As if to compensate, Judy Clark (playing his supposedly destined-for-stardom daughter) is so plucky and perky and cheerful, by gum, she makes "Oklahoma" seem like "Sweeney Todd." Gladys George has a beautiful, trained speaking voice; she brings as much color and variety to her functional role as she can.

Moviegoers wanting to see some historical glimpses of minstrel-show musical staging (both of you) will also be disappointed; the Oscar-nominated(???) score rarely rises to mediocre, and the camera never seems to be in the right place during the dances. The final big production number is staged on an ugly set of steps; the chorus members file onto each step and spend the whole song crossing from one side of the stage to the other and back again. This movie certainly doesn't make anyone mourn the loss of the minstrel-show form; most modern audiences will greet the end of the picture with audible relief.

Old Joy (2006)

Worn out joy.

[27 March 2012]

This is one of those movies that either haunts you forever, or leaves you completely cold. I didn't know what to make of it the first time I saw it; having seen it again, I don't think I will ever forget it. It asks the question--is there any way to live in this world that isn't a compromise of some kind? Mark (David London) and Kurt (Will Oldham) are old school friends linking up for a last weekend of boozing, pot-smoking, and camping in the woods (like they used to do) before Mark settles down and starts his life as a new father. Kurt has never settled into anything; he drifts around, living on charm and handouts (Mark ends up footing the bill for every expense incurred on the trip) and slipping in and out of various groups. At a time when so many movies and TV shows sentimentalize the perpetual adolescent "man-child", this is what the real thing looks like. Kurt doesn't have the talent or force to make a living in music; he's too unpredictable for outdoor work, and the thought of him in any corporate environment is inconceivable. Everyone who loves him ends up resenting him. Yet he's happy. Mark, the secure wage earner who has sobered up and become "reliable"--the kind of person your parents want you to know--is torn by new insecurities; he envies Kurt's life and is frightened of it, and he knows their times together are ending.

The men's friendship is completely believable; you can see how Kurt would have been the coolest teenager in the neighborhood, with square-at-heart Mark struggling to keep up. We've seen this kind of male camaraderie many times in movies, but it has rarely been the subject and the heart of a single movie. There's even a little homoeroticism implied (as there is in most close male friendships), but no big thing is made of it. At the end, we're left wondering (with Mark)--is Kurt really "free"? Can you be so purely yourself without giving up relationships, attachments, and solidity? Is it possible to exist without a certain amount of vulgar conformity--the kind that allows us to face jobs that aren't our lifelong dreams, and family obligations we can't help resenting a bit? There are no Hollywood answers here, and none of any other kind. The last shots are of Kurt, alone, with nothing but a few cigarettes, slouching down a street at night--yet he doesn't seem defeated (or particularly happy). There's no other way to end this film. And you do feel joy--of a kind that isn't worn out at all.

Flashdance (1983)

Irresistible Trash

[8/10 · 25 March 2012]

I saw this movie as a child and knew it was terrible then, yet I couldn't take my eyes off it for a second. This is the rare movie that is so bad it is unforgettable; elements from it instantly entered the pop mythology of the 1980s. An entire generation (whether they saw the movie or not) became familiar with the welder-by-day/dancer-by-night conceit, the creative-bra-removal scene, the "Maniac" running-in-place dance workout, and (of course) the interpretive dance involving gallons of water. Film critics may not have been enchanted, but you don't get such scenes in every movie.

Every so often, a low-budget "sleeper" movie comes out and becomes a runaway hit; generally, such movies are blue-collar musicals. They are about the ways in which struggling lower-class people use song and dance to break away from their squalid lives. (Examples--"Saturday Night Fever", "Grease", "Dirty Dancing", "Full Monty", "Billy Elliot"). This movie could be a parody of that genre, but it is played (and was taken) straight. A dewy-eyed female welder, Alex (whose hair, makeup, and wardrobe are always impeccable) finds artistic release at night through her performances in the oddest nightclub in movie history; the dancers thrash around and gyrate under strobe lights while never removing so much as a sock--yet the place stays in business despite competition from a "real" strip club up the street (whose sleazy promoter keeps trying to poach away Alex and her friends). Yet Alex isn't fulfilled by this--she longs to study classical ballet and be taken "seriously". To that end, she keeps almost-applying to a local dance academy, urged on by an elderly former ballerina (Lilia Skala)--this unlikely friendship is actually one of the most likable and believable elements in the movie. It's less a movie than an extended rock video--everything is soaked in 1980s "atmosphere" and scored to Giorgio Moroder hits. Strange, I know, but not all movie love is explicable.

Gremlins (1984)

Entertaining mess

[8/10 · 25 March 2012]

"Gremlins" is one of the wildest, most incoherent films ever to become a hit, but the style that sometimes makes the movie difficult to follow fits the subject--we in the audience literally don't know what to expect once the title gremlins are spawned and get loose (as we know they will). The beginning of the film cleverly sets up a super-bland Typical American Town out of Frank Capra; we get to know the local eccentrics (Hopeless Inventor, Spunky Housewife, Dense Sheriff, Miserable Old Rich Bitch) and the generic teenage dreamer Billy, who is presented on his birthday with Gizmo, an ultra-cute Furby-like creature who communicates in monosyllabic squeaks. Gizmo has a dark side, though; he accidentally spawns a breed of evil lizard-like monsters who invade the town on Christmas Eve and subject it to a destructive jamboree, like a miniature street gang on a sugar high. They're cartoon characters run wild--the movie shows how nightmarish it would be if animated cartoons turned evil and invaded the real world. Classic sequences abound; Billy's mother (Frances Lee McCain) battling the demons in her kitchen with the aid of a blender and a microwave; town harpy Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday) getting hers via a malfunctioning stair climber; Phoebe Cates' anti-Santa speech (I wonder if actresses ever used that monologue in auditions?) and a climactic battle scene set in a movie theatre playing "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." The movie gives the impression of a brainstorm, or a jazz session--not all of the ideas work, but there's so much going on it is impossible to be bored for a second.