Off the Map (et al.)

I was pulling for this former Williamstown Film Festival feature, with another strong performance from Joan Allen, a script by Berkshire playwrite Joan Ackerman, and direction by Campbell Scott, but it’s really not very good, decidedly less than the sum of its parts. The screenplay wobbles between the portentous and the inconsequential., falling with a muffled thud between magic and realism. The New Mexico high country is impressive, the precocious girl narrator is kinda cute, the direction has moments of both sweep and intimacy, but tone and pace are inconsistent and the whole is dragged down by the slow accumulation of implausibilities and indirections. I don’t want to beat up on this honest fledgling effort, but it does serve as a demonstration of how sincerity can go wrong. (2005, Images, n.) *5+* (MC-68, RT-65.)

Stealing Beauty is another film I can’t bring myself to critique fully, definitely not up to usual Bertolucci standard, but notable for the beauty of the Tuscan countryside and the debut of Liv Tyler. I re-watched it for the former, in anticipation of a trip this summer.

I TiVo’d the TCM broadcast of Becky Sharp for comparison to the Nair/Witherspoon Vanity Fair. Miriam Hopkins is certainly a sharper Becky, and Rouben Mamoulian’s 1935 production is notable as the first Technicolor feature, but I watched it in bits and pieces over several days so my impressions are fragmented. A bit too loud, in voice as well as color, but still vivid and smart.

Another film I can’t bring myself to review in any depth is The Outsiders. All I can say of Francis Coppola’s 1983 film is that it’s a long way down from The Godfather. S.E. Hinton’s YA fave seems written by the 16-year-old she was. But it’s a kick to see the likes of Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, and Diane Lane as teenagers again.

Baseball is back and my beloved Tribe has preempted my movie-viewing with a succession of excruciating one-run games, so I need a really good film to recover my attention. I’m looking forward to Thelma and Louise today as the conclusion of my “Hop-Skip-and-Jump Across America: In Search of the Cinematic Landscape” film series at the Clark. And also to Images Cinema’s presentation beginning tonight of the critically-acclaimed Japanese film, Nobody Knows.