Amidst the comings and goings of the holiday season, I seem to be watching movies to fill various gaps, rather than devoting concerted concentration to cin-e-mah, so this “salon” will be a chatty conversation.
Not to say that I haven’t been watching some very good things lately. After seeing 49 Up, I went back and watched the first three episodes, which I had never seen, having come into Michael Apted’s engrossing documentary series at 28 Up. It doesn’t hurt to watch them out of sequence, though the revelations of time will be relative, strike you differently. The whole thing is a spiral you can enter at any point. Cumulatively, this is certainly one of the greatest films of all time, and I will be pitching the Clark to show the entire series over the course of six weekly screenings.
One evening I happened not to have any Netflix disks on hand, so out of a choice offered by a companion the group decided on Prime, a title as unmemorable and inconsequential as the movie itself, which came out a year or so ago and sank without a trace. This so-so rom-com features an amusing turn by Meryl Streep as a Jewish mother/therapist, whose boychik has fallen for an older shiksa, who just happens to be one of her patients, Uma Thurman. These ladies are always pleasant to watch, but I am forgetting the name of the writer-director, not to hold this film against him in the future. People who want to like this might reference Woody Allen -- maybe, but only the sapless Woodys.
Another fill-in from the local library was Gates of Heaven (1978). I’m a big enough fan of Errol Morris to give this early film another look, but it certainly did not earn its cover blurb from Roger Ebert as one of the ten best films -- I think but can hardly believe he said -- “of all time.” I can tick off three better from Morris himself, and maybe more: Thin Blue Line; The Fog of War; Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control. This film about pet cemeteries certainly embodies some of Morris’s persistent obsessions, and his method of subverting the ostensible subject of his documentary, but he does that more significantly with Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time. Anyway, Gates of Heaven is cruelly funny in its way, and has plenty to say about family dynamics and the domestication of death. But I wouldn’t want to oversell it.
Another gap was filled when one of the visiting scholars at the Clark picked Next of Kin for the Fellow’s Favorite film series. I had somehow missed Atom Egoyan’s first film, even when I picked him for my own series last year: “10 Under 50: Young Directors to Watch.” In Next of Kin (1984), the 23-year-old announces most of themes and obsessions that will infuse his films over the next two decades, with peaks in Exotica and Ararat and the only real misfire in his latest, Where the Truth Lies. This first film is more than promising but less than revelatory.
On a Sunday evening with no news to watch during dinner, I channel-surfed to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and since my companion had not seen it yet, we watched to the end. With this and the American version of The Office, which I’ve never watched because I’m too attached to the Ricky Gervais original, Steve Carrell has sprung from the Daily Show to wide recognition, but I want to give props to writer-director Judd Apatow for making this painfully funny and not-too-painfully true film, in the wake of the great but short-lived tv series, Freaks & Geeks, which I urge you to view on DVD.
And speaking of great tv series, I am re-viewing the first season of The Wire on DVD, even as I wait impatiently for the final weekly episodes of season four on HBO. After next week’s climax I will write more about this absolute must-see. I remain a rabid partisan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and renew my enthusiasm whenever I happen to revisit an episode, but next to The Wire I gotta admit it’s just kid stuff. We are privileged to be witnessing a work in progress that transcends media and genre, what can only be described as a 66-hour documentary novel on film, a profile of a city (Bodymore, Murderland) and its institutions, and the people who work within and against the rules. It’s informative and intense, brilliantly scripted and acted; a visual, aural, and intellectual workout. You feel me? Ah be back at you, mos’ def.
No comments:
Post a Comment