Round up (and down)

There are two films I just watched to see if they might be worth showing sometime at the Clark, and determined that they are not. Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? (2006) is an amusing but slight documentary about a painting found in a thrift store by a senior lady trucker with a pink 18-wheeler and a habit of dumpster diving. Though her reaction when first told the painting might be a Jackson Pollock winds up as the title of the film, it becomes her dream and obsession to confirm its authenticity. Director Harry Moses has no trouble getting us to side with the feisty old gal against such ossified snobs as Thomas Hoving, but the film doesn’t answer or even much illuminate any of the questions it raises.

I’d never seen The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), perhaps dissuaded because all I could ever think of was the long-ago Mad Magazine parody, “The Agony and the Agony.” On a restored widescreen DVD, director Carol Reed does imbue the story behind the painting of the Sistine Chapel with some visual splendor, but Charlton Heston is ludicrous as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison little better as Pope Julius. In sum this is hardly more than an overblown potboiler, with zero verisimilitude in the psychology or sociology of artistic creation.

On the other hand, there are two films I just showed at the Clark which affirmed their worth not just in the large audiences they drew, but in my reconsidered response as well other viewers’ acclaim. Julien Temple’s Pandaemonium (2000) was a very personal choice, not having received good reviews when released (and indeed now out of print), but to me a very interesting postmodern take on Coleridge and Wordsworth, and the Clark audience seemed to share my favorable impression. Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) was more of a sure thing, but had lost none of its lustre, from the wit and beauty of Emma Thompson to the passion and loveliness of Kate Winslet, to the exquisite landscapes and vivid interiors of Jane Austen’s world. A world always worth revisiting, as it will be over the next weeks, as PBS presents new or revived adaptations of all her novels.

Though I usually don’t feel impelled to watch popular new movies without some imprimatur of quality, I did deign to watch The Simpsons Movie (2007), but all I can offer is a one-word review: “D’oh.” I am equally devoid of response to Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), undoubtably a visual spectacle but, as far as I could tell, of no more substance than a Hollywood special effects blockbuster.