Starting Out in the Evening

Okay, I’m a sucker for this material and milieu, old-school writers and intellectuals in New York City, and I’ve read the Brian Morton novel on which this Andrew Wagner film is based, so I’m inclined to like it more than many would. I’m also partial to Lili Taylor, who is both wacky and luminous as the turning-40 daughter of the eminent elder writer played subtly and powerfully by Frank Langella, in a justly celebrated perfomance. Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under is a young grad student hoping not just to write her thesis on the writer, but to revive his career and bring his books back into print. She’s a striver and schemer (from Cleveland Heights!) trying to jumpstart her own career, but seems to have a genuine interest in reigniting the writer’s potency, perhaps at some risk to his aging heart. This was not a book I ever imagined reaching the screen, and the film is quiet and interior, but it emerges as one of the better movies about writers, a genre notorious for pretension and pratfall. (2007, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-78.)

In the Valley of Elah

No fan of his Oscar winners, I was not inclined to give a chance to Paul Haggis’ poorly-received film on the aftermath of Iraq for the soldiers who fought there, but a friend recommended it, and it definitely turned out to be worth watching, for the performance of Tommy Lee Jones if nothing else. But other elements came across well: Charlize Theron as a police detective once again does her best to make us forget how beautiful she is; there’s a pretty strong sense of place (a military installation and associated town in New Mexico) and the feel of an unfolding mystery. Jones is a former military policeman, whose soldier son has disappeared just after returning from Iraq, so he goes looking for him, and finds no good news. I will offer no spoilers, except to say that when the central event is revealed, its depiction is scanted and its significance dissipated in a way that undermines what along the way had been a fairly gripping film. What happens when the war comes home is, however, an important subject we will be contending with for decades. (2007, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-65.)

The Savages

While I certainly recommend this film, I’m not certain how much. It’s funny and ruefully true, but I’d seen previews of many of the best moments, so the actual film did not come across as surprisingly as it might. But heck, I’d watch Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman read the phone book for two hours. They play a sister and brother, a would-be playwright and a Brecht scholar, both shy of relationships and largely disappointed in life, who must come together to deal with their abusive father’s decline into dementia and death. A real barrel of laughs. Almost a decade after Slums of Beverly Hills, writer/director Tamara Jenkins confirms her ability to find wit and wisdom in familial dysfunction, or maybe just the function of all families. In the genre of nursing home films, I’d still give last year’s nod to Away from Her, but gee, do you think it’s a life problem that we baby boomers are finally starting to face? (2007, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-85.)

Distractions & attractions

Two things have been cutting back on my general film viewing lately (three if you include the NBA playoffs and baseball season, both of which command the attention of a dedicated Cleveland sports fan -- so now it’s back to Boston for Game 7, where have I heard that story line before?).

With the absence of any television series I was committed to, with several favorites finished and others awaiting a new season (Big Love and Mad Men, in particular, as well as Generation Kill, the forthcoming Iraq series from the creators of The Wire), I finally succumbed to repeated recommendations for Battlestar Galactica, and while I’m recording new episodes in the fourth and final season, I’ve been catching up with the first three on DVD. No doubt I will have some summative statement when I get to the end, but in passing let me say that while the series will not overcome my inherent resistance to sci-fi to enter my pantheon of long-form tv masterpieces, I have been drawn into its canny blend of character development and social commentary. The show does a nice bit of political jujitsu in forcing both left and right to take a different look at the insurgency in Iraq, among many other issues of note.

The other claim on my viewing time has been putting together a series of Japanese animated features for the Clark next fall. With no expertise going in, it took some doing for me to survey the many-tentacled genres of anime and narrow down to five films. Of the numerous films I considered and rejected, there’s one I was reluctant to exclude, and that was Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy (2004), a retro sci-fi that presents a fabulous vision of Victorian London and Manchester, only to overstay its welcome with an extended orgy of picturesque destruction -- at 95 minutes I figured it was a sure bet for my series, but a half-hour later, with London in ruins and all character development abandoned, I was looking for some alternative choice. So here’s what I wound up with:

“Anime for Grown-ups: The Art of Japanese Animation.”

Anime, as Japanese animation is usually called, is an immense presence in the culture of Japan, with global reach as well. The Clark will look at anime not from the perspective of genre expectations, but through the work of directors who speak in the international language of film. So -- no bodacious robot babes or cyberpunk gunslingers, but rather serious and wide-ranging exploration of character and theme in an influential graphic medium, a cinema of dreams replete with fantastic imagery. Specifically, we’ll screen three films by different directors from Studio Ghibli -- led by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s answer to Walt Disney -- and two films by the leading director of the next generation, Satoshi Kon. On the five Saturdays of November, each film will be shown twice, at 1:00 pm in Japanese with English subtitles, and at 3:00 in the dubbed American version.

November 1: Porco Rosso (1992, 94 min.)
A decade before he became a household name in America with an Oscar for Spirited Away, along with other children’s favorites, Hayao Miyazaki directed this film explicitly for adults. Rather like Casablanca meets Only Angels Have Wings, it tells of a World War I flying ace, reduced to bounty hunting against air pirates over the Adriatic while the Fascists come come to power in ’20s Italy -- and oh incidentally, he’s turned into the Crimson Pig of the title.

November 8: Whisper of the Heart (1995, 111 min.)
Unlike Disney, Studio Ghibli is collaborative rather than corporate. For this thoroughly charming tale of adolescent romance and a bright young girl’s search for self, Miyazaki wrote the script but gave the direction to heir apparent Yoshifumi Kondo. Set in a realistic present, it is a testament to the expressive powers of rather simple animation, with brief fantasy interludes. If you liked Juno, you will love this winning story of a brash schoolgirl finding both a boyfriend and a calling in life.

November 15: Grave of the Fireflies (1988, 88 min.)
Directed by Isao Takahata, Miyazaki’s longtime collaborator, this sensitive, harrowing film depicts the impact of war on children, warranting comparison to all-time classic Forbidden Games. Two orphans, a boy and his younger sister, struggle for survival in the aftermath of the World War II firebombing of Japan, finding evanescent beauty in a terminal landscape. This sad and powerful masterpiece evokes the horror of war and the hope of humanity as well as any live-action film.

November 22: Tokyo Godfathers (2004, 92 min.)
Satoshi Kon has established himself as the younger director to watch, among those for whom animation is simply the most expressive medium for serious films of all sorts. Here he transposes John Ford’s Western Three Godfathers to the underbelly of modern day Tokyo, with three tramps -- an alcoholic, a transvestite, and a teen runaway -- finding a baby on Christmas Eve, and encountering comic adventures in their heartwarming attempt to return the child to its mother.

November 29: Paprika (2006, 90 min.)
Satoshi Kon delves into the sci-fi realm so common in anime, but with a distinctive bent, adapting a (non-graphic) novel obsessed with psychoanalysis and the meaning of dreams. Paprika is the therapeutic avatar of a powerful woman psychiatrist, partnered with a blubbery nerd genius who has invented a machine that allows physical entry into the dreams of subjects, a dangerous weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous and power-mad. This may be the boldest popular exploration of dream imagery since Hitchcock’s Spellbound.

Black Book

Not familiar with the depths to which Paul Verhoeven sunk in Hollywood (though I may get around to Basic Instinct and Showgirls one of these days), I was glad to see him return to Holland to make a quasi-Hollywood war picture. I surveyed his early work for a Dutch film series I did at the Clark, and this is another stab at the subject of Soldier of Orange, The Hague’s resistance to Nazi occupation. Verhoeven is trashy enough to keep the pot boiling, but on home ground his work has added layers. This film is long and twisty, an effectively engaging thriller, but it lives in the central performance of Carice van Houten, a cannon shot into international stardom. She plays a young Jewish woman who had been a cabaret singer in Germany, forced into hiding back in her native Netherlands, but then finds herself involved with both the Resistance and the Nazis, with the perception of good guys and bad guys continually shifting. She runs through many personae -- fugitive on the run, plucky conspirator, sultry Mata Hari, Kibbutz teacher -- and holds the whole thing together with her face, body, and personality. It wouldn’t do to look too deep into these proceedings, but they do keep moving. (2007, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-71.)

A Wedding

Lesser Altman, to say the least. The technique is there but the writing isn’t. Lame lampoons and shaky acting leave the proceedings moribund on the screen. I am not among those who consider Nashville a classic, but this is a real comedown, though it highlights the comparative virtues of the much later Gosford Park. You have to hand it to Robert Altman, he did it his way for forty years and more, and while the quality of his films was highly variable, he reached peaks with McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Vincent and Theo, and The Player. One testament to his protean talent is that many other critics would select an entirely different choice of high points and low. (1978, dvd, r.) *5+*

Clockers

This film about streetcorner drug dealing is a precursor to The Wire that highlights the breakthrough of the “greatest tv series ever.” Writer Richard Price, director Spike Lee, and producer Martin Scorsese are all serious men as well as canny entertainers -- estimable artists all, plus particular favorites of mine. I still have my ARC (advance reading copy) of the novel, from my days as a bookseller. But on re-viewing the film, all I can say is, “It’s good, but nowhere near as good as The Wire.” Harvey Keitel is the tough, shady Brooklyn homocide detective trying to crack a case involving two brothers, straight arrow Isaiah Washington and corner dealer Mekhi Phifer, each driven mad by the requirements of economic success in their straightened circumstances, the one working two full-time jobs in hopes of allowing his family to escape the ghetto, and the other developing an ulcer while running a corner of “clockers” and finding relief only in his Lionel train set-up. Delroy Lindo is appropriately ominous as the candy store owner fronting the drug business. The film is gritty and truthful up to a point, but Spike Lee adds some of his showy style and an annoyingly insistent and inappropriate music track, which is a big minus to the reality of the story. (1995, dvd, r.) *7-*

Shopgirl

Steve Martin adapts his own novella in such lugubrious fashion that it’s hard to remember that he was once a “wild and crazy guy.” Perhaps that’s the point -- he wants to be sober and serious now. Anand Tucker directs with widescreen La-La-Land lushness, but it’s a tiny little story of a rich middle-aged widower not-quite-wooing a glove girl from Saks. Claire Danes is winning as the lonely girl from Vermont, and Martin distinguishes himself as the older man. Jason Schwartzman is the younger, loopier suitor. The film is quiet and observant, but ultimately slight -- in the end it’s the same situation as Daisy Kenyon but without the intensity and engagement. Steve should have taken one more step away from the material. (2005, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-62.)

Daisy Kenyon

Otto Preminger delivers an uncommonly intelligent “women’s picture” with noirish shadings in this tale of a New York career girl caught between two men. Joan Crawford is scary intense in the title role, with Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda excellent and complex as the men she must choose between. Though the premise of a triangle with a big-shot-lawyer married lover and a shaken war-scarred veteran looking for marriage may be standard issue, its treatment is suspenseful and even-handed -- one is never sure how it will turn out, or even how one wants it to turn out. The dialogue and situations are witty, mature, and open-ended. This might qualify as a lost masterpiece. (1947, dvd, n.) *8*