Sideways

Don’t get me wrong, I really liked this movie, but I can’t jump on the critical bandwagon proclaiming it best picture of the year. It can’t come close to Vera Drake or Maria Full of Grace for emotional power and social significance, which Ray and Kinsey also have in potent combination, and even among romantic comedies it might be bested by Before Sunset and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I’m a big fan of Alexander Payne, and I’m glad for any recognition he gets, but this isn’t even his best film so far, with Election a near-perfect piece of work. On the other hand, all his films get better on re-viewing, so no telling how this one will ultimately rank. As sharp and funny, touching and real, as Sideways may be, it is ultimately a buddy flick, and hence limited, even stunted. Hey, I’m a guy and I love a guys-on-the-road movie as much as the next man, and I don’t necessarily believe it takes a great theme to make a great movie. It’s very easy to identify with the characters played by Paul Giamatti (son of Yale prez and commish of MLB) and Thomas Haden Church, and both actors give them depth and shading. The supporting women, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh (the director’s wife), are also outstanding, though clearly subsidiary. The setting in California wine country is superb in every detail. I want to praise the set design, but it’s hard to imagine it designed and not just found, and lived in by the characters to the seedy state of genuineness it has achieved. The story has plenty of punch lines and twists, as well as shape and symmetry, and the intimate scene between the two wine-loving would-be lovers is justly celebrated. But -- I felt the movie went on too long past the two hour mark, with an unsatisfying resolution. Without spoiling the end for anyone else, I can say I wasn’t happy when the prized wine got drunk, and the final blackout did not have the perfect inevitability of the one in Before Sunset. Still, this is an entirely enjoyable and near-great film that is likely to get greater with time, like the wines it celebrates. (2004, Images, n.) *8* (MC-94, RT-96.)

Glad to see Images getting big crowds for this film. They committed to a two-week run, and then through the vagaries of film distribution, the film opened the same day at the Berkshire Mall. Just as I urge you to patronize independent bookstores instead of the chains, I urge you to support the community-centered efforts of Images Cinema by buying your tickets there.

Born Yesterday

George Cukor is not as swift with the screwball as Hawks or Sturges, but does a nice job of permitting sentiment to show through and also of location shooting in Washington. Garson Kanin’s source play is witty and topical, and the two contrasting male leads, Broderick Crawford as the loutish junk magnate in DC to buy congressmen, and William Holden as the reporter enlisted to sand some of the rough edges off the boss’s dame, are very effective, but of course this is a one-woman show, and Judy Holliday brings it off with Oscar-winning bravura, the grating dumb blond gradually morphing into the touching, smarter-than-she-looks woman of spirit. (1950, dvd, n.) *7+*

Animal Farm

Britain’s first attempt to answer the domination of Disney in the field of animation, this Halas and Batchelor adaptation of Orwell’s classic is lovely in pastoral patches, but woefully inadequate in pace and characterization. The bar has been raised so high recently in the liveliness of animation as an artform, that this retelling seems quaintly inert, more like an illustrated lecture than a living fable. (1955, dvd, r.) *4*

A reader asked me recently if I ever give negative reviews, and while I don’t shy from criticism or take a pollyannish or film-buff-ish stance, the movies I do watch are rigorously pre-selected for quality. Somebody somewhere has strongly recommended a film or I wouldn’t give it my time.

One of the great beauties of getting your dvd rentals through www.netflix.com is the maintenance of your online queue of films to rent. Everyone hears something about a film that makes them say, “I’d like to see that,” but in the course of things that rarely comes to mind when actually faced with the overpowering though still inadequate choice at the video store. On Netflix, when you hear a recommendation, it’s just a click to put it on the list of films coming to you. My queue, for example, now has 168 films waiting for my viewing pleasure, so by the time a film’s place in line finally arrives, sometimes I’ve forgotten why I wanted it in the first place. This so-so cartoon is an example. Anything under a *5* I generally consider a waste of my time -- and yours.

All That Heaven Allows

That’s it, I’ve drunk the kool-aid, I’m a Douglas Sirk fanatic. Take the last sentence of the previous review, change “very little” to “some,” and you have my take on this film. It doesn’t bother me a bit that Rock Hudson is opaque and ludicrous as the Thoreavian man in nature. It doesn’t bother me a bit that the music is ladled like syrup over every scene (that’s why it’s called melo-drama), or that the Technicolor landscapes and interiors look utterly artificial, an alternation of Currier & Ives lithos and design spreads from a Fifties issue of House and Garden. No, Sirk himself said there is a fine line between trash and fine art, and he has clearly stepped over the line. This was the film that made the whole Cinematic Landscape film series click into place in the planning, and for me, if for no one else, it worked perfectly. I watched the whole film immersed in the byplay between mirrors and windows, indoors and outdoors, society and nature, and revelled in the wish-filling conclusion, when the couple goes into the final clinch, indoors by the fire, where it’s livable, but in front of a wall-sized picture window revealing a dazzling snowscape, into which a young doe wanders to offer a benediction on the deserving (of love and animal passion) widow Jane Wyman and her nature boy. Add that this was the source of two other favorite films of mine, Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, and only its provenance as pure Hollywood product keeps this film just out of the Pantheon. (1955, dvd@cai, r.) *9-*

The Lady Eve

I’m not as wild about Preston Sturges as many are, but this is clearly his best film, with tight, witty writing and swift, assured direction. A screwball romantic comedy with astonishingly literate and amusing dialogue amidst the hijinks and pratfalls, it rises to a whole other level through the performance of Barbara Stanwyck, who is tough, funny, and touching as the cardsharp who sets out to snare naive millionaire Henry Fonda, and gets snared in turn. Bears very little relationship to the real world, but within its jewel box setting, this is close to a perfect film. (1941, dvd, r.) *8+*

Coming Attractions: This Summer at the Clark

In conjunction with the Clark's 50th anniversary celebration this summer, I'll be offering samples of my choice as the most exciting filmmakers now coming into their prime in a series called, "A Dozen Directors Under 50: Discovering Distinctive Visions in Film for the Decades Ahead."

I announce the list this far in advance because in coming months I will post mini-essays on each of the directors, their careers to date and why they made my cut. The list is not intended to be exhaustive, and there are a number of honorable mentions I'll get around to eventually.

Films will be shown in Clark auditorium on Fridays at 4:00 pm.

June 10: Joel & Ethan Coen: Fargo. (1996, 97 minutes.)
June 17: Spike Lee: 4 Little Girls. (1997, 102 minutes.)
July 1: Cameron Crowe: Almost Famous. (2000, 162 minutes.)
July 8: David O. Russell: Three Kings. (1999, 115 minutes.)
July 15: Atom Egoyan: Ararat. (2002, 116 minutes.)
July 22: Alexander Payne: Election. (1999, 105 minutes.)
July 29: Richard Linklater: Waking Life. (2001, 99 minutes.)
Aug. 5: Alfonso Cuaron: Great Expectations. (1999, 111 minutes.)
Aug. 12: Michael Winterbottom: Welcome to Sarajevo. (1997, 102 minutes.)
Aug. 19: Lukas Moodysson: Together. (2000, 106 minutes.)
Aug. 26: Sofia Coppola: The Virgin Suicides. (1999, 97 minutes.)
Sept. 2: Gurinder Chadha: What's Cooking? (2000, 109 minutes.)

Waking Life

A dream of a movie about dreaming, this was the penultimate puzzle piece to complete my upcoming summer film series at the Clark, “A Dozen Directors Under 50: Discovering Distinctive Visions in Film for the Decades Ahead.” Within 5 minutes of reviewing, I had confirmed this artfully animated film as my Richard Linklater choice, favorite of my favorites. (I’d been thinking about doing a Before Sunrise/Before Sunset double feature, but this is the neater fit. And this offbeat choice made it easy to pick the documentary 4 Little Girls over a variety of other, more obvious Spike Lee Joints. So my all-star lineup is complete.) Here the dreamy animation from live-action digital video is painterly in kaleidoscopic ways; all the half-crackpot theories espoused by Austin TX savants are intriguing and funny; the dream within a dream structure flows and doubles back in true “oneironaut” fashion. Smart, gorgeous, a compendium of Linklater themes and characters -- what’s not to like? (2001, dvd, r.) *8+* (MC-82, RT-79.)

Bringing Up Baby

The quintessence of screwball comedy. Tell enough old jokes fast enough and even the most tired seem fresh and funny. Howard Hawks directs with unabashed swiftness; Katharine Hepburn is dizzy enough to send the normally suave Cary Grant reeling. The usual Hollywood contract players live up to their contracts, including the dog and the cats. Nothing more than madcap fun, but plenty of it. (1938, TCM/T, r.) *7+*

Kinsey

Bill Condon more than confirms the promise of Gods and Monsters, in this kinetic and moving account of the life of Alfred Kinsey, the famed entomologist turned sex researcher, magnificently embodied by Liam Neeson. Laura Linney as his wife and Peter Saarsgard as his right hand man lead a large and impeccable cast. This biopic sometimes checks off its points in textbook style, but is never less than competent and sometimes quite riveting. The styles and mores of midcentury America are pointedly depicted, but the movie's great achievement is to assert convincingly that the only thing more exciting than sex is science. (2004.) *8*

As usual, Images Cinema is showing a very good film this week, through Thursday, January 27. I happened to catch this film by chance last month in Boston, and recommend it highly. I regretfully missed last week's film at Images, but will by no means miss Sideways when it arrives on Friday.

Carnal Knowledge

It all holds up pretty well -- Jules Feiffer’s barbed if sketchy dialogue, Mike Nichol’s knowing and inventive direction, Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel as the two sex-crazed buddies who fail to mature as they move from postwar Amherst to Kennedy-era New York to the brink of the Me Decade, Candice Bergen and Ann-Margret as roadkill in the path of these cockhound hotrodders, who still get to assert their own pungent personalities. The humor of the college scenes is biting but ingratiating, timeless adolescent angst, but the bitter tone of succeeding episodes bespeaks an era of gender war, which may not be over but is certainly at a different stage these days. (1971, dvd, r.) *8-*

The Lovers on the Bridge

Exuberant and cockeyed, Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont-Neuf is a punk paean to mad love. Set in the center of Paris during bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution in 1989, the film matches two homeless people who meet as squatters on the Pont-Neuf while it is closed for restorations. Denis Lavant is a whacked-out street-performing flame-eater; Juliet Binoche is a well-to-do young artist who has lost her love and is losing her sight, and thus lands on the street in despair. Juliet’s radiance is dulled almost enough for you to believe in her as a street person. The intensely combustible, insanely desparate energy the pair bring to their affair lights up a dark, dead-end existence. And the visual energy Carax brings to every frame, the mad movie love that has him quoting both The Graduate and L’Atalante in the final scene, draws the viewer into a grim setting to find an almost-believable hope in the anarchic power of love. (1991, dvd, n.) *7+*

The Yearling (at the Clark)

This was the first time I programmed a film I’d never seen, and it was amazingly good. The technicolor landscapes of Florida scrubland certainly earned a spot in this "Hop-Skip-&-Jump Across America: In Search of the Cinematic Landscape" film series, and nicely typified the settler era, between last week’s exploration of aboriginal wilderness (Black Robe) and next week’s complete domestication of the wild (All That Heaven Allows.) Makes nice connection to Louisiana Story too, the middle film in the “Heartland” triad. Will also make for superior back-to-back performances by Jane Wyman, here as the stern but loving mother, hardened by a harsh life but with just a touch of the soft showing through. As the father, Gregory Peck warms up for the role of Atticus Finch -- wise, brave, understanding. Claude Jarman is just wonderful as 11-year-old Jody, who adopts and adores the fawn who will become the troublesome yearling -- hard to believe he didn’t have much of a career thereafter, though he did get an honorary Oscar for child performance. The film also got an Oscar for cinematography, as well as other nominations and awards across the board. I was expecting an embalmed “classic” and found a very lively film. Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s novel obviously has a good deal more going on than just a heart-tugging family story, and Clarence Brown’s direction brings in a lot of truth and beauty, very believable action and emotion. The bear hunt sequence has hardly been surpassed in sixty years of increasingly sophisticated nature documentaries. The family dynamic in the crucible of hardship is well delineated, and loads of local color are artfully interwoven. (1946, dvd@cai, n.) *8*

I heartily thank Michael Cassin, the Clark’s curator of education, for recommending this for the American landscape film series.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten my first scolding by the p.c. police, in a review in this week’s Williams Record of Black Robe, the first film in the current series. Okay, so she didn’t like the movie, everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion, but the reviewer makes herself ridiculous with overwrought abhorrence of Native American stereotypes -- the mote in her eye prevents her from seeing what’s actually on screen, which is much more astutely balanced than she can credit. She’s “dismayed,” she’s “disturbed,” she thinks such films should not be shown, and concludes, “When museums, as arbiters of standards and culture, show such works as part of an exhibition, they risk conferring undue importance on occasionally ignorant viewpoints.” I am barely stung by what is clearly itself an occasionally ignorant viewpoint. Oh well, I suppose bad publicity is better than no notice at all.

I’ve been on the road for most of a week, but I have managed to watch a few films, and will catch up with my reviews immediately below. I can promise more daily blogging in the future.

Drugstore Cowboy

Gus Van Zant made his first splash with this gritty adaptation of a prison memoir of an addict who survived by knocking over drugstores with his little gang. It’s a well-balanced, truthful, frequently funny look at the pleasures and dangers of drugs and addiction, and also of family. Matt Dillon is outstanding as the “dad” of the gang, with Kelly Lynch as the “mom,” and Heather Graham and James LeGros as the kids. William Burroughs has a memorable cameo as Tom the junkie ex-priest. (1989, dvd, r.) *7*

Collateral

Michael Mann’s sleek vision of night time L.A. is a West Coast Taxi Driver. Jamie Foxx is the cabbie who is hired by Tom Cruise, as a stylishly grizzled hit man, to drive around for a long night of bumping off informants and witnesses in a drug trial to begin the next day. Foxx certainly shows that Ray was no fluke, and Cruise is astoundingly efficient as a vision in gunmetal grey, from his suit to his beard to his hair to his professional philosophy. The noctural episodes have a satisfying arc, with succeeding snappy and tasty characterizations, and all the obligatory thrills, even some thought-provoking dialogue. In the end this is hardly more than another bastard spawn of 48 Hours, the interracial, odd couple buddy flick with all sorts of hurtling metal. But Mann’s flair for melodrama, the hypnotic mix of music and camera movement, makes the film well worth a viewing. (2004, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-71, RT-85.)

The Manchurian Candidate

Never a big fan of the original, I give this remake neither credit nor demerit against the Frankenheimer/Sinatra version. They share flaws and have their separate virtues. Jonathan Demme is a more than competent director, but less that we hoped for in the pre-Silence of the Lambs era, when his filmmaking was infused with New Wave energy, no telling where he might go. Well, now he’s into remakes of studio product. He tries to insert some topicality, but it mostly comes across as lame. The narrative thrust is adequate but there are no scenes nearly as surreal as Frankenheimer’s ChiComm tea party. Though many did not, I enjoyed the Hillary-like Meryl Streep in the Angela Lansbury role. Denzel Washington can always hold his own against Frank Sinatra, and while Liev Schreiber is not as memorably weird as Laurence Harvey he does bring his own coloration to the role of the manipulated son, now the candidate instead of the assassin. The film was overpraised for its anti-Bush relevance, which is hardly more than a Maguffin (as Hitchcock always called the initiating megillah of his thrillers.) (2004, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-76, RT-80.)

33 Docs to Watch instead of Michael Moore

I really like documentaries. I really dislike Fahrenheit 9/11. We are in a golden age of documentary filmmaking and this imposter, this agitprop political cartoon, demeans the genre when it's referred to as "the most successful documentary of all time." Cultural lightning rod, perhaps. Documentary, no.

Here's a quick list of documentaries I have watched on dvd in the past few years and rated *7* or better, which is my threshold of confident recommendation. When I get on top of really simple blog technology and transfer over my archives, the list will link to my capsule review for each film. For now it's just titles, but each is available for rental from www.netflix.com where more info is available. This is just a place to start for someone who wants to catch up with the range of superior documentaries being produced these days. The list is not exclusive, and includes only films readily available on dvd (unlike such as, unaccountably, Hoop Dreams.)

32 Short Films about Glenn Gould
4 Little Girls
42 Up
American Movie
Bus 174
Capturing the Friedmans
Control Room
Fog of War
Go Tigers!
Grass
Keep the River on Your Right
Lost in La Mancha
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision
Moon Over Broadway
Murder on a Sunday Morning
My Architect
One Day in September
Original Cast Album: Company
Rivers and Tides
Running on the Sun
Sherman's March
Sound and Fury
Spellbound
Startup.com
Stevie
Stone Reader
Super Size Me
To Be and To Have
Touching the Void
Wattstax
Weather Underground
Winged Migration
Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

Black Robe

Not quite as good as I remembered but still a perfect start to the “Cinematic Landscapes” film series at the Clark. I won’t be around to show it this Friday, so I caught an early look. This picture just screams “Hudson River School,” reeks of the elemental majesty of the American wilderness, as experienced by natives, early settlers, and the French missionary denoted by the title. It’s Quebec in 1634, and Father Laforgue sets out on his ambiguous civilizing mission in the canoes of the Algonquin to reinforce a distant Huron outpost, but runs into trouble with the Iroquois on the way. Brian Moore wrote the screenplay from his own novel, so the details are meticulous, convincingly real, but lack a certain movie momentum. I’ve probably rated Bruce Beresford too highly as a director, ever since I fell in love with Tender Mercies. With this, as with Breaker Morant and Driving Miss Daisy, he’s just as good as his material, no better no worse. He’s also made a lot of movies that are undistinguished or less. But oh my goodness, the landscapes. Sit back and drink in that widescreen glory. See it this Friday at 4:00 in the Clark auditorium. Viewers should be aware that the beauty can be quite savage, the wilderness can be feral in a way that Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, and their successors rarely acknowledge. (1991, dvd, r.) *7+*

Open Water

Admirably low-budget but not very good, this digital video feature by Chris Kentis plays effectively on primal fears of abandonment, helplessness in elemental vastness, and of course man-eating sharks, in a tale of two divers left behind by their excursion boat in the open seas. But that’s it as far as the story goes, as emptily “high concept” as any thriller, enough to creep us out for its brisk running time but with insufficient characterization to make us actually care whether the couple is rescued or eaten. (2004, dvd, n.) *5+* (MC-63, RT-72)

Vera Drake

Almost unbearably well done, this Mike Leigh masterpiece combines the intimate family drama of Secrets and Lies with the meticulous period detail of Topsy Turvy. Dickensian both in his grasp of character and his compassion for working class lives, Leigh is celebrated for his work with actors in long periods of rehearsal to create utterly lived-in performances, and here the ensemble work is flawless and profound. Imelda Staunton will certainly win awards as the title character, but there are a dozen or more brilliant nameless performances in this film. The feel of postwar austerity in the London of 1950 is delineated in detail. Vera is a busy little bundle of tea and sympathy, caring for her family and other shut-ins of the neighborhood, caring for the houses of the careless rich, and caring for young girls in trouble, by applying a soapy solution to their problem, all with no heed to her bother or trouble, humming the whole way. Inevitably the law comes calling, and her world collapses. There's never a doubt where Leigh's sympathies lie, but he is able to extend them to a stunning range of characters. This small domestic tragedy evokes much thought and many tears. It edges ahead of Maria Full of Grace as the best film of 2004 that I've seen so far. (2004, Images Cinema, n.) *9* (MC-83, RT-89)

Let me add a word of praise for the gang at Images. They consistently show the films that need to be seen, and I intend to see and review nearly everything they present, so check in here weekly to get an early take on what's showing.

The Blob

Maybe you had to be there. But I was and I kinda dug it. (And needed the unreality of it all, after overdosing on the reality of the previous film.) On one level it seems nuts for the Criterion Collection to have revived this piece of Fifties schlock, but on another it works brilliantly as a time capsule. The filmmaking is rudimentary in every aspect, from the writing to the lighting, from the acting to the cheesy special effects, but still the melding of teen rebel and Atom-Age-anxiety monster movies is so blatant as to be revelatory. And of course you have the fight against the flesh-eating, ever-expanding glob of red jello led by the wild but ultimately responsible teen Steve, played by Steve McQueen, in the very genesis of "The Tao of Steve." (1958, dvd, r.) *7*