Women in Revolt: An Andy Warhol movie on which Warhol did
the camerawork, but Paul Morrissey directed. I've done a bit of reading about this
film, and in interviews Morrissey articulates a surprisingly conservative
worldview; surprising in view of his predominantly transgendered/crossdressing
cast. He intended this film (apparently made after Valerie Solanis shot Warhol)
to be a satire of feminism, and it certainly mocks both radical feminists and
celebrity culture. At the same time, Morrissey's process is more captious than
his sociopolitics, and by allowing his performers to improvise he creates a
film that incorporates a diverse array of ideas and interests, from the
sneering camp of Jackie Curtis to the flawless glamour goddess riffing of Candy
Darling. Warhol's cinematography is terrible by any reasonable standard, but
maybe his wandering, randomly focused camera eye is an accurate reflection of
Warhol's listless way of looking at life. Holly Woodlawn has an early scene
where she bounces around like a jack-in-the-box, shrieking at her boyfriend,
that made me convulse with uncontrollable laughter until I became frightened at my own outsized reaction.
Overnight: A behind-the-scenes documentary about the story
of a Boston bartender who is suspected of being the next Quentin Tarantino, in
the 90s when everybody wanted to be or have the next Quentin. He makes his
movie (Boondock Saints, beloved by some) but antagonizes a lot of people along
the way. After power lunching with movie stars he gets the big head and
his worst self manifests. His lack of self-awareness is summed up in a scene
where he rants about how being thrown out of the Miramax building proves that
now he's in a power position "because now they're afraid of us." At
another point he laments (all quotations from memory): "I'm Hollywood's
latest hard-on, why is no one returning my calls?" Guess he forgot how
long a hard-on lasts. But he got his film and a sequel made, and some people
love it, so good for him.
Living in Oblivion: from that same 90s indy film boom.
Catherine Keener and Steve Buscemi make a low budget film-within-a-film, and every quirk of
the ensemble creative process rings true with my memories of the acting life.
It's an ensemble comedy that made me want to see everything auteur Tom Dicello
could throw at us.
The Real Blonde: Another Dicello film with Keener costarring
(And Buscemi reprises his character from Oblivion), this is another ensemble
comedy with a broader New York canvas, and a similar spacy blend of
character-based gags. I thought it was a worthy followup.
Double Whammy: Tom Dicello gives up on whimsy and tries to
make lurid trash, but he doesn't seem to have his heart in it, and the movie is
like watching someone improvise while exhausted. Early on there's a scene where
someone walks into a diner and starts shooting people; there's a gratuitous
panty shot as a cheerleader crawls backward to escape the gunfire, but gets
shot dead. It's all presented like an unfelt attempt at trashiness; a gloomy
effort at giving the rubes what they want. The whole movie has a vibe of
wanting to sell out, but not knowing how to do it with cunning capitalist
commitment. Denis Leary, who played against type as a sweet guy in Real Blonde,
seems becalmed in his role as a put-upon cop, left adrift by the lack of
anything to do. There's a pair of callow would-be screenwriters who poke fun at
all the callow boys in the 90s who wanted to be the next Great American
Screenwriter but just ended up making boyish junk, and the movie seems to be a
parody of their Tarantino-without-the-brains aesthetic. There's also a story
about a girl who hires someone to assassinate her father, or something; some
real sadness and ugliness comes through, but the film is tonally out of
balance. We gave up on this one. I suspect it turns out, in a meta twist, that
the movie is the product of the birdbrained screenwriting characters, but I
don't expect I'll ever find out.
House Party: African-American teens throw a house party.
Feels a bit like a beach movie without a beach, but lots of real talk
percolates through the hip hop performances and silly hijinks. Late in the
movie the protagonists, Kid and Play, get in an argument about whether or not
it's manly to have sex with girls and then ditch them if they get pregnant.
Neither character wins the argument; they just get frustrated with each other,
exactly like all the arguments I ever had with friends in school. Also, the
teens are hassled by honky cops all through the movie, but the film is
bookended with a fantasy sequence in which the party house flies through the
air and, with music blasting, lands on the cops like they're wicked witches.
Perhaps the message is that getting a party vibe going is a workable response
to authority/cultural hassles.
Melvin and Howard: an Altmanesque portrait of lower middle
class American life, bookended by an allegedly (but dubiously) true story about
Howard Hughes willing a big chunk of change to an ordinary working stiff. Much
of the movie is really about hapless Melvin's wives, and how he loses one only
to find another. Good-hearted people struggle to get by and to feel better
about themselves, and the sense of Real America in the 70s takes me right back
to family vacation memories. The real Melvin has a cameo, and exudes so much
charm that you can see why the filmmakers believe his preposterous story.
Birds of Prey: a short-lived TV series about the bat-women
of Gotham City trying to fight crime in the wake of Batman's disappearance.
It's going for a colorful camp vibe with a nonthreatening "sisterhood is
powerful" flavor, but it's too much a heat-and-eat TV product.. The
Huntress, who is Batman and Catwoman's conflicted daughter, is a potentially compelling
character, caught as she is between her parents' incompatible motivations, and
resentful of both, but the actress is too much the former child pageant
contestant, moeing and sparkling when she should be cutting (in several
senses).
The Big Sleep: The edition we got apparently had an Original
Cut on one side and the theatrical release on the other. We watched the
original without knowing it, then watched a documentary that itemized all the
studio-mandated changes. We concluded that the retooled version would probably
be better, but lacked the will to flip the disk and almost rewatch the movie. I
guess we flunked an important test of Movie Buffness. The whole experience left
us as mixed up as the book left me when I tried to read it. I prefer The Long Goodbye,
book and film, which seems less like the product of an elliptical random plot
generator than Big Sleep.
The Yakuza: Robert Mitchum goes to Japan to help a Japanese
friend fight baddies. A love triangle ensues, and stately tableaus of elegant
Japanese room design keep things pretty, until the tense extended battle
climax. Mitchum was ahead of his time with this Old Man Action Movie thing, and
while I'm no connoisseur of action choreography I was spellbound by the finale.
Like A Touch of Zen, this is an action movie that mostly plays as a talky drama
into which action irrupts. I love that. Mostly I rented this to see what
happens when Paul Schrader and Robert Towne work together. Not half bad. The
shocking West-meets-East post-battle denouement comes as no surprise, but I
don't think surprise was the point.
It Was a Wonderful Life: a documentary about homeless women
whom probably no one ever expected to be homeless; functional, smart women who
lost everything through divorce or economic problems, and live in cars while
trying to rebuild the foundations of their material lives, almost from scratch.
We see how difficult it is to maintain dignity in these situations, much less
to stay employed and get one's finances in order. One poor woman rents a U Haul
to sleep in, and describes it as a luxury she won't be able to afford for long.
She buys a pistol because it makes her feel protected. Then someone steals it
while she sleeps.
Swept Away: an Italian film in which a brutish working class
guy and a high-maintenance rich lady are marooned on an island. He brutalizes
her, and she falls in love with him. Then they return to civilization and her
love for him evaporates upon their return to class strictures, leaving him
feeling more used and demeaned than his cruelties ever left her. A woman, Lina
Wertmuller, wrote and directed this; if a man had made it I'd dismiss it as a
babyman "men's rights" misogynist fantasy/pity party. I suppose
Wertmuller is thinking about the dichotomies between class and sex, while
having nasty fun with sex and violence like movies should.
Daughters of the Dust: I couldn't really follow the plot (is
that little girl doing strange lo-fi effects magic because she's the spirit of
a child yet to be born? Or something?) but it's a treat to see so many gifted
African-American performers working in such gorgeous photography. This movie
presents us with a corner of history I knew nothing about, and is persuasively
unfamiliar, yet imbued with human warmth. It immerses us in a mysterious yet
utterly American cultural venue. Formalist cleverness reminiscent of Peter
Greenaway's Euro-art tableaus interconnect with a humanist concern for people
that Greenaway's arid highbrowness can barely understand. It's no surprise that
the director wrote or cowrote two books to expand on (and perhaps clarify) this
film.
Nashville: Some of the actors playing at county stardom
would never have passed an audition with a real Nashville label (and the
otherwise perfect Lily Tomlin's turn as a soul gospel soloist is a cringer),
but that quibble aside, this movie makes a virtuosic cinematic jazz symphony
out of its southern show biz milieu. Essential. And my Nashville born and bred
college roommate assured me that it captures the soul of the city perfectly.
Four Weddings and a Funeral: This one snuck up on me. Effervescent
charm and a tonic dose of surprising sorrow. It really replicates the sense of
getting to know a group of family and friends over time.
The Spirit: There's some dazzling use of light and shade in
this sinkhole, (written and directed by erstwhile comic book mastermind Frank
Miller) but... remember what I said about rumors that justify themselves on the
basis of how well they explain things? 3 words, in no particular order: Cocaine
Miller Frank. This rumor is the ONLY possible explanation for this chiaroscuro
turd. Not quite hilariously wretched enough to get me to the end.
The Singing Detective: This British miniseries reveals its
nation of origin with more than accents; the darkness and nastiness goes deeper
than anything American TV would have dared in the 80s. But it's not a wallow. A
hospitalized pulp fiction writer takes out his frustrations on everyone around
while reminiscing about his troubled childhood, and rewriting his detective
fiction in gnostically autobiographical fashion. It's lucidly fragmentary and
shifting, sorrowful yet full of energy. Fans of Alan Moore's less superheroic
work, or of Martin Amis, absolutely must see it. Michael Gambon makes his
clever but cruel character as sympathetic as can be without blunting the
uncompromising critique of his failings.
Boardwalk Empire, Seasons 3 and 4: Season 3 introduces a villain
of such grotesque awfulness that he makes the psychotic real-life baddies of
the early seasons (Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, etc.) seem balanced and moderate
by comparison. Too many scenes where we see a minor heavy who's been around but
never developed in his home, surrounded by loving family, setting the table for
his adoring Ma, promising to read a bedtime story to his cherubic daughter,
then answering a knock at the door and getting shot in the face. I was afraid
Season 4 would try to top Season 3’s Boss Monster with a villain who ate babies
or something, but they took a smart alternative route with a Marcus Garvey-like
prig who qualmlessly funds his activities by dealing heroin. Chalky White, the
most prominent African American character in the show, owns a Harlem club and
must contend with the new villain over the question of upon what plausible
foundation, exactly, African-American success can be built. Also other things
happen, but the struggle between idealistic yet conniving Afrocentrism Vs.
All-American capitalistic compromise overshadowed the rest. As usual the look
of the show is more glazed and prettified than I think works for the story, but
Season 4 held my interest much better than the bang bang bang boobs bang bang
of Season 3.
Girls: Everyone who hates this show is wrong. Demonize Lena
Dunham all you want, but this show articulates a certain kind of entitled
hipster 20something city life about as well as my actual 20s did.
The Complete Jean Vigo: this mostly-silent era French
filmmaker died while he was still in his 20s, and it's a dreadful loss to
cinema. There's a lot to engage with in his brief filmography, but I'd like to
highlight Zero de Conduite, which follows a pack of boys at an all-boy boarding
school. It's mostly like a really good Little Rascals film, but near the end a
loathsome teacher blatantly gropes the most prettily girlish of the boys, right
in front of an entire classroom of kids. For the rest of the film, the boy is
visibly hobbled with trauma. The authority figures all enlist him to cover it
up, and his desperate, profane outbursts only make the adults more confident in
their dismissal of the boy's pain. So whenever some doddering authority clod
gives you a load about how bishops and coaches didn't know child molesting was
a bad thing until recently, point them to this film. Jean Vigo knew, a hundred
years ago.
Two Girls and a Guy: Robert Downey Jr. crafts his Tony Stark
and, midway through the film, indulges in an apparently improvised acting
exercise (with, perhaps, a twist of drug remorse) that has zilch to do with the
romantic triangle that makes the gears turn on this one. The 90s dialogue goes
for screwball pingpong by way of Tarantino archness. I like Tarantino least at
his archest; ditto his legion of 90s wannabes. Heather "Rollergirl"
Graham was a fascinating dud in the butt end of Twin Peaks, but she's luminous
here, and seems to have handed the Awful Acting baton to her voice-challenged
fellow actress in this movie, who tries to get by on hotness, and might have
succeeded in a less talky pic.
The Fountainhead: stunning high camp. I don't usually say
things like "Check out that dress!" but I do with this movie. To my
astonishment, Ayn Rand's script actually has at least one moving passage; hero
Howard Roark's reassurance of a nervous client that designing a "mere gas
station" is worthy of his talents has given this lefty a bit more sympathy
for Rand's views. But mostly the movie is a dingdong Mary Sue fantasy, which
can be fun if you're dumb or drunk.
Capturing the Friedmans: A documentary about a picture
perfect family that's brought down by the husband's penchant for child
pornography and the investigation that follows. The husband is guilty of
purchasing and swapping child porn with other loathsome pervs (and detectives)
over the mails (in the pre-internet 80s) but the investigation homes in on his
computer classes for teenagers. They hire a hypnotist to soften up the kids'
brains for a load of delusional false accusations, and we get to see just how
eager everyone from the police to the Friedman's own lawyer are to impose all
their most lurid fantasies of subhuman debauchery onto Mr. Friedman, despite a
complete lack of credible evidence that the man abused any kids under his
tutelage. A bizarre witch hunt, made all the more confusing because the suspect
is manifestly guilty of aiding and abetting horrible abuse; there's just no
evidence that he abused kids himself, other than the grotesquely fantastical confessions
of hypnotized kids.
The Blues Brothers: I'm amazed that a road movie that's
almost a Wim Wenders remake of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World became such a
phenom as a comedy film. John Belushi seems underused; casting such a big
personality as an almost totally inexpressive character is a baffling choice.
John Candy is kinda handsome. Dan Ackroyd's line about glue is a lesson in how
delivery can sell a joke that would be nothing in someone else's mouth.
Hound of the Baskervilles: This is the Basil Rathbone
version that thrilled me as a kid. It still delights me, because I'm thrilled
by British hambones, smoky black and white photography, and atmospheric models.
Predator. A Vietnam movie in monster movie guise; the camouflaged
alien killer is The Jungle, man. the camerawork is every bit as proficient as
the paramilitary team it follows. The
men never upstage the jungle, and the jungle never upstages the men. The characters and the mis en scene blend.
Arnold finally defeats the monster by being, y'know, Arnold.
Enlightened: A show about a woman whose nervous breakdown
has led to a fall from grace. She never seems like someone who could have
achieved the position of responsibility from which she's been demoted, though,
so it seems more like a film about a recent college grad trying to figure
things out and establish herself in the first place. Star Laura Dern's
contemplative monologues give the show some real emotional power that the often
diagrammatic plots need, and her costars are all terrific. The finale complicates
her struggle in diverse ways while still giving her a big win.
Waking Life: Not just a superlative coffee shop in
Asheville, NC. While I'm usually no fan of blatant motion capture animation,
the painterly ornamentation this movie adds to quotidian life captures the
quicksilver emotional resonance that flows through life as we live it. I wanted
to cohost a podcast with a good third of the cast.
Lair of the White Worm: Director Ken Russell allegedly made
this goofy horror/fetish flick on the quick as part of a deal to finance a more
genteel art film. For some reason it was a fixture on the role-playing nerd
circuit, at least in my region. It's mostly lousy, although some of the
psychedelia, ulde-Britian folk culture, and theatrical carnality you expect
from Russell do make appearances, along with a portly manservant who makes the
most of all his leering double entendres. I'd watch a movie about him, drawing
a bath for master before locking up the chambermaids.
Shoot the Piano Player: Cheerful French cinema jazz. Anyone
who thinks New Wave film can't be fun should see this. Free and assured.
Tombs of the Blind Dead: In this evening's feature the role
of Franco and his supporters in the Church will be played by gross zombies. At
the end the zombies leave the churchyard from which they emerged to hop a train
and hit the city, using then-modern lines of transportation to bring their
ancient contagion to modern Urbania, just like Franco and his fascist-coddling
friends in the clergy. It's not exactly packed with scare scenes, but a couple
of chase sequences (both involving women on foot trying to sneak through crowds
of undead) are deliciously nightmarish.
True Blood, Final Season. Producer Alan (Six Feet Under)
Ball has left the building, and the show is almost unbearable. The lady who
works at Fangtasia and screams a lot saves the day, but not for long. An exhausted
show.
Jodorowsky's Dune: I've never understood why so many people
think that book cries out for audio-visual representation. Sandworms, sure, but
mostly it's people talking about really complicated made-up sociopolitics.
Great for a book, but why film it? Jodorowsky's version might have been livelier
than the versions that did get made, although his dipsydoodle rewrite of the
ending seems more like something out of the Heavy Metal movie than anything
Frank Herbert would condone.
Cranes Are Flying: touching drama about a Soviet woman and
her two lovers during WWII. Not to praise the loathsome Stalinist government
with faint damnation, but the obligatory Marxist propaganda doesn't overwhelm
the human insight; this story could be remade with zero concessions to Stalin
and still carry a powerful message about grief and community. Spoiler warning:
bereft, by the end, of both the men in her lover's triangle, the heroine
recommits herself to the community, and the music swells. Pretty darn Marxist,
but probably not a bad strategy for dealing with grief and loss in any
political/economic context.
Veep: All insults, all the time. Even at my most cynical I
doubt the toxicity in Washington is this routinely blatant at the level of
basic courtesy, or lack thereof. Funny but draining. Still, I prefer it to the
thinly veiled BDSM fantasy of House of Cards.
The Mighty Boosh: I used to be in an improv troop; this show
is like the platonic ideal of what we were going for in our longform shows,
only with fewer women (my only complaint). Two zookeepers face an array of
silly problems.
Guardians of the Galaxy: Star Wars for the X Box set, who
can probably follow the more kinetic action sequences better than I can.
Groot's last line got a single tear from me, and proves my point about the
non-Marxist applicability of Cranes Are Flying.
Anna Nicole: Mary Harron working for Lifetime isn't as
terrific as Mary Harron unfettered, but this surprisingly sympathetic portrayal
of the famous pinup presents her as a level-, rather than empty-, headed (when she isn't abusing substances)
and caring working-class mom. I can buy it. I've known a couple of women in the
hubba hubba business who were very real people behind the showbiz facade.
River's Edge: Dirtball Noir about a band of confused teens
who don't know how to handle it when one of their friends murders another
friend for no good reason, then tells everybody that he did it. Dennis Hopper
shows up and, after a little scenery chewing to remind us who's boss,
underplays with unexpected sensitivity and delegates the frantic overacting to
Crispin Glover, whose flamboyant metalhead scuzzball is as theatrical as some
actual teenagers. Director Tim Hunter went on to direct a bunch of Twin Peaks
episodes, and you can see it in every shot of this movie; it's as much a Twin
Peaks precursor as Winesburg, Ohio or Peyton Place.
