The Smackdown Martin Scorsese. Stanley Kubrick. Two masters of cinema direction, both with distinguished careers making films in multiple genres. But what happens when they square off outside their comfort zones and try to serve […]
Nothing tickles this aging English major more than a good challenge, a film I can’t predict, a movie that leaves me with food for significant thought. These gems are rare indeed for reasons so obvious they needn’t be mentioned, but I’ll mention them anyway. Never underestimate the low esteem with which Hollywood regards the American film-going, ticket-buying audience. Teenage boys simply don’t flock to the latest dialogue-driven dramedy of ideas. But I do. “Cold Souls†is a beautifully made extended short story; its scale stays personal even when it goes international. “Synecdoche, New York†is an undertaking so massive that you need reference books to fully appreciate its depths. Neither film got a wide release, and I’ll bet you missed them both, but luckily for you, they’re both available on DVD. Grab your dictionary and come with me. I promise I’ll hold your hand.
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Over the fifteen months preceding the first world war, a series of increasingly strange events unfold in a tiny German town. (In this hamlet, something’s rotten in the state of Germany, not Denmark.) The denizens are not individual characters so much as monstrous archetypes; the landed baron a controlling overlord who gradually loses control, the doctor a cold, cruel, and sexually perverse father, the pastor sexually repressed and physically abusive to his many children, the schoolteacher ineffectual, romantic, and somewhat distracted. The children are beaten and tortured, molested and abandoned, mistreated and punished for every infraction. The women are muzzled, abused, and dispatched with not much fanfare. Even the crops suffer brutal beheadings, and the pets savagely killed. In revenge, they act out their dark fantasies, traveling in a creepy Children-of-the-Corn-style pack, walking in an ominously straight line, visiting mysterious cruelties on the different, the Other. All this ritualized punishment rains down on the entire town; initially, the town looks normal, but soon the bucolic vistas yield to a slow motion horror movie, all portent and unease.
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“The Best Years Of Our Lives†stands tall as the ultimate and still unsurpassed drama about WWII’s returning soldiers, made in 1946 by William Wyler from a pitch-perfect script by Robert Sherwood. Director Lasse Hallström enters the love-and-war fray with his effort “Dear John†based on a novel by the very popular (if slightly gooey) Nicholas Sparks. The war in question is a lot more confusing than WWII, and the story is a whole lot soapier/dopier, but the eternal questions remain the same. What does war do to soldiers and their families and the women they love?
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Listen up, ‘rents. Being a father is never easy, but being the father of a teenage girl, and trying to get that one right is a true challenge. Both of these films — two decades apart in production dates and period settings — show fathers who, with the best of intentions, get it all wrong, but they get it wrong in exactly opposite ways.
You can care too little and you can care too much. When you’re in the middle of things, it’s not always so easy to see which is which. Believe me, as a father of girl who has just left her teenage years behind, these are matters I’ve thought a little bit about. I keep thinking of the famous Kenny Rogers’ song (“The Gambler,” written by Don Schlitz) that you gotta know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em. Like that’s easy. Still, what we have here to consider are a couple of fathers who don’t know best, not by a long shot… […]
“Valentine’s Day.” From everything I’ve seen and heard, I’m fairly certain that Garry Marshall is a very nice man, and I know he set out with the best of intentions making this film as did all his friends and associates who helped. No one ever intends to make a bad movie, and smacking this film feels a little like hitting a puppy. This movie sits there humping your leg, blissfully unaware and unashamed of the giant stinking turd it’s left on the cineplex screen. To extend the metaphor past all usefulness, this puppy hasn’t yet been spayed. It takes major cojones (or perhaps hubris) to engage such a weak, ungifted and unsuited company of players in hopes of recapturing the success of “Love Actually.” With a few major exceptions, the actors just plain aren’t good enough to rise above the lame material; most are unable to land any of the marginal jokes or even to remind us of any human beings we’ve met.
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Watch out when the American CIA comes to Europe in any movie made by the collaboration between French filmmakers Pierre Morel and Luc Besson because the body count will be high and the local infra-structure will certainly suffer. While both of these films let their leads hunt down and kill prodigious amounts of bad guys, one of them wanted to be Taken seriously while the other one merely wants to let you know that it’s a comically violent gift sent you From Paris with Love. The truth is if the CIA really had any agents who behave like Liam Neeson or John Travolta, the entire War on Terrorism would probably have been wrapped up by now. And Paris would probably be burning. […]
Autism. With the diagnosis on the rise, most of us find ourselves only a few degrees of separation from this little understood condition. Two of Hollywood’s most glamorous young newlyweds spent their first year of marriage exploring the subject in depth. Claire Danes stepped into the mighty big shoes of “Temple Grandin†in HBO’s effective biopic while her husband Hugh Dancy played Hollywood’s first big-screen romantic lead with Asperger’s syndrome in “Adam.†Both films rise well above a berth in the overcrowded “Disease Of The Week†pigeonhole, but let’s see which spouse lands the knockout punch and gets cinematic autism exactly right.
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Sorry. Just can’t do this any more. Can’t waste any more of my precious life energy writing it all out. So, here it is, one last time… all 38 blessed characters…
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Okay, we’re done here. From now on, it is the policy of this website to refer to this Oscar nominated film as “Precious.”
How did it happen that a film could be called by a title that sounds this unnecessary and pretentious? After all, all of the films in the “Adapted Screenplay” category could give themselves the same treatment. Then we’d be looking at films like “Up in the Air: Based on the Novel ‘Up in the Air’ by Walter Kim.” Or how would you have liked to see this on the big screen — “Star Trek: Based on the TV Series ‘Star Trek’ by Gene Roddenberry.” Ugh… […]
It’s 1962, stylishly retro and way cool. TV’s Mad Men have paved the cultural way for two more stellar entries in the Sex And The Sixties pantheon. With the swinging sixties looming right on the horizon, Los Angeles college literature professor George (Colin Firth) and sixteen year old suburban London student Jenny (Carey Mulligan) fumble their un-merry ways through the rough-and-tumble terrain of love, loss, secrets, and sexual experience. Both lead performances have stirred up considerable Academy Award buzz, but they’re unlikely to compete head to head anywhere but right here. Dewy Maiden with Distinct Audrey Hepburn Echoes takes on World-Weary Confirmed Bachelor with a Not-So-Secret Secret. The winner? A grateful arthouse (and beyond) audience.
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