That monkey sure did kill a lot of people

Yesterday I finally watched the movie "Monkey Shines". I've been meaning to see that movie for 20 years. One night twenty years ago, I thought I was actually watching it, but I wasn't, and then I threw up in the sink a little bit after begging myself not to vomit.

College is stupid.

[SPOILERS!] The movie was pretty good, with good actors. The best part was watching the paralyzed guy being terrorized by the cute little monkey, like when she kept shoving food in his mouth. The best villain is a darned cute one, which explains the enduring malevolence of the Ewoks.

I don't think it was scientifically accurate, though, so if you want to inject human brain material into a monkey's ass, go ahead (ask the monkey for permission, first). I really don't think it will make you telepathically bond with her brain and cause her to go on killing sprees of your enemies.

Also, I didn't think it was fair that the paralyzed guy was cured at the end, but the monkey was killed. It wasn't her fault she was injected with bad human cells or whatever.

And like it couldn't be a happy ending if he was still paralyzed and getting on with his life with the added benefit of not being stalked by a demonic monkey? That seemed like a weird message to me, given that accidents do happen and life does have to go on, with or without your monkey.

Sometimes killing your monkey doesn't solve all of your problems, but it does make things better overall -- cut off the dumb ending where he could walk, and that's what I took from this movie.

Deep!

"Picnic at Hanging Rock": Disappearing Schoolgirls, Serenaded by the Pan Flute (Master Thereof)

I watched the most excellent and unusual Peter Weir 1975 suspense film "Picnic at Hanging Rock"; it's worth checking not least for its rather bizarre origin as a novel, and the missing last book chapter that "explained" everything but was wisely left out. Good on ya, IFC channel, for scheduling this one.

The action (such as it is -- girls go on picnic, climb rock, disappear) starts in an Australian girl's boarding school in 1900. The genius of this film is that the atmosphere of suspense and dread comes from the pre-Raphaelite beauty and dreaminess of these girls and their upright Victorian minders and the rugged working men lurking nearby; the girls with their fluttering white dresses and pressed flowers and invocations to St Valentine barely concealing raging suppressed passions and merciless personal denials; the teachers with their leonine updos and perfect posture and desperate attempts to stick a firm finger in the dyke of sexual awakening. (No pun intended; seriously, what do you take me for? You need a cold shower.)

Best of all, the dreamiest scenes are scored by the pan flute stylings of the Master himself, Gheorghe Zamfir. I knew there was something menacing about that guy.

I went 800 miles to see a $40 movie

I went to Sundance!

Because we had to do this in the most ridiculous way possible, since that's how we roll, Walter and I went on the last weekend (when everyone had left) and drove (800 miles) and got tickets on the internet ahead of time ($6/each service fee) and chose a movie playing in Ogden (1 hour + from Park City). We r smahrt.

But the driving was pretty cool because we got to go through four states on the way (CA, AZ, NV, UT, aka caz-no-VUT) and after Las Vegas it was pretty damned beautiful for most of the way with purple mountain majesties and all that. This little lovely is from Virgin River Canyons:


We arrived at Ogden at night for our first movie and had a lot of time to kill, so we got to walk around in the pea soup fog, have dinner, and I even found a coffee in Ogden, UT! Of course, it was from inside the movie theatre, so I don't think it counts. No coffee shops in Ogden (except one place in an alley behind the theatre that promised to be open due to a whiteboard in the window promising "1/2 price lattes on Friday after 5!", but was not open at all. Maybe that's a result of the horrible economy -- rather than renege on the 1/2 price, they just closed up and ran away). I have a theory that there are mostly no-caffeine Mormons in Ogden, thus no Starbucks; could this possibly be true? Anyway, proof:


Then after coffee-hunting we still had time to kill, so we wandered down to Fat Cats and bowled:


and skee-balled:


and air hockeyed (no picture because of my shame at losing so disgracefully, including scoring ON MYSELF about six times).

We saw "500 Days of Summer" at the incredibly gorgeous Peery's Egyptian Theatre with the live organ playing ahead of time, and the movie was awesome. I have total crushes on both Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt and they both delivered, yay, movie!

Then we finally made our way to Park City and hung out with friends and saw some more movies and ate food. Thank you, Park City, for giving us a winter wonderland while we were there.

We went to see the thoughtful and charming "Arlen Faber", written and directed by my old sketch teacher John Hindman (meaning: he's not old; he taught Olde Sketch Style). We joined the crowd of post-movie-and-Q-and-A fans talking to him and shaking his hand, and I said hello and congrats, and thankfully Walter was there to capture this illustrious moment with his cell phone camera:


Boy, I'll treasure that photo!

I just watched "Red Dawn" (1984) for the first time

This movie was a touching story about brotherly devotion. Also, it was a celebration of the natural beauty of the American Southwest. Finally, it was a paean to the sheer pleasure of watching teenagers massacre people.

Well done, John Milius. According to the news from the last ten years, it's like your dream has come true!

"My Kid Could Paint That" (2007, dir Amir Bar-Lev)

Buy what you love, because if you buy art as an investment, you're playing a loser's game. Not a losing game, necessarily, but a loser's game, a game played by people with too much money and too little interest in natural gas futures or real estate. Art is meant to be lived with, to instruct and enlighten and enrage and love, yet much of the best of Western art (at least; how the fuck would I know about any other kind?) is locked up in temp-controlled storage units owned by the wealthy. With the wine, maybe. (Ha! Of course not -- totally different temps required. Wow, that's a filthy rich person's sidesplitter right there!)

Imagine pouring your heart and soul and possibly risking your life or risking exile to produce a work of art, and now, however many years later, it's locked in a giant closet in Sylvester Stallone's house, or Lars Ullrich's. Want to see art used as an investment? Watch the Metallica doc "Some Kind of Monster" and see Lars sell off his Basquiats and whatever. Let's hope there is no afterlife or there are bound to be some very disappointed paint-spattered souls up there.

But here's where I'll contradict myself -- art almost always has been defined by patronage, and I'm thinking that's the way it should be. Pieces produced for a specific purpose, often erotic (I think most major art museums should just be called what they are: "Museum of the Depiction of the Female Butt, Plus Some Saints and Jesus to Alleviate Resultant Guilt"). This whole bit of nonsense about one soul expressing himherself is kind of...well, the work's going to go on the auction block one way or another, isn't it? So it isn't so much expressing one's soul as it is guessing what other souls will want to see. Patronage. (Oh, and HINT: the other souls mostly want to see naked female butts, and/or war scenes and/or people being eaten by sharks.)

All I'm getting at is that I saw Amir Bar-Lev's doc, and although I was enraged for the first ten or fifteen minutes by the fact that I paid eleven dollars to sit in a theatre with six other people and some dopey woman STILL came right up to my seat in the back and asked to see my ticket because I had apparently sat in her ASSIGNED SEAT (Jesus, what is this, EUROPEAN SOCIALISM WITH THE ASSIGNED MOVIE SEATS?) -- I mean, for Christ's sake lady, there were only four other people there and you still walked down my row and said "Excuse me" to climb over my legs and you still bumped me out of my seat, I mean THIS IS AMERICA, LADY! -- so, fine, she picked the seat I should've picked, all's fair and I moved to another seat in only a 95% huff, and I was then further enraged by the fact that Amir didn't seem to have complete command of the focusing ring on his camera, so most of the interview sequences in the early part of the movie (with the journalist lady in overalls, and with Mark-the-dad) were fuzzy and, seriously, I paid 11 dollars to sit there watching a movie by a guy who couldn't manage to shine enough lights on his subjects and maybe needs new glasses.

But this movie was fantastic, really, and I think it comes down to Amir's niceness. He's so nice, it seems, that I feel I can call him by his first name. He's humble. He's not today's style of doc filmmaker, which is too often someone who wants to make narrative films with Angelina Jolie but needs to do something cheap and provocative first in order to get noticed. He's not a jerk with a camera looking for an expose or looking to make a point about society such that he'll edit his footage to fit it no matter how poorly his subject matches his theme --

(oh, I just watched "The Staircase" on DVD, CAN YOU TELL? Fascinating to watch and all, but damn there must be some kind of reverse libel statute that doesn't let you cover up so much of a real incident to fit your "American Southerners are homophobes and fools who consider justice a cotton-picking nuisance, and women are important only insofar as they are cute and doubtless golddigging and wear their hair in ways we find appealing", THAT MEANS YOU Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (writer/dir) and ESPECIALLY YOU Denis Poncet (producer), thanks for including the DVD extra of your own views on the case that explains your movie and it's creepy slant) --

...uh, where was I? Right, Amir. He's a nice guy who wanted to catch the painting prodigy in her ascendancy, and who's heart was, I think, genuinely a bit broken when he came to the inescapable conclusion that daddy was "helping" the prodigy to employ shape/form/repetition and theme in her paintings. You know, the things that a four year old couldn't employ or formulate. The things that make the paintings appealing and that make them sell.

Well, no. They sell because of the story behind them, and that's fine because lots of art is like that. "Guernica", or Motherwell without the Spanish war is...what? Mondrian without the move to New York and the influence of jazz is...not the same, I think. So the people who buy little Marla (+ big Mark's, I think) paintings are not being duped in any way that any art buyer isn't duped.

This is why people need to buy what they love. The price point is beside the point. I can give you a compare/contrast scenario to illustrate (no pun intended) what I mean: Norton Simon vs. Seymour H. Knox, Jr. Visit the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and you will see a wonderful, passionate, cohesive collection by a man who loved art, who especially loved Degas and his little cast horses. There's a viewpoint to this museum, and an expansive generosity. Now hop on a plane to Buffalo and visit the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. This collection is shit, and I'm not just saying that because I stupidly made a special trip to the frozen center of hell (Buffalo in winter) just to see it. It's shit because it's clearly the work of a rich guy, and subsequent acquisitions directors, who decided to cherry-pick from the big names in modern art. This is a collection meant to impress with it's price tag, and the works are strung up in a stiff line like the Von Trapp children reporting to Captain Dad. Entering that gallery is like walking into a party where all the guests are big name but have no relationship with one another and simply stand around glumly with drinks in their hands. This gallery left me cold, while the Norton Simon makes my heart pound with the possibilities of humanity. I can't tell you how angry it makes me that some wonderful stuff -- a side of beef by Soutine, my beloved "Yellow Christ" by Gauguin -- is stranded in the art-prison of the Albright-Knox.

So the Marla controversy is really about money and art, about the acquisition position. It isn't about the dopey "controversy" over whether modern art is "real" art -- I mean, god, are we still worrying about that? We aren't, are we? I'm sure Morely Safer is, but the rest of us? (Go paint more hotel rooms and relax, Morely.)

(Oh, shit -- I just realized how poetically perfect the Marla/Morely naming alliteration is! I would totally do that if I were naming these characters in a novel! It's FATE!)

The movie works because it doesn't stoop to Safer-cynicism or Wallace-skepticism with the subjects. Amir lets them talk. He asks the needed questions and lets their faces tell the story. He, miraculously, gets the gallery owner who made his fortune (? Or some good amount) off of Marla to admit what we movie-goers suspected an hour earlier: that he, a frustrated photo-realist painter, was championing Marla in order to stick it the art community and their inexplicable love of the quick-'n-easy and the abstract. It's a story of revenge and ego and the desire to be special (Mark, this means you). It's MacBeth. So, of course, it's tragedy, but a small tragedy, after all. Amir sympathizes with the family, especially Mom Laura and Non-Prodigy Zane, and we sympathize with all of them, too. I'm sorry you guys got into this, that your weaknesses let it happen. Weaknesses like a need for expression, a need to be heard, love of your children, loyalty to your family, not wanting to hurt or doubt the ones you love, and money-is-good. Nice, meaty, human weaknesses.

But seriously, if you're buying Markla's paintings, you'd better do it because you love them, not because you're hoping to cash in. Don't be an ass about it. This isn't "F is for Fake" territory here, so don't pretend it is.

My mom had these little blue Chinese dragons, book ends, when I was growing up. I loved them. I saw some just like them years later in a (closed) store in Boston's Chinatown and took a photo of them. Lately, I saw them on sale at Plantation LA for $250. My mom says she bought them for something like $25. It's not that they've become valuable all of a sudden -- it's that the Plantation LA buyer went down to some Chinatown somewhere and you did not, so you pay a premium.

But no matter how much or little you pay, it doesn't matter, so long as you love your dragons.

"Strangers on a Train" (1951), dir by Alfred Hitchcock

This movie exploits one of my worst fears (besides sharp corners on the edges of tables and, and this explains the first one, disembowelment): crazy people who talk to you in public settings. And then they stalk you and try to frame you for murder, and then your life is ruined.

It shouldn't feel right that a movie about a psychopathic murderer is as sprightly and fun as this one, but maybe it's the most honest way to deal with the games being played by the two men on the train. The world goes on no matter what freakiness you encounter one seat over. Hitchcock reminds us of this again and again, with our troubled heroes encountering person after person who's just going about his day or doing his job or enjoying his night at the carnival without caring about your murder plots or the man who's trying to ruin your life. I need cotton candy, and no creep stalking his prey is going to stand in my way!

Robert Walker does something very difficult in this movie: he plays a crazy person who knows he's crazy. Bruno isn't sane-crazy like Cuckoo's Nest inmates; he isn't cuckoo-crazy like a Batman villain; he isn't animal-crazy like the Cape Fear guy. He's psychotically crazy, which means that he seems rather normal. It's a Ted Bundy crazy. It's the type that convinces himself that his actions are justified with rigorous application of Crazy Logic. When explaining C-Logic to you, the psychopath does so in a calm, matter-of-fact manner and, when you react with disgust, makes you out to be the nutter.

In this case, the psychopath needs to involve someone else in his plan. He isn't explaining after-the-fact; he's laying out the plan in advance. Thus Walker has to play Bruno as a psycho who knows that he's acting for an audience. He performs for Guy Haines in order to make the proposed murders seem natural and inevitable. Walker has to act while acting, while squeezing Guy slowly tighter in Bruno's soft-from-underwork hands. He does a wonderful job, and unfortunately it seems he came by his look of haunted and resentful confusion honestly, given that he apparently suffered from depression and alcoholism and died at the age of 32 shortly after making this film.

This is a great film about how easy it is for one person to rule over another with the use of two great weapons of persuasion: Flattery and Resentment. Prey successfully on someone's ego about what they do have and on their bitterness against what they don't have and you've got yourself a willing puppet. Every demagogue and tyrant knows this, whether at the level of nation-building or spousal abuse. Guy resists Bruno's manipulation, but too late, at first. Only Hitchcock saves him at the end when order is restored.

Patricia Highsmith, author of the book of the same name on which the movie was based, did not restore order in her version of the story. I don't think she believed that the good guys always will or should win in the end. She created Tom Ripley, and Ripley's evil always carries the day. She knew that sometimes evil sticks around. Sure, it dies like everything else; every regime falls eventually, every domestic tyrant dies sooner or later. But that doesn't mean they were defeated by anything but time.

Thus this is a good time in history to revisit "Strangers on a Train". We need to remind ourselves of how easy it is to ignore the Brunos and their horrible (though horribly compelling) schemes before it's too late and they've set their plans in motion, and you're implicated. You! And you didn't do anything except do nothing!

"Body Heat" is not "Nine 1/2 Weeks"

It's also not "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (the remake). They came out in 1981, 1986, 1981, respectively, and they all starred hot blondes and...guys. Ok, pretty hot guys, too. And they were known for being sexxy, hot nude movies!, so I've had them confused for the last twenty years or so.

Which is odd, because I think I've seen "Nine 1/2 Weeks" (which is not "8 1/2" or foreign) -- I'm not sure if I saw the good parts. I guess I didn't if I'm not sure. That movie made me uncomfortable because Kim Basinger was pretty unhappy about the whole thing, and Mickey Rourke is bizarre.

He's also in "Body Heat", so you can see how confusing this all is. I thought this was basically a sexy sex movie about sex. Nobody told me it was a noir about good old-fashioned husband-murdering!

I finally saw "Body Heat" recently, and I loved and adored it and want to go back in time and write it myself. This was Lawrence Kasdan's directing debut after also writing some movie about muppets or something? Muppets hitting back?

The casting is brilliant, the actors are perfect, Kathleen Turner is my hero, William Hurt brings his peculiar implosive disgust to this loser's tale and makes it both funny and pathetic. And Ted Danson! My god, I didn't even recognize old lean 'n lanky. He has the trickiest part in the movie and pulls it off with perfect understated grace -- he makes it look so easy that you almost forget to notice how the whole movie hangs on him.

This is a movie about love; not adultery love or I'll-murder-for-you love or narcissism, not even so much love of great movie genres, but other kinds of love. Less explosive kinds. Friendship. Love of justice (Ted Danson's character). Love of the law (J.A. Preston's character). Love of power (Richard Crenna). Love of the game (Turner). Love of hot blondes.

Dear Ted Danson -- make brilliant indie movies and show your chops again. Come on! Don't deny us! You could have Cary Grant's career in reverse!

This Year's IFC Independent Spirit Awards nominees

Yeah, whatever -- the awards were weeks ago (months? Who can keep track?), way to be on top of all the new stuff out there. And I watched these before the awards so that I could vote, so these are opinions that have been allowed to sit and ripen, like dates, or pickles. That makes them sweeter and tangy-er.

Disclaimer: I hate independent films, just on principle. Don't we all? They're grainy, and slow, and stuck in a Hal Ashby world when the rest of us are in a McG world, right? Am I right, people? And they're so concerned about everyone's feelings, ewww. Crash some cars; then everyone will feel better.

Never mind that most of my favorite, most cherished movies of the last five or fifty years have been tiny little indies. That is not my point. I want to love Hollywood movies, but they make it so damned hard.

So I popped these films into the old player with my usual sense of dread, but look what happened: something wonderful!

(These are in no particular order)

1. LAND OF PLENTY -- look, I've heard of Wim Wenders, I don't think it's fair that he's on this list. But I guess if you make a movie for three cents, then you earn your props. This movie starred Michelle Williams, who I will watch in anything, anywhere, at any time. I have loved her since DICK, and I loved that she showed up in the great THE STATION AGENT, and she is luminous and expressive and great. It also starred some dude named John Diehl, never heard of him, but he too was great. This movie was kind of annoying and precious and 9/11-ny at first, and I was worried, but the more it went on, the more I liked it. It is buoyed up by two things: its own sense of humor (as in the scenes with the guy who works for the Diehl character), and the incredible letter that the dead mother wrote to her brother Diehl, which Williams delivers. The letter is one of the finest pieces of writing I've ever heard (Diehl reads it to us in voiceover). There is a depth of emotional understanding and compassion in it that took my breath away.

2. QUINCEANERA -- Ok, I'm dumb, I kept confusing this with REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES because all those Latino movies look alike, right? Am I right, people? They couldn't be more different. I loved this movie because it was very matter-of-fact in what happens to the characters and in how they deal with life. Stuff happens, they deal with it. Period. There are no neon signs saying GAY! OLD! KICKED OUT! PREGNANT! REALLY GAY! POOR! The characters are people, and stuff happens to it, and some of the stuff is mean, and some is nice, and they are themselves sometimes mean and sometimes nice. That's why I loved it -- because I believed it, and I really wanted many nice things to happen to the people in it.

3. MAN PUSH CART -- I have a lot of reservations with this one. I mean, holy shit, did that man ever push that cart. He sure did. I know because I watched him do so for many long minutes. It's worth seeing because the cast is great and the triangle between the cart-man, the lady, and the creepy businessman is really great and subtle and inescapable.

4. SORRY, HATERS -- Robin Wright Penn fucking RULES. She is fantastic, and Abdel Kechiche and Sandra Oh are really impressive as well. This is a fun and surprising movie that Wright Penn totally owns.

5. ROAD TO GUANTANAMO -- Every time I watch the news these days I think of this documentary and the appalling information within it.

6. BUBBLE -- Steven Soderbergh goes back to his roots, or even underneath his roots, for this one. Watch it, then definitely watch the making of extras for lots of excellent information about how it came together. The first twenty minutes or so are so boring you will wonder why you're sitting there watching it when you could be staring into space in peace, but then it winds tighter and tighter until you can't stand it. I was so worried for the characters as the movie progressed that I think I got hypertension just by watching it. They asked for so little out of life! And they couldn't even have that without problems problems problems! A wonderful story and a film that is truly inspiring for those who still believe in truly indie movies.

7. HALF NELSON and PAN'S LABYRINTH -- You don't need me to tell you how great these are and that you should watch them.

The end.

"The Bishop's Wife" (1947), starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven

I just watched this ostensibly charming little Christmas movie in which Cary Grant plays an angel who counsels an uptight bishop on how to be a better husband and religious leader. The bishop, played by David Niven with a face stuck on worried, is so preoccupied with raising funds to build a giant new cathedral that he can't see how love-starved his hot wife has become. She's ripe for the picking, if you know what I mean.

The angel Dudley is supposedly so suave that he instantly charms everyone he meets, mostly by knowing their first names without being told and by being exceptionally tan in the middle of winter. The ostensibly charming little Dudley uses his magic angel powers to delay the bishop while he blatantly hits on the bishop's wife. This struck me as less "suave" and more "stalker/future rapist". I kept thinking he'd turn out to be a demon instead, but that would've taken away from the stupefyingly creepy dullness of this ostensibly charming little Christmas movie.

At least there are some patented magical moments to brighten up this OCLCM, right? Suave stalker Dudley's magical heaven-sent angel powers consist of: opening locked doors, refilling Sherry glasses, filing, not answering direct questions, knowing trivia about ancient coins, ice skating, bewitching cab drivers into giving him free rides, decorating Christmas trees, and taking gaudy hats from chubby ladies to give them to skinny Loretta.

He also induces choir boys to sing. Aren't choir boys supposed to sing? Yes, but most of these boys were late for their recital, you see, so Dudley summoned the Almighty's powers in order to wave the boys slowly into the room WHILE SINGING, such that their chirpy little voices gradually blended together into a heavenly choir. I suppose this was supposed to be a silvery moment of convergence, but Dudley was really just hurrying up some tardy little eunuchs while staring at them with inappropriate intensity. Christmas magic!

The one bright spot is mischievous cherub Elsa Lanchester as the bishop's maid. I wish the whole movie had been about her; alas, she was reduced to twittering about and staring hungrily at dumb old pathologically lustful Dudley.

Dudley doesn't ravish the bishop's pillow-lipped wife, but he essentially admits that he wants to. If only he had! At least then the bishop may have been forced to change his expression.

I give it one chestnut roasting over an open fire FROM HELL.

"Secrets & Lies" (1996), dir by Mike Leigh

English movie stars are the least attractive movie stars in the world – you think I'm going to mention the teeth, but I'm not; I don't care about the teeth, I'm tired of perfect, blindingly-white, slightly too big veneers winking out at me from every mouth on TV. I like messed up teeth just fine.

(Notice that Cary Grant moved to America before becoming a movie star. He was too good-looking to be an English movie star.)

English movie stars are unattractive because they allow themselves to be and represent and inhabit real people. The best of them don't play characters; they play people. People aren't pretty. Brenda Blethyn plays a whiny, annoying woman with a high-pitched whine of a voice who drinks too much and allows her grown daughter to treat her like shit while she collapses in tears on the bed. She wears ugly stretched flower pants over her lumpy bottom, topped with hideous crotched tops. These are real clothes that a woman like this would really wear; these are not clothes that a costume designer or stylists picked out, stealth chic like most American movies, where the clothing is an extension of the expertise and sophistication of the wardrobe department and an acknowledgement that we audience members want to see beautiful people being beautiful and pretend we can be like them no matter where we work or how much money we have. We may be a waitress in a diner, but we're really Michelle Pfeiffer. We may be a smart but trashy secretary, but we're really Julia Roberts. Maybe it has to do with the American bootstrap mentality, and our insistence that class is an illusion and wealth is a lottery ticket away. I don't think English people think that way; in fact, they “take the piss out” of those who do. It doesn't make them or us better, but it sure does make for a different kind of actor.

Director Mike Leigh won't work from a script; he truly collaborates with his actors to create the characters and map out the scenes, and the narrative cohesion and depth of his approach is stunning, partly in its contrast to the surface that most movies present to us, the indication of feeling rather than the reality of it. In this movie, Leigh collaborated with astonishing actors who had the guts to be ugly, both in looks and in feeling. The characters are unlikable, pathetic, even hateable in how awful they are to one another or how weak they seem to be, and how stubbornly stuck they are in their unhappy lives and destructive patterns. They can't communicate. They'd be better off without each other.

Wrong. This movie is an emotionally mature work with great compassion for its characters. It proves that confronting your problems, exposing your secrets and lies, can release you in ways you never thought possible. It also shows how incredibly difficult it is to do that.

Structurally, the movie sneaks up on you, slowly, imperceptibly (“organically”) revealing bits of the characters' lives and pasts and how they are intermingled and who relied on whom at what point and who sacrificed when and how the power and inner strength shifted over time. It lets you put the pieces together as the movie progresses, making you an actor in the storytelling. You become complicit, responsible somehow, in the long line of decisions that led to this day and this breaking point. You want desperately for them to work it out and be happy, because you know that they deserve it at long last. Maybe everybody does (not Hitler), maybe we just need to know more to feel more, maybe not, I don't know. Aren't some people just shits who need to go far away? No?

The people who made this movie love people; they are humanists in the strongest, bravest sense. They believe in human beings and in the power of kindness and love. They helped me get a little closer to believing in them, too.

And of course, these actors (Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Blethyn, Claire Rushbrook, Marianne Jean-Baptiste) are beautiful. I just needed to look at them.

"Punch-Drunk Love", written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (2002)

You can't look at a 2x3 inch photo of a Mark Rothko painting and understand what it's all about; you have to stand right up next to it so that its color blocks surround you and seep into you. You can't analyze it, you can only feel it. You have to let it trigger your emotions. In a quiet gallery with no one else around, caught it the right mood, it can be overwhelming and even frightening.

That's what this movie is like. It sounds irritatingly quirky down on paper -- a guy with an anger management/punching problem runs a business from a warehouse, buys a harmonium, obsessively saves pudding UPC codes in a scheme to win a vacation, and falls in love with a mysterious woman. And he has seven nasty sisters. And he's Adam Sandler. I hate it already.

But wait -- the woman is played by the luminous Emily Watson, a uniquely powerful actress who looks like she could eat you whole, delicately pick you bones, and smile about it afterwards. Adam Sandler's channels his blatent discomfort in his own skin into this repressed and unhappy character so perfectly that his propensity for infantilizing his other characters suddenly makes sense. He'd be too vulnerable and heartbreaking otherwise. And there's a phone sex call that goes horribly wrong, thank God, because we know or at least suspect that the world is full of lonely people and/or people who are out to get you.

I was bawling by the end of this film. Life is very, very difficult and those who rise to the challenge of living it embody a courage so banal as to be invisible most of the time. This movie reminds us of that and of the balm of kindness and love that redeems even the most fucked up of us.

I don't think this movie did very well at the box office -- I'm sure PTA fans were thinking, Where are the boobies? Where are the frog storms? Where's Tom Cruise acting crazy before we even knew he was crazy? But Anderson did something remarkable with this movie -- he put naked emotion on screen, and at the same time, he acknowledged how ridiculous it is, and how we are victims of our own tragic humanness.

I can't wait to see what he does next.

"Assisted Living" (2003), written and directed by Elliot Greenebaum

A low-budget movie filmed in a nursing home using the actual residents as extras and co-stars, about a women with Alzheimer's and the pothead nursing assistant she befriends. Wow, sounds like a fun night at the movies, huh? Mortality on parade! You're dying as we speak! Being old sucks, sons living in Australia and refusing to take your calls suck more!

This movie should've been bad, and after reading about it in some indie film magazines when it was screened here in L.A., I was convinced it would be. Too precious, trying to hard to be relevant, so damn Indie Indie Indie it makes your teeth hurt. Not entertaining, and so cheap it probably looks like a junior high video project. I rented it just to see how bad it was.

Boy, was I wrong. This is a helluva movie, unique and funny and touching without being sentimental. It's a ballsy piece of filmmaking because it focuses on the ugly in life -- not the pretty/ugly, like glamorized gorgeous limp heroine addict teenagers, and not cool/ugly, like underworld mobster killers, and not ugly/beautiful, like Shrek and Steve Buscemi. Plain Ugly, like life smells sometimes, it's tedious and weird and other people are difficult and argumentative and your reward is that you get to die, possibly alone and forgotten.

This movie got to me in the following ways:

1. Unique storytelling -- the video interviews with the nursing home staff at the beginning blur the line between fact and fiction, actors and people who are just like the people they are portraying in the sense that aging and aging parents affect everyone sooner or later.

The fact that Greenebaum filmed in actual nursing homes not only makes for a great (gimmicky) production note story; in this case, it also adds a shocking level of reality to the fictional story, reminding you that you can't get comfortable in the narrative world. You are forced to consider the real world at every turn, and that makes this movie awesome.

2. Beautiful cinematography -- some dude named Marcel Cabrera shot this with a great eye for color and light. The lame thing to do would've been to shoot it flat and sad, but he didn't. He and Greenebaum showed the stunningly dream-like aspect of life that smacks you in the face every once in a while, like in the beautiful golden and creamy white tones of the nursing home hallways and the emerald green of its grounds. When they focus on the hands of the elderly residents, they force you to see these bits as part of a continuum. Accept the hands as you'd accept the trees outside. Don't be afraid to stare, because it's just the way it is here on earth. Damn, this is sounding too much like that plastic bag reverie shit from "American Beauty", but ugh, that is what I mean after all.

3. The leads. Movies are about faces, right, I mean Norma Desmond told us so. Maggie Riley and Michael Bonsignore have wonderful faces, calmly expressive and thoughtful. Their acting is absolutely natural and of the moment. Great acting isn't about showing off; it's about inhabiting the character, and that's what they did.

4. The phone calls.

5. The dog.

6. The plot. The movie wouldn't work without a driving plot. Mrs Pearlman wants what she wants and goes after it right to the end. Todd keeps trying to avoid responsibility, and has to actively work to do so. Stunned numbness is a popular movie characterization these days (hello, “Garden State”), but this movie shows how it should be done. It isn't about staring just off camera and blinking slowly and wearing funny clothing; it's about how that state of mind manifests itself in the character's relationships with other people. Moment-to-moment, what choices do they make to avoid connecting with other people? Todd makes a lot of choices with a lot of consequences. Small, tiny, tiny consequences in the scheme of an infinitely large world, but all the more important and resonate for being so. Because we're all just ants on the anthill.

7. The phone calls. Seriously.

Whatever, just watch it. It's hard to talk about this movie without sounding pretentious or like I'm pitying old people or something gank like that. It moved me, that's all, it woke me up in a way. Watch it.

The Sunday movie trilogy: Blondie & Martin & Lewis & Andy Hardy & Francis & Abbott & Costello

When I was a young lass, we lived in an apartment in Roxborough, Philadelphia, where I shared a room with my sister. We were permitted to have a TV in the room, THANK GOD, because otherwise, how would I have curled up on my bed on Sunday mornings and soaked in the Sunday movie trilogy of:

1. A Blondie movie, the series (about 10,000 sequels long, I think?) starring the perfectly cast Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake.
OR
An Andy Hardy movie, starring Mickey Rooney.

2. A Martin & Lewis movie (my all-time favorite is "Artists & Models")

3. An Abbott & Costello movie
OR
A Francis the Talking Mule movie, starring, uh, Francis (though I hear they dubbed his voice) and Donald O'Connor.

Perfect Sundays, all. I have a ridiculous affection for the actors in these movies, and a love for Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin that even Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin can't ruin. Donald O'Connor may be famous for "Singing in the Rain", but to me he was the better steadfast friend to a mule. (Francis was wise, though, and brave. He went to war, for god's sake.)

This is art, yes, but it's art that aims low and hits the mark. It's an uncomplicated, unquestioning kind of art that asserts a profound pull on a child: this is what adults are like, and they are just like you. They make mistakes. They are silly. They are confused about what to do, and they need each other's help. They are fun and they are funny. If idiots like this can figure out life, you can, too.

Maybe some or all of these actors (and writers and directors) were disappointed that their career highlights came in popular B-movies beloved of eight year olds. I hope not. We can feast on profundity and tragedy, but this kind of comedy is sustenance.

"Six Pack" (1982)

You heard me: SIX PACK. Starring Kenny Rogers.

This movie is a cable favorite, so other people must enjoy its charms as much as I do. Who can resist a movie starring old country beardo himself as a race car driver who gets mixed up with a passel of orphans who just want to stay together out of foster care and get themselves a home. Oh, and who steal auto parts to fund their child outlaw lives; how fortunate that they run into Kenny, who needs an expert crew to help him jump start (get it?) his racing career! Maybe Kenny is finally ready to settle down, perhaps with former girlfriend Erin Grey? Can you guess how it ends? (hint: in a bloodbath!)

My young self was irrestibly drawn to this movie for the following reasons:

1. Erin Grey, of TV's "Silver Spoons", a big favorite of mine at the time, and the reason I still love Jason Bateman. A very safely pretty person who looks nothing like a honky tonk waitress, but whatever.

2. Kenny. Perfect father/Santa figure. Love his voice. Good actor, too. Also contributed a great pop country lite theme song.*

2. Anthony Michael Hall. He plays the mechanical genuis among the kids, one year before appearing in NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION, which was followed by SIXTEEN CANDLES and THE BREAKFAST CLUB. To my mind the greatest teenage actor of all time, equally effortlessly adept at drama and comedy and at playing the straight man or the goofy lead. I adored him when I was growing up.

3. Diane Lane as the oldest sibling forced to take on the role of parent even as she was struggling to grow up herself. Sob! Perfect casting, perfect acting.

4. Those Other Kids. They were all well-cast and appealing without demanding that you find them cute and charming. They just were who they were.

5. Terry Kiser as the evil race car driving antagonist. Come on -- it's Bernie from WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S! Give me a break; that's a treat right there.

6. It deals with real emotional issues in an honest manner. It's sweet without being saccharine. It's about a big family of kids, which fascinates me since I'm from a small family. It's got a bearded partiarch character who chooses the kids, very compelling to the child of a single mom.

I've probably seen this movie ten times, and I'm happy to report that I saw it on cable recently and loved it all over again. It makes me feel good about life, and I'd be mighty pleased if someone said that about something I was a part of.

*Though I can't image what would qualify as pop country heavy. Ummm.. that Chris Issac song with the black-and-white video and the models? I don't know.

"Funny Ha-Ha": Addendum

This movie has a plot. In noting how well it captures feelings, I forget to mention that it is also a well-told story wherein the characters make decisions and act on them, and that those decisions have clear consequences that drive the story forward.

Since the success of the Musing Trifecta (I just made that up) of films including PULP FICTION, SWINGERS, and DINER, some filmmakers got the terribly wrong impression that it's sufficient to make a movie consisting entirely of clever characters standing around (or driving around) musing about random topics. Even Andre, in his cinematic dinner with Wallace Shawn, didn't muse; he questioned, he investigated, and he illustrated. His story had shape and weight. Similarly, the talk in the Trifecta films added to the plot, it didn't substitute for it.

The plot of FUNNY HA-HA is about a love triangle, and the movie contains a perfect scene: the principal characters affecting one side of the triangle meet unexpectedly in a supermarket, and their grocery talk ripples with the undercurrents of the mess of relationships and loyalties and missed opportunities between them. There's a great subtlety to the actors' behavior; it isn't a scene of open confrontation and melodrama, as it would've been as told by a less confident filmmaker. Instead, it's a scene of inflection and tone and of essentially nice people in an awkward situation, trying not to hurt others or show their own hurt.

It takes guts to write and direct a scene like that, and it takes real skill to draw such unaffected vulnerability out of unprofessional actors. So again: well played, Bujalski!

"Funny Ha-Ha", written/directed by Andrew Bujalski (2002)

So there's this guy Bujalski. He's this young guy who decides to make a movie about his life -- post college, temp jobs, that horrible yet exciting "cusp of the rest of your life" time, searching for "the one" or, realistically, any one. And he gets a camera and a bunch of his friends from school and makes the goddamned movie.

FUNNY HA-HA is a perfect example of personal, from-the-gut filmmaking. It was made on the cheap with non-actors, including Bujalski himself as Mitchell, the moonyeyed nerd who earns your love with his earnestness and honesy and vulnerability in the face of a beautiful woman. Kate Dollenmayer as Marnie is beautiful, not in an overprocessed movie starlet way, but in a "damn, the more I see of her, the more I love her" way. She impresses you because she isn't trying to impress you at all, and too few actresses are allowed to do that in movies and television because they are supposed to represent something more intense or flavorful than the rest of us, instead of representing plain old us.

The movie starts out slow and still and kind of precious and you get the terrible sinking feeling of Indie Movie, Pretentious Shit, Your Thoughts Aren't As Interesting or Unique as You Think They Are (IMPSYTAAIUYTTA). But hold your indie horses (they dye their manes the color of quirkiness!). Let Marnie's seemingly uneventful life wander ahead of you, and follow it like a kid sister. You'll find moments of honesty and embarrassment and courage in this movie that are so true you want to sqry (squirm and cry), but also call your best friend and reminisce about when you were stupid together.

Especially if you vividly remember the confusing and awkward years of your early twenties and are thrilled that this movie so accurately recorded the feeling.

Sorry, Douglas Coupland, this movie Generation X'd you ten years later. It's less, oh, Canadian. I kid because I love.

One more note: this film is very similar in tone and feel to AMERICAN JOB and other Chris Smith films. Modest filmmakers making sneakily powerful movies about regular people that nobody else cares about.

You are the shit, Bujalski!

"Touching the Void", book by Joe Simpson, movie dir by Kevin Macdonald

You can't make a movie out of this story, it's a ridiculous idea; watching one guy struggle to drag a broken leg down a Peruvian mountain? THAT'S entertainment. Why not have him give soliloquies along the way? Be sure to fill it with plenty of death-themed musical numbers, like maybe just cut in that last stairway dance number from "Sid and Nancy". (I still hear Chloe Webb shouting "SID!" in my nightmares, by the way.)

Joe Simpson's telling of the Rope Cut Heard 'Round the World is enough to make you vomit with fear and wonder and your own goddamned cowardice. It's like reading about infinite space and your complete insignificance in the massive void, and yet being reminded that your only acceptable response to this circumstances is to not die for as long as you can manage. Your reward at the end of all that struggle? Death.

Simpson quite rudely turned down the chance to die dozens of times during the course of his appallingly lonely journey down a mountain, through a crevasse, up and over the worst scree possible for a man in his condition (hungry, thirsty, wracked with pain, one-legged). His traveling companions should have left their base camp by the time he got there, they should've been unable to hear his cries for help, and yet. And still his journey wasn't over -- returning from the dead is a disturbing thing to do, after all, a bit of an imposition on even your closest friends. He still had to be bounced back to civilization on the back of a mule, ignored in a Peruvian hospital, and assured by his home doctors that he'd never again walk correctly. Somehow, he survived, did not go crazy, and did walk and climb again.

So he got to tell his own story, again, in the movie. Macdonald solved the dilemma of how to film this movie by hiring actors to recreate the action and having Simpson and Simon Yates narrate their story in intercut interviews. The result is spellbinding and sad and awful and even funny in the "cosmic joke" sense. It reminded me of "King Lear"; the gods "kill us for their sport".

I was astonished by this movie. I read the book afterwards and was shaken up by Simpson's story in ways I still haven't resolved.

And then there's this: watch the making of feature on the DVD. I think artists, especially movie directors, have to have a streak of terrible cruelty in them in order to do great work. Watch as Macdonald drags Simpson and Yates back to the scene of this awful tragedy, which became not a tragedy, sort of, but somehow an even worse one because of the painfully unresolved feelings of guilt and betrayal and blame and fear and, over it all, loneliness of a type we mostly can't admit to ourselves. Watch as he takes Simpson to the places of his worst nightmares, dresses him in facsimilies of his own former climbing clothes, and makes him reenact dragging himself down the mountain to use in long shots in the movie. And then comes the best part -- he makes him do it AGAIN. And AGAIN, despite the fact that Simpson's face registers pure horror. Whatever it takes to make the movie, right, Macdonald? Right. Watch Simpson and Yates' faces as they see this place again and try to talk casually about it. Watch as they confront boogeymen they'd buried under the bed long ago. Do you feel dirty yet?

Watch as Lear cradles the body of Cordelia.

"Midnight Cowboy" (1969)

For many years I confused this movie with "Midnight Express", and I just didn't want to watch a movie about prison and drugs. I couldn't figure out why Jon Voight was dressed like a cowboy on the poster, like no wonder he got caught in Turkey and thrown in jail! He made such an Ugly American spectacle of himself!

But Jon Voight just wanted to be your big-hatted gigolo. "Midnight Cowboy" is funny and sad and oddly sweet and it did something wonderful for me: it made me root for a guy to fulfill his dream of becoming a male prostitute. In that sense, it made my world bigger, didn't it, because it made me sympathize with someone I would normally be quick to judge.

It seemed like a reasonable dream, really. Worse men than him (Federline) have succeeded in this profession, I'm sure (the second-oldest profession? Third?). He was tall, good-looking, kind of doltish and sweet. What's the problem? I think those stuck-up New York ladies were the problem. Just pay the guy to have sex with you for god's sake! Cut his a break?

Maybe it was his being blonde -- it's unusual enough to be a blonde man that I think people subconsciously hold it against them. Brad Pitt is merely the exception that proves the rule.

The actors are pitch perfect, of course, and it turns out to be a story about true love. I believe too many people are terribly lonely at heart, secretly terrified of dying unloved, and this crazy fable illustrates that it needn't be that way.

This movie features one those perfect movie moments I love so much: Joe and Ratso are on the outs. Ratso's in a diner, hunched miserably over a cup of coffee. Lonely Joe wanders by the window and catches sight of Ratso. They both light up with delight and start to wave at each other before they suddenly realize they aren't talking. They freeze, look away, and Joe walks on. I'm embarrassed to say how many times I've been caught in that conundrum of love and hate.

"My Favorite Brunette" (1947)

This is one of my favorite movies; it never fails to make me laugh, and it perfectly parodies hardboiled detective stories like "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep". Bob Hope plays an uncool baby photographer who gets mistaken for his neighbor, a very cool detective, and gets drawn into a case of murder! Dorothy Lamour plays the beautiful straight man pretty much perfectly.

Hope's...no. Bob's? That doesn't seem right. Mr. Hope's? Let's say Bob Hope's...genius is on full display here: his perfect timing, his big-framed gracefulness, his funhouse good looks that make him appealing but approachable. I think this is one of the best, most graceful comedic performances in movie history (and that's a short list, because it's the hardest thing to pull off. Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, and...you're done). It's just funny, yo.

Peter Lorre portrays the Peter Lorre character with excellent comedic chops, and Lon Chaney Jr does the same with the Lon Chaney Jr role. They are a delight to watch.

This movie also features one of those precise movie moments that captures my fancy all out of proportion to its importance. I then try to explain these exquisite moments to other people and just come off sounding like an idiot desperate to join in the fun, like the person who gets all wound up to tell you this awesome joke and then the joke bombs.

But here it is: Bob Hope is running from the bad guys, and he runs up to an apartment building and rings all of the bells on the security intercom thingie in order to be let in. As he hits each button, he says, "Hi, honey, I'm home", for every button, ring it and, "Hi, honey, I'm home". And it totally works! These delighted female voices come out of the intercom murmuring things like, "Bill! I knew you'd come!", "Is that you, Dan?" But the bad guys are coming too quickly, so Bob Hope has to run off around the side of the building while the women keep cooing into the intercom and hitting their door-opening buttons.

That, to me, is hilarious.

Fuck! Told you these stories never work out! See the movie anyway; it's a gem.

"Spellbound" (2002), dir by Jeff Blitz

Who wants to watch a movie about a spelling bee? I do.

I got to go to a super-secret-special screening of this for a reason I can't even remember now. Ok, the screening wasn't secret. And it couldn't have been that special if I was there. And there were only about ten or twelve other people in the little screening room on some movie lot that, again, I can't even remember the name of. Did I dream this whole thing?

I went because it was free and I like documentaries. I picked up a promo packet and learned to my delight that it was directed by a fellow graduate of the Johns Hopkins University. I know Jeff Blitz zero percent, but I was so surprised to come across a Hopkins grad that I was instantly rooting for the movie.

Sure, it's about the National Spelling Bee and the crazy amount of studying these kids do to get to the finals, and about the slightly kooky personalities of the kids themselves (because you have to be kooky to be a schoolkid and be drawn to something difficult and nerve-wracking that does not involve varsity letters or performances of "The Music Man"). And yes the kids are endearing and compelling and all that, as is anyone who is passionately engaged in a quest.

But it turns out that this movie is really about families, especially the families that make up our mongrel nation of immigrants, and about the types of people who strive for greatness even if they don't know why they're doing it, and most of all about the heart-breaking amount of hope and love parents put into their kids, and the utter obliviousness of the kids to the depth of that hope. I've never seen a movie that illustrated the parental bond so clearly and sensitively without being cloying or sentimental or fake. The subjects of this film didn't know to create themselves or represent themselves for the cameras because they thought they were just talking about words.

One of the spellers comes from a small Pennsylvania town much like the ones I grew up around, and her parents are the kind of Pennsylvanians I know so well: modest and self-deprecating to the point of expressing disappointment in who they are and what they’ve made of their lives. They know how special their daughter is, but they don’t know how special they are for the simple fact of loving her and being kind and for caring about what’s going on in her life. Their story says everything that Tuesdays with Morrie tried to say about the meaning of life.

By the climax of the movie, my heart was pounding and I was literally perched forward on the edge of my seat. And all they were doing was spelling!