Muriels Sprint 2010- Part the First

For four years now, the lead-up to the Muriel Awards has caused me to look back at the films I watched in the past year. And with this looking back has come the invariable assessment of the movies I haven’t yet seen. Because of this, it has become an annual tradition for me to view as many eligible releases as possible throughout the month of January so as to leave as few stones unturned as possible before filling out my ballot. I’ve taken to calling it “The Muriels Sprint”- a full-on, month-long cinematic cram session.

And since I’m all about keeping you folks in the loop (the title of a movie I’ve already seen that probably won’t be watched again during the Muriels Sprint), I’ll be posting some thoughts on every Muriel-eligible movie I see over the next month. Nothing fancy, mind you- just a few sentences worth of review, along with a list of categories in which the movie could potentially contend. And since I’m going to be fairly busy with everything else in my life on top of the movies themselves, I reserve the right not to finish any movie that isn’t doing it for me. Generally, I’ll give it an hour before shutting it off, but this isn’t by any means a hard and fast rule, as you’ll see below.

Now, without further Apu…

Title: Up in the Air
Director: Jason Reitman
Potential nominations: Male Lead (George Clooney), Female Supporting (Anna Kendrick).
Notes: Since his debut four years ago with Thank You For Smoking, Jason Reitman has become Hollywood’s reigning king of “pretty good” movies, which are sturdily made and boast some fine acting, but don’t really make a very deep dent in my memory. Up in the Air is par for the course for him, although of the three he’s done it’s probably the best. Clooney gives a fine star turn as a guy who treasures his solitary, forever-on-the-go lifestyle, while Kendrick is predictably awesome as the young tyro he takes under his wing. Some timely plot points about our current economic conundrum have given some reviewers the impression that this is a Movie of Our Time, but it’s best enjoyed as a classy, star-driven character study. Demerits for a script that’s often distractingly on-the-nose, as well as a somewhat misguided revelation involving a fellow traveler played by Vera Farmiga (who’s also good here). Still, hard to hate a movie that contains a scene as good as the one between Clooney and J.K. Simmons. If this dominates the Oscars, you won’t hear me complain.
Rating (out of 10): 6.

Title: Humpday
Director: Lynn Shelton
Potential nominations: Best Film, Director (Shelton), Male Supporting (Joshua Leonard), Screenplay.
Notes: If nothing else, Humpday is fascinating in the way it affords audience members a glimpse at male bonding rituals as seen through the eyes of a woman. Had this been made by a male filmmaker, Ben and Andrew’s antics would no doubt have been portrayed as charmingly dunderheaded, a la Step Brothers. But because Shelton is under no obligation to defend the male gender, she portrays her quasi-heroes as the machismo-driven idiots they clearly are, unwilling to back down from the asinine challenge they’ve set for themselves. But in coming up with their particular challenge- namely, to film themselves having gay sex with each other (they’re both straight, by the way) for a local art-porn festival- Shelton is also to be commended for tackling some fruitful thematic territory. Not only does she hold up to scorn the male-infantilization culture that has become more prevalent in the last decade or so, but she also tackles the balls-before-brains “No Fear” undercurrent of this culture, while sending it careening smack-dab into the barely-buried homophobia that still afflicts many men (and women) today. Plus it’s really funny. Of course, your mileage may vary depending on how much of Ben and Andrew you can tolerate. But what can I say- I laughed.
Rating: 8.

Title: Adventureland
Director: Greg Mottola
Potential nominations: Male Supporting (Martin Starr), Ensemble Performance.
Notes: Comparisons with Dazed and Confused are a little excessive, but Adventureland is a little charmer all the same. Perhaps the best thing about the film is how lived-in its eighties-era setting is. Mottola never calls too much attention to the period in the that kitschy “I Love the 80s” way of most Hollywood movies set during the Members Only decade, but allows them to become a natural element of the story, as when the midway employees depair of having to listen to the Musik Express play “Rock Me Amadeus” for the 20th time that day. Likewise, I dug how the movie didn’t demonize its potentially villainous characters- even the married handyman (played by Ryan Reynolds) who’s having an affair with Kristen Stewart isn’t a flat-out bad guy (plus I love how his bit about jamming with Lou Reed pays off). Unfortunately, Mottola can’t resist throwing in some forced slapstick, such as the guy who repeatedly socks our hero (Jesse Eisenberg) in the balls, or the barn-door-broad characterizations of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. Still, when the movie concentrates on the realities of working a soul-sucking summer job, and the fun one can have with it when the boss isn’t looking, it’s pretty great. And Martin Starr is awesome, obviously.
Rating: 7.

Title: Thirst
Director: Chan-wook Park
Potential nominations: none.
Notes: With each passing movie, it becomes harder for me to push past Park’s ugly worldview. In Oldboy, the filmmaking was so kinetic that one barely had time to think about the subtext, but one of the biggest problems I had with Thirst was that the direction was so slack that I could hardly think of anything else. It’s not enough that the female lead be engaged to a man she can’t stand, but Park shows her as being groomed for the part from childhood, and dominated by her goonish fiancé and abusive mother-in-law-to-be. In addition, the dichotomy between protagonist Song Kang-ho’s good and evil sides (he’s a priest and healer, but he’s also a vampire who’s carrying on an affair with the betrothed heroine) is interesting up to a point, but Park really doesn’t do anything interesting with these opposing forces in his life. I wasn’t really digging it from the get-go, and I finally gave up about an hour or so in, during a hallucination in which the vampire priest humps away at his lover and the smiling body of one of his victims appears sandwiched between them. Man, classy AND subtle- Thirst has it all!
Rating: Not applicable.

Title: Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Potential nominations: none.
Notes: I have no doubt that first-time director Gervasi (longtime Anvil fan, one-time Anvil follower) was completely sincere in his desire to give the band he loves a documentary tribute. However, it’s sort of amazing how comfortably Anvil! fits the template that was laid down by This Is Spinal Tap a quarter-century ago. Of course, many of Anvil’s woes are similar to those faced by any number of bands who’ve gone on the road. But in scenes such as the one in which Anvil gets lost in the way to a gig (one band member’s girlfriend is the band’s manager, no less!), it undeniably feels like life imitating hilarious, hilarious art. Heck, it’s entirely possible that Gervasi’s goal was to invite the comparison (e.g. the scene in which Lips and Robb Reiner- the guy’s real name!- discuss their first song a la David and Nigel talking up “All the Way Home”), in order to show how sad the Spinal Tap arc is when applied to real life. But at the same time, it feels like Spinal Tap did all the groundwork for this, and all Gervasi had to do was to fill in the template with documentary footage. By the time the group performs at a heavy metal festival attended by literally hundreds of fans, I was half-awaiting the scene in which Anvil performs as the bottom half of a double with a puppet show. Not saying it’s fair, but I just couldn’t let go of the comparison. Maybe if I liked heavy metal more, or if the movie didn’t look like total ass, it might have been easier for me. Alas, it never quite happened. Still, diverting enough.
Rating: 5 out of 10.

Title: Avatar
Director: James Cameron
Potential nominations: Director, Screenplay (ha ha, just kidding).
Notes: In this blockbuster-driven age, movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars have become fairly commonplace. However, it’s rare to see one that so unmistakably displays its creator’s fingerprints. This is most obvious in the film’s somewhat conflicted portrayal of the military-industrial complex, a hallmark of the majority of Cameron’s films. On the one hand, Cameron has always been drawn to state of the art technology and weaponry- the bigger, the better. Yet this enthusiasm has always been tempered by a mistrust of gung-ho militarism run amok, most apparent here in Stephen Lang’s Marine officer, who’s just aching for a reason to mow down the forest-dwelling Na’vi in the name of deep-space Manifest Destiny.

Part of this comes from an undeniable love for the idea of Pure Science, here embodied by Sigourney Weaver and her team of scientists, whose quest to understand the Na’vi has led them to a devil’s bargain with both the Marines and a sniveling corporate scientist played by Giovanni Ribisi. Yet despite Cameron’s disdain for both of these mindsets (Marine and corporate), he can’t keep his impulses toward largesse in check, which leads to lingering shots of futuristic aircraft and cyborg-esque suits, both of which are used almost exclusively by the film’s baddies. But this seeming contradiction, troubling though it might be, only makes the film as a whole more fascinating, as Cameron is working through these conflicting urges with this story in a messy, compelling way, as compared to the rah-rah patriotic fetishism of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies.

As for the Na’vi themselves, they’re somewhat more simplistic, a group of forest-dwelling hunter/warriors inspired by Native Americans except, y’know, 12 feet tall and blue. And Cameron’s narrative debts to Dances With Wolves are already well-documented. Still, what the film lacks in narrative inspiration, it makes up for in pop spectacle. While it’s certainly true that the effects in Avatar aren’t as jaw-dropping as they might have been to an audience from a decade or so ago, they’re nonetheless leaps ahead of anything the big screen has seen. Much of the film is stunning on the pure eye-candy level, especially the shots of the Na’vi’s forest at night time (parts of which seem to be inspired by Jim Henson’s underappreciated TV special Song of the Cloud Forest). Whatever Avatar’s faults may be, visual wonderment is not one of them.
Rating: 7 out of 10.

Beg, borrow, and... okay, maybe not steal...

Most of you will recall that a few weeks ago I voiced my feelings about my need to be selective when playing catch-up with movies during Muriels voting season. But while I won’t even attempt to match the volume of movies I have in years past, I nonetheless have a number of glaring holes in my viewing for 2009, at least some of which I should probably patch up prior to filling out my ballot.

Naturally, there are a handful of movies that I’ll be able to catch on the big screen before the ballot is due at the end of January, some of which are currently occupying theatres nationwide. Chief of among these is Avatar, which even if it doesn’t pose a serious threat to my Muriels favorites, is the kind of pop-culture phenomenon which I really ought to see just to keep abreast of what the kids are up to nowadays (a la Titanic). Likewise, Up in the Air could be a contender- Jason Reitman is a fairly solid director, Clooney’s a reliable indicator of quality in movies that don’t involve goats, and it’ll be nice to see Anna Kendrick get a good role again. And if I get the chance to see The Road and even Precious (a movie I’ve more or less resigned myself to watching sooner or later), so be it.

Of course, the local distributors don’t simply stop opening movies in Columbus once the first of the year arrives. From now until the end of January, certain titles of interest will filter into local cinemas, beginning with the January 8 release of Bronson at the newly-revamped* Gateway Film Center. January 22 brings a pair of Best Actor contenders (on top of Bronson’s allegedly revelatory Tom Hardy) to the Drexel: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, and Colin Firth in A Single Man. And even if the critics haven’t been kind, as a long-standing fan of Peter Jackson I feel compelled to check out The Lovely Bones when it drops here mid-month.

But as any non-pro critic and awards voter can attest, a great deal of awards-season catching-up is done not in theatres but on DVD. I’ve kicked my Netflix membership up a few notches for the occasion, in the hopes of squeezing in some interesting “smaller” titles that skipped local venues. Of particular interest are a pair of movies featuring comedians in somewhat darker roles- Patton Oswalt in the blue-collar football-obsessive tale Big Fan, and Robin Williams in Bobcat Goldthwait’s allegedly acerbic comedy World’s Greatest Dad. Likewise, Spike Lee’s Passing Strange may be little more than a filmed stage production, but with Lee’s name attached that’s enough for me. However, I’m also looking forward to catching up with a handful of titles that I somehow overlooked in local release. The one that sticks out for me is Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, which has been riding a crest of great buzz since Sundance. Also of interest: Greg Mottola’s 80s-era comedy Adventureland, Sam Rockwell in Moon, and the crowd-pleasing heavy metal doc with the incredibly redundant name, Anvil!: The Story of Anvil.

But unfortunately, some of the most egregious holes in my viewing have yet to get a DVD release. Because of this, I’m trying to chase down screeners of them in time for them to make the ballot. Of the titles that I still need to see, these are my top 10:

1. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis) – this one particularly hurts, since it played a few days at the Wex in October, but the only screening I could have possibly made coincided with the local beggar’s night. And I couldn’t in good conscience miss out on spending time with my son for Halloween. Do I regret this decision? Heck no. I guess it’s just annoying that I live in a city that tries to act like a teeming metropolis, but can only manage two nights for a critically feted new release from one of world cinema’s most celebrated filmmakers. I mean, I love the Wexner Center, but some of those limited engagements can be difficult for those of us with lives to catch. Anyway, I see that this is coming to the Gateway sometime in the future, but no firm date is set on the site, and I really don’t want to take a chance on not seeing this prior to voting.

2. Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda) – Kore-eda’s a favorite of mine, and I’ve heard great things about this, the only movie in the Movie Nerd Top 10 of 2009 which I have yet to see. I noticed that this is streaming on Netflix, but I’m not sure my crappy computer is up to the task.

3. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke) – I mean, come on. Besides, even if it does suck, chances are that the black and white cinematography should be gorgeous.

4. Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo) – Honger goes to Paris. Based on that pitch alone, it sounds like it’s right up my alley.

5. Afterschool (Antonio Campos) – D’Angelo has been raving about this one since NYFF last year, and I’m sort of sick of being out of the loop.

6. Black Dynamite (Scott Sanders) – This one played locally as well, but I have a pretty good excuse for missing this one, since it had a whole four showings, all of them at 11 PM. Still, felt bad missing what was supposedly an awesome blaxploitation homage.

7. Home (Ursula Meier) – Because no awards ballot of mine is complete without at least one nomination for Isabelle Huppert.

8-10. Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar), My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Werner Herzog), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam) – Three reliable directors. Mixed buzz on their latest works, but I’m curious all the same.

Honorable mention: Bright Star (Jane Campion), La Danse: Paris Opera Ballet (Frederick Wiseman), House of the Devil (Ti West), Mammoth (Lukas Moodysson), Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu), Red Cliff (John Woo), Ricky (François Ozon), Storm (Hans-Christian Schmid), Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa).

So how will I manage to see these? This, friends, is where you come in. If you know of somewhere I might procure a screener of any of the above titles, let me know in the comments section or shoot me an e-Mail. Really, any help you can give will be greatly appreciated, and I’d be happy to reimburse you for shipping. Besides, the Muriels get more interesting when the voters see more diverse movies. And as much as I dig The Hurt Locker, it’s time to give another movie a chance to win, don’t you think?

* The Gateway (which began its life as a Drexel before becoming a Landmark) recently acquired new management, and one of the first acts of the new regime was to strike a deal with the Film/Video department at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The deal basically entails that the Wex will program two of the Gateway’s screens per week with arthouse fare. This is, of course, good news for those of us who have been decrying the often-paltry selection of non-Hollywood fare in Central Ohio, as well of those of us who love the Wex but can’t always make it on Friday and Saturday nights. This new arrangement should prove ideal both for titles that would otherwise skip Columbus (e.g. The Girlfriend Experience, Julia, most of the above list), plus movies that prove to be audience favorites in their limited Wex runs. Also, being able to get the Members’ discount for Gateway screenings will be awesome.

Bad Orson

"In many ways, Lt. Terence McDonagh represents the ultimate Cage performance, full of unorthodox acting choices that work beautifully. Cage goes over the top all right, but it never feels like he’s simply hamming it up for the hell of it. Everything works in the context of the character, from his repeated dialogue quirks (dig his disbelieving chuckle whenever he mentions the henchman “G”) to the character’s outlandish behavior. It would be sort of unbearable if Cage appeared to be breaking a sweat, but he inhabits the character so fully that he seems completely in control even in the character's craziest moments."

Click here for the full review.

"It’s become something of an awards-season cliché that actors are bound to get plenty of hype for playing famous people. Frankly, I’ve gotten a little tired of it- yeah, I suppose it’s neat to see, for example, Jaime Foxx playing Ray Charles, but once the initial charge wears off, the idea of one celebrity playing another feels like a thespian parlor trick designed to grab the attention of Oscar voters. However, Christian McKay’s justifiably feted turn as the late Mr. Welles is an exception- a full-blooded creation that transcends the requisite mimicry. McKay’s work is spellbinding, and his Welles is the rare interpretation of a historical figure that would be just as compelling a character had he not existed in real life."

Click here for the full review.

Tidings for Muriels Season

With awards season fast approaching, it’s now time to begin what has become an annual tradition for me- Muriels cramming. Having a limited amount of free time at my disposal throughout the year, I tend to find that there’s a decent-sized list of movies remaining come December that I feel compelled to watch before filling out my Muriels ballot. But while in the past I’ve felt a certain duty to take in anything that seems to be remotely in contention for awards, this year I’m getting a little weary of the process.

I suppose this feeling began last Friday, when I watched one of this year’s prime bits of Oscar bait, Lone Scherfig’s An Education. Here is a movie that has all the right ingredients to be a major awards-season player- a star-making turn from Carey Mulligan, a classy (mostly English!) supporting cast, and handsome production values, in the service of an adaptation of an acclaimed memoir, thereby carrying the attendant “based on a true story” cachet. It’s all so perfect- perfectly produced, perfectly performed, perfectly dull. There’s nothing in An Education to jolt the stereotypical arthouse crowd out of their collective comfort zone, but also nothing to make it memorable aside from Mulligan. If An Education makes a star of its leading lady, I certainly won’t complain, but one luminous performer doesn’t a worthy movie make. Compare it to a hard-edged movie like this year’s Julia, which features Tilda Swinton’s career-best work, and you see the difference between a film that uses its star turn as a crutch and one that actually makes it the foundation upon which everything else is built.

In years past, the idea that I would be with skipping a potentially “important” awards contender would have been surprising to me. But then, I had more time to watch movies back in the day. Nowadays, my movie-watching time has decreased significantly, so I have to make the most of it. So rather than sitting through anything that might have even the slightest chance of contending for my end-of-year honors, I’m forced to get more selective. With this in mind, I’ve come up with some rules of thumb I intend to observe this Muriels season, in the hope they’ll help me sift through the dross:

1. If I don’t think I’ll like something, I probably won’t.

In every cinephile, there exists a certain amount of hope that the movies we see will surprise us. But realistically speaking, this doesn’t happen very often. I’ve seen plenty of movies in my time, and this has shown me where my tastes lie as a moviegoer. Consequently, I’ve learned to trust my instincts when choosing what I’ll see. If I want to see something, I’ll find a reason to see it. If I don’t, I most likely won’t. And if I’m not sure, I’ll wait for the reviews. Of course, this method isn’t foolproof, but it works as well as any other I’ve found.

With the proliferation of movie blogs both professional and amateur, the amount of criticism (both positive and negative) can be overwhelming. Thus, trusting my own tastes has allowed me to eliminate the critical noise while making my decisions. The best recent example I can think of is the new movie Precious. By all accounts, this is one of this year’s Oscar juggernauts. But I’m just not interested. When I first read about it in this year’s Sundance coverage, it didn’t sound especially promising, and in spite of everything I’ve heard since then, it just doesn’t seem like my kind of thing.

As a fan of Charles Burnett and Spike Lee, I can assure you that I’ve never shied away from onscreen depictions of the lower-class African-American milieu. No, my lack of interest in Precious stems from my longstanding aversion to victimization stories. As doormats go, the title character in Precious is a doozy- poor, grossly obese, illiterate, raped (and impregnated) by her now-absent father, and perpetually abused by her mother. Factor in a mentally-handicapped baby and a terminal illness (what, no cute puppy?) and you’ve got a movie that practically dares you not to pity its protagonist and be uplifted by her eventual victories. Problem is, by encouraging pity from the audience rather than active sympathy, movies like this tend to reduce their pathetic protagonists into Others, comforting viewers with the idea that, hey, at least they don’t have it that bad. Or as Band Aid so memorably put it in that incredibly patronizing holiday mainstay “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” “be glad it’s them instead of you.”

Honestly, I hope I’m wrong about Precious. If nothing else, the film’s fans are legion- hundreds of mainstream critics are falling over themselves with praise, and it’s become this fall’s Little Indie That Could, with major players like Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry in its corner. However, I’ve spoken with a number of people I trust who have seen Precious, and nothing they’ve told me so far has changed my initial mind about the film. Additionally, in a certain movie nerd poll (in which I’m a voter), Precious is currently ranked at a meager #104 among this year’s releases, well below such acclaimed titles as Monsters vs. Aliens, I Love You, Man, and Crank 2: High Voltage (that movie is awesome, by the way). I hate to get all J. Ro on my readers, but until someone can give me a compelling reason why I owe it to myself to see Precious, I think I’ll just give it a pass. At least, until it cleans up at the Oscars. Speaking of which…

2. Just because a movie is designed to win a raft of Oscars, that doesn’t make it good.

I’ve been following the Academy Awards for well over a decade, and if I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that not all Oscar contenders are created equal. Some movies that capture the fancy of the AMPAS voting body are legitimately great films, whether they’re works of epic filmmaking ambition or wonderfully crafted entertainments. But others are seemingly deemed Oscar-worthy less for their quality than by virtue of their ability to hit the voters’ sweet spots. When people talk about “Oscar-bait,” they’re referring to the latter. And over the past few decades, no one has been more skillful at making Oscar-bait than the Weinstein brothers.

At the peak of the Miramax empire in the late nineties, Harvey Weinstein (and to a lesser extent, his brother Bob) perfected the technique for crafting ready-made Academy attention-grabbers. Start with an acclaimed literary property or a red-hot script, pack it full of Serious Actors (no lightweight movie stars will do), and hand it off to a trusty in-house director like John Madden or Lasse Hallstrom. Then make sure the production values are impeccable, and once production’s over, sell the product film as aggressively as possible. This proved to be extremely successful, with Miramax garnering Oscars for a sweeping epic (The English Patient), a frothy period rom-com (Shakespeare in Love), and a hyperkinetic musical (Chicago).

Ever since they parted ways with Miramax four years ago, the Weinstein brothers have had some trouble finding their old groove. But this fall’s Nine has all the earmarks of a classic Harvey Special. There are no fewer than six (SIX!) Oscar-winning actors in the cast, and the direction is by Chicago’s Rob Marshall, who has brought back most of his Oscar-winning below-the-line team. In other words, after his baity The Reader got beaten by Slumdog Millionaire last year, Harvey’s leaving nothing to chance.

Sorry, but I’m not buying. For one thing, I’m a little sick of the prestige-ification of the musical genre in recent years. Musicals have their roots in light entertainment, but in their attempts to create the next Chicago, studios have turned a genre once categorized by light-footed entertainments into bloated, plodding affairs that are puffed up with self-importance and art-directed to death. Frankly, I could do without the stunt casting of big-name stars in these movies, as if the fact that Richard Gere and Helena Bonham Carter aren’t full-time singers somehow excuses subpar crooning (I say this as a fan of Sweeney Todd, by the way). And while I’m certainly not averse to serious musicals, it’s one thing for a musical to tackle heavy material, and quite another for one to feel heavy due to its sheer relentlessness.

But what I resent even more is how calculated Nine feels, from its conception on down. While I’ve learned to distinguish good Oscar movies from bad ones, there’s still a significant percentage of moviegoers who still equates Oscar success with quality. But a gifted cast and an impeccable technical pedigree isn’t enough to make for a movie that’s worth watching. It’s not that Rob Marshall is a bad director- he’s a moderately-talented company man who pulls off Harvey’s goals with a minimum of fuss- but there’s no vision there. In fact, I dare say that the only vision dancing in the heads of Marshall and the Weinsteins involves a mantelpiece full of little golden statues.

3. I simply can’t see everything.

One of the first lessons that I learned in Microeconomics was the concept of utility- the idea that, given a limited amount of money, time, or other resources, the logical person will choose the option that brings him the greatest relative pleasure or gain. To apply this idea to moviewatching, if I only have time to see a handful of movies per week, I’ll most likely go with the ones I think I’ll enjoy the most. Of course, there are other factors in my decision, including the location where it’s playing and how long it’s running. But generally, I’d say the idea of utility is applicable to my moviegoing habits.

Living in Columbus is something of a double-edged sword when it comes to my viewing choices. On the one hand, I have something of a limited slate from which to choose- limited releases make it here weeks if not months after they bow in NYC, if at all, and there are weeks where there’s next to nothing that interests me. On the other hand, I rarely find myself in a position where I’m unable to see every theatrical release I want to see. Generally, I’m able to catch up with every local release that strikes my fancy.

The exception to this rule is at the end of the year. Suddenly, after withholding them for most of the year, the Hollywood studios dump the majority of their alleged heavy hitters in November and December, all in an attempt to snag some Oscar glory (truth be told, I see that game plan backfiring this year, when voters find themselves with ten Best Picture slots to fill, but that’s neither here nor there). For someone in my position- having a life, in short- I only have time to see two or three movies per week at most, and if the number of movies that I’m curious about is greater than the number I have time to see, something has to fall by the wayside. Whereas I might have had time for these movies earlier in the year, by the time December rolls around, something, as they say, has gotta give.

Naturally, there will always be directors whose films I make a priority to see. I’ll always line up for new releases by Rivette, Malick, the Dardenne brothers, P.T. Anderson, Von Trier, DePalma, Desplechin, and the guys at Pixar, to name a few. But while I have an undeniable sentimental attachment to these directors, I also recognize that they’re good bets, and even if they don’t hit a home run every time they’re at the plate, their batting averages are pretty darn high . Among high-profile films coming out later this month, I’m pumped for the Werner Herzog/Nicolas Cage Bad Lieutenant sequel/spinoff/thingamajig, because duh. Also, I’ll certainly make time for Avatar and The Lovely Bones, since for all their flaws, James Cameron and Peter Jackson are two of the only big-ticket filmmakers in Hollywood who consistently imbue their big-budget productions with real vision and grandeur.

Clint Eastwood? Not so much. Although I’ve loved some of Eastwood’s films- Unforgiven especially- I wouldn’t consider myself to be an unconditional fan by any means. His films tend to have a workmanlike quality, and the good ones succeed primarily because they tell good stories. Simply put, the story for Invictus doesn’t really grab me. Those who’ve followed the blog for any length of time know that I’m not especially keen on the biopic genre, but of all the contemporary figures whose lives demand the biopic treatment, Mandela has to be near the top. So you’ve got a story about Nelson Mandela, complete with the casting of Morgan Freeman as Mandela (the great man’s choice, might I add!), and the best you can do is to put him in an underdog sports saga? Are you frickin’ kidding me?

Not even the presence of Freeman and Damon, two of Hollywood’s finest actors, makes me all that curious to see this. For my money, Freeman has too many Dreamcatchers and Bruce Almightys on his résumé to be a sure thing, and Damon is much more interesting when he’s playing screwballs than heroes (as in this year’s The Informant!). And I’m a little weary of Eastwood’s elder-statesman phase, with every story he tells getting bogged down with shadows and foreboding. Just once, I’d like to see Clint cut loose again behind the camera, make something just for entertainment’s sake (another Space Cowboys, perhaps?). It might not get any Oscar nominations, but it should at least be fun.

A few days ago, I received an e-Mail from a prospective Muriels voter, asking me whether he needed to worry about seeing all of the big awards-season releases before filling out his ballot. I told him that wasn’t necessary, and I suppose that this post is my way of telling the rest of you as well. To me, the Muriels have always been about recognizing the achievements from the past year that inflame our passion about cinema. And I’ve always found that nothing dampers my cinematic passion more than watching a movie out of duty rather than legitimate desire or curiosity. The Muriels have never attempted to be the Oscars, or even to follow them. If our tastes are different, well, that’s what makes life interesting, isn’t it?

"A crying woman is a scheming woman."

One of the challenges of reviewing a movie as visceral as Antichrist is that it’s difficult to see past the initial impact to the headier stuff on display. I saw Antichrist for the first time on Friday night, and since then I’ve been turning it over in my head, trying to puzzle out what Von Trier is doing with the film. However, my more immediate reaction to it was closer to stunned silence at the sheer force of the filmmaking and the often-shocking imagery. Make no mistake- Antichrist hits, and hits hard.

Click here for the complete review.

Accounting for Myself

Ever since Nerve dropped Screengrab like the proverbial bad habit this past May, I’ve struggled to continue my once-impressive output. Part of the reason for that is financial- I was getting paid for it before, and now that I’m working strictly pro bono it becomes that much harder to write for free than it was in the past. Consequently, it’s simply easier to occupy my time with other pursuits. As you know, I moved in with Angela and the Offspring this summer, and it’s been everything I’d hoped for. Not always easy, of course, but I’m certainly not having second thoughts about the decision.

In addition to the new demands of live-in boyfriend-hood and quasi-fatherhood, I’ve also been busy with some other pursuits. In January, I started taking college courses part-time, in the evenings and on weekends. I earned my B.A. back in 2001, but I have yet to do anything in my major field of study (Humanities, so duh), and now that I’ve got more financial responsibilities on my plate than I had before, I figured that it was time to go back to school to study something I can actually make a little money doing. So I’m studying Accounting, with the goal of becoming a CPA.

I hinted at this decision back in February when I resigned my post as head honcho of the Muriels- though I’m staying on in a consigliere-esque role- but I’ve kept mum on the details until now since I didn’t want to mention it until I was sure that I could actually handle it. It was a struggle at first, but I’ve been working hard and have gotten good grades to show for it, and it looks like I’ll be seeing this thing through to the end.

Since returning to school, I always hoped that I might be able to find time to keep the blog going as I once did, but seeing as how I’ve written only a handful of reviews since Screengrab folded, it looks like that isn’t going to happen. But in the interest of giving my fans some thoughts on the movies I’ve been seeing, I recently settled upon a solution- micro-reviews. That’s right- all of the 2009 releases I’ve seen will be compacted, processed, and packaged into an easily digestible ten-word format for your reading pleasure and critical enlightenment. In some cases, I’d like to think I captured the essence of these movies- or my feelings about them, anyway- with haiku-like precision. However, in others I couldn’t resist the urge to get a little silly.

Anyway, hope you enjoy. In a handful of instances, I've linked to longer piecesI've written about the films, or work by others that dovetails nicely with my own opinions. See if you can find them all!

In kinda-sorta-alphabetical order:

17 Again (Steers)- Remember, kids- follow your dreams, or you’ll become Matthew Perry. [5]

24 City (Jia)- Sorry, Jia fanboys. He doesn’t excite me. Maybe next time… [6]

500 Days of Summer (Webb)- Half insightful relationship tale, half cutesy bullshit. Good enough for me. [6]

Adoration (Egoyan)- Second-tier Egoyan, but in his classic style. I’m down. [6]

Angels and Demons (Howard)- Outpaces Da Vinci by embracing its ridiculousness. Still not great. [5]

Away We Go (Mendes)- Genuine emotion can’t overcome condescending script. Schneider almost saves it. [5]

The Beaches of Agnes (Varda)- A doodle, but by now I’d say she’s entitled. [6]

The Brothers Bloom (Johnson)- RJ’s ear for patois impeccable in Lesteresque romp with soul. [8]

Brüno (Charles)- Sometimes funny, occasionally probing, but man, the gag’s wearing thin. [5]

Capitalism: A Love Story (Moore)- See Brüno mini-review, only even more so. [5]

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (Lord/Miller)- Hilarious with a chance of charming. Animated Mr. T FTW. [7]

Coraline (Selick)- Selick finds his way again. Dark stop-motion eye candy. [7]

Crank 2: High Voltage (Neveldine/Taylor)- “Statham makes England look ****ing awesome” ~ ZMF. In this, anyway. [7]

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (Zemeckis)- Zemeckis’ best motion-capture epic thusfar. Decidedly not for kids. [7]

District 9 (Blomkamp)- Imperfect, but miles better than a Halo movie would’ve been. [6]

Drag Me to Hell (Raimi)- Will stop at nothing to entertain you. I wholeheartedly approve. [7]

Duplicity (Gilroy)- Trouble in Paradise for cynical times. Stellar turns all around. [8]

Extract (Judge)- Kind of a lazy, downmarket SERIOUS MAN. Lacks flavor (sorry). [4]

Fados (Saura)- One to let wash over you. Click for review. [7]

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson)- Just what you’d expect, but in the best sense. Hotbox! [9]

Funny People (Apatow)- Inconsistent, sometimes insightful. Still not taken with Serious Adam Sandler. Click for review. [5]

G-Force (Yeatman)- Muriel, Victoria & Charlotte could whup these CGI cavies’ asses. [4]

The Girlfriend Experience (Soderbergh) I’d hate to meet this dude in a dark alley. [6]

Gomorrah (Garrone)- Well-made, but eventually I just stopped giving a shit. [6]

Goodbye Solo (Bahrani)- Low-key friendship story mostly avoids cliché. Red West supercool. [7]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Yates)- Mostly setup, thus kinda unsatisfying. #7 shows real potential though. [5]

The Headless Woman (Martel)- Fascinating enigma warrants second view, along with other Martel films. [7]

Hotel for Dogs (Freudenthal)- Clumsy, almost painfully square, but sunny and awfully good-natured. Click for review. [5]

Hunger (McQueen)- Less artsy stunt that I’d feared. Double-feature with Papillon. [7]

The Hurt Locker (Bigelow)- Only Beckham stuff holds this back from being a 10. [9]

In the Loop (Iannucci)- Deliciously salty as a big bag of pretzels. Cast awesome. [7]

The Informant! (Soderbergh)- “Man, I’d be invisible if it wasn’t for that thing.” [7]

Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino)- Watch first to marvel, then to relish. “It’s a bingo!!” [9]

Inkheart (Softley)- Decent family adventure, full of eminent thesps clearly enjoying themselves. [5]

Julia (Zonca)- Muriel FYC: Tilda Swinton. “Are ya shot?” Brilliant stuff. [8]

Land of the Lost (Silberling)- Obviously crap, but it’s so gleefully silly I hardly cared. [6]

The Limits of Control (Jarmusch)- Artsy slog, or poker-faced self-parody? Jarmusch ain’t telling. [6]

Lorna’s Silence (Dardenne bros.)- Dardennes: best bet in world cinema? They’re surely up there. Click for review. [9]

Monsters vs. Aliens (Letterman/Vernon)- Harmless, fairly amusing. Will inevitably see this a million times. [5]

Observe and Report (Hill)- Misanthropy curdles into sheer ugliness. Good thing it’s really funny. [7]

Paranormal Activity (Peli)- No Blair Witch, but effective LoFi horror all the same. [6]

Ponyo (Miyazaki)- Gorgeous, younger-skewing than most Miyazaki. Shame about the song. [7]

Public Enemies (Mann)- Solid, but please, Michael Mann- go back to film already. [6]

Revanche (Spielmann)- Trades action thrills for laser-like focus. Chop that log! [7]

A Serious Man (Coen bros.)- Compelling pieces, frustrating whole. Listless doormat protagonist. Coen naysayers right? [5]

Star Trek (Abrams)- My eyes are still reeling from the bright white bridge. Click for review. [6]

Sugar (Fleck/Boden)- More on its mind than baseball, usually to its benefit. [6]

Summer Hours (Assayas)- What he said re: Toy Story 2. Weep for furniture. [8]

Taking Woodstock (Lee)- Staunton’s arc made me want to punch something. Otherwise forgettable forgotten. [4]

Tetro (Coppola)- Operatic emotions, gorgeous style smooth over Freudian narrative. More, please. [8]

Three Monkeys (Ceylan)- All this ugliness gets stifling. NBC, you can do better. [5]

Tony Manero (Larrain)- Galling study of human train wreck, with Pinochet-era implications. [6]

Treeless Mountain (Kim)- Decent story of childhood hardship takes off in final third. [6]

Tulpan (Dvortsevoy)- Ethnographically awesome, otherwise pretty okay. So that’s a yurt. [6]

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Weitz)- Beats Twilight, that’s for sure. At least Weitz can direct. [5]

Two Lovers (Gray)- White Nights storyline still works. Come back, awesome actor Joaquin. [8]

Tyson (Toback)- Less enlightening than Toback seems to think it is. Pity. [5]

Up (Docter)- Still the filet of 2009. Cried at beginning, fer chrissakes. Click for review. [10]

Watchmen (Snyder)- “Meh” isn’t the emotion a Watchmen movie should warrant. Click for review. [5]

Whatever Works (Allen)- Allen/David pairing somehow not awesome. Wait- late Woody. Nevermind. [5]

Where the Wild Things Are (Jonze)- Bracing anarchy gives way to emo fuzzies. What gives, Spike? [6]

You, the Living (Andersson)- A Songs coda, but why complain? Andersson’s images still spectacular. [8]

Zombieland (Flesicher)- Prefab cult hit gets the job done. Guest cameo kills. [6]

Also, I’ll be maintaining a running tally of all the 2009 releases I’ve seen. The link can be found in the sidebar. On this page you’ll also see a list of movies which, for whatever reason, I haven’t managed to see yet. Some of them are still in theatres, others on DVD, and still others haven’t found their way to Central Ohio just yet. If you can hook me up with some of the harder-to-find titles, I’d be eternally grateful, so feel free to drop me a line.

Oh, and by the way- Famous Last Words kicks off again in January. So stick around a while, will ya?

The only new Thanksgiving recipe you'll need this year

With Thanksgiving coming up, it’s easy to get excited for all of the traditional foods of the season. Naturally, everyone is anticipating the old favorites- dressing, gravy, (s)mashed potatoes, Tofurkey, and the like. But let’s not overlook that classic creation, everyone’s favorite gun-metal grey veggie-centric delicacy, green bean casserole. Of course, not everyone has been so blessed to have grown up on this savory treat. If that’s the case, you’re in luck. I hereby bequeath to you, my loyal readership, the world’s greatest recipe for Green Bean Casserole.

Paul’s Impossibly Easy Green Bean Casserole
Ingredients:
2 16 oz cans green beans, drained
2 16 oz cans cream of mushroom soup, not drained
1 can French-fried onions, also not drained

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Eat one can of green beans as quickly as possible.
3. Eat one can of mushroom soup as quickly as possible.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2.
5. Vomit contents of stomach into 9-by-12 casserole dish. Induce vomiting, if necessary, only by physical means, either by having a family member or friend administer the Heimlich maneuver or performing it on yourself using the back of a chair. Remember, catch as much as you can in casserole dish to avoid cleanup issues afterwards.
6. Sprinkle onions on top of beans-soup-stomach acid mixture.
7. Place casserole into oven until rancid odor permeates the house and overwhelms the appetizing smells of your other Thanksgiving fare. Remove from oven and serve to gullible guests.

As you can probably guess, I don’t care much for green bean casserole, or it will henceforth be referred to by me, “bean barf.” Of course, I realize that it’s one of those love/hate foods, and I know plenty of otherwise sensible people (including the lovely Angela) who are fans of the stuff. But I find it pretty disgusting, even when it’s made using more conventional methods than the ones I employ above.

Part of it is that the combination of tasty veggies and cream soup seems a fairly unholy alliance. If I’m in the mood for green beans, I want them as unadorned as possible, with some butter and occasionally a few slivers of almond. What I don’t want is for them to be drowning in a heavy cream soup, particularly not if said soup turns the beans from a vibrant green to a grey the color of volcanic ash. I suppose it doesn’t help that I discovered about ten years back that I’m allergic to mushrooms. But then again, my allergy does free me from the burden of having to ever eat bean barf, even out of politeness. The younger me, whose parents thankfully never made the stuff but who often found himself having to “take just a little bit” out of courtesy when visiting others, would be green- or grey, as the case may be- with envy.

So Happy Thanksgiving, everybody, and enjoy your bean barf. Or, if you’re like me, don’t.

Woohoo! New content!

I've been about half a dozen kinds of swamped lately, so I haven't been able to update the blog with new content. That's one of the reasons I've been re-posting the old Movie Moment columns here- the other being that they're difficult to find unless you explicity sniff around the web for them for a good amount of time. I'm sure most of you are enjoying a trip in the ol' Wayback Machine, but at the same time I'm guessing you're craving something brand-spankin'. And so, submitted for your approval, a freshly-penned review of one of my newly-anointed favorite films of 2008, 2009, or whatever year it belongs to, the Dardenne Brothers' The Silence of Lorna, or if you prefer, Lorna's Silence. Hope you like it.

Sometimes, even the greatest of artists can become the victims of sky-high expectations. Take the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, whose latest film Lorna's Silence, despite almost universally positive reviews, has been given a curiously muted reception. “Ho-hum,” many critics seem to be saying. “Another hardscrabble, socially-conscious bit of cinema vérité from the Dardennes.” That’s a shame, really- sure, it’s interesting to see when talented filmmakers tackle many different genres and styles (it’s why Soderbergh is fun to watch even when he’s spinning his wheels). But with the Dardennes working at such a consistently high level, it’s churlish to complain that they just keep on cranking out another great Dardenne brothers movie every three years or so instead. Truth be told, it sounds a little like bitching that Dickens never wrote a book about giant killer robots- pointless and borderline absurd.

Click here for the full review.

The Movie Moment Redux: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974, Joseph Sargent)

(Originally posted on 12 October 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.)

Since it was first announced, I've been against the idea of remaking Joseph Sargent’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and nothing I've heard since its release has changed my opinion. But at a time when even the most revered genre films get remade (e.g. Halloween), why fret about this one, especially when it’s already been remade for television? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it has something to do with the stripped-down style of the film, which never calls attention to itself. Sargent, a Hollywood veteran who worked mostly in television, foregoes flash for detail, portraying the subway hijacking more or less realistically, with an invaluable assist from the New York City Transit Authority.

Then there’s the cast. Today, the only leading roles available in Hollywood for men who look like Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, and Martin Balsam would be in lowbrow comedies with the word "grumpy" in the title. But these actors were perfectly suited to the style of the film, playing not hotshot heroes and villains, but men doing a job primarily for the money. Given the usual visual pyrotechnics of remake director Tony Scott and the leading-man appeal of his star, Denzel Washington, it appears that the only thing left over from the original film is the subway hijacking. If that’s all that’s left, you might as well be remaking Money Train.

And no matter how good the remake is, it would be hard to come up with an ending that works even half as well as the original. After his partners-in-crime have been killed, Balsam’s disgraced ex-subway engineer takes his share of the loot back to his apartment, and Matthau and his fellow transit cops set about finding him by questioning former transit employees in the area. After a few false leads, Matthau and his boss (played by Jerry Stiller) drop in on Balsam, who appears nervous as the transit cops question him. After they look around the apartment, Matthau and Stiller start to leave the apartment, on their way to interview the next possible suspect.

Then Balsam sneezes.

Earlier in the film, when the hijackers called in their demands to the Transit Authority, Balsam could be heard sneezing twice in the background, to which Matthau absentmindedly would always respond "gesundheit." Now that same sneeze, which Matthau thought almost nothing of before, gives away Balsam’s identity.

It’s also just a good bit of suspense, with Balsam (the most sympathetic of the hijackers) worrying that the transit cops will find his money hidden in his oven or see through his alibi. In addition, there’s the way the scene ends the film long before we expect it to. In most films, Matthau would question all of the suspects on his list, go back to the station and hash out his clues. Here, it’s one sneeze and it’s over.

But most of all, it’s that final shot that makes the scene great. Who else could have sold that closeup like Matthau did?

"Gesundheit." Gotcha.

The Movie Moment Redux: The Girl Can't Help It (1956, Frank Tashlin)

(Originally posted on 22 February 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.)

Director Frank Tashlin’s background was as an animator at Warner Brothers, and this was reflected in his best work. The principal cast of his film Hollywood or Bust might’ve stepped out of a cartoon -- Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Anita Ekberg (as Bust?) were all outsize personalities, well-suited to Tashlin’s world. So too Jayne Mansfield, who serves as both the eye candy and the emotional center of Tashlin’s classic The Girl Can’t Help It.

In this film, Mansfield plays the mistress of a high-level gangster (played by Edmond O’Brien), who wants to turn her into a singing sensation. He enlists -- no, pressures -- has-been talent agent Tom Ewell into grooming her and making her a star. Ewell is the right man for the job, insists O’Brien, not only due to his previous professional successes, but his professionalism as well. Ever since his last successful singer and the love of his life (Julie London, playing herself) moved on for reasons left unstated, Ewell’s policy has been to keep his hands off the talent. However, there are complications. Not only does Mansfield demonstrate herself both unwilling and unable to pursue a singing career, but she also takes a shine to Ewell herself, and Ewell, despite himself, finds he isn’t immune to her charms either.

After a long night of taking Mansfield to various clubs in order to get the attention of the owners, Ewell returns home to his apartment. Tipsy and lonely, he puts on a record of Julie London singing “Cry Me a River,” and as the song plays he has a vision of her in his apartment, singing to him. He stumbles from room to room, trying to escape her, but Julie just keeps appearing- on the couch, reclining in his bed, in the hallway outside his apartment. Finally, after the song is over, Julie disappears down the stairs and Ewell is alone again.

Fans of classic animation might recognize this as a oft-repeated motif in Warner Brothers cartoons. However, in ‘toon form, scenes like this are played as comedy -- a hungry Bugs might hallucinate various objects around him as carrots, for example. What makes the scene in The Girl Can’t Help It so effective is how straight it’s played. The song that Julie London sings is slow and mournful, and the look on her face is full of longing and regret. Likewise, Ewell is tortured by the vision, but he never goes over the top. When it’s all over, all he can do is hang his head and slump off to bed.

However, the scene gets a happy payoff later in the film. In a bar one night, Ewell sits alone, three sheets to the wind, when the jukebox begins playing “Cry Me a River.” Ewell turns to the barfly who chose the tune and berates him for choosing it, and tries to explain his problem. When he points to the seat next to him, to show the other guy where Julie London is, there’s no one sitting there, and the other man tells him as much. But when Ewell takes a look himself, it’s not Julie sitting there at all, but Jayne Mansfield, her face beaming with a loving smile. As cinematic expressions of getting over an old flame go, this one’s hard to beat.

The Movie Moment Redux: The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978, Ermanno Olmi)

(Originally posted on 1 March 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.)

The Italian Neo-Realist movement began as a reaction to the more lightweight entertainments that usually focused on upper-class protagonists. In contrast, neo-realist directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica explored the poor and working-class Italy of the day, training their cameras on laborers and prostitutes instead of captains of industry and heiresses. Because of this, neo-realist filmmakers more often than not would forego the casting of name actors, preferring to find non-professionals who could embody the types of characters in the film.

Such was the case with Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978), which was made a quarter century after the heyday of Italian Neo-Realism but nonetheless is very much in the same tradition. The Tree of Wooden Clogs captures life on a farmstead in Lombardy, Italy near the end of the 1800s, and Olmi’s cast is comprised entirely of real-life peasants. The film doesn’t attempt to tell a conventional story so much as intertwine the lives of the people who worked this land, raised their families and fought to survive, and while the cast of non-actors might not have worked for a more straightforward narrative, here it’s the right choice. Olmi directs each of his performers so that they feel perfectly natural and free of affectations.

The film’s most emotionally-involving plot strand involves a shy courtship between two teenagers, Stefano and Maddalena. Despite some initial awkwardness, they end up getting married. What’s fascinating about their wedding day is how modest it is compared to most people are used to in real life, much less Hollywood movies. But so it must have been among most poor people of the time, and everything that seems alien to modern audiences makes sense -- the small, early-morning church wedding, the sack lunches the newlyweds bring for their honeymoon, and so on. Even the honeymoon itself is consistent with the characters’ economic situation, with Stefano and Maddalena taking a barge to Milan to visit her aunt, Sister Maria, in a convent. While it’s only a few hours’ voyage to Milan, it’s entirely possible that this is the furthest either has ever been from home, and in fact Sister Maria states that “it’s been years since I saw my sister,” Maddalena’s mother.

After taking a tour of the convent, which is also an orphanage, they eat with the nuns (who sing them a hymn as they dine) and are taken to a small, Spartan bedroom. “We’ve never had newlyweds here before,” Sister Maria tells them. The next morning as they prepare for the trip home (tellingly, they wear the same clothes they came in), Sister Maria enters their room again, a child in her arms.

“His name is Giovanni Batista. He is 1 year old and in perfect health. Aren’t you, Giovanni Batista? He only needs real parents to make him happy, a real mother and father. He can already be a help to his family because he has an inheritance. He has good clothing and a little money which is passed to our institution twice a year. For a family of poor people, this could sometimes be a true gift of Providence. We must help each other in this world. He can be useful to you, and you can be very helpful to him.”

Maddalena then takes Giovanni in her arms and holds him close to her. In a Hollywood tearjerker this would probably be enough to elicit “awws” and sniffles from the audience. But if and when you watch The Tree of Wooden Clogs, pay attention to how Olmi’s camera focuses on the expression on Giovanni’s face. He doesn’t instantly take to Maddalena, but holds back for a few seconds, as if sizing her up. Finally, almost like he’s decided to accept her as his mother, he leans his head against Maddalena’s and relaxes.

I love this scene because of the way it turns an unexpected development into something lovely and sort of profound. It says a lot -- not just about these newlyweds, but about the culture in which they live -- that they so unconditionally accept Giovanni into their lives. The money promised them by Sister Maria plays a small role in their decision, I’m sure, but I’d say that their religious beliefs and values were a much bigger deciding factor. For many poor people, no matter where they live, faith is something that is very real to them, accepted rather than scrutinized and questioned. So it is with Maddalena and Stefano. On their first night as husband and wife, Sister Maria advises them, “may you always deserve God’s blessing.” In the minds of all concerned, Giovanni is just such a blessing.

The Movie Moment Redux: 8 Women (2002, Francois Ozon)

(Originally posted on 8 March 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.)

One of my favorite films so far this decade is Francois Ozon’s 8 Women, a highly stylized film that has as many passionate detractors as supporters. A major point of contention is the way Ozon adds scenes in which each cast member performs a pop song to what is ostensibly a locked-room murder mystery in the Agatha Christie tradition. The musical numbers are pretty low-fi, and Ozon focuses more on the way his actresses perform the songs rather than dazzling the audience.

The naysayers believe that the songs distract from the plot, or worse, derail it. However, as a fan of the film, I believe they’re integral to the movie- in movies of this sort, the investigation ends up unearthing secrets in the characters involved, and Ozon and his actresses use the songs to reveal previously-buried depths to their characters. This is most obvious in the song performed by Isabelle Huppert, entitled “Message Personnel.”

A lot of the fun of Ozon’s film comes from the stars riffing on their signature roles. Unlike many films, 8 Women assumes that the audience is familiar with its stars’ filmographies. And why not? With a cast including Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Danielle Darrieux, and Emmanuelle Beart, anyone who’s familiar with French cinema should know these actresses’ films fairly well.

If Huppert -- one of the world’s great actresses -- can be said to have an archetypal role, it’s that of the enigmatic, unhinged loner whose stone face keeps reality at bay, which is why her performance as spinsterish Aunt Augustine comes as such a shock at the outset of the film. A far cry from the cool, appraising sorts Huppert tends to play, Augustine is something of a drama queen, prone to temper tantrums and never without a tart rejoinder, with much of her bile reserved for the sister who has taken her in. Huppert is an absolute hoot in the role, with her exaggerated facial expressions and outsize gestures, but it’s so gloriously stylized that we know it’s only a matter of time before the real “Isabelle” emerges.

Naturally, this opportunity manifests itself once a dead body has been discovered. The women in the house begin accusing each other of the crime, and after a particularly angry row between Augustine and big sister Gaby (Deneuve), Gaby storms out. All eyes are on Augustine, and the women who remain demand that she account for herself. It’s here that the Augustine’s high-strung personality falls away, and Huppert strides calmly to the piano.

Along with being a peerless actress, Huppert is also a trained pianist, and she had starred in The Piano Teacher the previous year. So when Ozon wittily spoofs the conventions of scenes of this type by never showing Huppert’s face in the same shot as her playing hands, it’s slyly funny. But what really sells the song “Message Personnel” and the scene around it is Huppert’s low-key, yet intense rendition of the song. Her delivery of the spoken lines that begin the song feels unsure, almost apologetic, as she intones, “I cannot tell you/ that I love you… perhaps?”

Then halfway through the song, Augustine stands up from the piano and directly faces the four women who are witnessing her sung confession. She pantomimes the lyrics as she sings, “we’ll flee the past for we can live tomorrow/come and rescue me.” The capper comes when Ozon cuts to a close-up of Huppert’s face as she sings the song’s final lines:

When every day is just another yesterday,
Think of me,
Think of me,
But if you…

What I love most about this moment is how it distills the Huppert screen persona -- unable to communicate her love for others, she suffers in silence. In this final close-up, we can actually see the tears welling up in her eyes as the song progresses, and Huppert punctuates the tentative final lyric by closing her eyes, causing the tears to roll down her cheeks.

Now, I’ve never met Isabelle Huppert in real life, so I can’t attest to how closely the Augustine who gets revealed in “Message Personnel” is to her actual personality. But that’s beside the point. Francois Ozon cast each actress in 8 Women not merely for her formidable talent but also the baggage she brought from previous iconic roles. When we learn the truth about Augustine through her song, we’re merely seeing the Huppert we’ve gotten to know from The Piano Teacher and her decades-long collaboration with Claude Chabrol. It’s the same with all of the stars of 8 Women -- Ozon doesn’t seek to show their true natures, but rather to reinforce the star personas they’ve constructed over the years.

In our current media-saturated age, we are able to scrutinize the lives of stars more closely than ever before. With 8 Women, Ozon seems to be asking why we would ever want to. When we see a star performing, we don’t respond to her personal behavior -- whether we know about it not -- but rather the image she conveys through her performance. Plenty of classical movie stars were later revealed to have been troubled or difficult in real life, but when they’re making magic onscreen, it doesn’t matter. Ozon’s acknowledgement of this is only one of the wonders of 8 Women, but it’s certainly one of the more relevant ones today.

The Movie Moment Redux: A Fish Called Wanda (1988, Charles Crichton)

(Originally posted on 15 March 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted with permission.)

Ever since my high school years I’ve considered myself a Monty Python fan, and practically every Python fan has a favorite member of the troupe. Mine has always been Michael Palin. Some people I know prefer the more forceful persona of John Cleese, the sarcastic stylings of Eric Idle or the utilityman charms of Terry Jones, but to me Palin is the soul of Python. Not only was he the most versatile performer of the bunch (though Jones came close) but he also invested his characters, no matter how grotesque, with the most humanity. His performances were always full of small touches that signaled that he had thought the characters through, rather than just coasting through his sketches. This tendency has extended to his film work, and while he hasn’t capitalized on his Python popularity as much as Cleese has, his work is more consistently interesting. For my money, his greatest non-Python performance comes in A Fish Called Wanda.

Of the quartet of principals in Charles Crichton’s film, Palin seems the odd man out. Barrister Archie, played by Cleese, gets to romance Jamie Lee Curtis’s Wanda, and Kevin Kline gets most of the good lines as the wannabe arch-criminal Otto. In a lesser film, Palin’s Ken would be little more than a figure of ridicule -- a weak, animal-loving stammerer who is the butt of Otto’s jokes. But A Fish Called Wanda, as dark as its humor is at times, likes its characters; and Ken is perhaps the most likable of all. Compared to the sexy and exciting adventures of the others, his is a life of quiet desperation.

A lot of the credit goes to Palin, and in particular how he pulls off Ken’s stammer, playing it not for easy laughs, but as a troubling affliction. There’s a reason behind this -- Palin’s own father had a stammering problem, and Palin based his performance off him. This sympathy for his father’s difficulty comes through in Palin’s performance, which successfully mines the character for pathos rather than snide comedy.

Like many stammerers, Ken’s condition gets worse when he’s nervous or emotional, such as when Otto ties him up and tortures him to find the location of a safety deposit box key. As Otto slurps down Ken’s beloved tropical fish one by one, Ken is practically paralyzed with rage, yet powerless to stop it. By the end of the scene, Otto has made off with the key, and Ken has been left, bound and alone, in his apartment.

But the film’s real highlight doesn’t come until later, when Archie arrives at Ken’s apartment to find out where Otto has gone. Ken is still tied up, gagged with an apple, and with his chair tipped over onto the floor. Needless to say, this is hardly the ideal time to ask Ken any questions. Supposedly Cleese had always wanted to write a scene in which a stammering character gets questioned to no avail, and here was his chance.

Archie unties Ken and seats him upright, trying to get the answer out of him, but Ken, try as he might, can’t seem to spit it out. So Archie, sensing the problem, does his best to put Ken at ease, but it still doesn’t work. As Ken repeatedly gets stuck on “The Caaa… the Caaaaaaa…,” the frustration begins to manifest itself on his face. Ken’s stammer has afflicted him all his life, but that doesn’t make it any easier for him to deal with. One can plainly see how much he wants to tell, but he just can’t, and that pains him. Finally, Archie decides to have Ken write down the answer instead, which Ken does, and when Archie reads the answer aloud- “The Cathcart Towers Hotel”- Ken repeats the answer, his stutter suddenly gone. The resultant look of surprise on Ken’s face is pricessless, punctuating a rare moment of triumph in his life. When Archie proceeds to the next question, of where the hotel is located, Ken, knowing from experience that his triumph is most likely short-lived, pantomimes the flying of an airplane rather than going through the painful process all over again. Archie figures out the answer almost immediately- “Heathrow.”

At one point during this scene, we see a sign hanging behind Ken, reading “No Credit.” How fitting that this sign is associated with Ken, the character who gets sent off by team leader George to do the dirty work of eliminating an elderly dog-loving witness, gets manipulated by Wanda, and mocked and tortured by Otto. Which makes his final triumph doubly sweet -- Ken is so put-upon, yet such a likable character that we yearn to see him win for a change. So when Ken finally gets his revenge on Otto for the demise of his fish -- and simultaneously loses his stammer, seemingly for good -- we celebrate it with him. After what he’s been through, he’s certainly earned it.

The Movie Moment Redux: Nashville (1975, Robert Altman)

(Originally posted on 22 March 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted with permission.)

Since I first saw Nashville, I’ve considered it to be Altman’s greatest achievement. With a career like his, that’s saying something. So what makes Nashville stand out from his other classics, like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, California Split, Short Cuts, The Long Goodbye, and the made-for-TV Tanner ’88? Perhaps it’s that, more than anything else Altman made, Nashville feels like the ultimate Altman movie, a summation of what made him such a legendary filmmaker — impeccable ensemble acting, a keen sense of place, political engagement, and a love of performance in all its forms.

Nashville is often described as a film with two dozen protagonists, but while there’s no principal character in the story, the world we see in the film revolves around Barbara Jean, a country superstar played by Ronee Blakley. Many of the big events in the film focus on her — the ceremony at the airport at the beginning, her onstage nervous breakdown, and the concert/campaign special gone bad at the finale. But while we see Barbara Jean throughout the film, we rarely get to see her outside the public eye. She smiles beatifically for the camera, but this is just play-acting. Who is she? Does she even have a last name? The film never says.

It’s mainly for this reason that, when I tried to come up with this week’s Movie Moment, I kept coming back to her one private moment, away from her fans and the press. After the collapses following her airport reception, Barbara Jean is rushed to the hospital, and as a result has to cancel an appearance on the Grand Old Opry radio show. As her replacement, Connie White sings in her stead, Barbara Jean and her husband, Barnett (Allen Garfield), sit alone in the room and listen. We don’t find out until later that Barbara Jean and Connie have a professional rivalry, never appearing together on the same stage, but hearing Connie on the radio angers Barbara Jean, and she demands that the radio be switched off. Barnett insists on listening, saying that he needs to listen so that he can properly thank Connie for stepping in for her. This sets Barbara Jean off:

“You’re going over there, and I know why… so you can hobnob with everybody, and I ain’t got not friends, I gotta sit here in the goddamn hospital. Everyone’s gonna be talking about me, saying how I’m a nut, how I had a- ‘Barbara Jean had another collapse…’ You know what? Why don’t you take her some of my flowers?”

One thing that’s immediately apparent in this scene is how fragile Barbara Jean really is. Much of modern popular music, country music in particular, is founded on the belief that its stars are just like regular people. While the film’s other stars, like Connie White and Haven Hamilton, can act the part, Barbara Jean is a natural — Altman and Ronee Blakley see that she smiles big for the camera not because her fans want her to, but because she’s genuinely happy to be in the spotlight. But it’s because she’s the genuine article, because her public feelings are real rather than faked, that success and fame have taken a toll on her in ways they wouldn’t for others. Later in the film, mid-breakdown, she relates to the audience that she began singing as a child, and it’s clear that she never quite grew up.

But just as fascinating, if less apparent on first viewing, is how this scene illuminates Barnett’s character as well as Barbara Jean’s. Our first impression of Barnett is as an angry, short-fused man, tagging along with his wife and seemingly leeching off her success — your standard-issue husband/manager. However, if you watch this scene carefully, we see that there’s more to him than that. Allen Garfield’s performance shows us a man whose life is concerned almost entirely with taking care of his wife, both in good times and bad. He proclaims, “Don’t tell me how to run your life; I’ve been doing pretty good with it,” not as a bitter rejoinder, but as a statement of fact. When he insists on leaving the hospital to thank Connie White, it’s because he’s trying to keep up appearances even when Barbara Jean cannot. “I don’t like to go over there and hobnob with them phonies,” he says.

If Barnett speaks to Barbara Jean like a child sometimes, it’s because she is essentially a child, and the little game they play as he’s leaving — “I’m walkin’ out now… what do you say? Say bye-bye” — is a perfect encapsulation of this. Barnett, who had appeared such an unsuitable match for Barbara Jean, is shown to be exactly the kind of husband she needs — simultaneously manager, father, nurse, and giver of tough love. Garfield’s performance, which at first glance fades into the background of the film, comes into sharper relief the more you watch Nashville, and is a great argument in favor of Altman’s assertion that his films be watched over and over.

Omnipotence over his chosen world is the right of any filmmaker, but precious few really exercise that right. What made Altman truly great (and inimitable, despite hundreds of attempts) was his knack for peering into even the most remote corners of his films in order to study the lives of the characters that lived there. The final moments of my chosen scene sum this up perfectly. Just after Barnett has left the hospital room, Barbara Jean sits cross-legged on her bed, a shell-shocked look on her face. She turns her head toward the door and whimpers after him, “Barnett?” While many filmmakers would have left the room with Barnett, this would have been a mistake, done in the interest of keeping the story moving instead of illuminating the characters. Altman knew better, and these final few seconds are the final brushstroke that makes the scene perfect and complete.

The Movie Moment Redux: Belle de Jour (1967, Luis Bunuel)

(Originally posted on 29 March 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission.)

For about ten years, my favorite film of all time has been Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour. I must have seen it fifty times so far, and I always find new ways to enjoy it. For one thing, it’s gotten a whole lot funnier in recent years. As is the case with anything so close to one’s heart, it’s become an important film to me, so important that I once broke up with a girl over it (long story, don’t ask). However, due to its importance to me I’ve always been reluctant to write about it. I love it so much that I take my loving it for granted, and I find that it’s nearly impossible for me to vocalize why.

But I suppose that if I had to list one reason why I love it above all other movies, it’d have to be because of Catherine Deneuve. Gorgeous, talented, classy as hell, and unafraid of seeking out interesting roles rather than coasting on her looks and charisma. Severine, her character in Belle de Jour, is Deneuve’s original embodiment of a role she’d go on to play numerous times — the enigmatic wife who maintains a chilly façade even as her fantasies and schemes bubble just below the surface. To watch Belle de Jour is to watch this character being born, already fully formed.

Before Belle Deneuve specialized in innocent young women. In The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, her character seemed virtuous even after an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and in Repulsion she became the personification of raging virginity, turning on the men who would impose their sexuality on her. Belle de Jour begins the same way, with Severine married to Pierre, a young, handsome doctor. They could be poster children for the bourgeois lifestyle, with their impeccably decorated Parisian apartment and weekend ski vacations. But while there appears to be love between Severine and Pierre, they sleep in their own beds even after a year together, and it’s fairly clear that the marriage has yet to be consummated.

Yet Severine’s fantasies tell a different story altogether. Many of Buñuel’s characters conceal certain perversions from the world, and Severine is no exception. In the opening scene of the film, Severine dreams of a quaint carriage ride with Pierre, only to end up being tied to a tree, whipped and ravished by two coachmen at Pierre’s behest. Pierre is a kind and loving husband in real life, but a guy like him can’t satisfy her fantasies. She doesn’t want to be indulged or cared for; she wants to be dominated and disciplined.

One day, she hears rumors about an old school friend who turned to prostitution to make some extra money. Her husband’s lecherous pal Husson (the great Michel Piccoli) drops the name of a favorite brothel in passing, and the curious Severine ventures there one day to meet the proprietor, one Mme. Anais (Genevieve Page). Anais is professional but genial, and she makes Severine’s first visit feel less like an interview than a social call. Almost without knowing it, Severine agrees to work afternoons for Anais, assuming the name Belle de Jour, but so great is her anxiety over the job that she runs out on her first day of work. When she returns, Mme. Anais becomes stern and puts Severine in her place, saying, “I see you need a firm hand.”

Severine’s first days as Belle de Jour don’t go too well — she shrinks away from her first client, and she has trouble learning the favorite scenario for a submissive regular. Even after she settles into the job, she still seems to maintain an emotional distance, being friendly with her clients but always holding back. It’s much the same when she goes to bed with a large Chinese man. As he prances around the room and jokes in Chinese, she laughs obligingly. She accepts going to bed with him as part of the job, but only to a point — in what is probably the film's most remarked-upon scene, she opens the small wooden box he has brought, studies the contents (unseen by the audience, though we do hear a high-pitched buzzing sound), and shakes her head “no” as she closes the box again.

But the scene that not only sums up best what I love about Belle de Jour but also what makes Deneuve one-of-a-kind comes just after this. We see the Chinese man leave the room, briefly grope the housekeeper’s teenage niece, and walk out the door. Cut to inside the bedroom. Pallas, the housekeeper tiptoes around and tidies up, while Severine lies face down on the bed. Pallas, sensing that Severine needs comforting, kindly states, “that man scares me too. Sometimes, it must be so hard.”

It’s at this point that Bunuel, whose style is usually fairly low-key, suddenly pushes in on Severine’s prone form. As she props herself up on her elbows, she turns around, a look of pure bliss on her face, and says, “what would you know, Pallas?” The camera then holds on Severine’s face a few more seconds, the expression never fading. While she smiles a few times prior to this scene, this is a different kind of smile altogether. It’s clear that at long last, Severine has gotten exactly what she came for: complete sexual satisfaction. The moment lasts but a few seconds, but it speaks volumes.

I find it interesting that this scene takes place roughly halfway through Belle de Jour, since it more or less cuts Severine’s character arc into two distinct parts. In the film’s first half, Severine attempts to satisfy her fantasies, and after her sexual awakening happens, she must learn to reconcile it with both her marriage and her lifestyle away from Mme. Anais’. Everything that happens to Severine after her time with the Chinese client is caused by her newly-discovered sexuality, until the film’s perfect final scene, in which her fantasies and her real life melt together.

Every great star has at least one iconic moment. For Marilyn Monroe, it was the image of her in The Seven Year Itch, her dress flying in the wind of the subway grate. For John Wayne, it’s the final shot of The Searchers, standing in the doorway with the prairie at his back, even as the door closed in front of him. If Catherine Deneuve has had an iconic moment — and she’s certainly star enough to warrant one — I believe it’s that single shot of Severine on the bed, her fantasies finally fulfilled. Of all her great films and performances, this is the one I return to in my mind again and again, and more than anything else it encapsulates why Belle de Jour remains my favorite film.

The Movie Moment Redux: Bus 174 (2001, Jose Padilha)

(Originally posted on 5 April 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted with permission.)

On June 12, 2000, an ex-convict named Sandro de Nascimento hijacked a bus in the middle-class Jardim Botânico neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. For the entire afternoon and into the evening, the hijacking spiraled into a hostage situation, with Sandro holding his fellow passengers at gunpoint while the police and SWAT team attempted to alleviate the situation. Finally, after dark, Sandro left the bus with a female hostage named Geísa. Shots rang out, and Sandro and the hostage were killed. This is the outline of perhaps the most highly-publicized crime in Brazilian history. In his film Bus 174, director Jose Padilha attempted to look beyond this outline to discover the truth about Sandro’s past and about what went wrong on that day in June.

As seen from the Atlantic Ocean, Rio de Janeiro is a bustling metropolis, with a beach teeming with resort hotels and luxurious homes. However, one discovers a different reality further inland. Bus 174 opens with a long helicopter shot of Rio, in which we see the slums, or favelas, that lie hidden in the hills just behind the rich neighborhoods. It is estimated that there are over one million boys living on the streets of Rio, and Sandro was one of them. After witnessing his mother’s brutal slaying at age six, Sandro took to the streets, falling into a life of drug abuse and crime. Throughout the course of the film, Padilha speaks with former street kids, but their cases are rare. More common are stories like the Candelaria massacre, in which seven street kids were killed by police while camping outside a church. A social worker states that of the 62 kids who survived the incident, 39 were later killed.

Eventually, Sandro’s lifestyle landed him in a Rio prison, a far cry from its regimented American counterparts. Prisons such as the ones where Sandro was jailed feel like something out of Dickens, had Dickens lived in the tropics — a dozen people to a cell, temperatures higher than 100 degrees, and all manner of disease make prison life in Rio one of almost unfathomable squalor. As Padilha takes his camera inside a similar prison (reversing the colors of the video, which creates an eerie effect), the prisoners say “I would rather have died than be in here… it’s worse than hell.”

Such was Sandro de Nascimento’s life before the Bus 174 incident. What happened after he hijacked the bus was another story unto itself. The police were called soon after the hijacking took place, but they were ill-trained and they failed to properly secure a perimeter. As a former cop explains, “in Rio, people who decide to become police officers are people who couldn’t get a regular job. A police officer has no idea what he’s getting trained for.” Once the SWAT team arrived on the scene, matters improved somewhat, but the crowds and especially the media were circling around, turning an already difficult crime scene into a zoo.

For his part, Sandro spent most of his time taunting the police and the cameras. Such was to be expected from a former child of the streets, according to one sociologist. “These boys are invisible,” he explains. “We are worth nothing if people don’t look at us.” If nothing else, Sandro was making sure people would take notice of him. He holds a gun to various hostages’ heads, loudly threatening to kill them unless the police meet his demands. Yet some of the hostages relate that they never really believed that he would kill them. One girl in particular says that she caught on to what Sandro was doing, and played along to help bring an end to the situation. As she tells us this, we see video footage of her at gunpoint, leaning into Sandro, clearly attempting to connect and empathize. Unfortunately, by that time it was too late.

But the scene that haunts me to this day is the culmination of the fateful day’s events. Padilha takes footage from a dozen different cameras on the scene and slows the action down to a crawl to show the moment that Sandro decided to leave the bus. Far from feeling like an affectation, the slow motion actually heightens the power of the sequence by simultaneously giving it an otherworldly effect and underlining the momentum of the events onscreen. As we hear the voices of various people involved recounting their perspective of what happened, the effect of the visuals are similar to the way that the survivors of a tragedy will replay the events in their minds. We as audience members become aware of every little detail — the way Sandro grabs Geísa, how he marches her in front of him, the movements of the other hostages, and how Sandro and Captain Batistia approach each other.

The first time I saw Bus 174, I actually caught myself not breathing during this sequence, so hypnotic was the filmmaking. But then the kicker comes — a lone SWAT team member, Marcelo, charges at Sandro, attempting to bring him down. When I first saw Marcelo drift into the shot, I remember gasping, not just from the shock of the image being suddenly altered, but also at the realization that everything was about to go very, very wrong. So it does, and Padilha shows us this image over and over again, from every angle he could find. Then we hear the gunshots, first two from Marcello, then a third from Sandro. Sandro falls to the ground, and then Geísa slumps down in front of him, presumably shot by a panicked Sandro. On the surface, this scene reminded me of the scene in Gimme Shelter in which the Rolling Stones watch the man being stabbed at the Altamont concert, but for my money Padilha’s version is even more resonant, in no small part because he was able to replay the moment again and again, from numerous angles.

But while this scene succeeds in recreating not just the events but also the emotional tone of this tragedy, no amount of video footage or filmmaking chops could ever explain how something like this could ever happen. Yes, Sandro de Nascimento was dangerous, and he deserved to be stopped, if not necessarily killed. But Marcelo erred as well, because his tunnel vision led to his charging into a situation that was already fraught with peril, unmindful of the life of the hostage. As one police officer relates, “the only one who paid attention to the hostage was Captain Batista.” Sadly, one man wasn’t enough to save her.

Yet what else could have happened? Sandro could have tried an escape, but he wouldn’t have gotten far, not with snipers hidden nearby and the crowd gathered around. “One should never let a static situation become mobile,” a SWAT team member says. Likewise, I’m not sure Sandro expected to survive the day either, once the police got involved. Had he survived, he would surely have been tossed back into the infernal prison, which he wouldn’t have wanted. “They know how it is,” says another officer, “and they don’t want to go back.” The real tragedy was that Geísa had to lose her life because of this. Discovering the reasons behind the hijacking, or the police’s questionable tactics, is cold comfort for her loved ones. The Bus 174 incident can never be undone, as this film’s climactic sequence makes unforgettably clear.

The Movie Moment Redux: Lolita (1962, Stanley Kubrick)

(Originally posted on 12 April 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted with permission.)

Of all the great filmmakers in movie history, Stanley Kubrick was, of course, one of the most revered. Many of his films are considered to be essential classics, and rightly so. But amidst all the attention for Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange, some other great films haven’t gotten the same amount of love, even from Kubrick fans. The Shining is as despised by some fans of the book as it is revered by movie lovers, and Eyes Wide Shut remains a point of contention for many. Yet perhaps the most overlooked great film Kubrick made was his take on Lolita.

Like The Shining, Lolita had a lot to live up to. Vladimir Nabokov’s novel was a controversial bestseller in its day, and even today it’s ranked as one of the twentieth century’s great works of fiction. But Kubrick had an even more formidable problem in adapting Nabokov — its storyline. Lolita, for the few of you who don’t know already, is about a middle-aged man who lusts after a young teenage girl. Humbert Humbert, played by James Mason, is a British college professor who comes to America to take a teaching position, and after seeing young Dolores Haze (nicknamed “Lolita” and played by Sue Lyon) he moves in with and eventually marries her mother Charlotte, just to be close to the young nymphet.

This storyline would be an edgy one for Hollywood even today, but consider that Lolita was made while the Production Code, though not the power it once was, was still in force. “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” blared the ads for Kubrick’s film, echoing the thoughts of practically every moviegoer of the time. Kubrick had to be careful in bringing the book to the screen, satisfying the censors while doing justice to what made the original book a masterpiece.

While Kubrick made some key directorial decisions to get past the Code, like deliberately casting the role with an older girl than the book called for, he largely accomplished his task through the film’s tone. Some of Nabokov’s more risqué moments never made it to the screen, but Kubrick wisely recognized that the genius of the novel — what made Lolita work — was its dry and twisted wit. Many great filmmakers made an art of using laughs to run iffy material around the Production Code — Preston Sturges pretty much made a career of it — and Kubrick pulled off something even trickier with Lolita, foiling the censors not through gags and punchlines, but with a filmmaking style that subverted the seamy nature of the material.

My favorite example of this comes after Charlotte (Shelley Winters) has discovered her husband’s obsession with her daughter. Tossing aside the incriminating journal, she lashes out at him and then locks herself in her bedroom. At this point she breaks down and cries out to her first husband, dead seven years:

“Harold, look what happened. I was disloyal to you. I couldn’t help it though… seven years is a long time… if you hadn’t died all this wouldn’t have happened. Oh darling, forgive me. Forgive me, forgive me. You were the soul of integrity. How did we produce such a little beast? I promise, I promise, I promise I’ll know better next time. Next time it’s gonna be someone you’ll be very proud of.”

So far, a perfectly serviceable dramatic soliloquy, the stuff Oscar clips are made of. But then Kubrick does a funny thing. As Charlotte sobs, clutches the urn holding Harold’s ashes and collapses on the rug, the camera cranes downstairs to the kitchen, where Humbert, playing the obliging husband, offers to make Charlotte a drink to calm her down. With this one move, Kubrick subverts the drama taking place in Charlotte’s bedroom, emphasizing in a definitive way that this isn’t her story, but Humbert’s. He coolly offers up a half-assed excuse for the diary — “these notes you found were fragments of a novel I’m writing!” — but his tone suggests that he’s less concerned about losing Charlotte than he is about losing Lolita.

A more conventional filmmaker might have stayed with Charlotte, inviting the audience to empathize with her predicament, and then to be overcome with emotion as she charged out of the house and into the street, only to be killed by an oncoming car. But Kubrick knew better. He keeps the camera with Humbert as he pours a drink, only to be interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. As the person on the other end of the line tells him about the accident, he interprets the call as a gag. He can’t help but laugh at the strange suddenness of the call, and even calls upstairs, a broad smile on his face: “Charlotte? There’s a man on the line who says you’ve been hit by a car!” It’s only when Humbert notices the front door open in a rainstorm and goes to close it that he sees that the call was no prank.

Nabokov’s boldest move was to tell the entire story from Humbert’s point of view by having him narrate. It’s also, not coincidentally, why the book is funny rather than tragic. Humbert Humbert is a man so singularly obsessed with Lolita that he is blind to almost everything else. What makes this scene so brilliant is how captures this in cinematic terms, without falling back on voiceover narration or subjective camera angles. By placing Humbert, wonderfully played by Mason, at the center of the scene, Kubrick downplays the tragedy swirling around him, this conveying Humbert’s mindset perfectly.

When Adrian Lyne directed a new adaptation of Lolita in 1997, he claimed to be making a version that was truer to the original novel. But while he was able to retain more of Nabokov’s original storyline and the controversial sexuality that came with it, his version retained almost none of the author’s chilly sense of humor. Kubrick didn’t make that mistake, and while his adaptation is hardly a letter-perfect one, it’s a pretty amazing movie in its own right. As long as you don’t approach Kubrick’s Lolita as cinematic Cliff’s Notes, it works extremely well, and deserves to be mentioned as one of its director’s many classics.

The Movie Moment Redux: Phantom of the Paradise (1974, Brian DePalma)

(Originally posted on 20 April 2007 at The Screengrab. Reprinted with permission.)

Brian DePalma has always been one of those directors people either love or hate. I’m not sure I’ve met a movie lover who doesn’t have an opinion on the guy one way or the other, and admittedly I once fell into the anti-DePalma camp. Sure, I’ve always enjoyed his most popular movies, like Carrie, but I was otherwise content to echo the popular line on the guy — that his films contained little more than empty technique and scenes cribbed wholesale from Hitchcock. I suppose that one might chalk my original feelings about the guy to the fact that I first saw a lot of his movies during his Snake Eyes/Mission to Mars period, and didn’t see many of his classics until a few years later.

Of all DePalma’s movies, the one I’ve rewatched the most over the years has been Phantom of the Paradise. While it’s not quite my favorite of his — that’d be his painfully personal Blow Out — it’s the most fun film he’s made. In addition, it’s almost certainly the most basic expression of the power struggles that are often at the core of DePalma’s films — namely, that he who controls the image holds the power. One finds this power jockeying in many of De Palma’s best films. In Femme Fatale, there’s the reclusive former jewel thief and the paparazzo who wants to photograph her; Body Double finds a peeping tom at the mercy of a psycho who sets up him to witness a killing.

Phantom of the Paradise, in addition to being a suspense movie, is also a rock musical, and so its power players are part of that scene. In one corner, there’s the legendary superproducer Swan (Paul Williams), and in the other, the hapless songwriter Winslow Leach (William Finley). Swan is the most powerful figure in pop music as the film begins, in large part because he’s able to manipulate the rest of the world to his point of view. This skill finds its most memorable visual expression in the low-hanging doorways in the diminutive Swan’s home and offices, through which he fits perfectly but which cause most visitors to duck to avoiding hitting their heads.

If Swan begins the film with incredible power, Winslow Leach starts out with next to none. Like many a fledgling musician, he’s desperate to be discovered, and when we first meet him he’s crashing a Swan concert in order to play a song from his “rock cantata, based on Faust” for the hitmaker. Swan likes the sound, but not the singer, and so he swindles Winslow out of his music and then won’t return his phone calls. When Winslow drops in on Swan’s open auditions for the stolen cantata, Swan has him arrested for trespassing, thrown into jail, and volunteered for a medical experiment that costs him his teeth. When Winslow tries to escape, he ends up having his face severely burned in one of Swan’s record presses before stumbling into the night.

The film’s best scene is one that represents both a turning point in the power struggle between Swan and Winslow. Winslow, presumed dead, has hidden out in Swan’s new concert hall, the Paradise, donning a cloak and a mask to hide his charred face. At the same time, Swan has begun rehearsals for his re-arranged version of Winslow’s cantata, which in its new form has morphed into a lightweight nostalgia trip, in keeping with the then-prevailing tone of Swan’s music. Not only has Swan turned a song that was originally a dramatic anthem into a surf rock dance tune with lyrics like “upholstery/ that’s the way that it’s supposed to be/ when I hold you close to me,” but his band the Juicyfruits, whom Winslow positively despises, are the stars of the show. Fed up with seeing his vision turned into dross, Winslow (now the titular Phantom) decides to take action.

What follows is perhaps the most skillful use of split-screen I’ve ever seen. On the right half of the screen, we view the rehearsal in progress, while on the left we see Winslow hide a bomb in the trunk of a prop car just before it gets wheeled out on the stage. The scene is a quintessentially Hitchcockian setup — the Master once stated that suspense is the knowledge that a bomb is going to go off rather than the explosion itself — but the split-screen effect only amplifies the tension. Key to this effect is that both sides of the split-screen are composed of long takes. Rather than cutting back between the trunk of the car and the oblivious would-be victims, DePalma places them side by side, as the audience waits for the inevitable. He even has a character remark about hearing a ticking sound (which we in the audience can hear loud and clear), but Swan’s lieutenant persuades him to get in the car anyway.

Sometimes in DePalma’s split-screen scenes, the shots will represent the literal points of view of two different characters, but this isn’t the case in Phantom of the Paradise. Rather than seeing what Winslow and Swan see during this scene, we see the images of what they’ve created. In Winslow’s case, he’s channeled his energies into destroying the vision of Swan, who previously destroyed him. In Swan’s case, he’s witnessing his creation (or more precisely, the one he stole) coming to fruition, only to have it go up in flames. It’s interesting that Swan’s half of the scene ends with a close-up on his face, which hardly flinches as the bomb goes off. Like any successful businessman, he is able to see even his disasters as opportunities for change.

I’m not opposed to the use of split-screen, but most of the examples of it that spring to mind are intended as either gimmickry or as throwbacks to those vintage gimmicks. DePalma is one of the few directors who has consistently integrated this technique in a way that feels natural rather than show-offy. Watching Phantom of the Paradise again made me realize that the characterization of his direction as empty virtuosity is unfair. It’s virtuosity, to be sure — technically, DePalma is the equal of any filmmaker of his generation — but in his best films, every stylistic flourish serves a purpose, and the level of craft that goes into these films does not detract in the least from their effectiveness. He may not be as revered as Hitchcock, but DePalma is a master of suspense in his own right.