Okay. Let's get this a lot of this out of the way in one big and yet far too brief post. Since BB was born, I've watched the following:
Fanny and Cesar, completing Marcel Pagnol's trilogy. And, yes, they were just as good as the first one (Marius). In fact, they might have been the best thing I watched the whole time, which is kind of sad that they came so early. Anyway, you should watch these. They're kind of warm and tear-jerking without being obvious about it or stupid, and they're basically just totally charming and make one think about family and such.
No Way to Treat a Lady: Starring George Segal and Rod Steiger. The former is a cop and the latter a serial killer who's a master of disguise. It paired nicely with Experiment in Terror, as both feature Lee Remick. Both are good, but Experiment in Terror is better, in super-crisp black and white, and Remick gets more to do in that one, although the plot is seemingly less interesting. There's something shiveringly alive about those films from the late 50s and early 60s, when directors were just starting really to push boundaries and figure out what they could get away with (see, e.g., Elevator to the Gallows).
Whatever Works: Okay, so Woody Allen's a parody of himself and this isn't nearly as good as his recent foreign experiments, and I can see how it's insulting to Southerners and, indeed, anyone not from New York, but nonetheless I enjoyed Larry David in it and I thought it had kind of a lovely argument in favor of tolerance.
Iris: Meh. Sad and all that and a decent bio-pic but not really very interesting.
The Burmese Harp: God, that title just sounds so boring and so does the plot description and of course it's a war movie, like all the classics you're supposed to see, but this was astonishingly accessible, especially if you compare it to something like Woman in the Dunes, which is much more of an art film. The narrative is easy to follow, the characters are totally identifiable, etc. There is rather a lot of singing.
Chocolate: And thus we finish up the only film from Tarantino's top 8 of the past year that we hadn't seen. It's worth persevering through the first 15 minutes, which are sort of terrible (to the point where I actually wondered if they were a joke or a film within the film or something), because after that it gets more interesting. Mostly, it's about JeeJa Yanin, who plays the main girl and is a pretty astonishing martial-arts star, and I can see why Tarantino likes it, as it's a) feminist and b) about the power of movies to alter our lives. Seeing her imitate Bruce Lee through her body language is awesome, and while the movie is mostly just a series of fight scenes, they're well choreographed.
Arrested Development, seasons 2 and 3: A bit late on these, obvs, but they were perfect to watch with a newborn baby and amazingly entertaining.
Libeled Lady: The problem with having seen all the great screwball comedies is that you've seen all of them. I thought this might be one I'd missed, and it's not bad, but it's not as good as I hoped. William Powell is pretty reliably awesome, and it's nice to see Spencer Tracy so young, but if you're hoping for an unseen Philadelphia Story it's not that.
A Serious Man: This I'm still thinking about. It's fascinatingly theological and rather dark but at the same time it's all there in the trailer, just in a shorter, sped-up version. The main surprise is that there is no surprise.
A Letter to Three Wives: Big thumbs up. If you were wondering about that weird Simpsons episode toward the end of last season in which Moe writes a letter to Homer, Lovejoy, and Apu saying he's run off with one of their wives (I'm just kidding--I know none of y'all watch that show anymore), it was based on this movie, which is probably underappreciated. It's just classic drama and well executed, and it's got some rants about the radio as popular entertainment that sound awfully familiar wrt TV.
Brian's Song: I'd never seen this before. It's awfully comedic for a movie that's famous for making dudes cry, which was nice. Very much a TV movie but entertaining all the same, and not just for how dated it is.
Sounder: Yeah, I guess this was good but a little boring and predictable
Nosferatu: Another one to check off the list. I've seen clips, and I've seen the Werner Herzog version and Shadow of the Vampire and learned about it in film classes, but I'd never seen the whole movie, which holds up very well, even if it does have rather too many scenes that consist of showing someone reading and then showing a page of a book about vampires to provide exposition. Not very scary but atmospheric for sure.
Confessions of a Shopaholic: What? I can watch both this and the above. It's pretty dumb, but it sure is shiny. I wish P.J. Hogan would be a little pickier about what he directs.
My Life as a Dog: Ditto for Lasse Hallstrom, I guess. This is about a kabillion times better than crap like Chocolat. It's weird and funny and cute and sad, and it makes you want to let your kids run around with no supervision (while at the same time not). Plus, I'm glad I have a girl, rather than boys.
Weeds, seasons 3, 4, and 5: This show is just so darn watchable. I know its tricks. It's getting old. It's so invested in shocking that it eventually becomes annoying. But it's half an hour! What can I not put up with for half an hour? And it amuses me.
The Earrings of Madame de...: Ooh, it's lovely. It might make you a bit dizzy during the long wooing/dancing scene, but what a triumph of style. It's very Guy de Maupassant in that the story is a bit arch and artificial but then, despite the detachment you think you have, it all becomes very sad and real (emotionally).
The River: Bizarro Jean Renoir film in color, in English, and in India. It's way more like a Michael Powell than anything else, although everyone is sort of amazingly unattractive and not made less so by the Technicolor. Little happens, but it's memorable anyway.
The Birth of a Nation: Another spoonful of medicine that had to be taken, and this one didn't turn out to taste like candy. It's long, and it feels long. The first hour contains interminable battle scenes that one can barely see--puffs of smoke in the darkness. And then, as it gets slightly more entertaining, it also becomes increasingly insanely racist. Know that that aspect of it is not exaggerated. It is important, indeed, but I seem to remember vastly preferring Intolerance.
Shutter Island: That's your big twist? Marty, are you just slacking off now that you have your Oscar? Yes, he does a better job directing this than most people would have, but it could almost just as well have been Simon West. It looks beautiful, but I am generally irritated by movies about crazy people or movies that could all be a dream or a hallucination, and this was no exception.
Cube 2: Hypercube: Um, not as good as Cube and very stupid in many ways, and the acting is awful, but still probably more interesting than it had any right to be.
The Big Parade: Now this, in contrast to the D.W. Griffith above, I thought was going to be a slog, and it turned out to be a delight. Yes, it's a silent movie about World War I that features a soldier losing a leg, but it's mostly a comedy, and it's easy to see why it was the biggest money-maker at the movies until Gone with the Wind came out. You can't get this from Netflix, but I would really encourage you, if you like movies and don't flip at the idea of a silent one, to seek it out. There is one montage moment in particular that kind of took my breath away.
Bound for Glory: They could have just called this "Woody Guthrie was kind of an a-hole." Not that it's bad. It's pretty good, if a little long and loose, and David Carradine is great. It's just that, well, he was.
The Blue Angel: I assume this is mostly notable for its being Dietrich's first role, and she's certainly a force onscreen, but it's not much of a movie. Little happens. I'm guessing her later stuff, which she got as a result of being seen in this, is better.
Scream of Fear: A very early Hammer film. This is so the same plot as a million other movies from this era (and an easy one on which I'm sure feminist theory papers have been written): young woman is made to think she's insane. But it's stylish and short and well done, and it has a kind of gleeful nastiness at the end that leaves it on a very strong note.
The Beast with Five Fingers: Peter Lorre movie that kind of has a lot in common with the preceding. Not awesome but worth watching.
More later.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
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4 comments:
Oh, The Earrings of Madame de... is one of my all-time favorites. When did melodrama go away, and why? If done well—Ophuls, Sirk—it's some of the best, most satisfying movie watching there is. I guess QT does it, but there's so much style in his stuff you almost don't notice.
Hoo boy. Birth of a Nation.
What's so significant about Birth of a Nation is its place in cinematic technical history -- it was revolutionary in its use of narrative technique.
However, I was involved in a showing and panel discussion of Birth of Nation ca. 1996 through University Union, and I've never been so incredibly stressed out by my fellow moviegoers. The racial issues are practically impossible for people to get beyond, because they're incredibly prominent.
It was only slightly more fun then that time we showed Triumph of the Will. Mainly because Birth of a Nation is at least entertaining once it gets going.
The thing is, I really thought I was going to be more okay with Birth of a Nation. I mean, I kind of like Triumph of the Will or at least am more able to get past its issues. But it's pretty bad. It's also looong.
Well, Triumph of the Will is pretty. And it's not directly embodying the most disturbing things about the whole Hitler business. I mean, really, it could be about any strapping young men from any fascist nation of the era in many regards. But it's also kind of dull. Not a lot happens. I mean, other than wholesome white people having wholesome military fun with other wholesome white people, and marching and planes and snore.
Birth of a Nation is much older, and quite early in cinematic history. It's also remarkably unrestrained in its absolute racism. I mean, so we have the Klan, right? But actually, the whole thing is racist. Every assumption it makes is racist, and that means that quite literally nearly every character is offensive to us. But still, in many ways DW Griffith invented cinematic editing -- the film is a clear demarcation between the earlier films, which are the film equivalent of videotaping a play, and pretty much everything after it. And it's not snoozy.
Anyway...I seem to recall that there were objections to showing both films, but BOAN really hit a nerve. I did the poster for it, and even that was scrutinized to a very high degree. It was very hard for people to view the film at any level other than politically. Which is a shame, but understandable.
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