miloc Reviews

Dulcimer Street (1948)

Interesting little character piece

[6/10 · 12 December 2012]

This odd little comedy/drama from Sidney Gilliat doesn't really hold a lot of water, but does hold a fair amount of charm, as the motley occupants of a London boarding house rally in support of one of their own, a young would-be spiv arrested for murder. As the youth in question Attenborough is pop-eyed, guilt-wracked and hapless, eerily resembling a young Peter Lorre-- we feel sorry for him, though we may not empathize much. But the film's emotional shadings come from the older actors like Wylie Watson, Fay Compton, and Joyce Carey (no, not the novelist), who stand by the boy simply because they know it's the right thing to do.

The plot's barely there, but there's a lovely eccentric atmosphere to it all, and also a juicy supporting bit for the great Alastair Sim. Hilariously morose, with a strange and seedy profession, his Mr. Squales would provide inspiration some seven years later for Alec Guinness's great turn in The Ladykillers, down to the overbite and the lank, terrible hair. Sim was a few years away yet from being the UK's most popular film star; he was the weirdest and most watchable of screen idols. He walks away with the film.

Stop Making Sense (1984)

The name of this band is Talking Heads

[10/10 · 22 September 2012]

At the beginning of the greatest concert movie ever made, we follow a pair of sneakered feet to down center of an empty stage. A voice says "I've got a tape I want to play." We pan up to a thin, nervous-looking man with an acoustic guitar and a boom box. The box starts playing a beat. The man's hand hits a jangling chord. And for the next hour and a half, as the scenery slowly builds around this skinny misfit, we sit transported.

Talking Heads were unquestionably a seminal band in the New York punk/new wave scene. Yet before seeing this film I had little idea of who they were, and even after seeing it I would not necessarily put them on a top ten list. Nonetheless, through a combination of front man David Byrne's charisma and stagecraft, Jonathan Demme's taut, precise filmmaking, and the infectious heat of the music, Stop Making Sense remains the most enthralling and sheerly entertaining rockshow ever. The keening melancholy of "Heaven", the stripped-down mystery of "Once in a Lifetime", the dark funk of "Girlfriend is Better" -- there's simply no duds here. And Byrne works his butt off. He seems to have energy to spare; during one number he simply jogs circles around the stage, as though he needs further exercise. His teammates Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and (eventually) a host of backup singers and musicians click into that energy without a stumble.

This isn't raw work-- clearly this is a conceived film, with defined emotional beats and even a sort of intuitive narrative. And like any band, Talking Heads have a specific sound and style that (I suppose) won't appeal to everyone. But who? I've shown this film to at least three people who never heard of the band before (except through dim memory of early MTV), and even claimed to hate concert movies-- and then they went and bought the soundtrack.

What can I further say? This is a record of performance that cannot be matched. If you like music, at all, clear a little time and watch this movie. I can't promise you won't be disappointed, but I cannot easily imagine how.

The Kids Are Alright (1979)

Levitation

[7/10 · 21 September 2012]

The object of any great concert film is to convince you, at least for the span of the movie, that the subject is The Greatest Rock Band in the World. If The Kids Are Alright doesn't succeed in that goal as completely as Jonathan Demme's sensational Stop Making Sense, that's hardly the fault of The Who-- few performers have labored harder in the name of fan service.

Though engaging and highly watchable, The Kids Are Alright stays a minor affair, documentary-wise. Here and there it flirts with insight. We catch a bit of Keith Moon palling around with fellow alcoholic Ringo Starr ("We're just taking our medicine, children!") in a bit that foreshadows tragedy without actually catching the weight of it. We get a laugh from Pete Townshend's startled "Eh?" at being confronted with his own lyrics ("...hope I die before I get old..."). But the between-music bits of the film offer little substance; they're just filler.

But there's an early clip of the band performing in a club, in which we cut to Moon, drumming his heart out, already in hyperdrive-- and then, impossibly, he starts going faster. His face is upturned in spiritual abandon, his hands simply disappear. And, in a phenomenal rendering of Baba O'Reilly, you see Townshend dancing in genuine and infectious ecstasy over John Entwhistle's thunderous bass line. And in an epic performance of Won't Get Fooled Again, we finally understand the sheer force of The Who-- the lights go out around six minutes in for the synth solo. Then the drums kick in, gathering our heartbeats with it. The lights come on: Roger Daltrey is screaming, and Townshend is in midair, and we are with him, transported, levitating.

These were men who enjoyed their work. And for these five-to-ten minute stretches, we are watching The Greatest Rock Band in the World. Worth the price of admission.

Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012 TV Movie)

Decent cheese

[5/10 · 3 June 2012]

For reasons more complicated than I would want to explain, I ended up at a special big- screen premiere of "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" last night. The trailer for this TV movie event has been attracting considerable online derision lately, so I feel compelled to say that in a theater, surrounded by a crowd of the willing, it's actually pretty fun.

The cults that surround movies like "The Room" and "Troll 2" have created a weird sort of cottage industry centered around "so-bad-it's-good" entertainment. SyFy, which has lately been churning out deadpan goofs like "Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus", seems determined to enter those sweepstakes. But the appeal of something like "The Room" comes from the understanding that the movie was meant to be *good*. (Tommy Wiseau has since claimed otherwise, but seriously, come on.)

"Jersey Shore" and "Mega-Shark", by contrast, are pseudo-hip, self-aware entertainments, somewhere between Roger Corman's '60s beatnik spoof "Bucket of Blood" and a Z-grade Frankie Avalon beach party. Here and there they earn a laugh worthy of a good SCTV sketch. (In "Mega-Shark" it's the bit with the plane, and in this one it's the fate of ex-'N Syncer Joey Fatone.)

This isn't exactly great or even good cinema. On TV, without a live audience, this may well die the death. But low-budget quickies like this used to kill in a drive-in or a 99-cent grindhouse. With low expectations you forgive the clunkier jokes and appreciate the details (like the "Jaws" music cue during Tony Sirico's Quint speech). Fun was had and the profit margins were high-- so why exactly aren't there drive-ins anymore?

Me and Orson Welles (2008)

The importance of not being earnest

[6/10 · 15 December 2011]

Richard Linklater's film of Robert Kaplow's novel merits a watch, if only for Christian McKay's splendid evocation of the young Orson Welles. McKay has the vocal chops, the look (in profile it's uncanny) and, most importantly, the attitude. Without apparent effort, he catches the mammoth self-confidence that made Welles one of the most intimidating screen presences in cinema. I have no idea how much time and effort this actor (in his first feature film) spent in mastering the smirk Welles gives when neophyte actor Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) talks of his "lover"; in any case the work pays off. It's like a cameo by Harry Lime.

This movie uses the Mercury Theatre's celebrated production of Julius Caesar as backdrop to its rather slight story. The screenplay tells us that Welles, whatever genius he possessed, may not have been a great guy-- and, well... are we wrong to ask how much that matters? Efron, as the young hopeful who falls into Welles's considerable gravitational pull, has a certain charm and potential talent, but looks and acts somehow utterly of his own time-- we never believe him as a 1930s construct. (Possibly he hasn't watched enough old movies.) He falls in love with Claire Danes, who plays an ambitious... something, I missed exactly what her job was. Script girl? Dramaturge? Anyway, she works on the play. Danes does a decent job as whatever she is, but she and Efron generate zero chemistry. "Why am I so interested in you?" she asks at one point. I had no guesses.

If I had to speculate, I'd say that the romantic plot did not grab the director much. He does good work casting the real-life characters. Eddie Marsan makes a credible John Houseman; Ben Chaplin registers strongly as a nerve-racked George Coulouris; and James Tupper looks, sounds, and feels right as the affable young ladies' man Joe Cotten. The backstage squabbles, trivial though they may be, draw more interest than the emotional business upfront. And Linklater truly comes awake as a director in capturing performance: whether he's staging a quick radio sequence in which Welles steals the show or very finely recreating the Mercury's legendary Caesar, you get the feeling Linklater would be happiest just sitting back and watching the show. And here the movie is at its best-- far more than Tim Robbins' earnest, turgid Cradle Will Rock, this movie, absent of politics, captures the excitement of truly revolutionary theater at a time when such a thing was still possible.

In fact, that lack of earnestness may be the key here. Caesar was a great production not because it deconstructed Hitler, but because Welles gave it a sense of importance strong enough to deconstruct anything. Welles was a great artist, and perhaps more crucially he was a great bulls--t artist. Let's put it more simply: that WAS his art. This is a film about learning to bulls--t, learning when not to say what you mean, learning when not to be honest-- and that's bracing. It reminds us that trickery, deception and narcissism can be magic, and that egotism with a will to dazzle us can be more dazzling than anything we describe as "talent" and "sincerity". It's why the movie stalls when McKay is not on screen-- he convinces us he IS Orson Welles, that he is the most important man in the world-- and in defiance of logic and perspective, we buy it. And at the end of the day, that transparent and fantastic lie-- that's art.

The Mystery of Picasso (1956)

The mystery

[9/10 · 23 September 2011]

Director Henri-Georges Clouzot, best known in America for his expert thrillers (Diabolique, The Wages of Fear, Le Corbeau) captures a different kind of suspense in this astonishing documentary: can the viewer think faster than Picasso?

Of course not, don't be ridiculous. Pablo Picasso, seen here in his seventies, creates 20-odd paintings for the camera (a couple of them in real time), running rings around us as he goes. We see a line cross the screen, and then another, and then color spatters about; drawn on bleed-through paper the images come to us unmediated, like daydreams. Before we know it scenes take shape, populated by Picasso's stock company of matadors, clowns, leering old men, and towering, serene, bare-breasted women, their faces regally aloof.

This is Picasso Playful. Clouzot informs him at one point that there are only five minutes of film left and asks him what he wants to do. The old man replies "It'll be a surprise," quickly sketching a bouquet of roses and then taking it through acrobatic transformations, faking us out with deadpan glee. His buoyancy counterweights some of the director's more awkward touches, such as the portentous intro, some over-dramatic music, a few probably staged conversations... but who cares? This is dynamic, visual cinema-- in a sense, a great animated film.

Some of the earlier drawings are merely a master's doodles; others make your jaw drop with their absolute sureness of line. He'll send a stroke wriggling upward, graceful as a ribbon of smoke, and suddenly that wriggle is a bull with man tossed on its horns, and as the shapes gather and the colors erupt the thing becomes impossibly beautiful, a small perfection. Picasso returns to the image later, breaking out the oils, and here the film truly takes off. "I want to go deeper," Picasso tells Clouzot, and he does. We realize what we were missing in those first drawings: texture. The head of a goat coheres and takes on animal reality, the pigments bright as stained glass. Picasso ages it, makes it solid. What would be a major work for a lesser artist here is a throwaway, literally; the paintings were destroyed after filming. The least of them could have paid for my house.

In that intro Clouzot says something about "looking into the mind of the artist" or somesuch, but the title really says it all. At the beginning the artist saunters out shirtless from the studio's shadows. At the end he declares, "It is finished," and saunters back. What could possibly account for the existence of a Pablo Picasso remains a mystery untouched.

The Night Stalker (1972 TV Movie)

Rescuing the vampire

[9/10 · 16 September 2011]

It's hard to imagine now, but by the early 1970s the vampire was, cinematically speaking, something of a dead issue. (Rimshot.) True, the UK's Hammer Studios were still plugging along with their Dracula Variations, starring Christopher Lee and a parade of bosoms in period costume, to increasingly musty effect. Attempts to modernize the concept, as in Dracula AD 1972, did not exactly catch fire.

New motifs dominated the scene. Hitchcock's Psycho kickstarted the enormously profitable psychopath industry, Romero's irony-laced Night of the Living Dead established a taste for gore with social awareness. Polanski's Rosemary's Baby made even the presence of the Devil as imminent as a neighbor ringing the bell. The crux was immediacy -- vampires wore capes and came from the Old World. They were just so 19th century. Who would be scared?

Curiously enough Richard Matheson, one of the industry's most prolific pros, had both reinvented and doomed the vampire as a credible agent of horror in 1954, by writing the novel I Am Legend. An tale of a lone human in a world taken over by vampires, it changed the field by making vampirism a scientific phenomenon instead of a supernatural one, and directly paved the way for Romero's visceral apocalypse. When the novel was filmed as The Omega Man in 1971, that hokey v-word had been taken out entirely; they weren't Nosferatu, just mutants.

So it makes poetic sense that Matheson should help rescue the genre by scripting one of its modern classics: The Night Stalker. Adapted from an unpublished story by Jeff Rice, this whipsmart TV movie recharged the batteries by keeping it real.

In a modern (1970s modern, that is) and believably seedy Las Vegas, a series of odd murders begins. The police call it the work of a serial killer. But as the anomalies pile up, our protagonist, a down-on-his-luck reporter named Carl Kolchak, forms a different opinion. "I hate to say it," he informs the chagrined authorities (and he doesn't hate to say it either; he's sitting on the scoop of the century and he's grinning like a Cheshire Cat) "But it looks like we've got a real, live vampire on our hands."

Kolchak, as played by the wonderful Darren McGavin, is a masterstroke of characterization. With his cheap suit and outsize ego he's a walking irritant, and his exchanges with the police and his weary editor Anthony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) are rich with comic detail. (The sheriff informs Carl that he is present by "the mutual suffrage of us all." "Sufferance," corrects Kolchak.) He makes the perfect hero here by having almost nothing of the heroic about him, except a certain hard-headedness that serves for courage. He *knows* he's right, and he might just get himself killed to prove it.

Terrifically entertaining, The Night Stalker became the highest-rated TV movie of its time, spawning a sequel and a short-lived but quite fun series with a disproportionately large footprint. The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Fringe-- all these shows can count themselves as Kolchak's progeny.

For better or worse (generally for worse, although see Let the Right One In) vampires now crowd the screens again, and through inflation are once again a devalued commodity. In movies like Blade or From Dusk till Dawn or 30 Days of Night they appear in hordes. But as The Night Stalker reminds us, one vampire ought to be enough for anybody.

Alice in Wonderland (I) (2010)

Nonsense, pro and con

[3/10 · 22 November 2010]

From about fifteen minutes after this movie began to the final credits, I sat baffled. Clearly Tim Burton and the screenwriter Linda Woolverton wished to create a magical fantasy- adventure tale for children about a clash between good and evil, along the lines of the Narnia movies, and that's all fine and good. But why on earth did he call it Alice in Wonderland?

The movie begins with a teenaged Alice (Mia Wasikowska), her spirit cramped by her repressive Edwardian life, tumbling down the proverbial rabbit-hole into "Underland". Familiar characters soon appear -- the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, etc -- but inform her that she is the "wrong Alice." They needed the original, it seems, to be their champion, and to slay the ferocious Jabberwocky and throw off the evil tyranny of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter). The Queen, hypersensitive about her outsized head, has ravaged Underland and enslaved its people, with the help of the incongruously menacing Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover)... so wait, a playing card is acting as henchman to a chess piece? Well, let it go.

Well of course this older Alice may well be the real one after all, fancy that, it's just that (we're told) she's lost her "muchness." "My muchness?" asks Alice. The speaker indicates her heart: "In there." Oh, lord. This is of course another variant of those barfy lines so beloved by screenwriters and studio executives, in which the protagonist is informed that she must regain her heart/soul/sense of wonder/sense of fun/idealism/so on in order to succeed. This will then become the movie's doggedly predictable emotional journey. And I am truly depressed to announce that this tired line comes from... the Mad Hatter. The Mad Hatter, dispensing this hackneyed Hollywood "wisdom"? It's like Keith Richards showing up at your door as a Jehovah's Witness.

It's not that everything's bad here. Helena Bonham-Carter plays the despotic Red Queen with tiny pursed lips, and she's very funny. The plump Cheshire Cat, purred by Stephen Fry, swims through the air like a manatee. Even at his weakest, Burton's visuals can be compelling, and the battle with the Jabberwocky is undeniably exciting.

But when the plot calls for heroics the movie feels misguided: the poem "Jabberwocky" was a *parody* of heroic epics (I'm guessing specifically Beowulf), and the solemnity that the movie keeps sinking into was exactly the sort of ponderousness Carroll loved to skewer. Is this really Wonderland? When the evil Knave of Hearts, hunting Alice, arrives at the Tea Party, he scornfully tells the Hatter, "You're mad." Well, I mean, duh. What is he, new around these parts?

Burton has a message he wants to get across, that "nonsense" and "madness" can help us do the impossible, by unleashing our imagination. That's not a bad message, but it's not the message of Alice in Wonderland. The books derive humor from nonsense; they don't endorse it.

The Alice of the books doesn't have much fun. She's insulted and bullied and ordered around by the Wonderlanders; their foolishness frustrates rather than beguiles her. The first book ends in a trial. It's a farce, of course. The witnesses are incoherent, the King as judge is buffoonish and arbitrary, and the Queen of Hearts repeatedly orders unjustified beheadings. Alice, fed up with the travesty, protests. The Queen orders, "Off with her head!" Alice retorts "Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!" And at this gloriously sensible observation, the court literally flies apart.

Carroll was, after all, a logician, and if he intended any message to Alice in Wonderland beyond simple entertainment, it's here: that people who pretend to power are often only speaking balderdash. Nonsense has only as much power as we allow it to have. If we're clear-eyed enough to see through it, that false power dissolves.

But in this movie, it takes a full army and the slaying of a monster to defeat the Queen. That's giving too much power to nonsense.

Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974 (2009 TV Movie)

The landscape of the soul

[8/10 · 28 August 2010]

It is 1974. Our protagonist, young and hip, has shaggy hair, sideburns, and a slick leather jacket. Asked about his suit at his father's funeral: "Carnaby's," he admits. "Oh, ay," says one mourner, with a hint of added dismay.

He's been in the South, you see. American viewers with a limited perception of the UK may, at the beginning of Channel Four's remarkable Red Riding trilogy, have little understanding of what difference that makes. They will soon learn. "This is the North," says one of the terrifying policemen who populate this film's haunted Yorkshire. "Where we do what we want."

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 begins under lowering skies. A girl of ten has vanished. A young and callow crime reporter Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) gets clued in by a conspiracy-minded colleague that the vanishing resembles two previous cases within a close range. Eager to make his mark, he senses opportunity, and in excitement at the idea that a serial murderer might be at work he blurts, "Let's keep our fingers crossed."

As the story deepens, however, so does the character. The grief of the victims' families needles him; he begins a relationship with one girl's heartsick mother (Rebecca Hall). Picking apart the story that emerges, he is drawn into the orbit of a wealthy developer (Sean Bean) with an unwholesome degree of influence in Yorkshire and its power structure. The perpetrator of the crimes is unquestionably psychopathic -- he stitches "angels' wings" into his victims' backs. Yet, in the film's most disturbing element, the police department itself functions as a psychopath, achieving its desires through brutalization, torture, and even possibly murder.

Caught in a conscienceless land, Dunford's own conscience, in reaction, grows, and what began as mere ambition transforms into a perhaps doomed lust for the truth. If this sounds like a conventional trope of the genre, it is -- plotwise much of what happens here is conventional. But Red Riding makes the narrative fresh by treating it not just as a story of crime and justice but as one of the soul, and its environs. When Dunford begs the mother to escape with him from the prevailing madness, he tells her, "In the South the sun shines." What he's telling her is that the sickness is inseparable from the place. Yorkshire is filmed (with gorgeous gloom) as a cloud-shrouded ruin, an economic disaster site in which financial power trumps morality. Starting out fresh-faced, vain, and cocky, Dunford will, by the end of his journey, be considerably the worse for wear. Looking at the landscape around him, we think, how could he not be?

Red Riding 1974 is not flawless -- some scenes feel repetitive and the bleakness can be overwhelming. But it compels you forward, it stays with you, and it genuinely rattles the spirit. This is not easy viewing, but in approaching the continuing saga, it promises hard- earned reward.

Gilda (1946)

And the award for "Most Dysfunctional Couple" goes to...

[7/10 · 29 May 2010]

Well, seriously. Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth have some issues going on here. As onlooker Joseph Calleia points out, "It's the most curious love-hate pattern I've ever had the privilege of witnessing."

It's curious all right. Johnny (Ford), a scruffy grifter on the streets of Buenos Aires, is on the brink of being killed when he is saved (picked up?) by a well-dressed stranger named Ballin (George Macready). Ballin hires Johnny to oversee his illegal casino, and the two form a quick bond of trust and loyalty. This relationship's a puzzler too; when Ballin reverses his dictum that "women and gambling don't mix," and announces there's a lady in the picture, Ford's expression reads less like a concerned business partner than a jilted suitor.

Quicker than you can say "so what's that about?" we meet Gilda (Hayworth), and... it's no mystery why this remains Hayworth's most famous role. From that first dazzling shot of her tossing her hair back -- even her hair is erotic -- with shoulders bared, she simply glitters with sex. Was this really 1946? Onstage at the casino, she flirts with the audience: "I can never get a zipper to close. Maybe that stands for something, what do you think?" Oh, I think it probably does.

The plot is frankly odd, hinging on lust, murder, and for some reason tungsten. Rudolph Mate's photography is gorgeous. The dialogue is consistently entertaining. Ford, often saddled with bland roles, does fine here as a ne'er-do-well with a conscience, and Steven Geray is quite amusing as the owlishly cynical Uncle Pio.

But it's Hayworth you'll remember, wriggling in her black dress or raising her stockinged leg like a banner of temptation. "Hate is a very exciting emotion," she tells Johnny, pressing up close. "I hate you so much I think I'm going to die from it." Hayworth's lips melt and transmute the word "hate" until it means "want." She murmurs again, "I think I'm going to die from it." What a way to go.

Tideland (2005)

Terry Gilliam and the state of the art

[10/10 · 31 December 2009]

Having watched Terry Gilliam's Tideland just a few hours ago, I sat down to write a review and find that I can't. I'm still too angry.

Not at Gilliam, no. I am angry because I half-dreaded turning on the movie to begin with. Critics largely reviled Tideland on its (minimal) American release -- Rotten Tomatoes calculates its positive receptions at 27%. And a fair number of online commentators, even fans of the director, have branded the movie as "awful," "a mess," "disappointing," etc., etc. So, while I felt interest in Tideland, I put off watching it. The reviews made me wary and I hated to see Gilliam flop. But today it came from Netflix and I thought, why not, and popped it in.

And now I am angry -- angry because I cannot believe this beautiful, scary, funny, mesmerizing, heart-wrenching movie is the same one discussed in all those reviews. Have I stumbled on some unique director's cut that no one else got to see? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of movies?

At the beginning of the movie Gilliam himself appears, in black-and-white, like Edward Van Sloan at the beginning of Frankenstein, to inform us that we may find the movie shocking, but that it should be seen as through the eyes of a child -- innocent. One can take this prologue either as a bold stroke or a move of desperation, but either way, he's right. Little Jeliza Rose (played by an astounding Jodelle Ferland) goes through absolute hell, set adrift in a bare landscape by a heroin-addicted father (Jeff Bridges). Having no protection, no support, no food, and nothing to do, she builds a new reality out of, simply, play.

The redemption of imagination is Gilliam's Great Theme, and has featured in all his movies, but never I think with the depth of feeling displayed here. The camera glides and bobs and darts, low to the ground, a child's eye view, and the tone of the movie stays true throughout, without a whiff of sentimentality. Jeliza's situation is bleak and terrifying, but she's occupied with other and more pressing issues -- conversing with squirrels, squabbling with her dolls, and befriending her alarming neighbors: a witchlike taxidermist and her mentally retarded brother.

But she's no fool, and Gilliam isn't either. The dreadful reality is always present, and Jeliza knows what's what; she possesses that paradoxical childhood perspective that allows a doll's head to be "just a doll's head" and at the same time a living person with an identity. The movie shows us the world as her imagination transforms it; she spins terror and tragedy into fable.

This movie staggered me; it's a genuine work of art, and it left me in tears. If that puts me at odds with 75% of the critical consensus, I'll live with that. When I think of the endless trite garbage that these same critics routinely praise, garbage that often wins awards or breaks box-office records, comfortable and self-congratulating hackwork that rarely has a scrap of the kind of creative courage or honesty of something like Tideland, it frankly makes me question what a good movie actually IS. Do feel-good escapism and drearily unnatural "naturalism" really comprise the height of cinematic expression? And does the idea of being made genuinely uncomfortable by art, genuinely challenged -- surely art's primary function -- have any current market value?

In short, if Tideland is not a good movie, then what are movies for?

Come and Go (2000 TV Short)

Life in eight minutes

[9/10 · 19 November 2009]

The first line trades off of Macbeth: "When did we three meet last?" But her companion will have none of that: "Let us not speak."

Three women occupy a park bench. One by one they leave, strolling into the opaque darkness at the edge of the stage, and come back. As each vanishes, her two friends share a secret. At the end they join hands "in the old way," and the sudden, smooth unity between the three shadowy characters can make your neck-hairs stand straight up.

The essence of Beckettian minimalism, this extraordinarily rich "dramaticule" consists of about a hundred and thirty words, surrounded by long, opulent silences. It's an almost blank slate and it's magnificent. Peter Brook classified Beckett's work as "Holy Theater" -- that which strives to make the invisible visible -- and of all the showy adaptations in the Beckett on Film series, this simply staged eight-minute ceremony best supports Brook's notion. To be watched and rewatched.

Odd Man Out (1947)

Purgatory

[9/10 · 9 November 2009]

Though he plays the central role, James Mason doesn't do much speaking in this great thriller -- and even at the beginning, before the trouble starts, that famous voice sounds like a weary rasp, as though he's already sensing what's to come.

In fact Mason, as IRA chieftain Johnny McQueen, spends most of the film barely animate. Badly wounded during a holdup, he is by turns left in a heap, hauled from place to place, dumped in back alleys, bartered, haggled over, posed for a portrait. Even the woman who loves him (Kathleen Ryan) begs a compatriot, "Let me have him first," as though Johnny were a keepsake about to be tossed in the fire. Reduced to an object, McQueen has to struggle just to move. It's a terrible kind of purgatory, and Mason's suffering eyes and agonizingly slow progress let us feel every moment of punishment. At one point, re-envisioning the night's events, he throws back his head and simply howls in physical and spiritual pain. It's heartrending and nerve-wracking; he's hidden in a roomful of people, an inch away from capture.

A lesser-known companion to Reed's The Third Man, the movie bears some superficial similarities: a dogged yet not unsympathetic police chief; a woman faithfully in love with a fugitive; a tense nighttime manhunt in a closed city -- not to mention beautifully crisp black-and-white cinematography. But Odd Man Out blends its tension with allegory. "I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal," Johnny declares in his delirium, quoting Corinthians, and the movie is all about the echoes his presence creates in the people he encounters. This leads to a few small clumsy touches -- some overhelpful dialogue for example ("I understand what I see in him." "What?" "It's the truth about us all.") -- but not enough to blunt the force of the message. A well-meaning woman asks, "Why should I have to be the one to turn him in?" She can't quite give him over to justice, but she can't quite extend charity either, so she wishes him luck as he staggers back out into the night. A cab- driver, anxious to be rid of him, says, "Tell your friends that I helped you but if the police get you don't mention my name," as he deposits a helpless Johnny in an abandoned washtub in the snow. It's bleakly funny: the unthinking cruelty of the completely self-absorbed. And, the movie insists, it's in all of us.

Inherit the Wind (1960)

A good movie that hedges its bets

[6/10 · 5 April 2009]

"Inherit the Wind" makes for an undeniably good watch. Its inspiration, the Scopes Trial of 1925, holds inherent fascination and (depressingly) ongoing relevance, as evidenced by the recent battle in Dover. Two great actors, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, get to play parts bursting with juice in the tastiest of dramatic settings, a courtroom. Even mediocre courtroom dramas are usually watchable -- trials are instant theater -- but the Scopes Trial was heaven-sent for a scenarist: crackling dialogue, charged issues, and a pair of titans at the center. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan were both masterful performers, two real-life one-man shows. No playwright could hope to invent better.

But the script hedges its bets. The hit stage play that spawned the film nominally fictionalized the story and the characters to avoid the necessity of absolute historical accuracy, and that's fine. Dramatic compression and embellishment are the norm even without the veneer of fiction. But here we have a case of both too much and not enough, and the result distorts not just the facts but the social issues at stake.

Henry Drummond (the Darrow character) and Matthew Brady (Bryan) aren't exactly impenetrably disguised.  Ditto E. W. Hornbeck (played by Gene Kelly), a famous, cynical Baltimore journalist who arrives to kibitz and mock the proceedings... well exactly how many famous cynical Baltimore journalists are there? The script freely appropriates biographical details, trial tidbits (like the squabble over Brady's "colonel" title), and whole chunks of dialogue straight from the court transcript. Yet frustratingly the screenwriters can't leave well enough alone.

The real John Scopes was approached by a group of local citizens eager to get Dayton, TN on the national radar. He agreed to be a test case to allow the ACLU to challenge the state's statutory ban on teaching evolution. The ban was hardly a hot-button issue; it was being quietly ignored by teachers and indeed by the legislature itself. The text that Scopes taught was not only already in use but in fact required by state law.

But the movie takes the popcorn route: the teacher Gates (Dick York) is a lone crusader for truth, while the townspeople are a monolithic fundamentalist entity, all but gnashing their teeth in eagerness for a lynching. Worse, the script invents a fiancée for Gates, and -- gasp! -- she's the daughter of the fiery town minister! It's enough to make you groan. The dramatic signposting in these scenes is so obvious that it amounts to an insult. We KNOW the issue is divisive; there's all those people yelling. The subplot's too heavy-handed to be poignant so you just sit through it and wait for Tracy and March to show up again.

The resolution (following a terrific and reasonably accurate witness box showdown) similarly feels forced and false, as does the final scene between Drummond and Hornbeck/Mencken (which feels like a writer's afterthought to "balance the message"). Kelly has a natural big-city dash that is quite effective in the role -- dapper and graceful, he shows up like a neon sign in the rural setting. A local woman asks him if he needs "a nice clean place to stay." He doffs his boater, smiles sweetly, and replies, "I had a nice clean place to stay, ma'am, but I left it to come here." It's funny, and fleetingly you can imagine what the movie might have been like with somebody like Preston Sturges in charge to seize on the satirical possibilities of the events. But the authors and director Stanley Kramer are too well-intentioned to empathize with the H. L. Menckens of the world, so Hornbeck's snarky cynicism earns him an inevitable condemnation as well. (Stanley Kramer may never have had a bad intention in his life. He was the anti-John Waters.)

So we're here to be taught a lesson about bigotry, ignorance, and the sacredness of truth. Yet the truth gets compromised, a baffling choice when the reality contains enough drama for five movies. At one point Brady, cornered by Drummond, announces: "I do not think about things I don't think about." Drummond returns, "Do you think about things you DO think about?", to which the flustered Brady blurts, "Well, sometimes." The lines have a classic screenwriter's ring, too good to be true -- and they come verbatim from Darrow and Bryan. With material like that, who needs fiction?

The Brothers Grimm (2005)

Minor but fun Gilliam

[6/10 · 10 December 2008]

Steven Spielberg is often accused of being one of those directors who try to "awaken the child in all of us." This accusation, unfortunately, is largely true; Spielberg's sentimental idealization of childhood has at times overwhelmed his considerable skill at depicting it. "E.T." may have brought magic to our youth, but if you've never balked at that movie's emotional false notes than you probably haven't seen it lately.

Terry Gilliam, likewise, has set out to recapture childhood, but with a difference. Gilliam doesn't have Spielberg's craft, but he has a surer knack for catching a child's sensibility than almost any other director living. When, in "The Brothers Grimm," a horse swallows a young boy whole, then opens its mouth to show the boy struggling frantically in its gullet, the image is so outlandish that it's both genuinely scary and genuinely magical -- the kind of wild nightmare your friends in school once laughed at you for finding terrifying. Throughout the movie you can feel Gilliam taking giggling delight in making fairy-tale nonsense real: a witch's hair snaking down from a tower, an ambulatory goon squad of trees, a hostile gingerbread-man, a fearsomely agile wolf to chase Little Red Riding Hood. Unlike Spielberg, Gilliam doesn't seek reassurance in youthful fantasy. He stays aware of its alarming ambiguities. Think of the boy at the end of "Time Bandits," staring at two smoking holes in the grass. He's free to adventure his way through the Universe, every child's dream, but his parents have after all just exploded... so what now? "Mum? Dad?"

The images stay consistently inventive, and the performers seem to have fun dodging around them. Matt Damon is perhaps a shade too slick as Will, but he has star presence and does well enough. Heath Ledger does something rather interesting with Jacob. He has slightly mangled diction, like a teenager wearing orthodontic headgear, and quick, spastic hand movements. He makes himself into a scholar-nerd with bookish dash, and he's quite engaging. Peter Stormare and Jonathan Pryce get fun accents to play with, and a ravishing Monica Belucci hisses erotically as the villainess.

Gilliam's flaws are undeniably visible here. As ever, he lets production design distract him from the narrative, which here and there falls limp. His characteristic weakness at developing strong adult female roles shows in Lena Headey's Angelika, who's allowed to be tough and unconventionally attractive but little else. (Gilliam's most effective female characters showed up in one of his weaker films, "The Fisher King.")

"Grimm" is a minor Gilliam. It doesn't engulf you like "Brazil" and it doesn't haunt you like "12 Monkeys." But it deserves better than the lukewarm response it got from critics and audiences at release. It's lightweight, but it's as entertaining as any recent blockbuster and in general far more interesting to watch. Gilliam has suffered from his difficult reputation with the film industry, and he may be now suffering for different reasons with the rest of us -- when one of his movies actually makes it to the screen it's enough of an event that we feel cheated if it's less than transcendent. "He could do better," we say; yet even a visionary is allowed simply to have fun, yes?

I'm Not There (2007)

Einstein disguised as Robin Hood

[8/10 · 18 September 2008]

Enjoying "I'm Not There" requires a level of acceptance that Dylan is somewhat more than just a well-respected pop star, or even a "living legend." The fact that the movie works at all partially confirms that idea: it's impossible to imagine a movie like this being made about Paul McCartney or even Mick Jagger. We know too much about them to get taken in. Dylan is that rare animal who has achieved massive fame without compromising an essential sense of mystery. He may be the last such animal ever.

This mystery is crucial, because "I'm Not There" is not about Dylan's life; it's about how Dylan is PERCEIVED -- by his fans, his friends, and even by himself.

First we meet Dylan-the-Poser (played engagingly by Marcus Carl Franklin, age 11). This is Dylan as he must have seemed when he first arrived in the New York scene: an impossibly precocious youth, already self-mythologized, seemingly ready to take his place among blues and folk legends whose lives he was too young to have lived, cooed over yet patronized by those who take him in.

The Poser seems happy enough with this treatment; but from beneath the ruse emerges Dylan-as-Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), the sharp-eyed, passionate poet. He speaks directly to the camera, directly to us. ("That's what makes him different," his fans thought then, "it's like he's speaking directly to me.") Swiftly on his heels (following Julianne Moore's amusingly accurate Joan Baez) is Dylan-the-Idealist (Christian Bale, very good). He's the Dylan that sang at civil rights marches, so seemingly pure in his truth-telling that he rejects the society that wants to honor him. (In one of the movie's most intriguing touches, this same Dylan is the one who is later "born again.")

But all too soon appears Dylan-the-Star (Heath Ledger), an actor who gained fame by playing the rebellious Idealist in a movie, whom we follow through a stormy relationship (it's the one Dylan's fans must've felt they were in -- in love with that guy who betrayed them, who turned out to be an egomaniac fake). Then, in the movie's most inspired stroke, comes Dylan-the-Concealer (Cait Blanchett). It's a coup: Blanchett transforms herself from one of the world's most elegant women into a scruffy, squawking proto-punk, desiccated and wired. There's a jittery thrill to her performance; she plays it as if at any moment we'll discover she's entirely the wrong actor for the part, which of course makes her perfect. She keeps one arm crooked in front of her to help conceal her shape; Dylan did too. Under siege from press and fans, the Concealer talks a mile a minute, leaping from one defense to the next -- humor, apathy, venom, and finally, brilliantly, nonsense. This segment is Haynes at his most fun, layering his pop associations so densely that we feel like we're watching "8 1/2", "A Hard Day's Night" and "Don't Look Back" superimposed.

What the Concealer's concealing is the final incarnation, Dylan's Self-Image (a fine Richard Gere). This is Billy the Kid, a rumpled, soft-spoken outlaw only looking for peace in a town of his own imagination. These gorgeously-filmed sequences, mystifyingly drubbed by the critics (had they ever listened to the lyrics?), in fact provide the film's sweetest and most affecting moments, including Jim James' lovely, haunting rendition of "Going to Acapulco".

The movie's not flawless. It drags at times, and frustrates at others. But it stuck with me, and it got me to think about its thesis: that part of what is important about any human achievement is the real, complicated human who achieved it. Take a look at a photo of Einstein. You may not understand the Theory of Relativity, but you understand the face. Wise and fragile, open and mysterious. This person, you think, was on to something. You want to know more.

The Prisoner (1967–1968)

Want answers? Take a number...

[9/10 · 17 August 2008]

Montage: a secret agent (Patrick McGoohan) storms into his superior's office and angrily resigns his post, for reasons unknown. A machine files away his Xed-out photo; he speeds away to his home. He enters his house and begins packing for a journey. Outside, a hearse pulls up to the curb. A pallbearer strides to the door. Knockout gas comes pouring in through the keyhole. When our hero awakes the room is the same... but the world outside is not.

We are in the Village, a picturesque nightmare co-fashioned by Orwell, Kafka, and Carroll. The unnamed agent has become Number Six in a population of equally nameless, creepily cheerful residents, headed by a shifting, and shifty, Number Two. Who is Number One? Well, that's the question, isn't it... In one direction are impassable mountains, in the other the sea -- and on patrol is a bizarre, lethal white balloon that hunts down those unwise enough to dare them.

Viewed today, "The Prisoner" seems so strikingly ahead of its time that one can only regard it as either a visionary masterpiece or a dazzling failure. Either way it is compulsive viewing. Co-creators McGoohan and George Markstein were seemingly at odds about what to make of it all, with McGoohan eschewing conventional James Bondisms for a more surreal, allegorical approach. (He himself wrote and directed some of the series' best and most bewildering episodes.) And truly "The Prisoner" works best when at its least explanatory and most hallucinatory. Not until "Twin Peaks" would another television show dabble this heavily in the logic of dreams.

McGoohan also believed the premise would only hold up over a limited run, and his concern seems justified. A few of the later of the seventeen episodes show desperation: low points include the feebly whimsical "The Girl Who Was Death," the plodding "It's Your Funeral," and "The General," which might as well be -- and nearly is -- an episode of Star Trek.

Yet at its best, in episodes like "Arrival," "Free For All," "Dance of Death," "Many Happy Returns," and the finale (one of the most astonishing hours ever programmed for television), the series achieves something extraordinary. Its influence reaches beyond such obvious successors as "Lost" and "The League of Gentlemen" -- and could you imagine "Brazil" or "The Matrix" without it? "The Prisoner" catches at a thread in our subconscious and pulls it loose; it tells us that something is genuinely wrong somewhere with the Great Big Picture. Its true antecedents are Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" and O'Brien's "The Third Policeman": nonsense that bleeds into spiritual unease.

It's not hard to understand why the series has a cult following, or why, love it or hate it, it still packs a punch. We are in the Village. Be seeing you...

Sylvia (2003)

Prose

[3/10 · 7 April 2008]

This biopic suffers a fatal omission: poetry. That's a problem, given that the two main characters are Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, two of the more celebrated poets of their time, and doubtless the lack of their work in the movie stems from the hostility of their respective literary estates to the making of this film. Which begs the question: then why make the film?

If the filmmakers believed that the natural drama of the situation was enough to cover the lack, then they seem to have erred. Without their verse -- which other characters helpfully inform us is really really good -- we are left with two rather problematic subjects. Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow, giving an extraordinarily fine portrait of fragility and mental illness) comes off as a clinical case rather than a character -- we gather that she wrote some powerful poems and something else called "The Bell Jar," which sounds nice for her, but all we get to see is a troubled young woman who, without treatment, clearly would have been bent on self-destruction no matter whom she married or what line of work she took up. This is deeply sad but not inherently dramatic. (Here we have the difference between "that which is tragic" and "a tragedy.")

Hughes (Daniel Craig) suffers even worse by the loss. Since we have no insight into his soul, artwise, and no context with which to evaluate or respect his abilities, he comes off as a plot device rather than a person. (The only poem he reads is by Yeats.) Craig has a hooded gunmetal stare, a rumbling voice and the physique of an action star, and his casting here as a future laureate holds interest: a poet with the physical presence of a prizefighter. (Although has any real poet/children's' book author ever really been that buff?) But the script lets him drift, and all he can do is stride around looking worried and vaguely guilty. Ultimately the only thing we really have to go on is that Hughes seems to have done well with the ladies. As insight goes, that's not much.

The movie is well-shot, and occasionally moving, but more often than not its only virtue is to provide an incentive to seek out these writers' frustrating missing words for ourselves. Perhaps then we can see what all the fuss was about.

The Host (2006)

Funny and scary, top-notch monster fare

[8/10 · 24 February 2008]

Joon-ho Bong, the director and co-writer of this marvelous satirical monster movie, clearly loves the conventions of the sci-fi/horror genre; he also clearly loves smashing them. A family gathers in an evacuation center to mourn a lost child; astonishingly, and discomfitingly, their grief goes over-the-top into parody -- you start to giggle and feel guilty, and then, realizing the humor is intentional, keep on giggling. A moment later, an ominous figure enters wearing a bio-protection suit, and you barely have time to feel nervous before he takes a pratfall. It's the kind of irreverence that may worry the conscientious western audience.

But Joon-ho is less worried about taking the genre seriously than he is making a rousingly entertaining movie. After a brisk bit of backstory he brings us to a sunny day on Seoul's Han river, where a dimwitted father (Kang-ho Song) and his sweet, smart daughter (Ah-sung Ko) help to run a food stand. Some onlookers notice a curious, indistinctly seen creature drop from a nearby bridge and swim through the water. Within a few moments that creature will be seen very clearly indeed, in a sequence both startling and exhilarating; there's none of this "Cloverfield" coyness about what-does-it-really-look-like. Few directors in this field are so generous with their monster, and the special effects, presented quite matter-of-factly, in broad daylight as it were, do not disappoint.

Joon-ho's head-on approach is bracing -- he pushes the gas-pedal so strongly that you almost fail to notice how complex the story is that follows. There are satiric swipes at the U.S., with more than a hint of Iraq in the aftertaste, and also a nice allegorical fable about unity in the face of danger. While the family that the film centers upon bicker and argue, they remain comic and ineffectual. Their eventual cooperation in the face of crisis pulls them through. (The message is reminiscent of Kurosawa, whose sharpest jabs were at selfishness and egocentrism.)

The monster is a hoot. (Watch out for that tail!) The performances are smart and often poignant, especially the young actress Ah-sung Ko, as a resourceful child in great peril. And, without giving too much away, the film has at least one magnificently scary moment, when Hyun-Seo (Ko), leaps to catch hold of a rope -- she clutches it, dangling for a moment, then lets go -- and then we, like she, are held breathless, in suspension. Truly first-rate.

Highly recommended, especially before the planned American remake comes out. Now that, unfortunately, is something to fear....

The Queen (2006)

How real is the Queen?

[6/10 · 19 December 2007]

The IMDb trivia page tells us that screenwriter Peter Morgan spoke to many insiders to gather the ticklish details that inform this movie; is it fair to wonder if some of those sources may have had a vested interest in how certain principals are portrayed? Not to carp unnecessarily, but Tony Blair as portrayed in this film comes off a great deal closer to Hugh Grant in "Love Actually" than any real-life politician has a right to. He becomes little more than a mouthpiece for the screenwriter's better instincts. (Any hint of cynicism in the motives of 10 Downing Street is safely offloaded onto Alastair Campbell.) Yet Sheen (who was recently drafted by the same writer to play David Frost onstage) is quite good; he's eerily Blairish, and it's easy to imagine his startled, amused reactions as being those of the genuine Blair facing the real thing, the monarch, the Queen.

But how real is the Queen? We are told, by this film, that she is more real than we might imagine, despite having lived one of world's strangest possible lives, and the notion is undeniably charming. As presented by "The Queen," the entity of Elizabeth II comprises an intriguing mixture of naivete and worldliness, cushioned detachment and sly, sometimes prickly wisdom. When she tells newcomer Blair that he is the eighth Prime Minister to sit before her, Winston Churchill being the first, we see a flash of tightly smiling panic on his face -- he's like a young man learning about his older mistress's past lovers. How does he measure up? The movie displays great deftness in catching these wonderful little nuances of the way society and royalty interact, and these touches are so entertaining that one almost regrets the overarching plot that demands the reconciliation of these two deeply odd entities -- it's the moments of disconnect that draw you in the most.

The cast is good all round, with particular kudos to James Cromwell, Roger Allam, and Sylvia Sims. But of course none of this would work without the towering presence of Helen Mirren, whose performance cannot be overpraised. With no showiness or visible self-indulgence she suggests an absolutely credible complexity in her assumption of authority: from the moment she appears she simply is the Queen of England. (Within a few minutes you may forget what the real one looks like.) She's marvelous, unaffected, and compulsively watchable, and she holds the whole movie on her shoulders without seeming to notice the burden. Morgan's screenplay is witty and filled with snarky gossip, but it ultimately adds up to no more than glib, and Frears' direction, while characteristically stylish, adds little in the way of profundity. All in all, we have a respectable little entertainment that happens to be anchored to a remarkable and mysterious presence, embodied by an equally remarkable and highly empathetic performer. "The Queen" is worth seeing for that alone.

Happiness (1998)

A genuine shocker -- in the good way.

[9/10 · 25 August 2007]

This jaw-droppingly black comedy (for such it is, more or less) can make you laugh out loud and screw your eyes away in horror at almost the same moment. Yet it's not just about shock effects. The apparently fearless Todd Solondz has made a real movie here, with real characters, no matter how depraved, and it is the skill, intelligence, and precision of his approach that give the discomfort (and the laughs) that rare quality: a true edge. If you can imagine some bizarre collaboration between Luis Bunuel, R. Crumb, and middle-period Woody Allen you might get an idea of what you're in for here.

As with Bunuel, Solondz' detached yet avid attention focuses less on condemnation than on watching what his characters do next. It isn't good: Hoffman, as a shy, inarticulate loner, releases his sexual frustration in abusive phone calls; Adams, as a sad-eyed, idealistic musician, floats from mishap to mishap like a semi-deflated balloon -- never rising yet never quite sinking either; Baker, playing a tortured family-man/therapist/pedophile, turns to predation. The sequences involving this last character constitute the movie's most quease-inducing thread, yet Baker's extraordinary performance, and that of the young actor Rufus Read as his son, make their scenes heartbreaking as well. (It should be noted that the cast all around is excellent, down to brief but memorable work by Jon Lovitz and Camryn Manheim.)

Solondz never softens: every time you think you sense a turn for the better in the whole business, something (rape, murder, suicide, theft) screws up the works. But the movie is ultimately about happiness, as both the title and the endearingly drippy song Adams performs remind us -- how fleeting it is, and how difficult to attain, and yet how transfiguring, even when it passes us by. I have not yet watched Solondz's other works, but I was impressed enough by the assurance of this one to seek them out. Movie-making as good as this is worth squirming for.

Extras (2005–2007)

Bonafide greatness.

[15 January 2007]

For some time I've been seeing comments here and elsewhere intimating that "Extras" was a decent comedy show, albeit not the stroke of genius that "The Office" was, that in any case deserved a chance, and all sorts of other trickles of faint praise. Since I was a great admirer of Gervais and Merchant's "Office" and not in a hurry to be let down in case that was a fluke, I didn't seek out the new series very rapidly. I recognized that a great deal of the success of the former series was based on Gervais' detailed caricature of Brent, and on the charm of the ensemble cast, which might be lost in a new setting. The new series hinted at hokeyness, with celebrity guest stars and the potentially thin premise of a scrabbling "background artist" trying to make good.

So, having just watched the first series, I was frankly bewildered to find that "Extras" was one of the best television comedies I've seen. It's funny, biting, touching, painful and likable in all the right measures. Gervais has created a subtler persona than his previous one: the essentially ordinary, honest-to-a-fault Andy Millman, facing his forty-third year with the quiet desperation of the perennial also-ran. Accompanied by his feather-brained best friend Maggie (nicely played by Ashley Jensen) and his insanely incompetent agent (Stephen Merchant proving himself as a performer as well as a writer), he navigates the choppy waters of show business with teeth bared. Brent's inane grin has transformed into the painfully aware grimace-smile of the borderline failure. Gervais has successfully softened his comic mannerisms without losing his edge, and it's paid off; "Extras" goes darker and deeper even as the situations grow more outsize and bizarre.

By creating one great, brief TV series, Gervais and Merchant could have been an unusually brilliant one-joke wonders. By creating two they establish themselves as genuine and formidable comic talents. "Extras" is not be missed.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

It works.

[7/10 · 14 January 2007]

Many years ago the public radio station in my hometown ran the radio series of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The theme song, "Journey of the Sorcerer," performed by a band that I otherwise loathe, to this day nearly brings tears to my eyes.

Hence it is probably impossible for me to give an entirely objective review for this film. This great conception was first hatched in those jokey yet skilfully made broadcasts. Since then it has taken many forms, from a television show to a series of novels, to record albums, to a computer game, to (finally) a film, each time being reshaped and reimagined by its creator, the late and sorely missed Douglas Adams. He really hit on something: a vehicle by which he could not only satirize pettiness, bureaucracy, consumerism, narcissism, and uncounted other foibles of humanity, but also the pomposity of science fiction itself. His sense of humor was at once deeply cynical and deeply warm, and one of the most gratifying and surprising qualities of this film version is the obvious respect it shows for its author.

Adams didn't live to see his creation hit this new medium, and yet the script he wrote seems not to have been, as might be expected, trampled upon by the filmmakers. The opening song is strikingly catchy and funny, the casting is excellent -- Freeman, Def, Deschanel, Nighy, Rickman, and especially Rockwell are ideal -- and the verbal wit, unusually intact, holds up.

And we have the moment, most importantly, when the Earth itself is destroyed -- not in a mammoth explosion but in a nicely understated poof. That unexpected sound instantly lets you know the movie is on the right track. And then, in the starry darkness, that banjo begins to play -- and for anyone who ever laughed out loud at hearing a deep, melancholy metallic voice say, "LIfe. Don't talk to me about life,'" that sound will send a chill down the spine. Adams created that rare work that creates laughter and sparks the imagination simultaneously. He made the universe seem like home.

Beat the Devil (1953)

Huston at play.

[8/10 · 24 December 2006]

Few things in movies are harder to put into words than the weird charm of "Beat the Devil". There's something lordly about the heedlessness of it all, as though John Huston had woken up one morning and, over eggs, decided to fritter away a few months, a couple of major stars, and the entire budget of a film on a practical joke. It's difficult to imagine the theater audiences who took this for an attempt at a serious thriller; any possibility of melodrama vanishes at approximately the moment Robert Morley, lower lip jutting with purpose, marches into sight -- his scowl is burstingly comic, and his crisp, supercilious phrasing seems to give the movie a whole extra level of energy. Despite Humphrey Bogart's famous irritation with the final product, he seems wry and laid-back here, and quite clearly aware that nothing of importance is happening. Jennifer Jones is unexpectedly funny and likable, Gina Lollobrigida is luscious (her pursuit of the stiff-necked Underdown is winning), and then of course there's Peter Lorre, who was one of those magic ingredients one could add to any film to make it better. (Where are they now?) He, Barnard, and Tulli make a hilariously seedy lineup -- "Surely one look at our faces should convince you we are honest men!"

What else? The plot is the shaggiest of dogs, the production looks cheap and somewhat patchwork, and the ending is -- well it just sort of ends. Yet as a sort of cinematic prank on the part of Huston and Truman Capote, who concocted some genuinely classic dialogue, the whole manages to be great fun. There ought to be more movies like this, but who has money to throw away?

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987)

A remarkable movie.

[9/10 · 18 July 2006]

Thanks to its legal status, "Superstar" is a true piece of underground cinema, and one of the best of its kind. Here in the era of "South Park" the idea of a drama about the Karen Carpenter tragedy acted out by Ken and Barbie sounds like a crass joke, and yet Haynes treats the material with extraordinary assurance. The dolls evoke not only the cultural issue of female body-image but a not-entirely vanished society -- Nixon's "Silent Majority," with its suffocating aesthetic and tight-lipped insecurity -- and the strange sound the Carpenters constituted within it: wholesome, sweetly naive songs delivered in Karen's deft, sultry/ melancholy voice. It was an odd enough voice to be coming from the real Carpenter, and here, juxtaposed with the wide-eyed, increasingly skeletal "Karen" doll, the effect is spooky and shockingly poignant. To what degree the treatment is fair to the Carpenter family is unclear, but as a film it makes an interesting companion piece to Haynes' extraordinary "Safe" and stands on its own as a superb pop-art elegy and a genuine outlaw triumph.