My June movies
Jul 01 '05 (Updated Jul 05 '05)
The Bottom Line The pleasant surprise was "Dummy," the biggest disappointment "Waiting for Guffman."
Although writing (or at least posting!) a lot of book reviews in June, I saw some movies, too, and mostly maintained my resolve to list what I see this year. (I plan—or at least hope—to write reviews of some of those I saw in June.)
Chronologically by their initial release:
Death Takes a Holiday (1934, directed by Mitchell Liesen, 2.5 stars) is a slow-starting, gabby fantasy about Death going on vacation to learn why he is feared. Fredric March is good as the personification of weary Death, but he and everyone else declaims claptrap.
The More the Merrier (1943, directed by George Stevens. 3.2 stars) is a late screwball comedy I'd long wanted to see, being a fan of sorts of Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn (who won a supporting actor Oscar in it). Joel McCrea was not bad, but was not Cary Grant (whose last screen appearance was in the Coburn role in a remake moved from WWII D.C. to Tokyo during the 1964 Olympics). I'd have been merrier if the movie (both versions, in fact) had been shorter.
The Horn Blows At Midnight (1945, directed by Raoul Walsh, not my idea of a fantasy comedy director, 2.8 stars) has Jack Benny as an angel playing trumpet (not violin!) dispatched to sound the earth's last trumpet. It's more silly than funny even with Jack Benny's deadpans.
Casque d'Or (1952, directed by Jaques Becker, 4.7 stars) is not the greatest French film ever, but has much that is great, especially Simone Signoret.
Billy Liar (1963, directed by John Schlesinger has superb performances, particularly those of Tom Courtenay, then-newcomer Julie Christie, and Mona Washbourne, and great widescreen black-and-white cinematography by . I'd give the movie 4.3 stars and the Criterion DVD 5.
Man's Favorite Sport (1964, directed by Howard Hawks, 3.8 stars) is too long, but has enjoyable friction between Paula Prentiss and Rock Hudson with fishing as a metaphor and Hudson passing (passing for Cary Grant, passing for being straight and sexually experienced with women, passing as being a savvy fisherman).
Coup de Grâce (directed by Volker Schlöndorff, 1976, 4.7 stars) seemed to me to err in shifting the focus of Marguerite Yourcenar's recit but has some interesting performances and despairing cinematography of a remote frontier from a long-ago revolution.
The Tin Drum (directed by Volker Schlöndorff,1978, 3.3 stars) has some great set pieces and performances. On its original release, I thought it failed to capture the spirit of the novel. Now I think that much of what is unsatisfying in the movie derives from the novel (though insofar as I can remember, the novel was much funnier). Some of the voice is literally transported (with voice-overs; the one about the end of the toy store is especially powerful). Little Oskar is a monster in a monstrous time, more than a little responsible for the death of all three of his partent. What he is resisting is unclear as he finds a place in a troupe of dwarfs entertaining the invaders (that is, the Nazis).
The tragic anime Grave of the Fireflies directed by and adapted from Nosaka Akiyuki's novel Hotaru no haka by Takahata Isao (1988, 4.4 stars) pours on the sentimentality at the end to a Disneyesque degree. The painfulness of the beginning is more acute in retrospect.
Dreamlife of Angels (1988, directed by Erick Zonca) has excellent performances by Élodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier as working-class women and Grégoire Colin as a sexy cad who plays with Regnier. I liked the movie more the first time I saw it. It drags and one of its sideplots (including assumptions being made about sexual orientation) has been eclipsed by Almódovar's "Talk to Her," so my rating is only 3.2.
Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1991 The Double Life of Veronique is like a parody of what Americans find insufferable about European art films: glacially paced, plotless, with opaque characters (particularly a beautiful female lead, here Irène Jacob, star of the Kieslowski movie I like most, "Rouge") having chance encounters, everything being unnaturally lit (sepia), and with a non-rock soundtrack (this one, by Zbigniew Preisner, is the best part of the movie for me, followed by the puppets and Mlle. Jacob). 1.5 stars.
The Ogre (1996, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, 3.8 stars) simplifies Michel Tournier's award-winning novel but has excellent performances (especially John Malkovich's) and some striking images. Abel (like Oskar in "The Tin Drum") is so odd a character that it is difficult to conclude anything from his involvement with the Nazis. I wish the DVD had included a commentary track or interview with the ever-articulate Schlöndorff about what he was trying to do and whether he thinks Abel redeems his (unwitting) service to Goering and the SS in the end.
I find the Christopher Guest/Eugene Levy mockumentaries less funny and engaging than others, but have found some enjoyment in most, but found Waiting for Guffman (1996) stupid and boring. 1.3 stars.
Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarrantino's 1997 vehicle for Pam Grier is too long, but enjoyable (especially in comparison to "The Double Life of Veronique" and "Waiting for Guffman"!). 4.2 stars.
"Wo de fu qin mu qin" (The Road Home1999, directed by Zhang Yimou, 3.3 stars) is a very slow-moving, beautifully shot (by Hou Yong) romance of a determined illiterate young weaver (the ubiquitous Zhang Ziyi) and a young teacher (Zheng Hao) in 1958 (the time of the Great Leap Backward by Mao) framed by an even more sentimental posthumous tribute (with Zhao Yulian as the still stubborn and romantic widow and Sun Honglei as the son who has gone off to the city, not become a teacher, and not married). This is the slowest and most sentimental of the ten Zhang movies I've seen. (For a ruralite-urbanite romance in the mountains, I prefer "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," not directed by Zhang.)
The Gleaners and I (2000, directed by Agnès Varda, 4 stars) is a genial documentary about people bending over to salvage food or discarded stuff. It and a 2002 followup have arresting images and considerable wit, but ignore some of the side effects of what my partner calls "the recycling pirates": noise, garbage strewn about, what is put out for recycling being moved to the garbage for the convenience of those going through the garbage, and here (but not apparently in France) robbing recycling credit from those who put stuff out to be recycled rather than collected and sold by the recycling pirates.
"Le Fate ignoranti" (His Secret Life 2001, directed by Ferzan Ozpetek has outstanding performance by Margherita Buy and Stefano Accorsi as Antonia and Michele, the two widows of a man living in two worlds (straight and gay) and Gabriel Garko as an AIDS patient and many other entertaining characters. I liked the opening shot of a bust of Antinous and eventually understand the opening scene, but was perplexed by the end. And there are enough underdeveloped sideplots to fill a soap opera miniseries or series. The inept story-telling makes me unable to give it more than 3 stars, but there are many effective scenes of complex relationships, including the mother-daughter one.
Kurosawa (2001, 4.5 stars) It's hard to go wrong with clips from Kurosawa masterpieces and interviews with the likes of Kon Ichikawa and Tatsuya Nakadai, and shooting in Kurosawa's mountain retreat.
Hidden Values: The Movies of the '50s (2001, 4 stars) including John Carpenter, Roger Corman,Paul Mazursky, Lee Grant, Molly Haskell, Paul Mazursky commenting on some of the challenging (to conventional norms) movies from the 1950s: The Wild One, Rebel withou a Cause, The Blackboard Jungle, The Thing, Giant, and Anatomy of a Murder. Interesting comments and good choice of film clips (but no Sam Fuller movies, alas).
Assassination Tango (2002, starring, written and directed by Robert Duvall, who indulges his many mannerisms and develops no other character, 2.7 stars) is an opaque movie about a Brooklyn hit-man dispatched to Buenos Aires, where the hit is delayed and he learns to tango while evading being killed (on whose orders I never figured out). The hit-man likes children, and attracts a very beautiful dancer (Luciana Pedraza). (I'd say this was the septuagenarian Duvall's fantasy, except that they two were already a couple in real life.) The movie starts slowly, but has some marvelous scenes (not that they fit together... or that Duvall the writer/director is very interested in the plot or that I am interested in the character he plays or care whether he falls apart or fails professionally or romantically...).
Dummy (2002, directed by Greg Pritikin, 4.2 stars) is a romantic comedy involving becalmed young adults (aged approximately 30) in the tradition of "Marty." Although character-driven, there is some amusing plotting in getting all the stalled careers and tentative romances in place for a big wedding. Adrien Brody (doing his own ventriloquism) is Stephen, a shy man-child who charms, frightens, then again charms his unemployment counselor Lorena (Vera Farmiga). Milla Jovovich (Joan of "The Messenger") plays his anarchic friend, a serial shoplifter who, like Stephen's sister Heidi (Illeana Douglas), wants to be a singer.
The parents of Steven and Heidi are overly broad caricatures, but Adrien Brody is excellent, quieting any doubts that his performance in "The Pianist" was a fluke. He can carry a movie without channeling Roman Polanski. I have not been easily charmed of late (see above!), but "Dummy" charmed me.
Raising Victor Vargas (2003, written and directed by Peter Sollett, 4 stars) looks to have been shot on a shoestring, but with considerable heart and very natural-seeming performances from youth recruited on Manhattan's Lower East Side to play posturing insecure youth. That it was slapped with an R rating is absurd.
Zona Rosa (2005, directed by Dan Castle, 3.4 stars) is a fairly interesting documentary about male strippers in Mexico City clubs (primarily El Antro). Christian Miranda, the one interviewed most extensively and filmed at home with his children and his mother (he divorced after four years of marriage to a female stripper), is articulate about his job, the rowdy female audience members, and the gay audience members whom he says are more respectful. He is censorious about the attitudes and lack of artistry of some other dancers and of a "biggest banana" contest. There is eventually full frontal male nudity, which was banned in 2001. There are some puzzling slide-show presentations of the dancers and locations in the city, Teotihuacán, and Monte Alban.
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Wracking my brain to try to recall all the movies that I saw in 2004 led to a resolve to list the ones I see in 2005, a resolve that has lasted six whole months! (though it is flagging.
Again, listing led to writing a few sentences and writing a few sentences led to some express reviews I never would have written had I not been compiling the list, and a few express reviews outgrew their containers. The lists for previous months this year are: January, February, March, April, and May.
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