Two Hands

Saw Two Hands, an Australian gangster movie about a boxer/guy-who-stands-in-front-of-strip-clubs-and-shouts-at-men-to-look-at-the-beautiful-girls. He gets a starter position with the local mob to deliver some money but he loses the cash. So, the mob is after him, there's a girlfriend involved, other gangs, all the trimmings for a nice, knotty little gangster film. This film reminded me a lot of the film Go. Both have intricate, branching stories following different characters that weave around and into each other, both include little cute details and a Seinfeldian climax that neatly ties everything together.

It's a cute film. It's not particularly clever or spectacular but it's a solid piece of film making and consistently entertaining. There's some side-business with the ghost of the protagonist's brother which I felt never really went anywhere but it affords the film some neat opening sequence imagery and serves as one more thread to neatly tie up. It also has a lot of attractive people in it, which is nice. Not an amazing film but not bad either. A good film for people who don't really see many films. Fun, easygoing, not stupid or ugly, not challenging or subtle, just good.

The Informant!

Saw The Informant!, a sort-of comedy about Mark Whitacre, a man who works at a corn processing plant which is struggling to get their enzyme ratios up to par. Suddenly, the cause becomes clear: a saboteur is active in the company, spiking the enzymes, a Japanese rival company is calling and leaving threatening messages. The FBI is contacted and Mark reveals that actually there was no Japanese phone calls, but there was legal shenanigans being played at his company. So begins the incredibly twisty (but apparently true) story of Mark Whitacre.

The film is darkly humorous and absurd but is mostly a sort of thriller or mystery. Throughout the film Mark acts like an idiot kid in a candy shop, living out (albeit ineptly) one of his Tom Clancy books or complicated legal thrillers. He gawps directly into the FBI's hidden cameras but also smoothly moves someone who was blocking the view. It's acted in a very restrained but subtly funny way. At one point there's a meeting of lawyers and one of them is clearly spinning bullshit. The opposing lawyers stare blankly ahead, blinking as they weather the storm. There's no attention drawn to these micro-jokes which of course is what makes them funny. We know exactly what these lawyers are feeling and they're just staring straight ahead.

The film is shot in a very staid, standard way. There's additional goofy music added over the action and funky 60s-style titles that tell us where and when the action is taking place. There are times when this forced jollity seems annoying as the film moves around yet another twist, but it keeps things light and tips us off that, yes, this is absurd and if you feel inclined to laugh, that's probably appropriate. It is not however, for the most part, very funny. There is a form of humor added but it's icing on the bizarre cake of the protagonist's adventures. These little gestures are to make it survive repeat viewings. It's such a strange story.

The Thin Man

Saw The Thin Man, a delightful little 1930s noir. The ace detective in this case is a man with a serious drinking problem who wants out of the detective game. A murder happens and everyone (the victim's lover, the victim's other lover's daughter and his wife, yes everyone) comes to see him to beg him not to take the case. This happens during a wonderfully chaotic Christmas party composed of the detective's friends (retired boxers, stool pigeons, other drunks.) It's hilarious and messy. Of course, the detective takes the case.

The film was apparently meant to be a B-picture and was hastily shot in two weeks. You'd never know it though. There's a breezy casual quality to it which is missing from a lot of flagship pictures. Whereas Maltese Falcon and The Third Man are very serious, almost dour films, this is a jaunt. The detective drinks and chuckles his way through the case, keeping everyone guessing. The film spawned several sequels and it's not hard to see why. I'd watch this detective and wife joke and flirt their way through the phone book. They're just delightful to watch.

The Kremlin Letter

Saw The Kremlin Letter, a spy film about a smug superspy who is recruited into a group to find and destroy a politically embarrassing letter sent to the Kremlin at the height of the Cold War. The protagonist is handsome in a lumpy, dad-ish sort of way but his personality is where he really sparkles "I think I'm a superior combination of intellect and physique, athlete and scholar." Fortunately (and against genre) the film does not expect us to like or want to be this guy. He's made a fool of many times by the end of the film.

The supporting cast of wierdo spies is great. There's a brunette bombshell who can crack a safe with her toes, a cancer-riddled priest, and a homosexual who infiltrates Moscow's intellectual gay scene. The film's attitude towards sex (on that note) is somewhat chaste. We know the protagonist is sleeping with some women but it all happens off-screen, not even a winking fadeout alerting us to what's going on. Then again, in another scene, we watch leeringly as a Russian diplomat's daughter is seduced into a black woman's sapphic embrace. This is hilarious in abstract but treated by the characters as horrible perversion. I suspect in retrospect that this film was perhaps trying to be campier than I had given it credit for.

Anyway, this film is dry fun. The supporting cast and little plot flourishes are great and imaginative but the plot (which is by necessity complex and convoluted) is often delivered via quick muttery dialogues. They make sure we understand the important bits before the big punch-line ending, but I feel like I missed a point of the plot here and there. This is a nice little spy film with character. I think it's mostly for genre fans but it's not a bad film for a general audience.

The Proposition

Saw The Proposition, a grimy contemplative film in the vein of There Will Be Blood. It follows an outlaw who has been sicced on his outlaw family in order to save his pathetic younger brother who may well be retarded (it's tough to say. He mostly just cries and cringes a lot.) Anyway we also follow the sheriff who is seemingly a decent and upstanding man. He commands a gang of ugly, ugly officers and is under the thumb of an effete but bloodthirsty English twit. There's also a couple discursions here and there, as we check in on a besotted bounty hunter or we visit the sheriff's wife.

The film is interesting and not just a pretty face but oh boy is that face pretty. Everything is grimy and filthy and shot in the crispest, brightest way possible. The dust and flies over everything sparkle and glisten with vivid detail. It's one of those films that are just crying out to be screencapped. The music is great too. Apparently the script was written by the composer, Nick Cave. The soundtrack matches the visuals: classical instruments played in a staid, colonial sort of way, with drums and synths sneaking in ever so delicately here and there.

The film was a bit too blood-and-guts for me to really love, but this film looks good and sounds good. It's full of outsized Western mythology. It never quite veers into melodrama or camp however. It's got a Terrence Malick-ish vibe to it, contemplative but not as slow as Malick likes to get. It's not quite as compelling as There Will Be Blood (this film I felt was a tad too lurid) but that's the film I'd compare this one to. Moody, beautiful, ghastly. This also predates There Will Be Blood by two years which of course came out at the same time as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country For Old Men. I'd go so far as to say this was the first of the wave of gothic westerns we got in 2007. Well done.

Five Easy Pieces

Saw Five Easy Pieces, a fairly depressing film. It stars Jack Nicholson as an oil worker who's sleeping with this heavily made up woman whom he toys with emotionally. We open on Jack coming home. She wants to sing him a song but he covers his ears smilingly. She asks him if he loves her and, after pausing a while, he says "why don't you sing?" "Now I don't feel like it." And he smiles smugly and reclines saying "I know." This man is an asshole. She's maybe needy and overbearing and obnoxious but first of all I can't blame her if he needles her insecurities like that and second of all he should in that case dump her and move on instead of stringing along this abusive relationship. Alas this film was made in the 70s so buckle up.

We get to know this dude and discover that he's from a wealthy family of concert musicians. He goes to his family home to visit his sick father, girlfriend in tow, and insults and belittles everyone around him. The revelation of the rich family is supposed to make him romantic and mysterious. Why did he leave? What riches did he seek, beyond the material, this wayward musician? Well, apparently he sought a woman he could manipulate and a life of frustration. The dude is a coward, afraid of showing any kind of weakness and the film tries to trick us into mistaking his cowardice for romantic, manly stoicism.

There are a lot of films from the 70s that annoy me on a personal level, the way (I guess) that good art ought to. I'm probably just a small man mistaking a noble spirit for a tough guise. Maybe this is just a man who is unwilling to subjugate himself for anyone. There's poetry to unpack here but I sure wish the movie wasn't so shitty to women. Every single woman is sneered at by some character in the film. This guy who we're supposed to worship has serious flaws as well. On the imdb boards someone has posted "Anybody else felt like [Jack Nicholson's character]?" Yes of course, Zader82. Don't we all?

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a fairly chill rom com about a man-child whose hot girlfriend dumps him for another man. He goes to Hawaii to forget her but (wuh oh!) she's having a romantic vacation with her new boyfriend at the same resort. For absolutely no reason apart from maybe pity, an attractive front-desk girl lets him stay in the most expensive suite for free and he jumps at this opportunity. Now, the movie gets better later on but it's starting out in a really deep hole. Why is the front-desk girl nice to him? How is she allowed to let people squat in vacant rooms? Does she own the place? And why god why does he agree to this stupid arrangement? Maybe it's supposed to be well-known that there are absolutely no free rooms at any hotel in Hawaii at any time? A mystery.

Anyway, I assumed that the film would reveal his ex-girlfriend to be evil in some way although, we would know, mostly she's evil for not valuing this guy who is just sooo nice and sooo low-maintenance. This is sort of what happens but, to the film's credit, they give her a pretty good monologue about how he's given up on himself, how he's not amounting to anything and it shouldn't be her job to fix him.... and then they reveal she's evil (they actually compare her to Hitler (of course.))

I feel like the film is trying to have it both ways. It wants to be a story of actual personal growth and also a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the couch-bound loser. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it's trying to get show a way forward for the couch-bound. If that way forward is a crisis caused by an ex however, it might be kind of specific advice (if that's what we're going for here.)

It's not a mean film though. It's very chill and relaxed and the people in it generally like each other. It's almost a stoner film. I don't want to condemn this movie. It's sort of dumb but it's not cruel and it might help someone make sense of their life. It's sort of like the puppet vampire musical the protagonist keeps talking about. Clearly it makes sense to someone but not me. (They show a bit of the puppet musical at the end. It looks like an amusing mess. I'd rather have seen that, but then I'm a sucker for misguided whimsy.)

Sherlock Holmes

Saw Sherlock Holmes (Thanks, Basil!) It was a romp. The film follows the famous detective duo Holmes and Watson as they track down a mysterious figure who is apparently able to perform actual magic. Holmes is played as a super-genius of inhuman levels who stays shut up in his room all day but somehow knows the city of London down to its pastry shops, down to its sewer system layout. I don't care how photographic your memory, that's a bit much. But okay, that's the nature of the beast. We are also treated to all of the major characters of the Holmes universe: Watson's fiancee Mary, Mrs. Hudson, "The Woman" (AKA Irene Adler) even Prof Moriarty whom we're apparently just meeting now, despite many references to this being their "last adventure."

They're also playing Holmes a bit queer here, I thought. All of the women in the film have a somewhat adversarial relationship with Holmes. Mrs Hudson is his overbearing nanny, Irene Adler cannot be trusted at all, and Mary is trying to steal Watson away which Holmes reacts to like an injured lover. Holmes and Watson even squabble about the ownership of "their" dog for heaven's sake! Of course this is only one interpretation (they could also be good friends) but I think the ambiguity is left there as a sort of bait. Between this film and Pirates of the Caribbean, I wonder if this we perhaps went through another cultural flirtation with bisexuality.

Anyway, this film was directed by showman extraordinaire Guy Ritchie who frantically speeds up and slows down the action, the better to show off a ripping punch to the jaw. He tilts and whirls his camera around some downright carnivalesque, steam-punk version of London, full of facial deformities, grimy vests, and top hats. The visuals are amazing and the story, although it does not grapple with the ethical dilemmas of modern man, is substantive enough to support these images. The spectacle is sort of the point anyway. And if you enjoy seeing something though, don't worry, you'll see it again: first in Holmes' mind before it happens, then again as it happens, and then in flashback when it's explained how it fits into the mystery (three times in all, with a bravura encore repeat during the credits!) If the film removed all duplicate scenes it might be half an hour shorter. This is just me snarking on the stylistic excess of the film. It's quite a fun romp ultimately.

Out of Africa

Saw Out of Africa, a film about the life of Karen Blixen, an early 1900s author who lived for a time in British East Africa (now known as Kenya.) The film is an epic, heavily focusing on the romance between Karen and Denys Finch Hatton who was a sort of wild-man who shot big cats before, I suppose, they were endangered. The film was made in the 80s but feels very 70s-ish to me. Her lover Denys has many arguments with her about how just wants to be free, man, why won't she let him be free?? This was a big thing in the 70s, the burning desire to have no meaningful connections with other human beings whatsoever. Also the movie doesn't bring it up but she was carrying his child for a while so it's kind of easy to want to be free when you don't have 10 pounds of someone's baby in you.

The film is slightly ambiguous about who's "right" in this freedom argument although, of course, I felt more sympathy for our hero Karen. HThis argument echoes the major theme of the film however which is men abandoning Karen. In the beginning of the film she enters into an admittedly loveless but friendly marriage with one of her friends so as not to die alone. He owns land in Africa (which is how she winds up there) but soon leaves her to manage his land solo while he philanders in town and hunts. When World War 1 breaks out, all of the men-folk leave to go and fight. Karen is doubly disappointed: that she is once again alone and that she cannot join in the fighting. Again and again she's sidelined because of perceived weakness but she rises above and to these challenges and proves herself to be as tough as the toughest man.

The film is rather long and focuses mostly on this romance which I feel is unjust to Karen in many ways. Then again I'd never heard of her before this film (although I do recognize her nom de plume: Isak Dinesen,) so perhaps I'm meant to feel righteous indignation at her treatment. I also get the feeling that she doesn't really suffer however. She's in danger a couple of times but she has servants and a mansion throughout the film. The worst that can befall her is that she moves back in with her family which sucks no doubt but the natives face starvation which sucks a bit more. The stakes are not super high for her but this is her story, so alright.

A beautiful film with a compelling and interesting protagonist.

The Castle

Saw The Castle, an Australian film about a family living right next to the airport runway. Crisis comes in the form of a land-grab by the conglomerate that owns the airport, forcing the family out of their home. Unable to stand for this, they fight it in court. The central family is unbelievably lovable. The film is narrated by the son of the family who is so absurdly stupid it may well be that we were supposed to assume he was retarded. The family members are all fairly dumb. The mother constructs hideous hand-crafts out of potato-chip bags and spray paint. One son constantly buys random things from the classified ads so their house is filled with exercise equipment and knicknacks. They're most proud of their daughter, the only one who went to college (barber.) They're so stupid and poor, but they are lovely. They so clearly love each other and have not only survived in these margins of society but thrive there.

The film is a comedy that pokes fun of its subjects but also loves them and portrays them as worthy of love. A rare thing for any film, doubly so for a comedy. It's a sweet film, life-affirming and kind. The evil conglomerate heads are left offscreen but even the opposition lawyers come off as well-meaning professionals. It's a lovely film.

Top Hat

Saw Top Hat, a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film about not very much. Fred's character runs into Ginger's during a dancing-related incident, he falls in love with her, she mistakes him for another man who is married, servants are involved, the usual. The film is essentially a vehicle for the dancing of which there is plenty and all good-quality. I especially liked one of the numbers where ginger wears a long feathered dress and does everal whirling jumps in it. Beautiful. There's also a show-stopping finale so iconic that The Simpsons parodied it. 50 men and woman on a white Venetian canal set, dancing over water that had been dyed black, it's something to see.

Apart from the dancing though, the plot of the film is the goofy boilerplate of mistaken identities and comical romance. This is not to say it's inept or badly done, mind you. There's some great performances by supporting characters and the writing is not going anywhere new, but it gets us to those familiar places with some style. It's apparently one of the films that rescued the struggling RKO pictures and is therefore kind of safe. There's some sweet dancing but the risks stop there. Not a bad little film.

Brüno

Saw Brüno, a reality/prank film where star Sacha Baron Cohen pretends to be a flamboyantly gay guy pursuing stardom. As with Borat, he provokes people into uncomfortable situations, this time using the strange otherness of homosexuality as his tool to do so. Some of the scenes seem a tad staged but not many and not very. The threat risk that Sasha has pushed his victim too far this time and will finally provoke violent retribution is the engine of this film. That and also strange people being mocked.

I have complicated feelings about this film. It made me uncomfortable but I don't think it's entirely Sasha's fault. I'm a little annoyed that he's perpetuating stereotypes so hard, particularly the stereotype that gay people have lots of extremely imaginative sex. At one point, he handcuffs himself and one of his assistants, in elaborate bondage gear, to a bed and calls the hotel staff to come and unlock him. When the hotel security guard shows up however, he takes one look at them and walks right back out the door again, muttering "I can't deal with this." Their penises were covered, their hands were locked down. They clearly weren't going to do anything to him, but just the sight of two guys in a sexual situation was too much for his tiny mind. I mean, this is a prank film admittedly, but ordinarily people do have sex in hotels. Sometimes they injure themselves or get into embarrassing predicaments but you should help them nonetheless. What if they needed a doctor? "Oh man, I can't deal with this!"

So the film is deeply uncomfortable. Part of that discomfort stems from Sasha performing an offensive stereotype but part of it is the exposure of homophobic, sex-phobic attitudes in society. In some scenes I feel nothing but sympathy for Sasha's victims (as in the scene at the swingers party, or the scene where he goes on a hunting trip and hits on his fellow hunters) and other times I feel he's picked some very low-hanging fruit (rampant homophobia at an MMA-style boxing match? No!) but there a few scenes that hit the balance just right and show me something that I didn't know was there. I don't know that those few glimmers of insight make up for the rest of the film but maybe.

Mrs. Miniver

Saw Mrs. Miniver (Thanks, Anne!) It was a very touching piece of British WW2 propaganda. The film revolves around one family as WW2 starts. It opens with the titular Mrs Miniver sitting on a bus. She fidgets and looks more and more nervous until she suddenly jumps up and rushes off of the bus. What disaster is she trying to avert? What calamity? Why she's only rushing back to a hat shop, having decided that, yes, she will buy that expensive hat after all! this is very cutesy but of course, since this film tracks the start of WW2, we know she will suffer and this is artful misdirection and foreshadowing. This level of well thought out treacle remains consistent throughout the whole film. The central Mrs Miniver and her family are all so wholesome and sincere, they're like the Flanders family, but of course their suffering is therefore all the more hard to watch. the film has a Thornton Wilder-ish sentimentality about it which dips into treacle once or twice (god, those horrible little children) but other times aimed true and broke my heart.

Perhaps as a result of being made in the 40s but perhaps also due to the nature of propaganda, it's very traditional. The family attends church, even through the war, and everyone's a cockney accented working man or a snooty aristocrat (with, of course, a flinty heart of gold after all.) It's true that the son of the family comes back from college a wild-eyed Marxist but this folly is soon kidded out of him by his sweet little girlfriend. Nowadays the filmmakers would be sure to emphasize a harmonious multi-cultural group, a mixed bag to contrast with the fascist's uniformity but maybe this isn't the right approach to grab the populace. Maybe only tribalism can beat tribalism. I don't know.

Anyway, the film stretches on, jumping from vignette to vignette, sometimes skipping over months in a fade to black. This only adds to the poignancy of course. A freshly lost relative is now an old memory, a young boy is grown to a man and is sent off to war. The film is a stirring call to action which now reads as a chest-beating victory cry. It's a sweet film. It doesn't raise any interesting questions or offer new perspectives, but it tugs at the heart strings and is intoxicating.

Paranorman

Saw Paranorman, a studio Laika stop-motion film about a little boy, Norman, who can talk to ghosts. Needless to say, he's misunderstood by his parents, bullied at school, and maintains an gumly cool and quirky attitude. Anyway, he lives in some crypto-salem where witch trials took place. The witch's curse, he learns, will strike tonight unless he can stop it! He teams up with his exasperated sister, the school bully, Norman's fat friend, and the fat friend's lunkhead brother. The film is lumpy at parts and was a little too cutesy for me (he quells a mob, for example, by shouting "Stop!" Yeah kid, no.) but when it hits its climax, oh man! We are treated to some downright pornographic stop-motion. Just gorgeous, gorgeous effects.

The film didn't really capture the new england feel, I think. It felt very west-coast. I think it's supposed to be fall but everyone's dressed very lightly. At one point we get a shot of downtown nightlife and there's a woman in a little black dress, a latina bartender at a dive bar, a man in a turtleneck. These are more big-city types in NEw England. Where's the Carhartt and LL Bean? There should be some women in sensible pastel-colored polar fleece and everyone should be wearing boots, even turtleneck guy and black dress lady. It felt off to me, possibly only because the town looked too warm.

The "acting" also leaves something to be desired. Animated films are usually made by recording the actors reading their lines in various intonations and then stitching the most natural-sounding ones together. This allows for greater freedom for the animators, but sometimes you wind up with incongruous, choppy dialogue. Studio Laika does some top-tier stopmotion but it's got a bad case of the choppies here. At one point Norman throws a book at someone, shouting angrily "How could you?" only no, not angrily, just kind of sadly and sulkily. The voice actor clearly had no idea that book-hurling was going to happen and assumed Norman was feeling sad and sulky. Choppy.

But the point of the film is really the visuals and the quirky story and there it shines. I honestly did not see a lot of the film coming, which is surprising for a kid's film (even a quirky kids film. They have formulas too, you know.) and like I say, the showdown at the end is completely, utterly amazing. Top points. This isn't one of those films I'm gonna tell everyone to see but if you're bored some day, give it shot.

Shine

Saw Shine, a biopic about David Helfgott, a piano prodegy as a child who grew up to win recognition and fame before burning out and losing his mind. The film starts in his childhood, under the thumb of his domineering and controlling father, a Polish Jew with a long burn mark on his forearm from when he "got too close to the fire poker." His father is proud of his gift but demands perfection, that he must win every competition. When scholarships from foreign schools start coming in, the father forbids him from leaving the house. It's realistic and scary, but not monstrous.

Throughout the film, the Rachmaninoff piano concerto no 3 is held up as the ultimate piano piece. His early teachers beg his father not to subject him to the "Rach 3" as they call it. When David finally does attempt it, he snaps. From a life of extreme inhibition, he loses all of his inhibitions, running nude through parks and blathering endlessly in little jokey circles. He's mad, but charming, but really quite nuts. He bounces from music-lover to music-lover, each getting frustrated by having to take care of a man-sized person with the mind of a child. This is a feel-good sort of film, so things turn out okay, but it's many a twist and turn getting there.

This dude is portrayed as a mad genius, his genius held in check only by his madness. The film has many a twist and turn as David's fortunes rise and fall, poetically nonsense-ified by his ramblings. The film is sweet ultimately, and full of lush, gorgeous, beautiful music, powerful enough to drive a man mad.

To Have and Have Not

Saw To Have and Have Not, a Howard Hawks film based on a Hemingway novel starring Humphrey Bogart. Yes, this is a Man's film. We have Bogart the fisherman in corrupt, 1940s Martinique. He runs into some freedom fighters and a smokey bombshell of a woman. She's the love interest and Bogart, with his callous indifference and sometimes hostility soon has her begging to take his shoes off and run him a bath (but will he let her? No, he's too red-pilled for that.) Anyway, Bogart's in full-on anti-hero mode, full of sneers and leers. There's a Hawks-ian bumbling sidekick, a wino, who was probably a lot more horrible and pathetic in the Hemingway novel (if indeed he existed at all.) This is an international noir in the style of Casablanca. It's not as good I don't think, but it's pretty good. It even has a evil, mincing, fat guy.

The film is well made, stark blacks and whites with swaying, striated shadows overlaid. The characters are noble and desperate. The movie gets a little too up the protagonist's ass a couple of times (I mean gosh he's just such a man~!) but this is kind of to be expected from the time and from Hawks and from Hemingway and Bogart. Faulkner was also involved, as a scriptwriter. Apparently they all used to sit together on canvas chairs with the day's script and they'd swap lines, cutting and improvising merrily together. My sympathy is with you Faulkner.

I'm being snide and grudge-y but it's really a good movie after all. It's very virtuous and brave and we could all use a bit of virtue and bravery I suppose. I think of Hawks as the Spielberg of his time, marrying crowd-pleasing stories with top-notch film craft, even capturing pure art here and there. A solid film.

Extract

Saw Extract, a Mike Judge comedy about a small business owner who, ala A Serious Man, suffers and suffers though misfortune, usually of his own design but frequently at the hands of his idiot employees or his even-bigger-idiot friend, a bartender who should have been played by Seth Rogen but is instead played by Ben Affleck. I kept wondering why the protagonist still hung out with Affleck. He's such a stupid, self-righteous ass. I guess he hangs out with him for the sake of the comedy however.

This is a tightly scripted comedy, where threads are branched and wrapped up elegantly and neatly. I did feel that the convolutions of the plot were a little far-fetched however. The protagonist is a chemist-turned-entrepreneur so I think he's supposed to maybe be a little more bumbling and socially stupid? He comes off however as some kind of lunatic who would rather hire a gigolo to seduce his wife in some circuitous plot than just talk to his wife. Also, like I say, he keeps hanging out with the colossal idiot bartender. I think he (the protagonist) is supposed to be a sort of Hank Hill character, meaning well and geekily invested in his niche of the market (flavoring extracts.) I think Jason Bateman plays him a little too Woody Allen-ish, snide and insincere.

Anyway, it's not a bad film. It has a few wonks in it and gets frustrating a couple of times, but it's solidly entertaining for its run-time and also, lie I say, it's very well plotted and well written. Mike Judge can write a hell of a skewering of the vacuity of modern life. I loved, for example, the giant leather cell-phone clip their overbearing neighbor wears. It's such a perfect detail. The film might have been better with more unknown actors but is not bad at all as it is.

Sudden Fear

Saw Sudden Fear (thanks, Anne!) Is was an excellent old noir. Joan Crawford is a millionaire heiress who amuses herself by being a playwright. She cuts some actor from her play only to run into him again later on a long train ride from New York to San Francisco. They fall madly in love but (alas! of course!) she soon discovers that he's trying to bump her off for her cash. This was a very domestic thriller. Crafty little plans unfold involving phones, makeup, gloves, little notes; the sort of plots a playwright would come up with. Versus this is this the blunt force of the calculating actor and his moll assistant. The film makes us wait for the climax but when it comes it's great! Tension, dutch angles, chiaroscuro, it's all there!

I liked this film. I have a weakness for old-timey, Hitchcockian, thrilling drama and this one, like I say, is a little slow starting but gets there in the end. Many times shadows are used to excellent effect. At one point Joan is sitting at her desk, waiting for midnight when she's going to spring her trap. The light is placed right inside of a clock so that the shadow of the swinging pendulum is thrown right on her face, swinging hypnotically and exactly from eye to eye. The film is shot very flatly, people always standing ten feet or so from the camera. The only time (apart from establishing shots) that a character recedes far into the background is when Joan learns of the actor's nefarious plot. She's suddenly dwarfed by her own study, a tiny woman lost in a giant room. It's so nice and neat!

So, this is a good film. A nice taut thriller, a bit goofy at parts, but wonderfully melodramatic and hysterical at the climax.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Saw Hellbound: Hellraiser II. I really like the world of the Hellraiser series. I think it's the ponderous self-seriousness of it, the spectacular visual effects and the bizarre focus on puzzles. There's also this kitschy 80s gloss over everything, with gelled hair and soft-focus sex scenes. The films are very indulgent and beautiful but this indulgence and beauty extends to the torture scenes which are incredibly imaginative and sumptuous. Hell, in this world, is a very passive affair. Most of the "torture" involves the protagonists looking at something, frozen in horror. I'm not sure what it is exactly but something about this series really calls to me.

Anyway, this one picks up right where the first left off, with the series' Final Girl waking up in a psychiatric hospital run by a sinister doctor. This doctor is (of course) very interested in the "cenobites" and is also a part-time puzzle-cube collector so of course soon their skinless people jumping out of mattresses and chains and meathooks everywhere. The film moves along as a sort of romance horror for a while until they finally get to hell where the movie becomes wonderfully disjointed and just stops cohering at all. We are then treated to the real stars of the film: the special effects and matte paintings. I am a total sucker for vaguely spooky imagery and I loved all of this.

I thought this movie was a romp. It's dour and strange and its sequels get progressively sillier (the very next one has a CD-ROM-based monster) but this one was great.

Lantana

Saw Lantana, a film about the intersecting lives of four couples, all with complicated relationships. The central theme of the film is trust, and the damage that's done when trust is lost in human relationships. The plot follows the disappearance of the wife of one of the couples. Although the police procedural of the missing woman keeps us grounded, this film is much more about the relationship calculous of long-term relationships. It reminded me a lot of the film Closer. Similarly, it never introduces a new character if an established character would do. For example, one of the husbands, a cop, randomly runs head-first into a man while jogging. This other man later pops up again (for no clear reason) as the boyfriend of another minor character. The central eight characters who make up the four couples run into each other at random, as though they are the only eight people in existence. It's not done lazily or anything, it's just a stylistic choice made to keep us focussed on these particular eight.

Mirroring the central missing-person mystery, the film treats the relationships of the four couples as a mystery as well, slowly revealing key evidence and clues through conversation. The central theme of trust shows up in both the actual mystery and in the relationship "mysteries" which is neat. The central message of the film, that trust is good and the lack of trust is terribly damaging, is unshocking but nicely laid out and framed.

This is an intelligent film about relationships. Unlike more straightforward romances and rom-coms, this is not wish-fulfillment or escapism. I believe these people could exist and I sympathize with them. I feel like I've learned something about relationships myself in some nebulous way. Also there's a gay character which I thought was a nice touch, but alas he doesn't end up very well and isn't a very nice person. The film was made in 2001, so we're not exactly breaking moulds here. Anyway, a sober but ultimately kind-hearted film.

The Awful Truth

Saw The Awful Truth, a 1930s sex comedy. It's about a couple who, plagued with suspicions about each other's fidelity, file for divorce but find that they have so much fun tormenting each other that - well - but that would be telling~! The film is cutesy and goofy, the man played by the ever-silly Cary Grant and the woman played by the humorously suffering Irene Dunne. It's not a bad picture, but very stuffy and overly coy. I also didn't like the viciousness of the protagonists but then I guess that's my age showing or something. I was interested in how seriously Cary Grant is taken. He engages in comic business with the dog and falls over chairs and so on, but his romantic interests are treated with respect as opposed to, say, Harpo Marx's. I don't know how Grant gets away with it, but good on him.

I didn't really like this film very much either. It's funny in an old-fashioned wordy sort of way which is silly and fun but I don't really care about the marriage of these two people who are so cruel to each other. I'm supposed to be enjoying the black-hearted mud slinging but I'm wondering why she should forgive him after humiliating her so badly and vice-versa why he should forgive her for the same. Cary Grant was apparently sure it was going to be flop (I can't blame him) but it was a huge success, comforting people, I suppose, in their own romantic struggles. A cute, fancy little toy film.

Animal House

Saw Animal House, another anarchic college film, celebrating the revolt of the slobs against those wicked snobs. Like Dazed and Confused, and American Graffiti, I didn't think much of it. I thought the protagonists were jerks and that the antagonists were kinda cute in a bland, ken-doll kind of way. The most compelling character was John Belushi's of course, the silent, animalistic creature who smashes a bottle on his own head to cheer up one of his friends, who wordlessly and pointlessly pours mustard on his chest. I don't know if a movie that featured that character would have been better (a little goes a long way with gross out and absurd humor) but the scenes he's in, he steals.

I thought the treatment of Donald Southerland's co-ed-bedding professor was interesting. He's seen as a peer, not as a clueless antagonist. He's a rival for that one girl's affections but he's not an enemy the way the evil Dean is or the way those smirking bastards in Omega Theta Pi are. I think the zeitgeist now has cast professors and experts as out-of-touch wonks and elites, not as friendly pot-providers. Also there's a scene with a passed-out drunk girl that I think would have been underlined a bit more hamfistedly had the film been made today.

I dunno. I think it does the right things and does okay. I wish maybe the female characters had been given more depth, but eh. What do expect for a frat comedy from the 70s? This one left me cold. Too much cruelty I guess. Or maybe I just wasn't in the mood.