The Summer in a Sentence

Time! It flies. My how it has flown this summer. To make up for the lost minutes, the movies for July and August will be outlined in one quick sentence each*. One single, solitary line to expedite the whole shebang and get me away from my computer and back to the movie theater. The summer may be wrapping up, but there are still so many new movies to see. Off we go!

*Note: Not all entries are one sentence.


July 2009

Public Enemies - (2009) - Film
Seen: Wednesday, July 1, 2009

I saw Michael Mann's latest film on opening night, and was thrilled, as I always am, by the iridescence of his imagery; the culmination of which came in the movie theater scene as Dillinger (Depp) watches W.S. Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama (1934), wherein Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy become sutured into Mann's modern day narrative. Stunning.











Horse Feathers - (1932) - DVD
Seen: Friday, July 3, 2009

That the film opens with Groucho Marx as the new president of the university without any setup or explanation sets the tone for all that follows: total absurdity, in hilarious Marx fashion.















Manhattan Melodrama - (1934) - DVD
Seen: Monday, July 6, 2009

A companion screening of W.S. Van Dyke's gangster melodrama on the heels of Mann's Public Enemies, you know, just to be thorough (and to admire William Powell's dashing ways).















Chimes at Midnight - (1965) - Film
Seen: Saturday, July 11, 2009

Orson Welles's big to-do this summer was Chimes at Midnight, a super-rare 35mm screening of the director's film made in the sixties in Spain, long after his fall from Hollywood grace (if you believe he was ever appreciated there at all), where he's cast as the bumbling and unrefined Falstaff--a man of good humor and appetite even in the most tragic life circumstances. He's sort of like Welles himself. Ebert has a nice paragraph on this in his 2006 review:

Welles was born to play Falstaff, not only because of the physical similarity but because of the rich voice, sonorous and amused, and the shared life experience. Both men lived long and too well, were at odds with the powers at court and were constantly in debt. Both knew disappointment, and one of the most sublime moments in Welles' career is simply the expression on his face at the coronation of Henry V, when he cries out "God save thee, my sweet boy," and the new king replies, "I know thee not, old man."

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - (2007) - DVD
Seen: Monday, July 20, 2009

What a great documentary on the tribulations of two competing Donkey Kong gamers, each of such polarizing, yet true, archetypal character. Also, from someone who never made it past the first half of the first level in the Atari 2600 version of Donkey Kong, that the gaming competition exists at all is miraculous.









The Swimming Pool - (1969) - DVD
Seen: Saturday, July 25, 2009

A movie we might classify under the genre title "French." It's cerebral without saying very much, and even if you don't grow tired of gazing at Alain Delon the story will have you dozing off before long.














August 2009

In The Loop - (2009) - Film
Seen: Sunday, August 2, 2009

Really had fun with this movie (despite the disheartening New Yorker review) and put up a short bit about it on Scarlett Cinema.










(500) Days of Summer - (2009) - Film
Seen: Wednesday, August 5, 2009

He outgrew his overalls, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a welcome addition to the screen as an adult actor; with Zooey Daschanel at his side (500) Days is the free spirit film of the summer. Their chemistry was cute, and I loved the film's framing of the city of LA. I didn't realize LA could look like a busy downtown, but apparently, it can.


Julie & Julia - (2009) - Film
Seen: Saturday, August 8, 2009

Adored Ms. Ephron's delicious summer delight Julie & Julia. You can read my full song of praise at Scarlett Cinema.









La Promesse - (1996) - DVD
Seen: Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Darnennes's film La Promesse arrived in time to temper the overflowing joy of Julie & Julia and Beaches of Agnes, which is nice for the sake of emotional balance, I suppose, but then again, the dire life of a boy on the cut-throat streets of Paris who single-handedly tries to save an African immigrant from his father who plans to force her into prostitution was a tough pill to swallow amidst such glee. I think this is my third or fourth Dardennes picture. They employ a quite raw visual aesthetic that looks to me like a hybrid of Barbara Loden, Cassavetes, and old French noir.







Beaches of Agnes - (2009) - Film
Seen: Sunday, August 16, 2009

The matron of French New Wave cinema, Agnes Varda, made the best movie of the summer (and maybe the year) with her Beaches of Agnes, a wise, playful reflection on both life's victories and pains. Read more of my thoughts on the film at Scarlett Cinema.






The Big Country - (1958) - DVD
Seen: Friday, August 21, 2009

All this talk for years about John Ford's The Searchers (1956) as the standard-bearer of the Western genre and, lo and behold, I discover William Wyler's little-known The Big Country that gives the former a demanding run for its money. How had I not seen this before? How can wide-angle shots of the land go on forever in spite of the film frame? How? I loved it. Perhaps more thoughts later.












Cold Souls - (2009) - Film
Seen: Friday, August 21, 2009

All aboard! Next stop: Depressing City, population: Paul Giamatti.

Wonderful performances from both Giamatti and David Strathairn. I wish I felt the same about the story that fell flat.




My Man Godfrey - (1936) - DVD
Seen: Thursday, August 27, 2009

My Man is my new go-to movie on bored nights that need a quick injection of love and laughter. I've seen this at least five times now, but seeing Lombard and Powell together is always a new experience. And being in ear shot of Eugene Pallette's fatherly grumble is on its own winning.







District 9 - (2009) - Film
Seen: Saturday, August 29, 2009

So it's an allegory about apartheid starring aliens as the discarded members of South African society and the message is clear: segregation is bad. I totally agree, but I wish District 9 had something more politically substantial to say about that. And this one instance where, to avoid motion sickness, I was praying for a Steadycam. Alas...

Inglourious Basterds - (2009) - Film
Seen: Sunday, August 30, 2009

Months of anticipation leading up to a film by a director I have historically disliked culminated the week before Inglourious Basterds's wide release: the blogosphere was all atwitter. Seriously, Twitter blew up with 140 character debates that made me lose my breath with excitement; J. Rosenbaum called it the "cinematic equivalent of Sarah Palin" and a Holocaust denial; even my bestie who's always been a QT fan gave it a big "meh." However, there is nothing that gets me in the theater quicker than controversy. I have to say, this is not only the first Tarantino picture that I liked, it's also the film that I believe will define the rest of his career; this really is his masterpiece.

For all of the cries about IB's political orientation the truth is this film isn't about politics or history at all, it's about the movies. Merely name-dropping director's names from the silent era (as is done with G.W. Pabst many times here) is not enough to qualify as a discourse on the history of cinema, but engaging with the history of cinematic style does. Looking at this picture felt like a walking tour through the arc of film history. It's a discourse that usually has a default frame around the American system, but Tarantino takes it international. It wasn't just the look of the film's visual variegation across the strata of cinematic styles, but its proud reliance on international languages too. He's probably the only one in Hollywood who can subtitle a film and still attract a big audience. This may sound silly considering how gruesome and bloody IB is, but Tarantino has never felt so transparently playful and deeply admiring of the moving image. I just want to give him a big hug!

June Ponderables, And Some TV Too

City of Sadness - (1989) - 35mm Film
Seen: Monday, June 1, 2009

Realizing how out of sync I was with the story of Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness makes perfect sense retroactively, because its narrative follows a four-year period of Taiwanese history that I know very little about. A quick read-though of a handy Wikipedia page filled in a lot of the historical gaps and now it's clearer. Just after the Japanese surrender to the allies in WWII, Taiwan becomes free for the first time in 51 years. Problem is, mainland China has its eyes on the island country, and pitted against the Taiwanese rebel fighters, the stage is set for war, just when Taiwan looked to be free. During these four years of particularly intense strife, Hou Hsiao-hsien follows a family that awaits the return of four brothers from WWII, sees their partial reunion, then deals with their political and social maladjustment. It's a historical film, to be sure. But as a Taiwanese himself, this is a personal film for Hou--and likewise to the Taiwanese people--even more so. Unavailable on DVD, this newly struck 35mm print was on direct loan from Taiwan for its Doc Films screening. The theater packed a full house--marvelous!


Up - (2009) - Film
Seen: Wednesday, June 3, 2009

It pains me to say it--just look at that lovable, pudgy kid at left, Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai), from Pixar's latest feature Up--but I can't think of a more disappointing release from the animation giant in its history. Frankly, I don't get it--did I see the same movie as you all? I enjoyed myself enough to say it was a good experience on a few levels: 1) to marvel at its technical prowess; 2) for the introduction to two cute characters, Russell, the boyscout who befriends codgery old Carl (Ed Asner), and a dog named Dug, who with the aid of a special collar is able to narrate his adorably doggie kind of thoughts--pretty priceless; finally, 3) for a sequence that without any dialogue leads us through Carl's life with his wife Ellie. It's a brief montage of their time from kids to Ellie's death, which hits Carl hard, and left me quivering to keep the tears from spilling out. On the other hand, beyond the sequence just described, the rest of the film felt like filler. Carl remained bitter solely for the sake of narrative conflict, it seemed. There was so little redeeming about him, a hard trait to have for a kid's movie that's supposed to portray the elderly as nonthreatening. Also, shouldn't Charles Muntz have died long before Carl was able to catch up with him in the jungle? As a child Carl watched Muntz's adventurous exploits on newsreels that look to make him at least 25 or 3o years his senior. That would make Muntz over 100-years-old by my calculations. Something doesn't add up...(unforgivably terrible pun)


I Heart Huckabees - (2004) - DVD
Seen: Sunday, June 7, 2009

More than anything else I remembered about 2004's I Heart Huckabees was the Film Comment cover in response to its fall release. I remember that cover better than the movie, which can easily be explained away because I never saw I Heart Huckabees in the theater in 2004. The movie slipped away from me. And it's funny, because even though I have no memory of the film itself, I do remember its ad campaign and the miles of critical essays about it upon its release. For some odd reason, I have a place in my heart for I Heart Huckabees as a defining movie of 2004, despite not seeing it until almost five years later.

I have fond memories of the idea of the movie, rather than the movie itself? Do you remember movies like this too? I am glad to report Huckabees, as it is to the future-me now who is now residing in 2009, is cute, and had a fun energy. I really relished Lily Tomlin onscreen, who I don't see nearly enough of anymore. Dustin Hoffman is one of those actors who is able to absorb a character so the audience is not left thinking about "Dustin Hoffman," the star persona; in Huckabees, he is no different, he just lets it all go. Ditto that for Jude Law, spastic and delightful; Naomi Watts, simply mad (and cute); Mark Walberg, hilarious and an impossible companion; and Jason Schwartzman, the oddest comic master. French actress Isabelle Huppert adds extra eclecticism to an already strange brew of existential dilemmas. One of the dulling experiences in life is revisiting movies you loved as a kid that as an adult are bad, or worse, unwatchable. Even though I didn't see Huckabees in 2004, the anticipation I built up for it over the past five years might as well be the proxy for my hypothetical love of it then. What a relief to have the years match my expectations.


The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - (2008) - DVD
Seen: Monday, June 8, 2009

Andrea at the Spinster Aunt blog saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on New Year's Eve. As a holiday devoted entirely to the celebration of the passing of time, it was an apt moment to see it, and as she has noted, it influenced her reception of it very much. I am sure now that my experience with Benjamin Button would have better if I saw it at the same time. My viewing mate at home, here, late in the middle of June, said it reminded him of Forrest Gump. Hearing that, and knowing the movie tastes of my movie companion, I knew right away his thoughts on Benjamin Button were less than satisfactory, but thought maybe that could be chalked up to the circumstances of time, just as it had for Andrea in the inverse manner.

I fell somewhere in between. Remembering the sweet melancholia of Andrea's experience, and being unable to separate myself--physically, we were in the same room--from the spells of dramatic sighs made in disapproval, especially when that little hummingbird whisked into the frame, it was hard to get my intellectual and emotional bearings on the film set straight. Just like the feather wafting along the arc of Forrest Gump, I suppose Button's hummingbird was repeatedly too overt to take sitting down quietly. But, then again, in a movie like Button that is created outside of time, in both character arc--Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) literally ages in reverse, starting life as an old man in an infant's body, and ending it as a baby with the wisdom of ages--and as a retrospective, a biopic really, that transports us to a different time in history altogether, the hummingbird felt like an acceptable time marker. A little reminder perhaps that the structures of time we adhere to may be just as whimsical as that CGI hummingbird...


The Fisher King - (1991) - DVD
Seen: Wednesday, June 10, 2009

There was sudden buzz about The Fisher King, a movie I have long meant to see, when a friend began tutoring the screenwriter of the film. Ta-da! To the top of the queue it went. From director Terry Gilliam, it has a distinct dsytopic look, like a glance into a steely future that looks a lot like early 1990s New York. Set among gaps between buildings scraping the stratosphere, cramped tenements, and an open stretch of Central Park, its lead character, Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), is a slightly meaner version of Howard Stern who inadvertently sends a call-in listener on a murderous rampage to years later befriend Parry (Robin Williams), one victim's husband, after he's lost his job and is relegated to anonymity and working-class status. The tenuous relationship between Jack and Parry--who appears to be a schizophrenic--is analogous to the city scenery Gilliam presents, with the backdrop alternating from metallic, modern edges (Jack, in his rich and famous heyday) to scrappy stoops and storefronts (Jack and Anne, played wonderfully by Mercedes Ruehl, in her cluttered apartment) to the city streets and park lawn (the public places where Jack has the least control over Parry's whims). It's a tightly woven story that in its most basic sense is about action and consequence. But such a moralistic tale has never felt less didactic.


Year One - (2009) - Film
Seen: Saturday, June 20, 2009

Read my capsule review of Harold Ramis's Year One at Scarlett Cinema!


















Maborosi - (1995) - DVD
Seen: Sunday, June 21, 2009

My thoughts on Hirokazu Kore-eda's Maborosi at Scarlett Cinema...













Duck Soup - (1933) - DVD
Seen: Wednesday, June 24, 2009


As it was spoken on Twitter...













Food, Inc. - (2009) - Film
Seen: Saturday, June 27, 2009

Another great reminder to be mindful of our food sources. The documentary structure is a little clunky, but forgivable. Read my review on Scarlett Cinema!
















RoboCop - (1987) - DVD
Seen: Saturday, June 27, 2009

Here is a still from the best scene of the movie. You probably already know this because you've been watching RoboCop since you were 8-years-old, but for those of you who, like me, have not seen the movie before, a man gets mowed down right in the middle of the office by this cumbersome, Jetsons-esque robot cop at left. In the ivory tower, just beside a conference table the capitalist suit is shot to a pulp--Blammo! I liked RoboCop because it's a really good bad movie. As an action flick, it could have been reduced to a cliche if it weren't for its very fun Reaganomics commentary.

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Lastly, I caught up with some brilliant TV shows this month. I wrapped up the last episodes of The Wire, and began an altogether different series, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, a show so irreverent and politically incorrect it makes those of us with the darkest senses of humor seem sweet. I love it, naturally. Maybe more on It's Always Sunny in the next post...