February 21, 2006
Some more notes on movies
1. While I liked The Best of Youth, it still really looked like a very good miniseries and not a movie. It was fun to look at hot Italian men but this thing just goes on and on. It also gets more soap-operatic toward the end. And wow, those wigs look awful at the worst possible moments. Still, it's a good story and well told for the most part. Also, I think it's almost unavoidable not to feel something for people you've been with for 6 hours (unless it's a really bad date).
2. Constantine was just silly. I think the dialogue was lifted right out of the comic book and it just doesn't work with live human beings. Especially if that human being is Keanu Reeves. Tilda Swinton is amazing as Gabriel, mostly because her androgynous look and voice is perfect for an otherworldly being.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:30 PM | Comments (1)
January 29, 2006
Flowers of Shanghai, DVD, 1/22/06
Has anyone else seen this?
I read a review of this in the Village Voice years ago, so I finally decided to rent it. It's all long scenes with few edits. I'm pretty sure the shortest scene lasts 4 minutes. It takes place entirely indoors and, if I'm not mistaken, it's all source lighting.
In the first scene, the men are gambling and telling stories about some prostitutes in a brothel in 1930s China. At first, the women say nothing. The host tells a story about a prostitute named Crimson who beats up another because her only client has gone to see her. Then, the host mentions that the prostitute and her client have been together a long time. By Tony Leung's and his companion's expressions, we finally figure out that this story is about them. They say nothing and then leave the room as the party continues while one of the "flowers" defends Crimson's actions. This goes on for another 3 or 4 minutes before we see where they have gone. Our star finally says two words about 12 minutes into the movie. He finally converses with his concumbine about 5 minutes after that.
The movie continues in this style. The camera stays mostly rooted in the middle of rooms and sometimes pans left or right. There are no over-the-shoulder shots so we can see people's expressions as they talk. Sometimes, candles or opium pipes obscure the actors' faces. Some of the most important action takes place inbetween scenes.
Yet, it all works. The slow narrative gives the film its deliberate pacing and its concern with Confucian moral appearances. This might be the director to adapt a great version of "The Age of Innocence" because the art direction looks almost anthropological in detail. We spend so much time watching people live without reference to the outside world that the whole enterprise seems hermetically sealed. It feels like a hothouse that no one really escapes. It's beautiful, slow, drugged and doomed.
Posted by deaconmf at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2006
Some movies
1. Three Slave Boys has some very hot guys in it, but unless you're looking for softcore gay porn, it's just not worth watching.
2. Kontroll makes Communist subway systems look like the most amazing movie sets ever.
3. Ran is still the great Shakespearean adaptation on film. Strangely, the whole movie wouldn't be tragic if it had ended just before Saburo dies. The villians are routed, the good guys win the battle and father and son are reunited. I keep wondering which ending is really tacked on.
4. Gates of Heaven still looks rather amazing. It's also more about the business of pet cemetaries than I remembered. Does anyone know where the closed pet cemetary was? The shot in the movie looks so familiar. I think it's somewhere in Los Altos.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
Brokeback Mountain
I saw this almost 2 weeks ago and I'm still not all that excited by that movie.
I think it's mostly because the scenery looked so expensive. It looked so good that they would have ended up sodomizing sheep or a gopher hole if they hadn't done each other.
Do we need another movie of tragic gay lovers? I don't know, but this simple story didn't need to look quite this expensive. Still, Heath Ledger does a great job with Ennis. He actually manages to be expressive while remaining quite minimal.
I'm not going to fault the movie for aiming for the mainstream, nor is it wrong to be tragic (because the story was written that way), but I just wish the love story seemed more compelling, because the two men never seem all that affectionate after that explosive kiss that Ennis's wife sees. They just seem disappointed. And where's the hope in that?
Posted by deaconmf at 10:40 AM | Comments (2)
October 10, 2005
Tootsie @ Dolores Park, 10/9/05
One of those amazing movies where the plot comes together beautifully with theme, where the actors are perfectly suited and the direction stay clear and clean. The ending still doesn't quite work, but it's still the second most insightful American sex comedy. Thanks to Miss C for the suggestion and to all my friends for showing up. I'm still full.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:07 PM | Comments (4)
October 03, 2005
Thumbsucker @ The Embarcadero, 9/30/05
Sometimes, movies are about our deepest impulses expressed more meaningfully than we ever approach in life. When we have these moments, we fail to express exactly what we mean because we keep getting interrupted or we don't have the skills to express ourselves clearly or we don't have the time to think about the event as it occurs. Not all of Thumbsucker approaches that depth. But it does have Tilda Swinton saying what every mother must think when she knows her child is growing up and eventually leaving. It's devastating enough to hear Tilda say she's lonely even with a husband and family; it's worse when she knows her son is already gone. (Thanks for saying what I was thinking, Ms. C.)
My mother finally has all of her children out of her home and this protagonist probably will seem a lot like me. I'm not even mentioning this film to her. Maybe in a year or two when she has more grandchildren.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
The River on DVD, 5/15/05
Jean Renoir directed the screenplay he wrote with Rumer Godden based on her novel. A red-headed English girl named Harriet is growing up on the Ganges when she has her first crush on an aimless American ex-soldier. She has some competition for his attention from Valerie, her best friend, and the half-Indian girl next door. There's about 20 minutes of exposition where we learn about the jute trade and the customs of the sub-continent. There's even a dance sequence. The love story feels like it was written in the 1800s, but India looks amazing here. The documentary sequences on the Ganges look amazing in Technicolor and feel so real. Renoir must have figured out someway of transporting his weighty cameras on boats so he could document what he could see. The final third of the movie involves a tragedy that feels right, but the film ends with a disappointing sequence with the three girls spouting such cliched platitudes about growing up. Ugh.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
Samurai Assassin on DVD, 5/13/05
Well, this is strange one. They've got Toshiro Mifune recycling all his Kurosawa samurai roles in one character and inserted him into a real historical incident. While the swordplay is excellent and Mifune acts his part particularly well, there's some big problems here. Mifune is far too old for the role. His motivations would make more sense if he looked 20 years younger. So much time is devoted to explaining the situation here, but it still makes very little sense to someone who knows only a minimum of Japanese history. It's based on the assassination of the shogun's regent at one of the gates in Tokyo. A group of samurai bent on restoring the emperor to power is responsible, but they want to find out who's been betraying their group to the secret police. Kurosawa is accused at first. They're wrong, of course. I'm sure this was made to win whatever the Japanese Oscar is. Hope Kurosawa got his Oscar. Hope this movie didn't.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie on DVD, 5/12/05
Ok, so the movie is padded with about 20 minutes worth of credits. It's got a creaky plot that doesn't use the characters in Bikini Bottom well. And it's got this framing device that calls to mind a least two Monty Python flicks. But whatever. It's Spongebob and he looks great on a huge screen. His personality is intact and all the jokes remain innocently grotesque. Patrick gets to pal around with him and their big adventure has all the right surreal touches, like a strangely superpowered, but real-live David Hasselhoff. Note to self: stay away from that man's pecs.
Oh. This is a kids' movie. Get your damned mind out of the gutter.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2005
Distant on DVD, 5/7/05
I had no idea it snowed in Istanbul, but when it does, it looks wonderous. This is one of those very European movies where very little seems to happen, but we watch characters go about their very average lives. An unemployed man from somewhere in the mountainous countryside of Turkey goes to stay with an older, successful photographer from the same hometown. They get on each others nerves, they try to get along, they fail. It's usual a very quiet movie and, as the two move slowly toward their emotional showdown, we watch the younger man try to get a job and watch women. The older man has conversations with his ex-wife, who's leaving with her new husband for Canada. It's all quietly and deliberately observed. I probably won't remember the characters in 10 years, but I will remember a man walking by a creaky boat floating on its side as the snow falls quietly in the bright light of winter.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2005
Yossi and Jagger on DVD, 5/1/05
Two hot gay soldiers. A war situation. Of course, someone was going to end up dead. While the movie's mostly about these two, a good portion of this story is about the company of soldiers dealing with the Golan Heights (I think) in the winter. It's not too sentimental and it's not the ringing endorsement of gayness that an American movie would be, but the relative quiet tells this simple story simply. And yup, I'd probably sleep with most of the cast. Woohoo!
Posted by deaconmf at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster on DVD, 4/30/05
This was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. While it didn't really concentrate on the creative aspects of music, it did a great job of showing how the band stayed together with the help of a psychiatrist. I think the movie's most notable for showing how Lars and James did try to stay civil to each other while going through a lot of therapy. I'm not sure why the directors decided to show us the auction where Lars ends up making a shitload of money. That just reinforces how much of an asshole that guy is. Also, I liked that once they discussed the band problems, they jettisoned the therapist. I'm not sure why the therapist thought he was going to become part of their creative process.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2005
The Last Mitterand at the Castro (SFIFF), 4/24/05
Man, this movie was no fun. It's about a journalist who is hired by Francois Mitterand to write his memoirs as he leaves office. He spends very little time on politics and instead we get bogged down in Mitterand's uncertain involvement with the Resistance. Also, he seems to be played as a wacky old man which just seems sort of jarring. The ending seems so "feel good", I wondered if Americans had made this movie. It's too bad because Michel Bouquet does an amazing impression of the man.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
Raging Bull on DVD, 4/23/05
I keep forgetting that this movie is so complex considering that its starting point is rage. Jake La Motta's anger gives him success in the ring and ruins his marriage. His jealousy is an ugly thing to watch especially when he accuses his brother of sleeping with his wife. Cathy Moriarty seems so angry and strong that I can't quite see her as a victim in this relationship. Robert De Niro is hot as the younger Jake, but there's this horrible sense of ruin when he does "On the Waterfront" as a fat, washed up old man struggling to survive.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
Sin City at Van Ness 1000, 4/17/05
Mostly black and white. Red for love and blood, yellow for sickness and other unspeakable bodily fluids. Bikini girls with machine guns. Clive Owen's accent comes in and out. The horrible voiceovers and stilted dialog. Mickey Rourke, forgotten monster. Frodo is now silent boy-cannibal with sharpened nails. This is some comic book movie. Fun actually, brutally and casually violent. It feel fragmentary and jagged. While I wish it were more cohesive, it does look amazing. I just wished it sounded amazing as well.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
Infernal Affairs on DVD, 4/14/05
Damned clever plot. The police and the mafia each have a mole planted years ago on the other side. Now, both sides know those moles are there and they're both desperately trying to find the traitor before the other side does. Tony Leung (the fake gangster) always looks hot but he's great at looking desperate and nervous too. Andy Lau is great as the crooked policeman. It's obvious that his divided loyalties are getting to him and he needs a way out of this situation.
The director filmed an ending to the film that was logical, but fell totally flat. I'm glad they used the more heroic ending.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)
Tokyo Underground, Vol. 1 on DVD, 4/10
Another anime TV series, I think. This one is Superhero Junior High. A mysterious group (aren't they always mysterious in anime?) called the Company is chasing a couple of girls with superpowers in the sewers of Tokyo. They flee above ground and meet two boys, one of whom is a martial arts master in training. He decides to shelter the two girls while the forces of the Company keep attacking to bring the two girls back. Coincidentally, our martial artist begins to develop some superpowers of his own. Stylistically, this one looks great. We have these nifty freeze frames that use the previous scene as a backdrop. Guess it keeps the viewer from noticing how cheap the effects in this show are. Looks like they've spent most of the money showing the superpower battles. The conversations that play up the teen aspect of this are done in the cheaper style. Our poor martial artist gets hot anytime the youngest girl smiles at him. Puppy love, superpowers and mysterious companies. Seems like I've described the X-Men too. LOL.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
The Motorcycle Diaries on DVD, 4/9/05
This one is like the Odyssey in reverse. Instead of knowing heading home again, two characters set off to find themselves. This is a hagiography of Che Guevara who gets saintly as the movie progresses. At the beginning, he goes to visit his girlfriend on her family farm. She breaks up with him in a letter later. Soon, their motorcycle breaks down. He talks to the poor farmers, miners and laborers of Latin America until he finally gets to a leper colony in the Amazon where he becomes the doctor who breaks the rules and actually touches the patients. He's turned into Odysseus looking for advise among the dead or Marlow looking Kurtz. Perhaps the best analogy is Christ harrowing Hell. In any case, there's a lot of suffering in this movie and Gael Garcia Bernal does empathy very well. He's got sincerity down too, so his earthiness makes the preachy plot bearable.
And goddamn, who doesn't want to do Gael Garcia Bernal? No shirtless scenes though. Couldn't they have done just one? Sigh.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2005
Gantz Vol. 1 on DVD, 4/5/05
So, the rental cue finally started sending me some anime. This one is quite a doozy. A couple of kids die when they try to save an unconscious homeless man from a train. Instead of dying though, they're spirited away to an apartment in downtown Tokyo by some giant metallic egg. The egg spouts guns and uniforms and has them hunt a celery-kid and his father.
Um, I don't know what to make of this. We hear most of this through one kid's point of view. He's horny and seems to resent doing anything that might help someone else. His friend wants to help other people and our narrator really has the hots for one of the women in their little group, but we're given next to no information about what they people are doing. The living can't seems to see them though their weapons blow up walls. The celery kid actually lives in a house. Anyone who wanders away from this little scenario blows up. So, these are dead people who can die. Again. Weird.
Posted by deaconmf at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
Bright Young Things on DVD, 4/1/05
This wasn't disasterous, but it sure isn't the book. Vile Bodies is one of those very funny novels that revels in its bitchiness. I guess the screenwriter/director changed the name of his movie because it's not the same thing at all. He makes his characters tragic and then gives the leads a happy ending. Too bad. Evelyn Waugh would have had something nasty, funny and appropriate to say about all this.
Posted by deaconmf at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2005
Mysterious Object At Noon on DVD, 3/30/05
I've never seen a Thai movie before and this one is a strange movie. The movie starts with a woman relating the very sad story of her life, before making up a story about a wheelchair-bound boy and his teacher. The narrative is picked up by different people and occasionally we actually see the story performed by some actors. At one point, a dance troupe performs the story. Old women on the bus, some deaf girls and even some kids during recess add their own elements to the narrative. We even see them filming the story.
It was an interesting way of making a film, but it seemed like it could have used more structure. At a certain point, the director stopped depicting his story and let his interviewees tell us what happens. Then even that disappears as we watch kids play soccer and swim. Finally, it ends with a short shot of a dog. Not sure what that means other than he ran out of film.
Posted by deaconmf at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)
Steamboy at the Arclight in El Ley, 3/29/05
The follow-up to Akira is enjoyable, but there's not much going on here. It's a movie about a kid whose father and grandfather are famous Victorian scientists who discover a way to increase the amount of steam power in tiny containers. I'm assuming they're like superpowered steam batteries. Strangely, there's a little girl who is the daughter of a weapons dealer whose name is Scarlett O'Hara. It takes place during the London Worlds Fair that the weaponeers turn into a demostration for their product. Robert Louis Stevenson is an inventor/spy master. Somehow, they discover a way to increase the amount of steam power in tiny containers. I guess they're superpowered steam batteries.
After awhile, the movie just gets silly. The action sequences aren't bad, but after awhile, as my friend Roddy pointed out, there's only so many ways you can watch steam blow up in a pipe. The sequence in London starts to look like one warped cross between Godzilla and War of the Worlds, but a lot of the sequences here simply echo one you've already seen. And everytime the plot slows down to expound on war or science, it just sounds non-sensical. I wished this were better.
The Arclight Theaters were amazing though. They're big and look a lot like the Sony Metreon. I wished we could have seen a movie where you could take in a beer, but guess that wasn't to be.
Posted by deaconmf at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2005
Fighting Elegy on DVD, 3/20/05
Not as much fun as Branded To Kill, but there's still that crazy style going on here. This time, the director or screenwriter is implying that abstinance leads to war. It's really forced, but there's still some amazing scenes. My favorite one has the lead actor (who is obviously too old for this part) for high school playing a boy with a crush on a smart Catholic girl. As they walk around under the cherry blossoms, he sees the leader of the high school ruffians. At first, he lies and says the girl is his sister. He gets caught and gets embarassed. For some reason, consorting with women is seen as unmanly. The leader is obviously on a wall and the other two characters are seen from the head up around his feet. They look like soccer balls subject to his macho strutting.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle on DVD, 3/20/05
Stoner comedies are usually stupid. This one is still rather stupid, but it's inspired at least. Harold and Kumar get the munchies and decide to go for burgers. This is story of their very long night to get to White Castle. Along the way, we get scary tow drivers with horrible diseases, their horny wives, beautiful women, underachieving Jewish stoners, punk, corrupt policemen and conniving co-workers. And that's it. That's the plot.
I'm not sure that casting two Asian men as the stoner leads counts as progress, but at least, it's different. The two leads are likeable and cute even. I kept hoping they would do each other. (Porn idea: Harold and Kumar Do Each Other!) I'm just glad a movie that's plotted like a laundry list came out a lot better than it might have.
Here's hoping Neal Patrick Harris is also this much fun in person.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2005
Branded To Kill on DVD, 3/15/05
I can't believe I've never heard of this movie before. Why didn't someone recommend this earlier?
This is one of those crazy Japanese movies where the plot seems vaguely familiar, but there's some weirdness in the translation, so what probably seems sensical to a Japanese audience plays like one huge mess in America. It begins with the third best assassin in Japan taking an assignment to kill the second best. This actor, Jo Shishido, is most notable for his incredibly square jawline and his puffy chipmunk cheeks. He ends up killing what seems like an army of bad guys and gets involved with a mysterious woman who he fucks. He goes back to his wife and she leaves him when she finds out. He goes back to the mysterious woman who hires him to kill some foreign official, then she gets kidnapped herself by the best assassin in Japan. This new assassin starts tormenting our chubby-cheeked antihero, who begins cracking under the stress of being watched constantly. It all ends at a shoot out in some empty boxing ring.
The plot's definitely noir, but the style is some weirdo cross between noir storylines, German expressionist lighting and Man Ray photos. The violence is so stylized and over the top. The action sequences are inventive, but manic. Our assassin hero shoots a dentist from below through a drain in a sink. There's a lot of violence done to women, but even the men suffer in this mess. The characters do things that make no sense to nonsense and I kept wondering how they even managed to make this movie. The director, Seijun Suzuki, was apparently fired by his studio for deviated from the script. I'm sure the studio had no idea what to do with this twisted little thing, but it was worth it.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2005
Shaun Of the Dead on DVD, 3/12/05
I'm not sure why no one's ever tried it before, but a zombie comedy makes sense. They move slowly, they seem rather dumb and there's all sorts of horror comedies out there these days. Oh wait. I guess Dead Alive counts. Well, anyhow, this starts with Shaun having a bad day at work and at home. His girlfriend breaks up with him. His jobs sucks. His mother expects him for dinner with the stepfather he can't stand. Anyhow, the zombie epidemic starts and, at first, Shaun and his best bud, Ed don't notice at first. Eventually, they come up with a plan to save his mom, step-father, ex-girlfriend and her flatmates. Of course, it goes badly, but at least the world doesn't end. Too bleak, you know.
The best thing about this movie is that it keeps its tone relatively even. It's usually very funny although the zombies do tear people apart. The extras are great with this one. The best sequence has three comics explaining certain holes in the plot.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
Written On the Wind on DVD, 3/11/05
Another Douglas Sirk film, another ridiculous melodrama done in all its Technocolor glory. This time out, Rock Hudson is the upstanding best friend of Robert Stack, a spoiled rich alcoholic son of a Texas oil man. They meet Lauren Bacall, the grounded secretary in some advertising firm. She's got some chemistry with Rock at first, but the one she ends up marrying after a single night is Robert Stack. For a year, he stays sober until he moves back to his hometown and gets jealous of Rock and Lauren's obvious attraction. Dorothy Malone plays the sister that's always wanted Rock Hudson. She's the real "spitfire" freespirit who drinks and manipulates everyone. Of course, Rock Hudson ends up trying to save his friend, but ends up on trial for his murder. And of course, it's no surprise that he gets off after one very spectacular character reversal. It's all too much, yet so much fun watching it happen.
There's this scene in there that really seems in love with editing. While Dorothy Malone dances like a hussy upstairs in the family mansion, her father dies trying to stop the music. Rock Hudson tries to save the man, but it's too late. You know that dancing manically to fast jazzy tracks always leads to serious consequences.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
Ghost In the Shell II: Innocence on DVD, 3/6/05
I actually liked this one better than the first Ghost in the Shell. The story line is far more coherent, which always helps. It's still an interesting amalgam of I, Robot's machines-gone-wrong theme with Blade Runner's noirish visual style. This time, Bato, the detective's partner is investigating why expensive pleasurebots are killing their owners. There are all sorts of fun visual items and the backgrounds look amazing. I'm glad the translation this time out did a far better job of clearing up the plot mechanics. When I saw the first movie, it took awhile to figure out what happened to Major Kusanagi. This time out, it was all much clearer.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)
Purple Butterfly on DVD, 3/4/05
This was one very long movie. Zhang Zhi-Yi is part of some cell rebelling against the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Turns out she was in love with some hot Japanese student who conveniently becomes the head of the spy network, so she conveniently becomes his girlfriend again. It's one of those movies where very little happens and there's so little talking, even when characters share the same screen. It's been a long time since I've seen so many characters walking around in the rain saying nothing. I kept thinking we could have edited this just to save us some time. It's Wong Kar-Wai influenced, with all the blue filters and leisurely takes, but without his sense of storytelling. We see every plot point in the this movie and each one seems to take hours.
There's a second storyline concerning a Chinese businessman gets who gets dragged into this mess when his girlfriend is shot during a raid at a train station. The two narratives collide and, of course, the movie ends with a shootout. The final coda takes place slightly before the end where Zhang Zhi-Yi and her revolutionary cohort/ex get it on. This would have been amazing if it were just a little shorter and less blue all the time.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)
All That Heaven Allows on DVD, 3/1/05
Rock Hudson movies are sometimes pretty silly things. Douglas Sirk movies always seem rather silly, yet in their overly melodramatic way, they make some sense. Unfortunately, they don't make Rock Hudson look like much of an actor. This time out, we get the former Mrs. Ronald Reagan playing the part of a woman who falls for her gardener. This is of course beneath her social circle. Her children's shame at this relationship makes her reject Rock, then when she leaves his place at an attempt at a reconciliation, Rock runs off a cliff trying to chase her car. Of course, she ends at his place in the end, pledging her wounded man her love as a deer hangs out just outside the window.
It's so absurdist but so over the top, it doesn't make much sense getting upset over it. Of course, Douglas Sirk's intense camerawork brings Jane Wyman some dignity. This is probably the primary inspiration for Far From Heaven, that homage to these Sirk melodramas. It even takes place in the same time of year and retains that "forbidden love" theme.
Strangely, Rock is a very handsome man, but he always seems awkward, so I never find him attractive. Maybe I just haven't seen the right film yet.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2005
Irreversible on DVD, 2/27/05
I have a friend who really likes this movie and I was eager to see it. Problem was it turned out to be quite a disappointment. I couldn't figure out the reason to tell this story backward except to tell each section of the movie as a different genre of film. Existential conversation, gritty horror movie, revenge flick, breakup story, sex comedy then finally, life affirming love story.
The biggest problem was a rape scene that I'm pretty certain lasted 20 minutes. It was gratuitous and, worse of all, the woozy camera work that had been flitting around the scenes and making me nauseous, stopped and stood still. It gave me one very long look at a nasty scene played out in all its gruesome brutality. I think it's telling that the short feature on special effects brags about giving the rapist a virtual penis. It's also telling that I didn't realize that they'd killed the wrong man until I watched those extra features. When all the joy in a film goes to making suffering so realistic and visceral, I'm sure I just don't need to see it.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
The Station Agent on DVD, 2/25/05
Are quiet indie films really so much about characters thawing, so to speak? I remember how much I liked The Accidental Tourist (ok, not indie). Garden State certainly is about the same thing. Here's another movie where a couple of characters move toward living as opposed to living stasis. This time, the two characters move toward living again. Guess I'm glad it's not with each other this time, because that would have been the most obvious. Besides, we could always use more movies about friendship instead of lovers. We have a million of those already.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2005
The Yes Men on DVD, 2/20/05
These two guys got the idea of creating a fake website for the World Trade Organization using the organization's predecessor, the GATT. Other organizations, not paying attention to the info on these faked sites, sent invitations to these men to speak as representatives of the WTO. This is the documentary they made about a couple of those invites. It got them some headlines but it doesn't seem like people are paying very close attention to what they two are doing. In a presentation in Finland, they advocate slavery and wear strange golden lame costumes with some very phallic monitors to watch over their workers.
I'm glad that these two were able to do this, but it worries me that so many people didn't understand this as politically pointed humor. Is capitalism really this indestructible? Are people at conferences gullible, tired, or just not paying attention? I'm not sure and this really worries me, but I'll laugh at it everytime.
Either way, these two were cute. I'd do 'em.
Posted by deaconmf at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)
28 Days Later on DVD, 2/19/05
Gotta love running zombies. They seem to do far more damage than the normal movie varieties. So, it was definitely worth it. The scenes of an empty London were eerie enough and Cillian Murphy sure is a hottie. I think the movie's detour into that strange adventure with the military didn't work as well, but I've missed seeing Christopher Eccleston, so that was ok.
The alternate endings were great. The first bleak ending made more sense, but it didn't really do much for the rest of the movie. The alternate ending which they storyboarded but couldn't figure out how to make that one plot point work was a lot more intriguing.
It's a fun movie and there really isn't much more to say about that. But those two actors are hot. Zombie orgy!
Posted by deaconmf at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2005
Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, The Roxie, 2/17/05
Um. I'm not sure what to say about a musical puppet show based on the life and times of Charlie Manson. This movie is trying so hard to gross out the audience, but it just doesn't work well with puppets and fake blood. Some of the jokes are great, but after awhile, I just got tired of watching because the movie's relentlessness just gets boring.
Posted by deaconmf at 03:17 PM | Comments (0)
Elephant on DVD, 2/18/05
I finally got around to seeing this one. It was beautifully interlocking and I liked watching people walk in and out of each others' lives. The sense of dread is tangible because those kids keep looking at the sky uncomfortably, like they hear something flying overhead. It's discursive, seemingly elusive and vague. For some reason, I think it works for this movie. Most lives in high school seem rather separate from one another. You know some people and interact with them for a couple of seconds.
Um, remember every review I do is a spoiler. LOL.
Anyhow, this does turn into the horror show promised by the advertisements. It feels like a series of exclamation points inserted at the end of story where everyone seems to be screaming after so much silence. Well, go see it anyway, if just to watch hot boys and get confused about finding murderers sexy.
Posted by deaconmf at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2005
Lagaan on DVD, 2/12/05, 2/14/05
There aren't many politcal movies about taxes, there's aren't many sports movies on cricket and there sure aren't many Bollywood movies that aren't romantic musicals. This is different alright. A movie on taxes, cricket and Indian nationalism is one unusual subject for a movie. Of course, the amazing thing is that it works in spite of the heavyhanded message of tolerance and the songs and dancing. Check this one out if just to check out one very handsome man and learn the rules to cricket at the same time.
Posted by deaconmf at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2005
In the Mood for Love, DVD, 2/12/05
There's this thing that Wong Kar Wai gets right about relationships. The movement from stranger to friend (or more) wanders from event to event. In most cases, it moves slowly even imperceptibly until the both of you are friends. You forget when you learned certain details or even conversations that you've had, but the information remains somehow. And this is what Wong Kar Wai gets right. This movie feels like the memory of a old relationship. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung take forever to meet because they keep repeating their trips to the won ton shop until they finally meet, but when they finally do, it all feels so tentative, like their relationship in the film. He even heightens the experience by putting Maggie Cheung in the chongsams that looks like they might have been from that time, except that they're seem too brighty colored. And Tony Leung is still an incredibly hot man. I'd sleep with him anytime he wants. Call me, Tony. LOL.
Posted by deaconmf at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2005
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Castro Theater, 2/4/05
I've been trying to write this entry for some time now, because there was something about J. T. Leroy's book that I really liked, yet something about the movie that I didn't. I went to the opening of the Independent Film Festival and thought I'd be seeing an amazing movie. Asia Argento directed the adaptation of his collection of loosely connected short stories. She was supposed to be there, but she couldn't make it. J. T. was lurking somewhere in the audience, keeping himself inconspicuous as usual.
Then we watched the movie. I was puzzled by my reaction because the movie is very faithful to the book. It follows those stories closely and simply depicts quite clearly and simply so much of what the book describes. And yet, I was disappointed. I had to read the book again to figure out what that was. (If you want to read the first few pages, Amazon has them online.) A conversation with a good friend helped clarify my ideas too. (Thanks Roddy.)
J.T.'s writing is amazing for using very simple wording and sentences to create some very complex child characters. Part of the effect is accomplished by the wording, I think. He's also very good at giving his characters multiple motivations for their actions. In the first story, we see how repulsed Jeremiah is at this woman who's claiming to be his mother. His foster parents seemed so perfect and she is such a mess. At the same time, it's clear he wants someone to be his mother. Like all children, he seems so needy.
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite translate in the movie. The looks of the movie is very much right. It looks downright squalid. The low budget certainly helps in this case. In the first part of the movie, it seems like Jeremiah choses to stay with his mother because she's bullying him when the truth should be both his mother's bullying and his consuming want for a mother. It turns the movie into a litany of horrible events in a child's life, but that child seems so distant from most of it. The horror of the situation encompasses the whole of the film without much of Jeremiah's complexity. I think the first problem is having three actors play the same part. The second might be that none of the actors playing the role is very convincing. The third problem is visual. By depicting the events in the book so clearly, the horror aspect of the movies is emphasized over the neediness. The fourth problem would be that once I figured out how horrible this life was going to be, I started looking for the moments where the Jeremiah actor could not have been physically in these horrid scenes and I started finding how those scenes were edited together. It was distancing, which doesn't help with this particular movie.
I hope that J.T. Leroy's other books are filmed, but I'm doubtful they'll ever come out right. The filmed version of Jesus's Son comes closest to what this movie could have been, but it may require a subtlety movies lack.
I'm still glad I saw the movie, but I just expected more. If I were to give the movie a letter grade, I'd give it a solid B, but I'm not sure how to improve this difficult adaptation.
Posted by deaconmf at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2005
Notorious on DVD, 1/22/05
The first thing that always amazes me about this movie is Ingrid Bergman. Her Alicia Huberman is radiant looking, drunk, poisoned or sober. There's always this element of distance in her acting as though she's a exotic angel come to earth to dwell among us. Her very slight accent helps the illusion. Strangely, in this one, she plays a drunk who sleeps around a lot. Then she meets Cary Grant who plays a government agent who actively falls in love with her, then ends up pimping her out to man they want to spy on. They argue about whether or not she can change. The plot mechanics in this movie are smooth, but motives are all messed up. Worst of all, the man they all have to dupe seems to be the most decent of this lot. Well, except for the fact that he's a Nazi. It's a beautiful screenplay constructed out of the motives of some very conflicted, confused people. The only element I have a real problem with is that Alicia has to become such a victim to show she's changed. This movie is so amazing I'd do Alicia, drunk, poisoned or sober. Too bad, she's long gone.
Posted by deaconmf at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2005
The Aviator, Metreon, 1/17/2005
Here's another long biography of someone famous. It's not a bad movie; it's like watching someone lie entertaininly about their life. LOL.
Flippant remarks aside, I felt like I didn't know much about this character that Citizen Kane hadn't already revealed about rich, famous and powerful men. It didn't help that the opening sequence has a sequence about another mother determining a man's initial path. It also didn't help that Scorsese's style seems to overshadow the man's life story. As the color processes get more realistic, our hero descends into madness. It's like the Wizard of Oz, if Dorothy went mental. (You know, maybe she did.) It's telling that the movie's heroic motion seems to be about his final moments of sanity before his madness carries him off again. I know movies don't need to be about the truth. Most movie biographies select a narrow portion of a person's life to illustrate, but there's something about this one that seems dishonest. Howard Hughes spent the last portion of his life living in penthouses with his uncut hair and nails, horribly obsessed with his bodily wastes, watching movies endlessly. There's no happy ending in this and, while this screenplay powerfully suggests that horror, it does so without confronting the all the confusion of this poor man's madness, his ignominous death and the ugly legacy of his contested wills. The movie seems to be about the greatness of one man dealing with barriers that would kill most people. I can use a history book or encyclopedia entry to figure out why Howard Hughes is important, but a movie requires a truth to tell. His life does not kill him; it makes him mad instead. And while I admit to cynicism, that seems to be the truth of Mr. Hughes's life.
That being said, it's a beautiful movie to look at. The cinematographer never seems to make a misstep and Scorsese's incredible attention to detail makes the movie a wonder to watch. He remembered that peas looked blue in the original Technicolor process. It makes the peas look sickly, which reinforces Mr. Hughes's revulsion at that point.
I've spent a good month watching Cate Blanchett in very different roles. While she makes an amazing elf-queen, Kathryn Hepburn gives her a real workout for her skills. She certainly has Hepburn's accent down and even that ungainly walk, but she somehow radiates a real warmth when the role demands it. Her attempt to get Hughes out of his projection room feels real, even with the difficulty of not being able to actually talk to him face to face. Kate Beckinsale, in comparison, looks radiant, but sure doesn't seem like Ava Gardner.
Part of my problem with the movie may be Leonardo DiCaprio himself. He doesn't much look like the man at the beginning and he uses his considerable boyish charm to give us that sense of wonder and ego that Hughes probably felt about flying and running his companies. I don't think we quite get Hughes' very adult command of people or his considerable smarts. A lot of those scenes come off with an air of "gee whiz" and not enough deliberate thought. I will give Leonardo this though: he does the slow descent into madness well. He looks like a man whose stresses finally grab enough of him to force him to surrender. That scene where he repeats himself is really terrifying because he seems to grasp something very real about paranoia, which is the inability to shrug something off because you just get stuck in a loop. He looks great as the paranoid Howard Hughes, scarred, frightened and obsessed with his urine.
Well enough about this movie. And if you haven't guessed, no, I wouldn't sleep with Leonardo DiCaprio. However, Jude Law as Errol Flynn? Mmmm, Tasmanians.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:02 PM | Comments (1)
January 05, 2005
Hero on DVD, 12/31/04
One of my housemates got the DVD for Christmas, so I sat down and watched it again. I hate to say this, but the color schemes are the reason to watch the movie. Yellow leaves flying in cyclones. Sword points bouncing in and out of blue green water. Green tapestries falling from ceilings. The art direction is incredible. I hate to say that because the movie itself is still entertaining. It's not the art-house works that Ju Dou or Raise the Red Lantern are, but at least both sexes get to be heroic figures in this action flick. This movie has a lot of exposition because so much needs to be explained in the course of two hours. It's partly a function of trying to keep a story told three times interesting and partly because we Americans know nothing about Chinese classical history, but mostly because it's a movie about where character motives keep shifting and narrators turn out to be unreliable. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung do make one attractive couple although we never do actually hear their side of this story. So, yes, I would sleep with Tony Leung. Damn, he's hot.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
Hotel Rwanda, 1/4/05
I'm not quite sure how to feel about this one. The movie's heart is certainly in the right place, but I get the feeling a PG rated genocide is just not as horrible as it needs to be. This have very little to do with Don Cheadle's performance though. He's amazing as Paul Rusesabagina (I love that name) who seems to be the one truly civilized man in Rwanda when the massacres begin. He epitomizes smooth when the world seems to be failing him. In fact, he seems far more civilized than the Westerners in this movie who abandon him. Mostly, it's amazing how he gets by on his charm and negotiating skills for so long. There's also a great scene where he tells his wife what she needs to do if the Tutsi attack the hotel.
There's one moment where the horrors becomes visual. He leaves the compound and he ends up driving on the bodies in the middle of a street. It's a horrible scene but done with so much fog and so little light, it's hard to see what's happening. There are bodies everywhere, but they don't seem particularly bloody. They seem like extras lying down in the street. The characters in this film are often threatened or scared, but the movie itself seems to be less stressful than it ought to be at this point. While there is a need to show children the horror of genocide, this did not seem like a movie for adults.
Posted by deaconmf at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2005
A Very Long Engagement, Embarcadero, 1/2/04
Or as Ms. C's boyfriend put it, "Amelie Goes to War". Or maybe they should have titled it "Amelie Deals With War Atrocities". With minutes of starting, the breathless pace and the relentless self-mutilation mean we're not watching a heartwarming, quirky romance. This time, the director means to have us see the horror of this war. But something strange happens. It's a movie that's split into two parts. One plot thread has us rooting for the very plucky Mathilde while she and her quicky family search for her missing fiance. Here, the style looks very familiar. Jean-Pierre Jeunet gives us the visual asides and strange stories he fills his movie with. The other half of the movie shows us what happened the horrible day that Manech, her fiance, was supposed to be executed. It's all so well filmed, but the parts of this movie don't seem to synthesize well. Mostly, Manech seems so very sketched in. We don't hear him say much as an adult. Mostly, he just seems so shell-shocked. Worst, we never see him with Mathilde much. So, the very summery yellows and browns of Mathilde's part of the movie don't synthesize with the blues and greys of the war story. I hope Jeunet's next movie goes back to something much lighter or much darker without this compromise. And oh yeah, I would totally do Manech if he had something to talk about. LOL.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
In the Realm of the Unreal, Castro Theater, 12/29/04
Henry Darger was a 81 year old janitor who seemed to know very few people at his death. There seem to be exactly three photographs of the man found among his effects. The people that did know him were uncertain how to pronounce his last name. They seem to know a few biographical details, like his mother's early death while giving birth to a sister, who was then adopted and whose name he had forgotten.
It wouldn't have mattered much if his landlords hadn't gone into his place when Mr. Darger moved to a pauper's home and discovered that he spent years cramming hundreds of water color paintings and thousands of pages of handwritten and typed text into his very tiny living space. While it also included a 5000 page autobiography, the largest part of the work was a 15,000 page novel called In the Realms of the Unreal where seven Christian sisters lead a nation to war against heathen hordes. Most of those paintings depict incidents in his novel. Some are two sided, done on butcher paper and show the Vivian sisters nude. The sisters have tiny penises. He illustrates explosions, torture and disembowelments of children in his war and he allows two very different endings, one where the girls win and another where they lose.
The movie refrains from figuring out what it might all mean. It dwells on the strangeness of his creation without commenting on the mind of its creator. So, I'll refrain as well except to say I wish I was driven to write this much.
Posted by deaconmf at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2004
Napoleon Dynamite on DVD, 12/27/04
Here's another movie that seemed very funny, yet wasn't very good. It did really seem like a reason to mock people that the director or screenwriter wanted us to feel sorry for them. I'm not sure why we should feel much when it's so unclear why any of this is going on. Why does Napoleon live with his much older brother? Why is his grandmother going on dates? Why does his uncle seem to be trying so hard to make money? And where did his brother get all this hiphop gear and attitude. It's not a bad movie, but the joke I loved the most is Napoleon's failure to get over a bike ramp. Wish they hadn't underplayed everything because it made these characters seem retarded. Wish Napoleon didn't seem so disconnected from reality. Really wish he didn't have the tetherball ending with that girl.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
The Life Aquatic, 12/27/04
What exactly do I say about a film that was funny, yet was still a huge disappointment? Wes Anderson's been making these strange, seemingly small films of his for quite some time. His characters seem bewildered by the lives they lead which means they always seem so tentative. They also seem so distant from the plot though almost all of his main characters seems intensely driven to make certain dreams of theirs come true. So now I'm pretty sure all his movies have this disconnect. We're now used to watching Mr. Anderson's actors underreact, especially Bill Murray, who seems to be making it a trademark of all his movies (watch Lost in Translation). His "clowns" are sad, but unlike Pagliacci, his clowns don't cry. They mope usually entertainingly.
Well, it doesn't work this time. I might be getting tired of Mr. Murray's schtick. It's may also be that Mr. Anderson's sense of whimsy is just getting in the way. His special effects looks like so much Day-Glo Play-Do. His movies seems stilted enough with stilted special effects. It makes the movie look like a parody of a sealife documentary. What it particularly reminds me of the documentaries of Jean Painleve. There was this incredibly simple depiction of animals doing what they do (and the Yo La Tengo accompaniment helped too.) Here, the incidents that compose the plot seem so episodic. Each event occurs without much connection to one another, until we hit the pirates. Then it seems to turn into an action picture parody. After awhile, the movie seems like one parody too many and it keeps changing the tone of the movie. Too much whimsy with too many important events occuring in these characters' lives. I might be getting tired of Mr. Anderson's schtick too.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:50 PM | Comments (2)
The Lord of the Rings on DVD, 12/24 - 26
Ok, I think everybody I know has seen this movie, so I'm not going to describe the plot or anything. Just a couple of comments after spending the whole of the Christmas weekend watching all 11+ hours of DVD material.
1) While the storyline tends closely to the original, some things are expanded and most of those are the correct choices. Giving Gollum a split personality fleshed out Frodo and Sam's story line quite nicely. It reinforced the themes of (platonic) love and friendship and gave a storyline that otherwise lacked events after the hobbits meet up with Shelob.
2) Some of the expansion materials aren't so good. The haunted trail into the mountains looks a lot like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Sometimes, Legolas looks like he's flown in from some L.A. skateboard park/stunt convention during the Battle of Pelennor Fields and Gimli seems to be comic relief just because he's a dwarf.
3) I still miss the last part of the book. Saruman's conquest of the Shire keeps so many of the themes of the novel in motion. Part of what makes these books great is the horror of power. The hobbits are motivated by what might happen to the Shire if they fail to take the actions that Gandalf has forced upon them. The horror here is that the actions they take end up destroying the Shire as they knew it. Finally, left to act all alone, the 4 hobbits save the land they call home. I would have loved to see this in the movie, though it would have added another hour to the overall running time.
4) It occurs to me that so many American movies end with the characters in essentially the same position that they begin in, except slightly more hopeful for the future. The past tends not to change the physical surroundings of characters, just their mindsets. Probably the best example of this is "It's a Wonderful Life". (Hey, I like that one.) Without the razing of the Shire, we get a very circular motion that deposits hobbits exactly where they began. At least, Frodo goes to the West and Sam, who made it very clear how much he loved his home, gets to deliver the last line, "I'm home" as he does in the book. Is this what we think of in America when we think of closure? I hope not. History isn't just what happens in our heads.
5) Most of Middle Earth is drawn very smartly, but there seem to be problems dealing with the dimensions of the hobbits in the movies. There are some scenes where they seem to move like midgets (where Merry and Pippin charge after Aragorn at the Battle of Minas Morgul), then there are others where they seem to move like normal sized adults (most of the time Frodo and Sam alone).
Posted by deaconmf at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
The United States of Leland, 11/12/04
Ok, so maybe, just maybe I'm doing some other things besides writing a novel. LOL.
This is one of those movies that's striving to be meaningful, but just ends up messy. A teenage boy who seems weirdly disconnected from his world is arrested for killing a handicapped kid. The movie shows us why he did it while his teacher in prison whose also a writer tries to find out why he did it. It turns out that his father is a famous novelist.
So why didn't I like it? Well, the subplot with the famous writer father amounts to very little. His dad buys the kid plane tickets to go visit the world. His mom thinks he's with his dad. Dad has him visiting all of these places without any adult supervision. The kid ends up sleeping with some divorced woman. We're asked to believe that her endless sadness is somehow the cause for this psychic disconnect because he's so sensitive. His girlfriend back at home breaks up with him and then he murders her handicapped brother. Mostly, the plot asks us to accept a lot without much care for logic or characterization. There's all of these scenes with people explaining what the movie "means". They all seem to be moralizing rather lazily about everything, but no one seems to be doing much anything. People lose the loves of their lives in this movie which causes the adolescent boys to behave in irrational murderous ways. I don't quite get it. I suspect the script must have interested the players, but it just seems heavy-handed and awkward.
No, don't see this one. Not even Don Cheadle, Chris Stein and Ryan Gosling can save this jerry-built plot. Too bad. I'd think about sleeping with all of them.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:28 AM | Comments (1)
October 26, 2004
Showgirls DVD, 10/22/04
Ok, I've watched this one. You probably have too. This time, I watched it with the commentary track by this guy who does midnight showings while delivering commentary. David Schmader sounds like he had a great time. He argues rather passionately that this is the most underrated work of art of the last century because it's so bad. And it's so bad because everyone in this movie is making the worst possible decision at every moment. (The only exception is Gina Gershon who seems to be the only who knows how bad this movie is.) The women don't act like women. They behave like robots with bad programming. They lunge at everything they eat. They talk about nails, snack food, breasts and being naked incessantly. Worst of all, they dance like they're flinging themselves around a room. When he said that I realized something. Darryl Hannah plays one of the replicants in Blade Runner and there's that scene where Decker shoots her replicant character, Pris. She slams into a wall and some furniture and she flails her arms up and down as she dies. That's how Nomi dances. We never did see what pleasure bots did in Blade Runner. Now we know.
Posted by deaconmf at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Tarnation, Oct. 20, 2004 @ The Castro
You might as well accept this. If I'm writing about a movie, I'm going to tell you how it ends.
Ok, so there's the cliche about butterfly wings. You know, a butterfly flapping his wings in Beijing eventually creates a Hurricane Andrew or Ivan out in the Caribbean. The metaphor's a good one for explaining the essential chaos of weather prediction. It's also damned good for explaining the chaos of individual lives.
Tarnation starts with a grainy video shot a woman singing a show tune. It's simple and unaccompanied, yet there seems to be something wrong here. Mostly, I think it's the length of the camera shot. We're not used to watching ordinary people sing without editing. Music videos have insured that our visual representations of music look anything but pedestrian. Singers don't sing with out plots, camera gimmicks, special effect or endless fields of booty. It's uncomfortable mostly because it's embarassing. This is a whole movie almost entirely based on this principle.
This is a journey through juvenalia in search of a personal history. It's what print biographers do all the time, but it's not often used by documentary film makers. We have so many confessional autobiographies in print and so few confessional film ones. Why? Maybe writers imagine themselves as characters all the time; directors imagine other people doing characterizations. This may be because most film makers don't usually want to reveal themselves. It can seem self-indulgent at best and self-serving at worst.
The first scene involving Jonathan himself was him crying while receiving some very bad news about his mother, who turns out to be that singer we saw earlier. This is where I thought it was going to be horribly self-indulgent. She's overdosed on lithium and he needs to go back home to Texas.
As he travels back, the movie explains his story up to this point. As it turns out, he's got quite a story to tell and this story involves mostly the horrible events that let to his mother's overdose. It starts with one event. Renee fell off the roof of the family home and didn't bend her knees. She was paralyzed for six months after. When she refused to walk, her parents somehow received some advice from a neighbor who suggested electric shock treatments as a cure. There appears to have been nothing wrong with her brain then. This began a series of hospitalizations, medications and treatments to solve a slowly decaying emotional state. Jonathan was born in the early 70s. His father left early on and his mother's state eventually left him in his grandparents' care. His rebelliousness also got him hospitalized eight times, the first time after trying a marijuana joint laced with PCP. Meanwhile, he got involved with some friends who introduced him to punk rock and avant-garde films. His films are certainly amateurish, but fun and certainly entertaining. Meanwhile, his mother situation deteriorated. She kept coming in and out of hospitals. Finally, the lithium overdose damaged her brain. There's a shot at this point of his mother giggling hysterically at a small pumpkin. The embarassment of the first situation is gone. Now, we're left with the embarassment of someone who's clearly not who they used to be. This is where the reality of the past catches up with someone like the tide and leaves them horribly transformed.
So, why isn't this disfiguringly self-indulgent? His earlier amateurish avant-garde films gave him material to illustrate his mood at each point of this film. Now he probably films himself constantly so he's got plenty of material to chose from. It looks like iMovie also gave him the tools to give the film a glossy, almost video-game look with all the flashing graphics.
And the real reason this isn't horribly egocentric is his mother. We watch a good amount of footage of her, both before and after the lithium overdose. Those two scenes of her singing and laughing at a pumpkin are largely unedited. Before, she seemed a little strange. After, you have a very clear sense of what's now missing. The human being that was previously there is now gone.
Finally, the story of both lives, mother and son, is parallel at the beginning, yet Jonathan is in a far better place. It's partly because he's got a better support system. When Jonathan tries asking his grandfather why they continued with the electric shock treatments, his grandfather slowly gets upset and finally calls the police. His grandfather hasn't been able to deal with any of this for the longest time. Jonathan has had two boyfriends who have kept him sane. Finally, he decides to care for his mother. It's an amazing decision given how different she seems to be.
We're all the product of the general laws of the universe and our particular histories. Sometimes, it ends badly. I hope that our particular circumstances look out for us then.
`
Posted by deaconmf at 11:49 AM | Comments (3)
October 11, 2004
Help the Aged: Harold and Maude, Dolores Park, 10-9-04
Miss C (who is even better than a cruise director at informing us of fun events) sent an email telling us that Harold and Maude would be playing outdoors at Dolores Park and that we must go. And so, we did. After some last minute shopping at Buy Rite, Kim, Miss C and I spread our blankets and lay out our delicious snack food spread. Then, Miss T came by with Aaron. They added more to our picnic and we ate for a good long time. Great food, like pasta salad, Mediterranean food, wine, cider, fried chicken and delicious cookies. Wish you were here.
SPOILER ALERT: I can't imagine someone reading this hasn't seen Harold and Maude, but it might be possible. So, don't read the following if you want to be surprised.
Then we saw the movie. I don't think I've seen Harold and Maude in years. Not actually sure when, but I know I saw it in San Francisco. I always forget how strange looking Bud Cort is. He's extremely baby-faced, yet very alien-looking with those big sad eyes of his. I also forgot how quiet he is throughout most of the film. I seem to remember Ruth Gordon better mostly because she talks so vivaciously and with mucho gusto. The movie itself reminds me a lot of the Graduate in terms of its plot and so shares a family resemblance with Garden State. All three of them seem to be about boyish men growing into a maturity through relationships with women. They also have some catchy pop tunes buoying the entire atmosphere in these films. Did Bud Cort really have hair on his chest in that bedroom scene? I'm still not sure why Ruth Gordon's character decides 80 is the correct age to check out of this life, though the movie gives hints of hard her life has been. Would I sleep with Bud Cort? Um, no. Not now, not then. Sorry, dude.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:42 AM | Comments (3)
October 05, 2004
Wine Obsession and the Evil That Men Do: Sideways 10/4/04
Again, I have to thank Ms. C for a good time. She invited me to see a screening of Alexander Payne's new movie "Sideways". Although we had to wait outside for about an hour, it was still no problem because it was free. Free is always a very good price.
Well, the movie itself was an interesting little character study. Myles, 8th grade school teacher and aging writer wannabe, takes his friend Jack on a holiday through Santa Barbara wine country just before his wedding. While there, they meet Maya, a hot blonde waitress who seems to like Myles, and Stephanie, a sales person at a wine tasting place that Jack gets the hots for. Emotional complications ensue. Our heroes behave badly.
There's quite a few things that are likeable about this movie.
1. Sandra Oh finally gets a part where she looks like the hottie she is. I thought the director was being observant at first. Then I found out that the director married her. No wonder she looked great.
2. Virginia Madsen gets a part where she smolders with her brains. She delivers her monologue about wine with such insight and sexual magnetism that when we finally see her hand on Myles' hand, it comes as a shock.
3. Paul Giamatti does another great character. This time, his loser is a frustrated writer who teaches 8th graders. He's a relatively recent divorcee who can't seem to let go of that relationship. He's also wine-obsessed bad drunk. Thomas Haden Church's character just seems irresponsible, but Paul Giamatti's Myles does a lot of shitty things to in order to get laid or just to avoid embarassment.
Miss C was right about one big problem the movie has. The women disappear about 2/3rds of the way through and then we get this strange plot detour that takes up most of the rest of the film. Oh well.
Alexander Payne was interesting, though he did seem a bit full of himself. I thought he was very good at indulging people with bad questions and he did try his best to answer everything. Would I sleep with the director? Damn right I would. LOL.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:53 AM | Comments (1)