Deborah Lipp

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) 10/10
A gang of criminals led by “Mr. Blue” (Robert Shaw) kidnap a New York City subway car and hold the passengers hostage for a million dollars. Transit police Lieutenant Garber (Walter Matthau) negotiates for time while trying to discern their plan.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is probably best known today as the source for using color-coded pseudonyms during a heist, lifted by Tarantino for Reservoir Dogs. Which is a shame; the movie should be known for its own merits.

One way to describe Pelham 123 is to tell you what’s not in it. No one on the subway car is related to, or in a relationship with, anyone working in the transit office or for the police. None of the hostages are Lt. Garber’s mother, sister, or childhood sweetheart. There are no coincidences in the plotting or characterization at all. No one in the movie looks like they’re in a movie; no one has perfect features, or exquisite skin tone, or flawless makeup. There’s no romance. But it’s not a “guy” movie, either; the hostages are as likely to be female as male, and there are an unusual number of female roles for a heist movie.

All of which makes it kind of hard to describe. Some movies are great because they have a sweeping theme, or are startling or innovative, or are romantic, or incredibly witty. But a handful of movies are great because they’re just great movies. They tell interesting stories with a rich array of embellishments. You walk away from them thinking not about love or truth or family or death, but about storytelling, and authenticity. The Man Who Would Be King is such a movie, a great yarn, you might say. So is Treasure of the Sierra Madre. And so is The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

The movie is populated with a terrific collection of character actors; only Shaw and Matthau are anything like stars, and even they are not of the “star” mold. The other criminals are Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and Earl Hindman. On the transit side are Jerry Stiller and James Broderick (among others). Julius Harris is a cop, Lee Wallace as the mayor is a dead ringer for Ed Koch three years before the real Koch became mayor. But pulling out names sort of defeats the purpose. What happens is a cumulative effect; that you’re looking at real people who are in and around the New York City subways circa 1974. That effect is never diminished, never movied-up. The location footage is grimy and run-down. Everything feels very real, in a way that works for both comedy and drama.

Of course, if you’re going to blend comedy and drama, you want Matthau, who can turn the whole thing back and forth between the extremes with a twist of the wrist and a shift of eyebrows. There’s a lot of laughs, but this is mostly straight-ahead thriller. You never really know what the kidnappers are going to do next, or why, but you’re never confused as they reveal their plan, point by point. The cops are confused, but only exactly as much as the audience.

That’s a tough line to walk. In lesser movies, you either catch onto a plot before the good guys and are stuck feeling like your heroes are stupid, or you never catch on because the whole thing is too obtuse. Here the crooks are just a teeny bit smarter than the cops can follow, but not crazy chessmaster smart.

In sum, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is the kind of smart crime story that is all too rare. Definitely catch it the next time it comes around on TCM.

Kill Bill Vol. I (2003) 4/10
Kill Bill Vol. II (2004) 6/10
An entire bridal party, including the pregnant bride (Uma Thurman) is brutally murdered. We learn that The Bride was a top assassain who left killing behind when she became pregnant, and that, although everyone was left for dead, she survived in a coma for four years. Now she’s out of her coma and looking to avenge herself on Bill (David Carradine) and the assassains who helped him destroy her. Directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Fairly early in Kill Bill Vol. I, the relentless, meaningless, over-the-top bloodshed stopped being watchable, and to the extent that I could still pay attention, I was watching color, composition, and cinematography without regard to the fact that the red was buckets of fake blood. KBI is a meaningless exercise in form over function. Sometimes it is kitch and even funny, but more often it is simply unpleasant.

In the “making of” feature on the DVD, Tarantino compares his film to Indiana Jones. Spielberg and Lucas, he says, were paying homage to 1930s serials, and he is paying homage in a similar manner to 1970s grindhouse. Set aside the obnoxious egoism of the comparison, Tarantino misses an important point. The Indiana Jones movies aren’t just a tribute to the serials, they are also movies in their own right. The Kill Bill movies, especially the first one, are just homage, with no substance of their own.

Tarantino is thrilled with the whizzbang coolness of it all, and watching KBI is an awful lot like watching a loudish kid play with his GI Joes. Smash! Boom! Rat-a-tat-a-tat! Mom, did you see that? Yeah, whatever. There’s no real movie here. I also think that Tarantino doesn’t know how to distinguish something that’s “great” because it’s outrageous and overblown and delightfully ridiculous, and something that’s “great” because it’s actually of high quality. He is willing to layer any version of “great” into this over the top tribute.

Kill Bill Vol. II fares better. Large parts of it were extremely watchable and entertaining, mostly because the second movie, unlike the first, has real characters and a real story to tell. There’s a scene between Bill’s brother Budd (Michael Madsen) and the Bride that is genuinely suspenseful and exciting. There’s a sense of substance in the flashbacks to the Bride’s relationship with Bill, and her apprenticeship to assassain master Pai Mei (Chia Hui Liu). But even here, Tarantino is having too much fun by half. There’s a “whoosh” sound effect every time Pai Mei moves his long beard. Once is kind of a giggle, but there were about ten and after a while you want to tell the kid to either put his GI Joes away or take them out in the yard and stop bothering the grown-ups.

There’s a scene at the end of Vol. II where the Bride is explaining why she decided to leave Bill. As she explains, a flashback to the moment begins. It’s a fairly long scene, with some comedy and a lot of violence. In the end, it says nothing about the Bride that she couldn’t have said in five words, with no flashback, no story, no “Allow me to explain” at all. The scene is there because Tarantino wanted that one more fight, that one more joke.

A lot of film buffs really distrust the term “self-indulgent” when applied to a film or a director, but in this case, I don’t know what else to call these movies. The Kill Bill films are Tarantino’s version of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. These movies are about Tarantino. And after a while, that’s kind of dull.

Tuesday night’s House had a guest star that looked very familiar to me, so this morning I looked her up. It’s Azura Skye.

On House, Skye played a young woman who believed she could talk to the dead. On Buffy, Skye played a young woman who could see the future, and knew the date of her own death. She then came back as a ghost (except it wasn’t really her, it was the First).

Psychic Dead Girl. I’m thinking that’s the most specific typecasting in television history.

I watched about ten minutes of Viva Laughlin, which was notable for being the most horrifically bad television to have ever assaulted my eyeballs. And ears. Cuz it’s a musical. It’s already been canceled.

I have to say that, having read the blurb that the show was going to be on, I was both interested enough to make note of the date of the premiere, and certain it would be cancelled. It’s a musical. About a casino owner. Except it’s also a drama. Y’know, like Cop Rock. So you had to kind of guess. Except it was, in every way, more awful than you could picture. Okay, let me put it this way: The stars lip-synched to well-known songs. I mean it. “Viva Las Vegas” and “Sympathy for the Devil” with very bad choreography while walking through plot points with jazz hands. Oh. My. Gods.

Moonlight may have made it all the way to the half-hour mark. Except, y’know, one hour show. The lead actor is a screaming nightmare of bland. The plot unfolds like an amalgam of every other plot you’ve heard of. And in that style of pretty people on pretty TV, everyone looks alike. Awful.

K-ville fared better. One might legitimately like this show. “One” meaning not me. The acting was excellent and the cast has chops. The cinematography (can you say that about TV?) was wonderful, gritty and appealing. But the relationships felt very forced and the plot was very cliched. It was all just-another-cop-show except for the cut-above quality. Can’t be bothered to come back to this one.

My one true pleasure of the fall season is Life. I am loving every minute of this. Damien Lewis is fascinating, I just want to watch and watch and watch him. Adam Arkin is, of course, welcome on any show I’m watching. In fact, maybe he should do a guest spot on all of them. And Christina Hendricks has a recurring role.

The show is doing a good job of blending back story, character development, and murder-of-the-week. The only thing wrong that I see is two of the three primary female characters are that bland-pretty-we-all-look-alike type. Why can’t I see more interesting women, dammit?

The premise is that police officer Charlie Crews was convicted of murder and spent twelve years in jail. Freed because of DNA evidence and the work of his devoted lawyer, he’s been paid a large settlement and his badge has been restored. Now Charlie is trying to solve the crime he was convicted of, trying to adjust to life on the outside, solving crimes, and having a personal life. It’s all rather intricate and usually handled with some delicacy.

Other than that, there’s nothing much going on. Grey’s Anatomy is not quite as bad as the latter half of last season, but the magic is gone. ER is actually better than last season, and in many ways has a lot of juice. In other ways, it’s a lot like, am I still watching this thing? But yes, I am.

The Good Shepherd (2006) 7/10
Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is recruited to head Counter-intelligence in the newly-formed OSS, and then to do the same in the newly formed CIA. In what amounts to a roman à clef, Philip Allen (William Hurt) is Allen Dulles, Bill Sullivan (Robert DeNiro) is “Wild Bill” Donovan, and many historic incidents are fictionalized. Directed by Robert DeNiro.

I wanted to like this movie more than I did. In fact, it does a lot of things right, it’s intelligent, thoughtful, and shows the paranoia, devotion, and destructiveness at the heart of a life of secrecy. It also has a lot to say about the hidden elite running the U.S., perhaps moreso in years gone than now, but the Bush family are members of the very same Skull & Bones Society so crucial to the film. It’s easy to say, oh racism, oh anti-Semitism, or whatever, but this movie examines the consolidation of power, and the obsessive kind of secrecy that makes distrust (especially distrust of the “other”) fundamental. So gays must be violently removed from the inner circle. Catholics can get in, but they must be limited. Women are there to wear pretty dresses and produce children.

Unfortunately, this sort of stifling tight-lipped quality can feel as oppressive to the audience as it must to the people living it. The movie often achieves a kind of bird’s eye view of paranoia, but just as often it’s just dull. Kind of, O my GODS they’re still telling this story they’re still fighting World War II IT’S STILL THE FIFTIES! (Made painful because the movie opens in 1961 and then flashes back.)

There’s an underlying theme of silence. Crucial news is delivered off-screen. Two key people in Wilson’s life are deaf. The idea seems to be that we try to listen, but are often isolated instead. Like I said, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

The cast is almost overwhelming, there are so many notable actors of real quality, but few of them are used to good end, as Damon carries most of the show single-handedly. Angelina Jolie has almost nothing to do, and Billy Crudup is little more than a cameo. Tammy Blanchard as Wilson’s first love is wonderful, and Damon, in addition to doing a great job, is an actor particularly suitable to a decades-spanning role. His boyish looks let him pull of the extended sequence of his college years, which for most actors would make me snort through my nose.

In terms of spying, The Good Shepherd is marvelous at delivering the minutia of uncovering the truth, of planting falsehood, and of the shifting sands of who is on whose side.

Shortbus (2006) 10/10
Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), Severin (Lindsay Beamish), James (Paul Dawson), Jamie (PJ DeBoy), and their friends and lovers struggle to find pleasure, love, and connection in New York City. Written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell.

Let’s start by acknowledging that this is a sexually explicit movie. As in, very. The opening sequence makes that abundantly clear, so that anyone uncomfortable with the sight of penetration, domination, and masturbation is going to turn the movie off in the first few minutes. The movie doesn’t simply include sex; sex is its primary metaphor for communicating about its characters, and the main setting is the private sex club that gives the movie its title.

Sofia is a sex therapist (“I prefer the term ‘couples counselor'”), the fact of which is the movie’s greatest weakness. Sofia is “pre-orgasmic;” despite an active and athletic sex life, she has never had an orgasm, and she is lying to her husband about it. Her story is poignant, and indeed, forms the centerpiece of the movie. But I absolutely despise movies that give people professions as a prop, or a placeholder, or as ironic commentary. There is simply no way that Sofia is a sex therapist. It’s not just that she’s bad, and inappropriate, it’s that she seems to have no education about sex at all. And I’m pretty sure that’s a requirement. The unprofessional professional is an irritant whenever it shows up in films, never more so than here.

Despite that, I adored this movie. I was stunned by its beauty, by the delicacy with which people’s needs and sorrows emerge, by the tenderness with which the film views their loneliness and desire.

In her first counseling session with “the Jamies” (actually James and Jamie), a gay couple considering exploring open relationships, Sofia has an outburst and reveals she is pre-orgasmic (wherein Jamie gets off one of the movie’s funniest lines, reminding us that gay men really don’t know all that much about female sexuality). Believing it will help her, the Jamies invite her to Shorbus, a sex club for misfits and people exploring the outré within themselves. There Sofia meets Severin, a “pro-domme” (professional dominatrix) who has never had a real relationship. The two form a friendship.

Meanwhile, the Jamies meet Ceth (Jay Brannan), but there is more troubling the relationship than any of them know.

I was trying to think of what movie Shortbus reminded me of, and I realized it was Bubble. The characters and events have absolutely nothing in common, but the tone, the authenticity, the simplicity of letting the characters just be themselves, and the overwhelming sense of truth and wonder are similar. Bubble, of course, uses ordinary life, mostly work. Shortbus uses sex, including kinky, unusual, and perverse sex, but that, too, is a part of life.

Shortbus is funny, touching, occasionally erotic, often sad, and extremely entertaining. It is such a remarkable achievement that I’m giving it 10 out of 10 despite its one irritating flaw. I recommend the “making of” feature included on the DVD as well, which gives a lot of insight into the complex problems of creating a sexually explicit feature film.

Sideways (2004) 5/10
Miles (Paul Giamatti) takes his friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) on a road trip to wine country the week before Jack’s wedding. There they meet and become involved with two beautiful wine connoisseurs (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madson).

Gods, did I hate this movie.

Okay, that’s kind of strong. There’s certainly a lot to commend. Giamatti’s performance is nuanced and rather brilliant. Madsen and Oh are radiant and sharp. There were some decent laughs, and the movie is intelligently written. For all of that, it pretty much made my skin crawl.

First, can we talk about Thomas Haden Church? He looks like the Claymation version of a handsome man. His face is soft and sort of semi-formed. I was totally on board when he was cast as the Sandman, a character who turns into sand, because he kind of looks like that all the time. It’s very distracting to watch his squishy face, which is consistent with his squishy character. It’s a child’s face, and Jack behaves like a child.

The problem with Sideways is that Miles and Jack are detestable men with barely any character arc. I’m all about dislikable characters, but give me something. Within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, Miles has lied to his friend Jack, dawdled when he was already late, and stolen from his mother. Really, by this point I absolutely despised Miles, and didn’t give a shit what his fucking character journey was. But I stuck with the movie in the hopes that things would shape up.

Silly me.

Giamatti has one absolutely stellar monologue, in which he talks about the wonders of the Pinot grape. How it’s thin-skinned, temperamental, not a survivor, but has the most brilliant and thrilling flavors if it’s grown correctly. It’s very clear that he’s describing himself, but wonderfully, neither he nor Maya (Madsen) spell out the simile; the viewer can know it without having it hammered home. The thing is, though, that Miles is thin-skinned and temperamental, but I never really bought that he was thrilling and brilliant.

A negative protagonist works when you sense there’s something good within that is unexpressed. You root for the character in the hopes that the good will come out, or that the character will survive the adventure to perhaps find that goodness at a later date. But neither Miles nor Jack evince any decent qualities at all. Miles is smug and disdainful in every conversation, he feels sorry for himself, he whines, he pontificates, and he is seething with anger. Jack is a philanderer and a big ol’ baby. Despite everything these men go through, they just persist in being their small-minded, nasty selves.

You know, when you read that, you can think it’s intelligent, or realistic, or whatever. Mostly, whiny depressive snots don’t much change. But everything in the script and presentation sets you up to expect the heartwarming moment. There is a heartwarming moment at the very end, but it’s tepid, and entirely too small in proportion to what has gone before.

Hollywood, including “indie” Hollywood, has too many goddamn movies about self-pitying middle-aged white men with delusions of intellectualism and fear of commitment. Yeah, I get it, they write what they know. But all that does is make me feel irritated that they don’t know anything else. If I met Miles or Jack at a party I’d chat with them for ten minutes and then walk away, annoyed. Instead, I was stuck with them for two hours.

Moviehole is reporting that there’s a possibility of a Serenity sequel, perhaps direct-to-DVD.

When Alan Tudyk told me on the phone this morning that a sequel to “Serenity” – that’s the name of the “Firefly” movie for those who’ve been up at Guantanamo Bay for the past couple of years – could be happening I just about dropped the phone (I didn’t though, because the last time I did that it landed in the loo. Fried itself. And as a consequence, I lost all my numbers.) Tudyk says the newly-released “Serenity : Special Edition“ DVD has been selling so hot, that there’s talk in doing another movie.

“They had to put [the new DVD] out because they’ve been selling out of the other one and so Universal’s like ‘So, let’s do another one’. And now… there’s now a chance there’s going to be another movie”.

Tudyk agrees that even if it was a direct-to-DVD movie, it’d still be worthwhile. Especially since the whole DVD sequel is a big trend.

“It really is”, says Tudyk. “Everybody in the Firefly crew – and that includes the ones who died in the movie – are excited about the prospect of doing another”.

Yes, yes, yes! I’d totally drop my phone in the loo for that!

h/t to Whedonesque.

In the past year, I’ve seen three different documentaries about competitive language games: Spellbound, Wordplay, and most recently, Word Wars. Each is good in its own right. Word Wars was the least satisfying for me, but I am left to wonder if it’s in the nature of competitive Scrabble® to be a less pleasurable experience.

Spellbound is the most famous of these films. This Oscar-nominated film is about the word contests most in the public eye: spelling bees. It obliquely manages to address a lot of social issues. In my original review of it I wrote: “The film functions beautifully as a tour of the U.S. and of Americans. With so many children of immigrants competing, it says something about the process of becoming American. But this is never a lecture; we are watching a competition and meeting competitors. They are charming, annoying, funny, and abrasive by turn, and we are thoroughly captivated. Still, most of what we’re seeing has a lot to do with race and class. It was hard not to root for the poor kids against those with access to private tutors and computers.” What was going on in Spellbound was what the competition meant to the kids and their families, and how their circumstances in life enabled or hindered their ability to study.

Wordplay, although also centered around a competition, was not really about competition so much as about the love of the subject. Everyone in this documentary loves crossword puzzles. Some people simply do them alone, daily or on Sundays. Some compete. Some attend competitions with no hope of hitting the highest levels, simply for the joy of interacting with other cruciverbalists. Wordplay is aptly named; the competitors are, at heart, playing.

Word Wars, too, is aptly named, because the competitors in this game are at war. There seems to be no inherent love of the game, or indeed, of the words. In fact, we are briefly introduced to some foreign competitors who don’t speak English very well; the game is purely memorization to them. As a player, I know both crosswords and Scrabble have an elegance to the way words intersect. The language is beautiful, and the way the words lay over one another is beautiful. While Wordplay is very much about that beauty, Word Wars couldn’t care less. In fact, competitor Marlon Hill specifically and pointedly rejects learning what the words mean. The competitors argue and trash talk about one another, they treat competing as a game of machismo—there are almost no women. While the movie is good for what it is, it’s not nearly as much fun as I’d hoped, and in fact, has turned me off from the notion of ever attending such an event.