Archive for Movies & TV

Monday Movie Review: With a Friend Like Harry

December 15, 2008 / / One comment

Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien (With a Friend Like Harry) (2000) 8/10
Michel (Laurent Lucas) and his wife Claire (Mathilde Seigner) are driving to their summer home with their three young daughters when they meet, by chance, an old schoolmate of Michel’s at a rest stop. Harry (Sergi López) remembers Michel very well, although Michel barely remembers him at all. Soon Harry and his girlfriend Plum (Sophie Guillemin) are staying with Michel and Claire, and it seems that Harry has very specific ideas about how to improve Michel’s life.

It’s a hot summer day. The baby in the car seat cries ceaselessly. The other kids argue and yell. The parents are harassed, worn. A hand-held camera captures the immediacy of this until you want to pull the car over your damn self. Just make it stop. It is everything that sucks about domestic bliss.

When Harry arrives, really, it’s such a relief. It mostly seems like Michel doesn’t remember him because he’s too worn out to think straight. Once they decide that Harry and Plum will follow Michel and Claire to their summer house, the next step is to have the baby travel in Harry’s air-conditioned car. No longer overheated, she is calm and adorable. How easy to solve problems when you’re independently wealthy!

Because Harry is living large on inheritance, he sees problem-solving as just that easy. Michel and Claire don’t want his charity, but they are certainly beaten down by a lack of time and money, and Harry just wants to help. Are things more sinister than that? The soundtrack music certainly suggests it. In scenes that might otherwise be innocent, some very old-fashioned Hitchcockian violins work to create tension.

And you have to ask, what’s up with this guy? He has memorized a poem that Michel wrote in high school. Look, Michel doesn’t remember him, and Harry is reciting Michel’s poetry. That’s just not right. Things aren’t going to go well.

I was stunned by Sergi López in An Affair of Love, and then read a favorable review of this film, and added it to my “To See” list. But the list grows at a rate faster than I watch movies, and I forgot about it. It is worth remembering. Naturalistic, chilling, smart, and understated, With a Friend Like Harry is a graceful bit of domestic horror. It does a good job of combining the ordinary horrors of life: Crying children, overwork, demanding elderly parents, with a little something more. Harry is smart, and spoiled, entertaining, and demanding. He seems a little like a comedic Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave. By the time things take a dark turn, you might have let your guard down, or thought things would go in an entirely different direction. Yet everything in the plot had been meticulously set up. In the end, you’re left wondering what mark Harry has left on this family, and what was under the surface that you never got to see.

Monday Movie Review: Murderball (rerun)

December 8, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Murderball (rerun)

This is a re-run of a movie review I wrote two years ago. It’s a documentary; the kind for which Netflix exists—it has become one of my all-time favorite movies. I am just swamped today and have no time to write up any of the movies I saw this week. Sorry.

Murderball (2005) 9/10
Quad rugby (“murderball”) players are followed from the World Championships in 2002 to the Paralympics Games of 2004. Quad rugby, or wheelchair rugby, is played by quadriplegics in specially-adapted and reinforced chairs. (Documentary)

In the movies, people in wheelchairs are a finite number of things. They are tragic, uplifting, inspiring, angry, brave, hopeful, or heartwarming. In Murderball, they’re guys. (Women in wheelchairs are seen only peripherally in the film.) Specifically, they’re guys on a sports team. In fact, if you want to generalize, they’re more typical of what you may think about athletes than of what you may think about the disabled. They’re interested in playing hard, proving themselves, partying, and picking up girls. They pull pranks, they roughhouse, they boast. They’re guys.

In a way, I realized, this is an obvious and overlooked aspect of quadriplegia. Many such injuries are acquired in typically macho ways: Extreme sports, bar fights, pranks gone wrong, drunk driving, war. We see the way that the injured have to rebuild their self-image, and nothing makes more sense than that they rebuild the macho part as well.

The basic story follows two men. Mark Zupan is one of the stars of the U.S. quad rugby team. One day he was out partying and fell asleep, drunk, in the back of his friend’s pickup truck. Later his friend, driving drunk, and with no idea Mark was in the back, crashed the truck. Zupan was thrown sixty feet and hung onto a tree in a canal for thirteen hours until someone heard his cries for help. We meet his girlfriend, we attend his high school reunion, and ultimately, we meet the driver of the pickup truck.

Joe Soares had childhood polio. He was a star of the U.S. team for years. When he was cut from the team (a coach says simply that age slowed him down) he sued, unsuccessfully, to get back on. Now he coaches the Canadian team and the rivalry between his former and current teams runs deep. We meet Joe’s wife and his son. The younger Soares is interested in music and academics, not sports, which creates tension between the two.

We also meet a recently injured man, Keith, who is first learning to face his injury. We follow him from the early days of rehab, through a meeting with Zupan at a presentation on quad rugby, where Keith is excited by the freedom and strength he feels in the rugby chair.

Murderball is a masterful film. The editing seamlessly carries you through a huge range of facets of the lives of these men. Just writing this up made me realize how very much I’d seen. We are educated about spinal cord injury, we traverse family relationships, sexuality, competition, guilt, friendship, family, remorse, anger, and play. The competitions are exciting, there’s humor, there’s even heartwarming stuff. We are allowed to draw conclusions without being pushed.

The meeting with Keith brought up the eternal question about documentaries; who are the documentarians, and what are they doing? Clearly, the filmmakers arranged for Zupan to make a presentation where Keith would be present, but how did they pick Keith in particular? How did they decide he would ultimately be excited about quad rugby? Did they follow several recently injured people in the hopes that one of them would be? These are the sort of questions I wish documentaries in general would answer.

Monday Movie Review: 3:10 to Yuma (Compare & Contrast)

December 1, 2008 / / 3 comments

3:10 to Yuma (1957) 8/10
Rancher Dan Evans (Van Heflin) is on the edge of losing it all when outlaw Ben Wade (Glenn Ford) is captured. Desperate for money, Dan agrees to help escort Wade to the town of Contention, where he will be put on the 3:10 train to Yuma prison.

So, here’s an interesting thing: I saw the remake of this (and reviewed it), then saw the original, then saw the remake again. The 1957 original is considered a classic of the genre, and as my loyal readers know, I loved the remake. So I thought that, instead of a regular review, I would talk about the original in light of the remake.

The original movie does an interesting thing in its casting. Glenn Ford is a perennial good guy, handsome and always cast on the side of right. Van Heflin is generally a good guy as well, but more of a character actor, with a beaten face that can be open and kind, or very dark indeed. The first thought would be that Ford is playing Dan Evans here, but his sweetheart charm is perfect for Ben Wade. In fact, I was surprised to see how much the character was the same in the two films. I don’t know if Russell Crowe has seen the original, or if it was all in the script or the short story by Elmore Leonard or what, but the good-natured seductiveness of pure evil is all over both actors, and it works like crazy. The remake didn’t do this kind of tricky casting. Either man could have played either character; Christian Bale has already played both villains and heroes, and Crowe’s good guys generally have a poison within.

In both movies, Dan is a man looking for redemption. He is a failure, his ranch about to be repossessed. In the original, Dan is ashamed in front of his wife, while his children adore him. In the remake, his marriage is in better shape, if not exactly idyllic—it is his older son who disdains him. And having seen the remake, the gosh-golly adoration of those boys is irritating, but it leaves room for a very interesting marriage indeed. Dan and Alice (Leora Dana) are really working out something about respect and family, and, as Dan struggles to better himself in her eyes, ultimately it is Alice who must step up and help them both see it. In the remake, Dan’s relationship with his son is parallel to this, but how can I not appreciate a Western that gives a woman the kind of power that Alice Evans has?

Both films have intelligent plots, reflecting that the characters are intelligent people. The townfolk know that capturing Ben Wade is as much a problem as a boon, and they must outsmart his gang, and the Wade gang is very smart indeed. This leads to some clever machinations in transporting Wade.

The virtue of the 1957 film is in its tightness and simplicity. By contrast, the 2007 film makes a virtue of its sweep and action. It is an “opened up” film that succeeds in showing the West as a whole, whereas the original is interested in showing the Evans family’s little piece of it.

In the end, I like the remake better. A beautiful, modern Western is a thing to behold, and a rarity. In the canon of 1950s Westerns, the original is minor, if excellent. I can only suggest you see both.

Monday Movie Review: Ushpizin

November 24, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Ushpizin

Ushpizin (2004) 8/10
Moshe (Shuli Rand) and Malli (Michal Bat-Sheva Rand) are ultra-Orthodox Jews living in Jerusalem. Moshe is so broke that he cannot afford to prepare for the upcoming holiday of Sukkot. Praying for a miracle, he receives unexpected help. He also receives usphizin, holiday guests, which are considered a blessing, but these particular guests are not what anyone expected.

Shuli Rand was a popular Israeli actor who quit to live a religious life. He came back to acting for this movie only, which he also wrote, and the Israeli Film Academy awarded him with Best Actor for this film. As such, it is respectful of religious life, not gawky, but also not idealistic. The Jews of Moshe’s neighborhood are deeply religious, but also argumentative and judgmental.

Moshe is a guy with a past, and his past is catching up with him. At one time a violent criminal, he longs for redemption. He and Malli also long for children, and the lack of this blessing is seen by them as a failing of faith. When an escaped con from Moshe’s past shows up as a guest, Moshe is confronted by his own weakness, his desire to lie and be rid of these guests, warring within himself (and within his marriage) with his desire for piety and an open, welcoming heart.

The criminal guests are gently comic; they have no understanding of who these religious people are. Which works on several levels, putting the American viewer on equal footing. They continue to shake up the movie, and as much as these guys are jerks, we end up with a certain affection for them. Certainly they bring color to the screen.

Malli is a great character. Rand insisted that his wife be cast in this role, and their natural affection for each other works. She is strong, opinionated, devoted, and funny. I am charmed by seeing a heavier woman in this role, there are two few big women in the movies. It’s especially notable because she is childless; the ghetto for heavy women tends to be Earth Mother.

So what are the themes here? Certainly miracles and prayer are important, escaping the past and living a good life. But I think we’re also talking about anger. Moshe and Malli get angry at these rude, obnoxious guests. Eliyahu (Shaul Mizrahi—nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this film by the Israeli Film Academy) is angry that his old friend has changed. Malli is angry at Moshe, who has deceived her. Their anger is intense, and inevitable, and prevents each of them from doing what they truly wish to do.

I liked the bird’s eye view of an enclave we rarely see in films. I liked these people, their passionate commitment to their lives and their deep feeling, I liked the joyfulness of their faith and the richness of their despair, and I loved their ability to laugh at themselves.

Monday Movie Review: Quantum of Solace

November 17, 2008 / / One comment

Quantum of Solace (2008) 6/10
James Bond (Daniel Craig), having shot Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) at the end of Casino Royale, interrogates him and learns of a secret organization known as Quantum. Following sparse leads, Bond finds Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) and pursues him to the Bolivian desert. Directed by Marc Forster.

The other day I was interviewed by E! Online and I defended Bond against the notion that he’s losing ground to, or imitative of, Jason Bourne. And now I have to say that the first ten or fifteen minutes of Quantum of Solace are indistinguishable from The Bourne Ultimatum.

I don’t know, I am inclined to blame Marc Forster. He’s an artful director who has never done action before, so naturally he’d imitate an artful action director. But for Bond, it doesn’t work. Bond movies have strong narrative flow, and the crazy-quick-cut approach just doesn’t do it.

A lot of Quantum of Solace felt like someone else’s movie. Someone else’s soundtrack. Someone else’s title song. Someone else’s title design. It made me want to watch a Bond movie.

Not that this wasn’t a good movie; it was. It wasn’t a great movie, and it was too short, too snappy, and too confusing. But it was good. There were beautiful touches, and Marc Forster’s eye for framing a shot was very apparent. This may be the finest composition you’ll see in a Bond film. There were lovely visual homages; the Goldfinger one being the most obvious, but The Spy Who Loved Me is there as well, and just prior to the climactic battle, a lovely visual and plot reference to the short story For Your Eyes Only. (You can’t miss it.)

So much is going on that it’s hard to describe; a villain with a complex plot, a huge, shady organization behind him (but not a part of his plot so much; I suspect a SPECTRE-like organization with many fingers in many pies, a conglomerate), the CIA (and hello, Leiter), Bond’s hunt for revenge for Vesper, Camille (Olga Kurlyenko) with her own revenge motives and her own sub-plot, motivation, and secondary characters—I’m getting tired just listing it all. And, while the plot may not be as complex as Octopussy, it may take me longer to figure out, because it all goes by so fast.

So now I’ve had the night out at the movies I’ve been anticipating for two years. I’m tired, I’m a little let down. I think most people will love this movie, and I think it’s natural for the hardcore fan to be pickier. I feel like I’ll like this movie better on DVD, when I can slow down a little, back away a little, and replay lines that go by too fast.

(Cross-posted)

This is what I did instead of watching a movie

October 27, 2008 / / One comment

It rocked.

James Bond Trivia Quiz!

October 22, 2008 / / 2 comments

I am the author of a James Bond trivia quiz in Parade Magazine. Jump on over and take the quiz!

Monday Wednesday Movie Review: The Visitor

October 22, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Wednesday Movie Review: The Visitor

The Visitor (2007) 9/10
Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a college professor, leading a solitary and empty life following the death of his wife. Visiting New York City for a conference, he meets by chance, and establishes a relationship with Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira). Tarek begins to teach Walter how to play the djembe (an African drum). Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy.

The Visitor is Thomas McCarthy’s second outing as writer/director, following the exquisite The Station Agent in 2003. One could wish for him to work a little faster. He has a delicate touch with human loneliness and isolation, and a respect for difference that transcends cliché.

McCarthy has an affinity for certain character types; Tarek’s insistent cheerfulness is reminiscent of Bobby Canavale’s character in The Station Agent, and when we meet Tarek’s mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass), her steady, sorrowful gaze is reminiscent of Patricia Clarkson. But the characters aren’t just types, which is really important for two reasons. First, because Uptight College Professor Who Needs to Loosen Up is kind of over. I mean over. It’s just something we don’t need to see anymore. On the other hand, Human Needing to Become More Human is something we will never see too much of, because it is one of life’s essential narratives. Because McCarthy is so good, and because Jenkins is so so so good, Walter is a human and not a type. (Jenkins, by the way, has one of the most beautiful speaking voices I can think of, it rolls and rumbles and surprises, and I could listen to him read the phone book.)

Second, it’s important that Tarek and Zainab be fully human because the film largely focuses on immigration issues. If the characters have no presence as individuals, then the film is a Message Movie, it’s about an issue. The danger of polemic is high. But by the time Tarek, through no fault of his own, comes to the attention of the authorities and it’s discovered that he and his girlfriend are illegal, we know them as people.

And here, in two paragraphs, we can see the reductionist version of a movie review. It’s about an uptight white guy being loosened up by, not a Magical Negro, but a Magical Arab (with a Negro girlfriend). It’s a political movie about the plight of illegal immigrants. It’s a quirky indie about the colorful New York City life of people who drum in the park. Yes, we can do that. But we don’t have to.

They say there are only seven stories. Parts of The Visitor feel familiar, but I’m going to say that’s because there are only seven stories, and not because this particular version of storytelling has nothing to say. Just in terms of narrative, this film surprised me several times. I didn’t think it was going to do that, and I didn’t think it was going to do that.

Visually, The Visitor does some remarkable things. There’s a moment of Walter’s face framed in a window that is almost Kubrick; all stark white and angles. And can we go back again to Richard Jenkins? He’s so himself. He’s in that place where he’s not acting, he’s being, and if there were weaknesses in the script, that clarity of presence would overcome them.

One of interesting things about the way the story is told is that there is never any hammering about Walter’s grief. It’s never actually stated that he’s grieving, or that his emptiness is related to his wife’s death. But there are all these suggestions, and it’s clear to me that Walter was one of those men who depended entirely on his wife to have warmth in his life. Without her, he has to find it himself, and mostly he fails. Listen: The movie opens with Walter taking a piano lesson. When the lesson doesn’t go well, the teacher finds out she is Walter’s fourth such teacher. Later, we find out that his wife was a piano teacher.

Again, no one emphasizes that note. The person I watched the movie with didn’t catch it. But it’s there, and it says that Walter is not an uptight priss, but someone reaching out, trying to find an opening. For him, the djembe is that opening. And once open, he is a person who cares about his friends, and so Tarek’s plight has meaning to him.

A movie like The Visitor is what Netflix was made for. Most people would never get a chance to see it otherwise, and isn’t it wonderful that you can?

Monday Movie Review: The Whole Wide World

October 13, 2008 / / 4 comments

The Whole Wide World (1996) 8/10
Novalyne Price (Renée Zellweger) meets pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard (Vincent D’Onofrio). Although most of his neighbors in 1930s Texas think Bob Howard is crazy, Novalyne finds him fascinating and a romance gradually develops.

The Whole Wide World is based upon the memoirs of Novalyn Price, and it functions strictly through her point of view. We see Howard only when she sees him, and we know him only as she knows him. The tight focus of the movie is interesting and unusual; we normally see more of characters “real” life, but in this movie, most of the action is Bob and Novalyne talking; on drives, in parlors, on a picnic. Talking. Discovering they love each other and discovering, too, that they are not all that compatible. Great friends with real chemistry, they have very different ideas of what life should contain.

D’Onofrio inhabits Howard with his characteristic weirdness, but also with a burning enthusiasm that bursts forth in shouts and broad gestures, before calming back into something like civility. Zellweger is almost a cliché, a fussy schoolteacher with a Sunday School attitude, but she’s also fiery and fierce. A cliché would not have the strength to stand up to someone she so admires. By the time Novalyne meets Bob in 1933, he is already famous, widely-regarded as the greatest pulp writer alive. An unsuccessful writer of “true romance” stories, she wants to meet him to pick his brain probably more than she wants a romance.

Although a friend whose taste I admire adores this film, I liked it very much without being blown away. The stiff propriety of romance with a schoolmarm was distancing, and the emphasis on intellectual conversation, while admirable, went a bit overboard. I was also frustrated by Howard’s mother’s “Movie Illness,” in which she slows weakens with an unnamed sickness that makes her daily more beautiful. I was surprised, reading up on Howard afterwards, to find nothing all that specific about Mrs. Howard. She was “sick” and getting “sicker,” and that’s about it. She apparently lived Movie Illness before it was the in thing.

I recommend it nonetheless. It is a romance filled with the world of writing and reading, it is love based on a meeting of minds as well as deep feeling, and it is a touching story.

Life on Mars: Thoughts

October 10, 2008 / / 4 comments

This was better than I thought it would be. It looked so good and cool, on the other hand, it looked like pandering to the audience’s desire for cool. It’s a pastiche of things that are popular now; on-going mysteries, low-grade supernatural elements (as opposed to full-blown science fiction; a single oddity in an otherwise normal world), time travel, period pieces. So how much can you hope?

But Life on Mars was surprisingly good. It had a sense of being grounded, of not just playing by the numbers. And oh, sure, the numbers were played, but, maybe just because of the presence of Harvey Keitel, there was a certain gravity.

Life on Mars is the story of present-day police detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) who is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He is weirded out by the technology and fashion, but he also suspects he is hallucinating. We are left with the notion that in 2008 he is in a persistant vegetative state while living an alternate reality in 1973. So he’s stuck and the PVS lets him stay stuck a good long time, while potentially having a body to return to in the present. In the past, he’s finding clues to the serial killings he was working on when he had his accident, and he’s in conflict with his lieutenant (Keitel) while forming a bond with a policewoman (Gretchen Mol).

I like the period feel of this one in every way I didn’t like Swingtown. Here, the seventies are urban and gritty, the cool period objects have some wear and tear, whereas in Swingtown, the camera lingered on each can of Tab and fringed vest like they were naked boobs. The result is the 70s feel like life, not like a set.

Jason O’Mara isn’t going to win any Emmys; in one scene, he shows he’s upset by pouting. With his big ol’ pouty lower lip. But he’s passable.

Fans of the original BBC series (which I never saw) are unhappy with the show, but judged on its own merits, I think it’s pretty good, and I’ll be back next week.

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