Do the Right Thing

http://www.filmreference.com

A friend and intense cinephile was having my wife and I to dinner with the idea that we would also see a movie in his home-built, in-house little movie theater, and asked me what I was interested in seeing. I suggested Do the Right Thing, as it was on my list, I thought my wife would be interested, and I felt it was a respectable movie to ask for. I also nominated Dog Day Afternoon.

Why is it so satisfying to see African American culture up close? So much reality. The dialogue is a joy, even if there are a few prevailing tones, there are lot of funny moments, and the acting seems almost a miracle. It's kind of a message movie, designed to get at truth, not our entertainment, yet it entertains through the beauty of speech, of high passions well-acted, and of faces and bodies. My wife made a comparison to Crash, and I saw that the movies are parallel in several ways. This one seems more immediate, less manipulative, more uncompromising in its drive for truth--not that I didn't enjoy Crash. I was glad I saw Do the Right Thing on a big screen with plenty of volume.

Young@Heart

http://www.sbs.com.au

Someone I'm collaborating with on a community service project with students had me show this movie to my students.

In the first half I was non-plussed, perhaps because of sleepiness. In the second half, I cried more than once. The underdog triumphing is a formula that works for me, and others, on a deep level, and the over-dog to the under-dog (old people) being death gives this movie a depth that underdog stories don't often have, I believe. The scene in which the chorus performs for men in a prison is a killer.

The Cranes Are Flying

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/

At a senior center, in connection with a student community service project I manage, I saw an excerpt of a movie and asked the senior who was showing it about it, leading to my renting this movie by the same director, Mikhail Kolotozov.

It was magnificent, though part of my reaction might be to the novelty of film-making in a style so masterful and confident and yet so unfamiliar. I had a similar reaction to Grigori Kozintsev's King Lear. Like that film's Cordelia, Valentina Shendrikova, the female lead in this movie, Tatiana Samoilova, seems radiant almost beyond belief, but this is movie is much more about her than King Lear is about Cordelia, and her acting is the central feature of the film. I found it one of the most compelling performances I've ever seen. The combination of the story, her acting, and her beauty--a good deal of which is a creation of the camera work--is quite something. The camera work throughout the movie vies with her performance for being the the film's central feature. I was struck by the idea that in the Soviet Union something this artistic could have such a budget behind it. The crowd scenes are something else. (in the U.S., if the most artistic director available were given such a budget--and of course he, whoever he is at that moment, not infrequently is--the result would probably be much less disciplined.) The bad guy seems a little too bad for realism, and the scene in which he rapes the heroine is stagey (although always rich from the craft point of view); the war, and the soldiers fighting it, are presented more positively and patriotically than the complex reality would justify. But overall the movie does not overly simplify reality; on the contrary. Serious and successful examples of the tragic genre expand one's reality.

The Reader

http://news.absolutely.net

A friend said she thought it was a good movie.

I found it engrossing, and a skillful, complex structure of moral quandaries. I found it warmer and sweeter than the book (and to call a work with this material sweet is something). Credit to Kate Winslet, in what must have been a challenging role, and the male lead(s), both younger and older versions. Manohla Dargis, in a scathing review, calls it self-pitying and a way to make us feel better about the Holocaust by embalming it in good taste and high production values. I think she was in a bad mood.

Happy-Go-Lucky

http://mollycorinne.files.wordpress.com

A positive article in the New York Times.

The main character is so sweet and lovable and vulnerable that I waited the whole time for something bad to happen to her. Nothing does, which could be a structural flaw: where’s the conflict? Where’s the structure? But it somehow was very satisfying anyway. It had a young-Audrey-Hepburn kind of feel, in that the main character’s delightfulness was the main fact of the movie.

Taking Woodstock

http://www3.timeoutny.com/

Was on a double date to go to the movies (unusual for me) and this was the consensus pick.

Sweet, evocative, funny, cartoonish, sentimental and unrealistic but true to its own laws (i.e. successful on its own terms).

Synecdoche, New York

http://www.ghostinthemachine.net/

A positive review in the NY Times.

I felt I was in the presence of greatness from early on, and the feeling got stronger as the movie went along. Like Being Jon Malkevich but demanding of more patience and much more ambitious. It was, in a sense, self-absorbed on an epic scale, but it really wasn’t, because it also seemed relentlessly honest, witty, and aware of its own issues—and able to make art of those issues—as it went along. I thought the production values were tremendous, considering how complex the whole thing was, and how non-linear. It seemed strongly reminiscent of 8½ and of The Truman Show (as well as of Being Jon Malkevich), and was much more interesting and artistically engaging than his (Kaufman’s) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though maybe I just didn’t understand the latter. (The Truman Show seemed a much more superficial in different ways.) I thought the performances were great, especially that of Philip Seymour Hoffman—it seemed epic; it was certainly a tragic role, in what seems to me to be a grand tragedy. I could see how it would not be for everyone though. The way it harps on the unpleasant and the awkward almost put me off near the beginning, before the movie’s idiosyncratic logic clicked in.

Persepolis

http://www.santafefilmfestival.com

My wife had bought this on sale, and we wanted to watch a movie together.

I found it magnificent. How she could locate her life within the larger political and historical currents flowing around and through her existence. It seemed to me that this movie was one way of getting life right. The balance of the dark forces at work in her life and the vitality and humanity of the heroine worked for me in a big way.

Let the Right One In

http://auteurs.s3.amazonaws.com

A positive review in the NY Times.

I watched for about ten minutes. The heavy-handed, lugubrious score, and the anxiety-nightmare point of view I found hard to take, even if the movie was trying to get at something real.

Cinema Paradiso

http://blogs.hoycinema.com

A student told me that this was her favorite movie, and when I looked it up I saw that it had won the Academy Award for best foreign film.

I thought it shapeless and overacted. How enough people could have liked this movie enough to give it the awards it got—I can’t fathom it.

Raging Bull

http://generationfilm.wordpress.com

A classic I hadn’t seen.

At the beginning, I can’t help but think: is the director (Scorsese) so in love with his star (DeNiro) that it bends the movie out of shape? However, once DeNiro starts working against the four other poles, or counterweights—Jake, his wife, his brother, the mob/the system--the movie seems like greatness itself.

The violence, while intense, seems corralled by its being contained (mostly) in the ring. Note that no one gets killed.

I thought it flawed: the brother-betrayal part doesn’t come through all that clearly, and seems more told than shown. The ending is unrealistic and, while a tour de force, it evades the question of an ending. But a flawed movie can still have greatness.

Arsenic and Old Lace

http://www.doctormacro1.info

My wife and I wanted to watch something together, looked over the movies available for immediate viewing on Netflix, and chose this.

My wife enjoys movies that combine humor with a murder-related plot. She loved Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry. I can find them off-putting, their pacing often seeming off as I found to be the case in Charade and The Trouble with Harry. Arsenic and Old Lace, however, I found hilarious. The individual performances gave each moment some sense of urgency. Cary Grant combined mad-cap-itude and gracefulness, physical and moral, in the way that no one else could—have I ever seen him in such a broad, and not-self-ironic performance? He is a wonder and a joy. The plot is delightfully layered with broad but delightful twists of dramatic irony.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

http://movies.ign.com

An article in the New York Times recommended it.

At first it seems puerile, for ‘tweeners, except for the bad language, and Michael Cera seems as if he’ll be unbearable as a self-absorbed emo type. The opening is a set-up, as the movie again and again shows its intelligence. It’s a classic romantic comedy, with Cera and an affecting Kate Dennings manage to deal with their own separate troubles while in the company of each other (how do they do this?) while finding their way to each other. The dialogue is funny, and the lovable-ness or hate-able-ness of the side-characters are funny. What mostly unites the two lovers is a passion for music of a convincingly, detailedly pure sort, making the movie a mixture of romance and idealism concerning something larger than just the characters themselves, and all of this goes on while the movie stays pleasingly light-handed. The New York City at night scenery and cinematography is a positive feature.

August Evening

http://movies.nytimes.com

Something positive I read in the New York Times.

Similar to Wordsworth’s poetic narratives like “Michael,” the movie combines pathos, enormous respect for the dignity of its subjects, and an adherence to reality down to its gritty level to keep things from getting top-heavy or too ponderous. I loved the riveting performance of Veronica Loren as Lupe. A New York Times reviewer (Holden) found there to be too many lyric pauses, and found it too long. I disagree with the former, agree with the latter. It’s slow right from the beginning, but the details accumulate and a narrative rhythm gets established, but especially at the end, Holden has a point. Still a beautiful film that demonstrates wisdom and goodness as opposed to straining to show us how wise and good it is. Reminiscent of The Bicycle Thief, though it lacks the latter’s somberness, sharpness and purity of visual vocabulary, and acute framing, but then what movie doesn’t.

Marty

http://www.moderntimes.com

Soon after joining Netflix I went to a Netflix feature (if I remember rightly) that presented the Academy Award for Best Picture for each year there have been Academy Awards. This movie was on the list and was intriguing, though I put off seeing it.

It's a sweet, modest movie, somewhat simplistic as to its conflicts, structure, and dialogue, but mature and realistic in its concerns. Its simplistic aspects give a feeling akin to what arises when I see the sitcoms of my youth. Did the makers of such shows have so little confidence in their viewers' intelligence? An unglamorized New York City, mostly at night, in black and white, is a pleasure.

Y Tu Mama Tambien

http://www.offoffoff.com

From now on these comments were written right after watching the movie in question. The previous posts were an account of the movies I had seen via Netflix up to this time, remembered with some help from the plot section of Wikipedia entries.

As I recall, something about Belle Epoque (perhaps the idea that sexy movies can be fun) led me to this movie.

Y Tu Mama Tambien As an exploration of sexuality it could be a lot more nuanced, a rabbit the story pulls out of the hat at the end feels gimmicky and unearned, and its drive to succeed through titillation quotient is high; yet this is a good-humored, energetic movie.

Serenity

http://www.projectorreviews.com

Because of my affection for the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire, after which I though invention ran more thin.

So satisfying. Josh Whedon stays within the comic book realm in order to create funny, sexy, suspense-filled, brain-teasing work with very appealing characters. The high-humor plus high-suspense combination is unusual in my experience, and much fun. The character of River, the clairvoyant young girl, seems like a more artistically mature idea of what his team was roughing out by introducing Buffy’s little sister into the plot of Buffy. She was my favorite part of the movie, and she and her powers are brought out sparingly, with a sense of artistic restraint.

Traffic

http://hollywoodjesus.com

I was interested in Soderbergh’s more adventurous films, because of Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

Taut and suspenseful, and the large cast of characters is fun to negotiate. Lots of scenes have lots of punch. It feels a bit as if a serious, complex topic is being mined for its entertainment possibilities, which would be okay, except that we would want the serious, complex topics to be mind for its artistic possibilities. The politician’s mid-speech falter seems somewhat unprepared for and unbelievable.

Babette's Feast

http://www.rootsrain.com

A “critic’s choice” discussed in the New York Times.

Beautiful, funny, understated, and unusual. The cinematography is spare and chiseled (though as a reviewer writes, it gets rich and more color-soaked at the end, reflecting the movie's thematic development); the movies effect rises out of an unusual quietness. The payoff, given its apparent ingredients, is surprisingly large. My wife told me that the movie can be read as a Christian allegory involving the Eucharist, and I see that, but in a crucial way it subverts the Christian approach, because it’s art and pleasure that leads the absurdly and narrowly Christian folk out of their darkness and into happiness, however temporary. A sophisticated and surprising version of a feel-good movie.

Robin and Marian

http://www.ew.com/

In a conversation about Audrey Hepburn with a friend/colleague, she recommended this movie.

This movie tries hard to be both comic and full of dignity, and has trouble settling down into a particular tone (attitude toward its subject). The pace seems way too slow, or rather, a little unsure of itself.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic

http://bridge-inthepines.blogspot.com

My friend T had discussed Sarah Silverman approvingly, and I appreciated the funny video she made encouraging people to tell their grandparents that they would not visit unless the grandparents voted for Obama. The fact that this was a musical, and that it’s subject was reminiscent of rock opera a friend of mine had written, also female, Jewish, attractive, and outrageously irreverent made me interested.

I found the movie not very sure-footed, and the songs didn’t seem wonderful, and they seemed to bring the narrative to a halt. I stopped watching.

The Wire

http://wordsonwhativeseen.wordpress.com

It’s possible that we live in a golden age of TV, and people refer to The Wire as possibly the best show on TV ever.

I commented on watching them in my other blog: “I watched two episodes of The Wire, and they were enough. The grimness makes it seem too Johnny-One-Note. No humor, no eros. I can see that it doesn't talk down to its audience and it's taut. How does it differ from Richard Price's Clockers, a novel I love, so similar in content and approach? The talk in Clockers is a kind of poetry; the author loves the argot he has discovered and makes it sing. And the main character is amazingly lovable. How important it is to have a character to love.”

Admittedly, I only watched two episodes.  Someone I trust told me the praise was deserved, but that it takes more than two episodes to "get it."

Also, in looking for a representative image, I found this scene, which contains humor and allegorical depth that I didn't notice in the first two episodes: http://wordsonwhativeseen.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/what-does-the-success-of-the-wire-tell-us-about-british-tv-drama/

Pulp Fiction

http://www.musicbanter.com

It kept coming up, to the point that I knew I should watch, but I held back, afraid it would be too violent, too extreme. (The same fear kept me away from Trainspotting for a while.)

As with Trainspotting, I felt my movie-watching appetite satisfied in a way that I’m not used to having it satisfied. It had the same roller-coaster quality. It was so compelling to look at and listen to; it was so continually surprising; it was so dad-blasted funny. The way it combined violence and humor was something unique in my experience. That sounds cold-hearted, but it isn’t; nor is Pulp Fiction at all cold-hearted. There’s a strong, if somewhat inchoate, moral center to the proceedings, though it doesn’t look that way to start. When the Bruce Miller character shoots the John Travolta character because a pop tart pops up in the toaster at the wrong moment, it’s as much a loving, satiric take on violence in the movies as it is a fate-driven, quasi-nihilistic moment as much as it is a plea for sympathy for the complexity of the situations of both men.

Trainspotting

http://wildsidenotes.files.wordpress.com

It kept coming up.

This movie, almost unbearable in several places, I enjoyed very much. Wikipedia:

Jonathan Rosenbaum, in his review for the Chicago Reader, wrote, "Like Twister and Independence Day, this movie is a theme-park ride--though it's a much better one, basically a series of youthful thrills, spills, chills, and swerves rather than a story intended to say very much."

There is something very roller-coaster-ish about it, and it kept my adrenaline pumping. But at the same time the movie was so smart, so funny, and so visually sure-footed, that I didn’t think I was riding a roller-coaster that had simply been designed to make money. Indeed, no on would ever think this movie was just to make money—it’s subject matter is so extreme, and the movie deals with it so straightforwardly. It risks—no, there’s no risk involved—it makes its audience uncomfortable. I thought all the acting was good and the lead’s Ewan McGregor’s, was so powerful that I thought he deserved at least nominations for the various acting prizes.

Becoming Jane

http://www.freewebs.com

I had to wait around for my daughter, had my computer with me, wanted to watch something fun and easy, and found this movie available for immediate watching; being a lover of Jane Austen’s books, I began to watch it.

I stopped watching after about five minutes. Not that it's fair to judge a movie in five minutes, but it seemed to be such a pandering kind of movie. Sorry if I'm being hasty and unjust.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

http://thevoidmovies.files.wordpress.com

I heard a positive review, and my daughter was interested in the actress Amy Adams to the point of my being interested to see her in action.

In retrospect I find this movie a little odd and hard to characterize. However, I enjoyed watching it, because of the two female leads, Adams and, especially, Frances McDormand, both of whom were very loving characters, thus lighting the movie from within.

American Graffiti

http://media.entertainment.sky.com

A movie that keeps getting referenced that I hadn’t seen.

I recalled writing about this on my other blog close to the time I watched it and looked it up:

“American Graffiti acknowledges the nightmare aspect of things, but is like a dream where things keep working out well, in fact just as they should ....Cindy Williams, who plays the female lead in the movie, is the most appealing romantic lead -- not in an objective sense, but speaking subjectively -- since, hmm, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday?”

My response at the time to Williams’s performance seems more enthusiastic and colored by the moment than it was objective. I did like her performance though. I found the movie deeply good-humored, and it had a hyper-focused feel—again, dream-like—that perhaps the first Star Wars (also directed by Lucas) has too and that makes viewing feel like eating candy.

Double Indemnity

http://www.legalmoviesdownloads.com

I believe this was the subject of a “critic’s pick” in the New York Times, and I learned it was by Billy Wilder.

There’s the who-was-there-to-love problem—almost every character is unpleasant to take in or neutral—and the cynicism seemed manufactured and thickly laid on in a cynical way. Fred MacMurray in villain mode is so villainous as to be hard to take (as in The Apartment, but there he doesn’t dominate the move the way he does here). It was good to see James Cagney in action as the insurance inspector with integrity.

The Squid and the Whale

http://thecia.com.au/reviews/s/images/squid-and-the-whale-1.jpg

Suggested by friend E. when I asked for recommendations of recent movies.

Painful to watch and listen to. The parents’ selfishness is strongly conveyed. There’s an air of brittle, tense awkwardness throughout, and a discomfiting note of self-pity.

Smile (1975)

http://forum.dvdtalk.com

Made the “classic comedies” list in The Enlightened Bracketologist.

Always watchable, though a little more painful than funny.