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Interferenz
(Interference)
Italian

warning

This little film is surprisingly affectively disturbing. An outgoing woman, a radio DJ, while having problems with her lover, becomes involved with a computer nerd who she thinks is spying on her through her window from across the street, when he is actually shouting at a cross-dressing entertainer who has just left a party in his building. Nice premise, huh?

The woman storms across the street and boldly forces her way into the guy's apartment, where she begins to berate him for his peeping-tomery and his isolated life-style in general, while he ineffectively tries to defend himself. They carry on a conversation at cross-purposes, a theme that persists throughout the film and is "resolved" by the ending.

When the DJ learns that the guy is a sky-watching comet freak, she decides for them that they will go out that night to a nearby hilltop where they can view the comet that is apparently the current highlight of the nerd-computer world, thus establishing her character as a spontaneous woman who will take off unexpectedly on the spur of the moment.

Despite the nerd's protests, they go. While on the hilltop, they meet a guy (who they don't know is the cross-dresser because he is no longer in drag) burning posters that he is supposed to be posting, as a requirement of one of his several jobs. They mistake him for a comet-partier who is building a bonfire.

Later, they get together, talked by this guy into a lame get-rich-quick scheme making videos with the nerd's video camera. When things do not go well and the police and/or gangsters (I never did quite figure that one out; my Italian, and/or the sub-titles are not that good) are looking for them for ripping off pot plants that they discovered while watching the videos they took of the hilltop, they take off on a short, spontaneous "vacation," in order get away from the heat for awhile and to cheer up the nerd, who is beginning to fall into a funk.

The vacation is extended and they are now out on their own. At first, they're happy, but they go through a period of anxiety and depression, a contagion caught from the nerd. They are having a hard time adjusting to a life of "freedom." The woman has abandoned her job as a DJ and is disconcerted. The nerd is lost without his computer, and the cross-dresser is... well, I don't know what he is. It's not really explained. Maybe he misses his boa.

Eventually, they begin to lighten up and learn to like each other's company. When they are about to be completely defeated, they win a lot of money on a horserace [it's a stretch], and they buy a sporty car. The entire film, until the end, seems kind of light-weight and flippant.

But the ending changes everything. At a pit stop, the girl says she'll wait in the car to watch their possessions, and when the guys return, she is gone, absconded with the money and the video camera. It's a heartbreaking moment, especially since it's completely unexpected. To make it worse, the guys, comparing notes while in the John, realized that she really liked them. But what can men expect? This is the way women are. They don't want men as good friends, they want exciting lovers, and these guys were just too dense to see it.
The Thin Red Line

Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Andrea Koteaus, John Travolta
John Savage, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack

This was a great movie, but it would have been even greater if they had used unknown actors instead of Hollywood standards, especially since some of them (such as Clooney) were used in a token manner. I thought that the recognizable faces detracted from the unfolding story, and it was hard enough as it was to understand the subtext. But what a subtext!

The characters, especially Witt, continually out-Zenned the Japanese, who were made to seem vapid and ineffectual. That kind of behavior probably existed as often among the Japanese as did the stereotypical bonsai kamikaze kind. But the film focused on the former. If the Japs were that bad, how come it took so long and cost so many American lives to take Guadalcanal?

That minor flaw aside, this was the best and strangest "antiwar" film I've ever seen (with the possible exception of All Quiet on the Western Front). It's basic premise: war is bad, very bad, but it's altogether a typical human enterprise. This is the way human life, all life, really is, divided in its basic nature. Why, oh why must this evil exist? But it does; it's a fact, of life.

I love this film's philosophy, which is more oriental than western. And I love the mood it creates, the laid back atmosphere (a function of the main character Witt's sensibility and life experience) in a time and place of pain, death, and turmoil. And, especially, I love the voice-over technique that executes the film's philosophy in a way that makes you often not quite sure who is doing the talking/thinking.

At the end, it is, non-logically, Witt's voice-over we hear, but as if it's the inner voice of a different soldier, because, as Witt thinks at the beginning of the film, "Who are you to live in all these many forms? You're death that captures all. You, too, are the source of all that's gonna be born. You're glory, mercy, peace, truth. You give calm spirit. I understand. I understand it. Courage, the contented heart."

And, "Maybe all men got one big soul where everybody's a part of, all faces of the same man, one big self, everyone looking for salvation by himself, each like a coal thrown from the fire."

And "Darkness, light, strife, and love. Are they the workings of one mind, the features of the same face? Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes, look out at the things you made, all things shining."

We are each a face of God, and war is a mechanism whereby we kill parts of ourselves. At the end, as the survivors leave, they each feel a part of this one great soul comprised of both the living and the dead, or so the film leads us to believe. I believe it. Don't you?
Garbo Talks

warning

Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher, Catherine Hicks,
Stephen Hill, Jesse White, Hermoine Gingold, Harvey Feinstein

Very few films are ingenious. This is one that is. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking this is a film about a dying woman who wants to meet Greta Garbo. It is, but just. That's a mere sub-plot. This is a film about a son of an overly assertive activist Jewish mother trying to grow up (both of them). The son journeys through the New York environment like an ancient Greek on a quest, searching for Garbo to satisfy his mother's dying wish. In the process, he sacrifices his job and his marriage (neither of which is working out for him, but both of which he is overly attached to, in the same way he is attached to his mother).

Although this is a great film, I do have a problem with two aspects of the plot. I feel like I want to rewrite it and remake the film to correct these, in order to:

1) minimize the helper role of Hicks so that she doesn't know so much about what Silver is trying to accomplish, so that the final payoff works. As it is, Hick's amazement at Garbo's greeting is uncalled for. Of course Garbo knows him--and Hicks knows he would be likely to have met her, because Hicks was intimately involved in his finding her, and it's highly unlikely that Silver wouldn't have confided what he was trying to do, given how intimate they became. She should have been kept out of the loop completely. Silver could have used Jesse White's agent to achieve the same end and, at the same time, the ridiculous flirtation scene at Actor's Equity could have been avoided. [That scene, then, with White in place of Hicks, could have been made incredibly humorous.]

2) deepen the plot by having Silver act more reticently toward Hicks re an ulterior motive of acting on his mother's behalf, which could have been seen as an extension of the same reticence he felt with his wife. Then, at the end, we would know that even if Hicks had wanted a less than temporary relationship with him, it would never have worked out, because although he has come to terms with his milquetoast personality (ala the resolution of the film), he still has a lot of the oedipal conflict to work through. Specifically, he has loved his mother and now he will be looking for a replacement for her.

These plot flaws, however, are relatively hidden and don't interfere with the story or the overall psychology of the film, the maturing nature of a son in the process of losing his mother, the primary love in his life. But they are essential flaws when you consider that the ending is, in fact, the whole point of the movie:

The title is clever. Garbo doesn't talk, except in a few indecipherable whispers throughout the film, and except, of course, at the end, when she says hello to Silver, emphasizing the symbolic nature of the exchange. Yes. She does talk to Bancroft in the hospital room, but we don't hear it. We only learn about it later when Bancroft reports it. It's Bancroft who does all the talking in the film, in a very succinct Garbo-like manner. So, Garbo talks though Bancroft's character. But she talks directly to Silver at the end. Get it? She speaks to him. And it's his mother who has, in a round-about way, arranged it.

All along, he thought that he was arranging for Garbo to talk to his mother, but as it turns out, it was his mother who was (unconsciously) arranging for Garbo to talk to him, because she (his mother, disguised as Garbo) had something important to say to him--not in words, but in the very fact that she (Garbo) approached and spoke to him at all, which makes him feel important, symbolic of the achievement he has made as a result of having succeeded at finding Garbo in the first place, of fulfilling his mother's dying wish, of being the perfect son, of asserting himself at his job, of becoming, in fact, a man. After all, does The Great Garbo talk to anyone, let alone a pansy?
The Limey

Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda, Luis Guzman, Lesley Ann Warren

Great minimalized action, held in abeyance by Stamp's brooding characterization. Stamp was always an expert at this mood-setting motif. And the technique of incorporating clips from his past films is clever (and better done than with, for example, Kirk Douglas in Diamonds).

The story/plot, though, is kind of weak. Could have been a great film with a better vehicle. There is one huge mystery, though, that keeps the audience on its toes, persisting throughout the film and remaining unresolved: Who is it who keeps telling Peter Fonda he can act? You make one good film early on in your career and you're set for life. (It also doesn't hurt that you had a famous talented father that you look more and more like every year.)

Miss Firecracker

Holly Hunter, Tim Robbins, Mary Steenburgen,
Alfrie Woodard, Trey Wilson

This should have been a terrible film. The premise is as corny as Kansas in August: an aging wannabe beauty queen takes her last shot at success--and succeeds, but not in the way she thought she would. Great actors and a great script save the movie from clichéry. Tim Robbins was brilliant, and Alfrie Woodard was as appealing as I've ever seen her. I can't imagine how any other actors could have pulled off what these two managed to do. And the family relationship between Steenburgen, Hunter, and Robbins. Wow! What dynamics!

In a way, this is the way I wish my family were, lovingly confrontational, and openly caring, a reaction against a questionable childhood, survival skills acquired as a buffer against a crazy intolerable mother. It's either develop in this way or harbor obsessions and resentments the rest of your life--like those that Elaine (Steenbergen) harbors for her beauty queen past and her younger cousin (Hunter) who has been free and easy all her life, while Elaine must restrict her own freedom out of a need to be secure.

This family situation is the later result of an obvious early dysfunction, which is made quite clear in the film in as concise and minimal a way as possible. And as for minimalism, I like the way they left the subplot between Trey Wilson and Mary Steenburgen hanging (as well as a number of other things besides). They should do more of this kind of thing in films. Everything doesn't have to be "roled" up into a neat little ball. Leave something for the viewers' fantasies to work on.

But implication seems to be too subtle a technique for the average American citizen. Even the critics, who claim to know better (yeah, right), criticize plot elements that are left unresolved. It's not really unresolved, it's just unstated. It's an option: believe what you want about how their relationship will or will not develop. [Crash the conclusion of this review. Leave it unresolved, as a nose-thumb to the critics.]
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro. Cameos: Tim Thomerson, Katherine Helman, Toby MacGuire, Penn Gillette, Lyle Lovett, Gary Busey, Christine Ricci, Ellen Barkin, Cameron Diaz (I think I saw her in there somewhere; I recognize her in retrospect), Mark Harmon (I don't remember seeing him at all), Harry Dean Stanton (I didn't see him either, and I wish I had, because he's been one of my favorites for a long time. I remember way back to when he used to be billed as simply 'Harry Stanton') Director: Terry Gilliam.

Truer to the book than the Bill Murray version, and a better production overall, with Depp maybe playing a better Hunter S. Thompson than Murray (or maybe playing a better Murray than Murray. I didn't think that anyone could be more over the top than Bill). But the Samoan was much better rendered by Peter Boyle than by Del Toro.

But most importantly, Ellen Barkin (my favorite all-time movie actor) stole the show. After I saw her part, I wanted the whole movie to have revolved around her. I wanted Depp and Del Toro to have been her second fiddles. Oh, man, was she hot, or what? She played that part perfectly. Jane Russell couldn't have played it better, and that's who Thompson had in mind when he wrote the book.

The rest of the film was a nightmare of complex mumbling and innuendo that would have made no sense at all if I hadn't read the book--just like all of Gilliam's other films. This is not a complaint. I love esotery. But the Murray version was probably a bit more understandable from a beginner's point of view. This film is pure art. Not for the uninitiated, maybe even if they have read the book.
Lifeforce

Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Mathilda May, Patrick Steward

An alien naked female vampire and her two male cohorts hitch a ride on a spaceship and threaten the Earth by spreading their vampirism like a plague in London. The vampires harvest human souls as life energy that they beam up to their umbrella-like spaceship far above the Earth. Okay. That's the plot. (Who thinks up this stuff anyway?) Now for the important part, the extensive scenes of Ms. May totally nude and loving it. Great scenery. Worth seeing for this alone. Add to that Jean-Luc Piccard's vampire transformation and victims desiccating and rotting before your very eyes and you have a cult masterpiece.
Summer of Sam
1999

Mira Sorvino, John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Jennifer Esposito, Anthony LaPagli, Ben Gazzara, Mike Starr, Jimmy Breslin

It took me a long while to get into this film. I hated the beginning, not because it was bad, because it was terribly well-done, but because I hated that era, disco, vain arrogant macho men, cunts on parade, etc. (Now that I think of it, it's sort of like the current era. This is the disco era all over again.) But after I began to get into Mira Sorvinos's character, my perceptions changed. [What a great actress she's turning out to be. She's come a long way since Romy and Michele Go To Their High School Reunion And Turn Themselves Into Even Bigger Assholes, or whatever the fuck the title of that film was.] And after the character of Ritchie began to develop, I warmed up to the film's intent. In the end, I loved this film. I loved it's basic statement, which is a recurrent Spike Lee theme: prejudice is prevalent everywhere. This is an anatomy of the prejudicial mindset (if that is not a redundant phrase). Great ending. I wished Mike Starr's character had shot the motherfuckers. Oh, yeah.
Little Voice

Jane Horrocks, Michael Caine, Ewan MacGregor, Belinda Bethyln

Started out with a great premise, but kind of fell apart halfway through. Jane Horrock, though, was fantastic from beginning to end, of course. I fell in love with her a long time ago when she played Bubbles in the Brit TV series "Absolutely Fabulous." We never see enough of her here in America. I can't believe they nominated the cow who played her mother for an academy award and ignored Jane's performance. Fucking ignorant cocksuckers. Ewan was great too. He and Jane made a great couple. The filmmakers should have concentrated more on that relationship and on the deep psychology of Jane's character and left the obvious plot well enough alone. Bad writing, I think.
Eye of the Beholder

Ewan MacGregor, Ashley Judd, KD Lang, Genevieve Bujold

Ewan was great, as usual. Ashley was okay, I guess, but played her usual cunt self. All of the praise that KD got for the film was overblown. Yeah, she was good, but she wasn't that good. Typical case of an exaggeration of the facts in the name of political correctness. The film was just mysterious enough to keep me watching. I liked it, especially the ending, which can be taken literally or symbolically. I like it when the filmmakers leave it mostly up to the audience to decide.
Clerks

Jay and Silent Bob, D: Kevin Smith

A day in the life of two buddies who work as clerks in adjacent stores, one a convenience store, the other a movie rental outlet. Particularly memorable for the (off camera) scene where an ex-girlfriend of one of the guys fucks a dead man (thinking it's her ex) in the dark in the storeroom when the lights go out. Lots of quiet sarcasm.
The Deadly Trackers
1973

Richard Harris, Rod Taylor, Neville Brande

A sheriff who believes in non-violence because his father was killed by a lawman, tracks into Mexico the killers of his wife and son, who died as a result of his non-violent methods of law enforcement. But his abandonment of his principles comes back to haunt him in the end. Great standard western without a Hollywood ending.
A Rózsa Vére
(The Blood of the Rose)
Hungarian, 1997

warning

Anita crosses the border into the Ukraine every night, as the border guards tacitly allow her to smuggle diesel fuel back across the border in an extra fuel tank in her car. Her loser boyfriend, Andras, a married man with children, runs a black market in vegetables, motivated to become something more than just another modern day peasant. But one night rival black marketeers beat him up. Anita then convinces him to join her in the smuggling business. But local cops, one of whom is Anita's ex-husband, bust his operation.

Andras quits the business, doubting the wisdom of his actions, and goes back to work for his demeaning former boss. But that doesn't last long. He attacks his drunken boss when the guy tries to bully him into submission. So he goes to a local gangster to get money to pay off his debts. The gangster's price for the money is to involve him in heroin smuggling. He thinks it's too risky to cross the border himself, so he uses Anita, who doesn't want to do it, but who goes along with it, meanwhile becoming involved with a visiting musician.

Andras discovers this relationship and tries to run the guy over with his car. He forces Anita to smuggle the heroin, but he's involved in a car accident and she gets away. The musician finds her and comforts her in the drying shed her grandfather, who has recently died, built in order to raise a little bit of income for the family. She falls asleep, and he steals the heroin.

Meanwhile, Andras is released from the hospital with his broken leg in a cast. He returns home, where his wife, pregnant bitch that she is, decides to forgive him, pretending to magnanimity when her actual motivation is survival. (It's hard enough for ordinary people to survive, let alone a pregnant woman with kids whose husband has deserted her.) She tells her broken husband that everything will be all right and that she has arranged for him to work as an engineer for the cooperative. He submissively nods his head.

In the final scene, he returns to his grandfather's farm, a memory-filled place he loves, a place where he had shacked up with Anita. His wife has decided they will sell the place. He walks to the river and looks out over the landscape. Another man, broken years earlier, a local neighbor, approaches him from across a narrow inlet of the river, walking through the shallow water. Andras and Anita had spoken briefly with the man earlier in the film, when he had been sitting on a stoop with river rocks laid out on the ground in front of him, talking to them as if they were his friends. He explained their nature to them in a cryptic fashion.

Cut to extreme long shot at the river at the end of the film: the man bends down in front of Andras, obviously gathering up rocks. Andras watches for a short while, and then he bends down with the man, apparently joining him in his isolated psychology. We may conclude that all the characters are river rocks, worn smooth over a long time by the waters of life. The man is a fool, in the sense of a court jester. His simple-mindedness is a disguise of wisdom.
L'Estat di Davide
(David's Summer)
Italian - 1997

warning

A kid, living in Turin with his brother and his wife (who are always fighting and leaving him to care for their infant kid, whom they tend to ignore), graduates from school and goes to his Uncle's farm to spend the summer. There he experiences life full force as he encounters his harsh uncle, meets a new, wild friend in the hospital after falling and cutting his shoulder, and falls in love with a girl.

But things begin to go wrong when he discovers that the girl is a heroin addict who cheats on him with her pusher. He and his friend set out to vandalize the pusher's business, where they discover a cache of heroin, which they take on a road trip, to sell their booty to a contact the friend has.

But the friend is knifed to death by a pre-teen courier. The hero runs off down the beach, catches a bus back to Turin, and during the ride, in a voice-over parallel to the beginning of the film, he describes his coming life, working in the car wash he had been working at before he left.

A great film, especially in its depiction of the dilemma of the girlfriend who truly loves the kid, but who must maintain her habit. There's a particularly poignant final scene between the two as the kid prepares to go back to Turin, the type of scene that Hollywood would have overdone and turned into sappy melodrama. In this case, though, it is done with restraint, allowing the actors and the editing to convey the repressed emotions.

Imagine, now, a kid, a student perhaps, or a drop-out working in a car wash, stuck there while his friends are going off on summer vacations, imagining a vacation of his own. Imagine that he has this fantasy that he wants to be a writer. Imagine that he sits down to write a story. What would he write about? How about his summer vacation? What to include to make it interesting? Why, love, sex, heroin addiction, and murder, of course.

This may not be the origin of the story, but it's written as if it is, because if a slick, polished writer had written it, it is more likely to have come off as a more corporate affair, James Bondian, or involving more sophisticated, cosmopolitan types. But instead, it is a down-to-earth story, romantic, but unromanticized, heroic, but self-effacing, a true masterpiece coming-of-age flick.
Oleanna
1994

William H. Macy

Interesting premise. Good content. But the acting was very awkward and strained, too obvious in its presentation, not at all organic. This can happen when a play is adapted to a movie script--or rather, not so well adapted. David Mamet should have let someone else write the screenplay, maybe) It has that stifled quality that filmed plays have. When you see a play live, you accept the format, because then it's a natural process. There's something about a staged play that allows you to accept the artificiality of actors acting. But when you're watching a more plastic medium, a film or videotape, you become aware of the play format's artifice. Maybe it's nothing more than conditioning. Maybe all it is is that we've become used to the artificiality of the play, whereas with a film we know it can be done more "naturally." As a result, plays must be transformed into something different for them to work as films. In any case, the actors, in their attempt to make the language "natural," get it wrong; or else, Mamet got it wrong right from the start, when he wrote the words. But I don't think so. The content is first rate. The ideas are profound. It's the presentation that suffers, in a way that it probably did not on stage.
Disney's The Kid
2000

Bruce Willis, Lili Tomlin, Jean Smart

First of all, I hate it when they write attributions into titles. This should be an outlawed practice. "Sidney Sheldon's Bloodlines." "Jacqueline Suzanne's Once is not Enough." [Is that right? Was she the author? Did I spell her name right? Oh, who gives a shit, anyway?] These are vain attempts to unduly influence audiences by making certain they don't miss the fact that the work was done by a celebrity. Give us a break. If we don't know already, then why should we? And now, it seems, Disney has become a celebrity corporation, in and of itself. Fuck you. If we don't know it's a Disney film, if we never find it out, who cares? Stop your shameless self-promotion, rake in your box office proceeds, and go away. Stop rubbing it in our faces.

Now, to the plot: A kid shows up in his future self's life, where he's a super-businessman, an image consultant, who's become hardcore and jaded and lost his way. It doesn't work on that level. In fact, it doesn't hold up to any of the standards of this "Time Travel" genre.

But it does work on other levels, in particular, that of the acting. It's well acted, in spite of its typical lightweight device and plot. It seems that Bruce Willis can save any filmic disaster. He can't do anything wrong any more. And Lily Tomlin is even better.

The appearance of "The Kid" in Bruce's life causes him to remember his childhood, which he has managed to thoroughly repress. These "memories" change his life. This is a good allegory for a mid-life crisis--or it's a therapy method for how to change your life by going back into your past via creative imagination and fantasy. But the film flops on those levels too. It should have been a lot more profound, given the subject matter. Yay, Bruce. Boo, Disney.
Unidentified Flying Oddball
1979

Dennis Dugan, Kenneth More, Ron Moody

A scientist (Dugan. Remember him? He was Ritchie Brockelman in "The Rockford Files") builds a robot that looks exactly like himself (Remember Making Mr. Right? This film looked like it was starting to go in that direction, but unfortunately, it took a different turn--and Dugan is no John Malcovich) to send into space, because the authorities don't want humans going on such a dangerous mission involving spacetime distortion. But plans get fouled up (they always do) and both scientist and robot get sent into space, go back in time, and land in England during the days of King Arthur (played completely unconvincingly by More). Here, the fantasy turns totally unbelievable. Never mind that they didn't speak modern English then. Even Mark Twain got that one wrong. (But Twain's expertise at prose and parody allowed the suspension of disbelief.) Merlin (Moody, who should have been fantastic in the part. Remember Fagan in Oliver? But you can't act well with a bad script.) acts in conjunction with Mordred (an alliance that is totally implausible) in an attempt to dethrone the king, but Dugan, with the help of a lot of nonsensical futuristic equipment, saves the kingdom. This has to be just about the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of bad ones. I can't believe I actually watched the whole thing. I must be getting senile.
Welcome to the Dollhouse
1996

Heather Matarazzo, Brendan Sexton, Jr.

A homely teen is harassed at school by students and teachers, dissed by her siblings, and psychologically abused by her bitch mother, all of which causes her to react in kind, precipitating turmoil in the family and among her friends. Starts out as a tame little tale, but gets progressively more dark and profound as events unfold, and ends up as an indictment of modern culture in general and the education system in particular.
Prisonnieres
(Prisoners)
French

The travails of women in a French prison are revealed through the introduction of new prisoners into the system. Experiences range from psychological adaptation through the power struggle among the inmates and with their guards to the lesbian relations so necessary to their sanity. I wanted to like this film a whole lot more than I did. I found it a bit confusing, especially at the end. But maybe that's just me being uninitiated. Maybe there's a whole lot here I'm missing. Maybe. Or maybe it's just an obtuse film. But usually I like obtuse films. Maybe it's just too shallow, despite the subject matter. Anyway, it was worth watching. Somebody tell me what I'm missing here. I'd really like to know.
L'Ultimo Capodanno
Italian

On New Year's Eve, tenants and guests of an apartment building go increasingly crazy as midnight approaches and their lives intertwine. Some pretty funny and satiric scenes give way to unbelievable brutality as the plot unfolds.

At the party of an aging countess, who is accidentally electrocuted with a hair dryer while drunk in her bathtub by her gigolo's former football coach, the football team creates havoc.

A kinky businessman, whose family is on vacation in the mountains, and who is tied up by a prostitute whose specialties include sexual games, urination, and S & M, is caught in the act by three Mafia types, who conclude that blackmailing him will be as lucrative as the burglary they are in the process of carrying out.

The wife of a famous movie producer discovers that he is cheating on her with a woman he works with, so she seeks creative vengeance via laxatives (and more) at their dinner party.

A reclusive young druggie and his bud hole up in a bedroom that has access to an "inner chamber" harboring a blazing furnace designed a century ago by a Finnish immigrant whose ghost mourns his daughter Heidi's death, as witnessed by the friend who huffs some industrial strength solvent he finds in the factory and hallucinates several hilarious and bizarre scenes.

The family across the street, negatively affected by the antics in the apartment building, takes serious revenge.

All is resolved in a very unconventional way. Almost makes me like the idea of resolution. This is the kind of creativity that's needed in the postmodern world of art in order to make conventional form interesting. I could hardly believe how the film unfolded. It's a fantastic commentary on modern life.
Untamed Heart

Christian Slater, Marissa Tomei, Rosey Perez

Pretty ordinary stuff, but so well produced, directed, and acted that they pulled it off. This is a great romantic fantasy. A sickly, painfully shy busboy (Slater) loves more or less normal waitress Tomei, whom he worships from afar. He follows her home and even sneaks into her house late at night to watch her sleep. One night walking home from work, she's attacked by would-be rapists, and since Slater is following her, he comes to her rescue. She, in turn, rescues him from his isolated world, as they quickly become friends, then lovers. He tells her about his past as an orphan and relates a fantastic tale about his childhood that he had been told by a well-meaning Mother Superior. This terribly trite scene should have flopped, but Slater and, especially, Tomei, handle it with grace. A good ending, despite the outcome, although it was a little bit sappy, designed to jerk the tears right outta your face.
Jack and Sarah

Richard E. Grant, Samantha Mathis, Judi Dench, Ian McKellan

I really am an incorrigible reprobate. When Richard Grant's family put the baby next to him on the bed as he slept after having been on an extended binge in response to his wife's death in childbirth, my reaction was to want him to completely ignore the baby's crying, deal with it totally objectively, bundle it up, take it out and turn it over to someone, and have nothing more to do with it, thus enabling the continuation of his isolation.

Of course, he wouldn't have had to have gone to all that trouble, because his family was secretly waiting downstairs. But just to have made the attempt would have been satisfying enough for me.

[But this is me rewriting the script to satisfy my penchant for engaging scenic images and twisting them to my perverse psychology, which eschews social manipulation (influence) whenever it can. And anyway, I'm not a father (obviously).]

Instead, in trying to attend to the baby, he becomes involved, and thus reintegrated into his society--a clever plot device, and a clever psychiatric ploy. (It was his psychiatrist father's idea.)

From this point on, the film gets impressively better, and endearing, even to a hardcore case like me. (It took an actor like Richard Grant to pull this subtle role reversal masterpiece off.) And even if the ending was a bit overly plotted, it still worked, a fine resolution to a fine little film. [more]

Six Degrees of Separation

Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland,
Ian McKellan, Mary Beth Hurt, Bruce Davidson,
Anthony Michael Hall, Richard Mazur

I've looked forward for so long to seeing this film, but well into it I continued to think that it sucked. Again, more of the same stilted language that's created by transforming a play into a movie. Playwrights should never write screenplays of their own work. My one major impression remained throughout the film: these are false characters expressing the theme of social pretension. I realize that this is probably all intended and that my reaction is exactly what the playwright is shooting for, but I don't care.

These people piss me off. And the acting is so good that I don't even care that they are great actors. (I'm not so sure about Will Smith. His acting may be too strained and amateurish. He's playing the same part he played in the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," with a bit more sophistication--or is that sophistry?) Or, he may be so good that I can't see through his technique. (I doubt it.)

But my entire attitude threatens to change near the end of the film, which sucks you in with its negative approach and then turns it around on you with Channing's character. But it keeps returning to the theme of social pretension and my hackles rise again. Finally though, the film is saved for me by Channing's conversion. You don't realize until almost the end that it's her story, and not Will Smith's. This is one example of plot resolution at work. Fuck all the rest of these assholes. I love Channing. This is her movie, and I would have known it sooner if I had taken the time to read a few blurbs. She was in the play.

[But I hate to read blurbs or reviews before I see a film. They always end up ruining it for me, try as they may not to. This is why I often reveal critical information in my own reviews. Revenge--and because I don't like the idea of formats that restrict me from saying what I want to say spontaneously. I know that restriction is a function of this limited art. But I am not a critic and these reviews are not reviews per se. Live with it.]

Man on the Moon

Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito, Courtney Love, Peter Bonerz,
Jerry Lawler, Paul Giamatti, Victor Schiavelli

I don't like Jim Carrey very much. I never have. Nor do I appreciate much of his humor (if that's what it is). But I thought he did an excellent job in this picture. (He also did a good job in Truman. He's great as a serious actor, but ridiculous as a comedian.) He had Andy Kaufmann down perfectly. But I wanted him to actually be Andy, and I was very aware throughout the movie of the discrepancy between the two men. Also, I thought that more attention should have been paid to Andy's childhood and especially to his early years of struggle. But I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise the movie would have been four hours long--which I wouldn't have minded at all.
Manny & Lo
1996

Scarlet Johansson, Aleska Palladino, Mary Kay Place

This is a strange movie. Pre-teen Amanda (Manny) and her teenage sister Louise (Lo) are on their own after the death of their mother. Freewheeling and surviving by their wits, Lo's pregnancy forces them to decide that they need a more stable situation until this ordeal of theirs is over. Enter not-so-stable Mary Kay Place, looking for that one break in life.

This should have been a better film than it was. It's interesting, both for its premise and for the characterizations that the actors bring to the script. But when it was over, I couldn't help but think "Is that all there is?"

I'd like to rewrite this script to involve more of the minor characters, especially the kid who lived down the creek, and to further develop Place's character. The story needs to be deepened, complexified, and condensed. As it is, it's just another story, one with a lot of promise, but not as special as it promised to be at the beginning.

The Color of Night
1994
warning

Bruce Willis, Ruben Blades, Lance Henrickson,
Jane March, Kevin J. O'Connor, Brad Douriff
Leslie Ann Warren, Scott Bakula, Jeff Corey

A New York psychiatrist stops practicing after a patient kills himself in his presence. So suffering, he does the logical thing. He goes to LA. There he meets a psychiatrist friend, who promptly gets himself murdered, leaving Bruce to pick up the pieces. And what interesting pieces they are when one of them turns out to be Jane March in multiple roles. I subconsciously suspected this plot device, but I never actually recognized it. The cast who played the therapy group was excellent. This is group at its best.

This film kind of strained at the seams a bit, but I liked it. Of course, I would. It's about the two loves of my life, psychology and postmodernism. But it contains a lot of smart lines that, when you come right down to it, are too clever to be natural. The script writer is too obvious throughout, especially in the person of Blades, who plays a cop with a cruel streak who is nevertheless adorable.

Country Girl
1954

Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, William Holden

A stage director befriends and promotes a has-been alcoholic actor because he admires him for his past work. But the director's loyalty, like his character, becomes divided as the story progresses.

Kind of a cynical movie throughout, except for the ending, which was kind of sappy, except for Kelly's ultimate decision, which she never would have made in a modern day role. But then, Bing's character could not be today the lovable reprobate he was back then. He would have to be more of a scoundrel. As it is, the real scoundrel turns out to be Holden, who in a modern romance would be the hero who has found true love. But that was a different time back then, wasn't it?

When it comes right down to it, this wasn't much more than melodramatic pap. But Odets, the playwright, got into the problems of the duplicity of alcoholism and theater production fairly well and in-depth in the second act. Above all else, this is an excuse for Bing to sing, and his performances are first rate, if you like that kind of thing. I myself think it's kind of worn around the edges now.

The title is lost on me. Maybe I missed the reference to it in the content.

Dog Eat Dog
1964

Jayne Mansfield, Cameron Mitchell

Funny up this seedy pic a bit and it could be one of those mock radio days Firesign Theater scripts. In the Greek islands, everybody is out for him or her self and betrays everybody else while angling for control of a million dollars in stolen money. (The movie might only have been an hour long if they cut all of the scenes of Cameron Mitchell tearing the house apart looking for the money.)

And Mansfield really was a slut, wasn't she? Somehow throughout the whole thing I got the idea that she really wasn't acting. And she was a lot younger than I thought. I never paid much attention to her before, but I had this idea that she was a lot more mature. In this film at least, she looks and acts like a slutty version of a young Susan George.

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