by Dean | Apr 15, 2013 | General
An often disappointing artist, David Mamet is also a talented one. As well, he is now a conservative—and was probably leaning toward conservatism as long ago as 1999, the year he released his dandy film adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play, The Winslow Boy. The hero here is Sir Robert Morton, a respectable conservative barrister who has proven to be solidly anti-feminist and anti-trade union. Jeremy Northam plays him with graceful intensity, enviable poise, even a spark of eccentricity.
It is he, Sir Robert, who must clear the name of the young brother of a dignified suffragette (Rebecca Pidgeon). Ironically, this conservative barrister begins to condemn “the great” as they side against “the powerless,” as though he were a liberal—the great being the Crown and, probably, the English press. (The Winslow Boy is set in early 20th century England.)
Mamet’s film is knowingly directed, finely photographed, and well acted. This movie and his follow-up picture, the rather vulgar State and Main (2000), evince what an interesting man Mamet is. I look forward to seeing his HBO film about Phil Spector.
Cover of The Winslow Boy
by Dean | Apr 12, 2013 | General
The Federico Fellini film, Amarcord (1974), is autobiographical and nostalgic and seeks to be genial, amusing and slightly political and religious. In the final analysis, it is an overrated load of insulting grossness. An adolescent picture partially about adolescents, it features a boy who, after getting lewdly physical with an obese woman, feels so guilty he promises his mother he will become a missionary. Forget it, kid: in this movie that seems highly out of place.
Cover via Amazon
by Dean | Apr 10, 2013 | General
Directed by Tom Hooper, Les Miserables (2012) may be the most naturalistic movie musical I’ve seen, though its theatrical character never disappears.
Most if not all the filming of this well-known stage work is smoothly successful, despite a few grating singing voices. Hooper eventually has Anne Hathaway, the movie’s Fantine, looking ugly but, worse, she makes a spectacle of herself when she emotes. The good news is that Hathaway sings well enough and is moving, insufficient as this is.
The song lyrics in Les Miz are not very literate or sophisticated—they’re just okay—but the sober and warm music is admirable. The presence of political revolutionaries makes the Christian vision in the film’s finale rather odd, but, well, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) and Fantine are there too, and it is uplifting.
At the Movies ~ Les Misérables, 2012 (Photo credit: erjkprunczýk)
by Dean | Apr 8, 2013 | General
The 1994 Queen Margot, adapted from an Alexandre Dumas novel, is about Margaret of Valois (Isabelle Adjani), who during the 1500s was forced to marry Henri the King of Navarre (later the King of France) in the midst of post-Reformation violence and conflict. The marriage is essentially no good; as in life, Margaret—Margot—has her lovers, and so does Henri. Yet the Catholic Margot feels compelled to save the Protestant Henri’s life after Margot’s evil mother (Virna Lisi) engineers the massacre of the Huguenots on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day. It’s a famous horror in French history. Even after this, Henri remains a marked man since he desires the French throne, while Margot gets together with another man she must try to protect: La Mole (Vincent Perez), her newest lover. He too is a Protestant.
The film is a vivid and bloody historical drama with a dark screenplay by Daniele Thompson, et al. The direction by Patrice Chereau is generally sensible and brave. In the world of Queen Margot, some needed relief emanates through loyalty and through love affairs, but largely there is the chaos of perilous times. What is practiced is the politics of death. We might as well be in Ukraine during the Stalin era. People are fearful, moving with a liveliness that demonstrates the need to escape. . . The movie ends with nasty Anjou, one of Margot’s brothers, poised to take the throne after the death of Charles IX and commenting to his mother that now, in the kingdom, hatred shall come to an end. Empty optimism, I’d say.
(In French with English subtitles.)
Cover of Queen Margot (La Reine Margot)
by Dean | Apr 5, 2013 | General
The old movie The Girl Can’t Help It played in the Big Apple in 2006 and was intelligently reviewed in the Village Voice. So I saw it on DVD, impossible though that makes it to judge the cinematography.
Frank Tashlin’s film is brazen with color, with “laminated sheen” (J. Hoberman), and is a 1956 guilty pleasure. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll quasi-musical starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell and Edmond O’Brien, and featuring Little Richard, Eddie Cochran and even Julie London. Most of the songs are trash; they’re “classic rock.” Thankfully, some ballads are there. Unthankfully, so is Tashlin’s script.
Enjoy yourself. Mansfield is staggeringly beautiful, and although J. Hoberman is right that her “desire for domesticity” is “unconvincing,” at least it’s there. The girl can’t help it? Right, and she can’t help being highly sensual once Tashlin gets hold of her. Not that The Girl is very hip, though. The presence of the principals, e.g. Ewell, makes the film seem basically divorced from rock music’s feisty world. Jayne ain’t cool . . . I take that back: In a way she is. Whatever the case, the flick is pure Hollywood commercialism. Again, a guilty pleasure.
The Girl Can’t Help It film poster (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Apr 4, 2013 | General
Because she is poor and pregnant and refuses to marry her irresponsible boyfriend, Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno, in a so-so performance)—the protag of Maria Full of Grace (2004)—agrees to become a criminally active “mule” who smuggles drugs from Colombia to exotic New York. She swallows the pellets whole and carries them in her gut before excreting them in the NYC apartment of drug-dealing thugs. The plot advances with the death of Maria’s fellow mule, Lucy, who gets fatally sick and is horribly manhandled by the thugs. The conclusion of this film by Joshua Marston accepts what is indisputably the politically liberal view on illegal immigration (economically Colombia bad, America good, you see) and I have a problem with that.
Doesn’t mean it’s a bad picture, though. Maria is absorbing, non-melodramatic and almost always convincing. I do wonder, however, why Maria fails to perceive the moral seriousness of what she’s doing. Oh well.
(In Spanish with English subtitles.)
Maria Full of Grace (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Mar 29, 2013 | General
How many a cappella pop songs exist in the world I don’t know, but “Easter Song” by Glad is likely to be one of the best. The lead singer is enthrallingly good, both sober and cheerful, while collective vocals fill the bill superbly. (This on the studio recording.) A certain restraint is here but so is utter passion, summoned, of course, by the Resurrection. Too, you’d better believe the song has hooks.
Edifying.
by Dean | Mar 26, 2013 | General
Peter Yates’s police drama Bullitt (1968) is poorly written in several ways but is engrossing nonetheless. It has to do with killers and witness protection, and it contains enjoyable action, but it’s a mostly quiet film. Proceedings are quiet, as they frequently are in life. Only now and then do people get noisy. Correlatively, the hero—Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt—is a loner.
Also, it’s a profoundly American film. The manly loner lives in a place of obvious, nonstop manufacturing, of urban construction and extensive roads. He has an English girlfriend, however, played by Jacqueline Bisset, whose celebrated beauty is another reason Bullitt is worth seeing.
It beats me why Frank Bullitt isn’t a better protector of his witness, but this movie is fun and interesting in spite of itself.
Bullitt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Mar 16, 2013 | General
Woody Allen’s musical comedy, Everyone Says I Love You (1996), is a catastrophe. Frequently it is not very funny because comedy and undistinguished dialogue don’t exactly go together unless the comedy is physical. The movie features songs by Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, among others; and they are butchered by the bad voices of Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore and Allen himself. The only tolerable number is the first one, “Just You, Just Me,” because Edward Norton’s singing is more or less acceptable and the routine does not require much liveliness. Any time a routine does require liveliness, you can forget about Allen providing it. I can’t judge the choreography of Graciela Daniele, but it seems quite pleasant within this framework.
The film’s title derives from a Marx Brothers flick, and I wish Allen was as good a writer as those the Marx Brothers had. The musical’s “book” can be obnoxiously stupid, as witness the tomfoolery involving Barrymore and Tim Roth. Is it possible that when writing it Allen said to himself, “Oh well. The books for those old musicals weren’t very good either”? Damned if I know.
Cover of Woody Allen
by Dean | Mar 11, 2013 | General
However many improbabilities arise in Jack Reacher (2012), it’s a vigorous, reasonably intelligent, engaging crime thriller starring Tom Cruise. It works because I assume its source material, a Lee Child novel titled One Shot, is well-crafted. (Am I wrong?) Jack Reacher (Cruise) is a drifting ex-military cop who wishes to mete out justice to a sniper he knows, only to find out he needs to pursue a different offender, the true sniper. Cruise and Rosamund Pike, playing a defense attorney, make a good team; both have energy and project smarts. Christopher McQuarrie has directed and scripted the film with savvy, and nowhere is either the violence or the profanity excessive.
Jack Reacher is almost as good a crime drama as The LineUp and Bullitt. Check it out.
