Tonight's Selection

What I'm thinking about what I'm watching.

[tonightsselection]

Boyhood

this is the rare kind of movie that makes me sit back in wonder at what movies can be and what they can do.  richard linklater has created a masterpiece that he will struggle to surpass for the rest of his career.  his well-regarded "before..." series now looks like experimental practices for this movie.  there's an audacious stunt in the premise of this movie, but it never feels gimmicky.  he's captured an amazing view into humanity by showing how we're always changing, sometimes in slow and subtle ways and sometimes in sudden and stark ways, with a mixture of important and mundane moments.  it is a singular accomplishment that confidently lives up to its grand and universal title.

[tonightsselection]

Breakfast at Tiffany's

on the list of things that don't hold up over time, mickey rooney's performance in this movie might be at the very top.  it's in such bad taste that, fifty years laters, i can only gape in amazement that anyone ever thought it was a good idea.  it reminds me of ching-chong ding-dong, stephen colbert's parody of tone-deaf racial humor.  it feels out of place with the modern style of the emerging sixties that dominates the rest of the movie, as if it would be unacceptable if the movie was made just a couple years later.

not far behind that on the list is the male lead's respectful deference to a marriage formed between a middle-aged man and a 14-year-old girl.  it's unfortunate, because holly golightly is such an interesting and honest portrait of a broken ingenue trying to make it in a world that expects her to be a happy plaything.  but every time yunioshi pops his buck teeth into frame, i'm completely put off.

holly's party is about as close as i can imagine to a worst case scenario.  i'd be proud if i lasted fifteen minutes there.

the shot of holly, collapsed on her bed, with the down of her pillow still hanging in the air is gorgeous.  the pixie shot down.  i only with they held on the shot longer.

[tonightsselection]

The General

the copy of this that i watched had a very peculiar look to it.  i don't know if it is characteristic of the original film or an artifact of a modern restoration, but the focus seemed too sharp.  the people or objects in focus would often have sharp outlines and a slight halo effect that made them look like they had been superimposed onto the backgrounds.  the backgrounds sometimes didn't seem to have a natural drift of focus through the depth of the shot, with some objects much closer to in focus than they rightfully should be.  it gave the movie a strange synthetic look that i found quite distracting.

hard to swallow that a seasoned train engineer would be incapacitated by the smoke of a burning rail car.

the hand-drawn lightning was a charming touch that i'm sure influenced wes anderson at some point.

it blunts the value of a high-definition restoration a bit when you include high-definition holes in the image.  i guess that's the difference between criterion and kino.  criterion is well worth their higher prices.

[tonightsselection]

New Orleans Music in Exile

this doc is about the diaspora of new orleans' musicians in the wake of hurricane katrina.  it's an interesting topic to see where they go, how their new surroundings affect them, and how their absence affects their home town.  unfortunately, this movie doesn't do a very good job of tackling those issues.  it spends way too much time on the same disaster footage we've all seen many times, and it doesn't dig deep into the culture.  it doesn't convey the emotional connection between the city and its music.

[tonightsselection]

Sunset Blvd.

i'm always a bit put off by art that's about the kind of art it is.  there's an air of navel gazing to it that puts it on the wrong foot right at the onset, making it that much harder for me to come around.  this movie is certainly well made through and through, but it lacks that extra oomph to overcome the sense of laziness and self-pity that comes with making a movie about how hard it is to make movies for a living.  i can objectively appreciate that it's good, but it feels flat and doesn't leave me wanting to see it again.

the one thing that i thought was genuinely weak was the romantic triangle subplot that is blindingly identical to casablanca's romantic triangle.

there's something charming in classic movies' lack of special effects; the gunshots that don't puncture clothing or bleed; the tire blowouts that happen on perfectly clean and smooth roads.

[tonightsselection]

Das Boot

this movie is a prime example of how to create excitement without spectacle.  it doesn't have all the huge exploding set pieces or epic battles with hundreds of extras that have come to typify war movies.  it does have less enormous explosions and battles, but they're not the high points.  the tension and excitement are at their highest when the camera stays inside the sub and watches the crew wait in terrified silence as pings bounce off the hull and depth charges sink toward them.  effective use of perspective is far more powerful than cgi destruction.

[tonightsselection]

Tootsie

it's an interesting choice to save the transformation montage until after we've already seen hoffman as a woman.  it would be a fun idea to surprise the audience that way, but the promotional materials give everything away, so no chance of that.  on the other hand, a carefully edited transformation montage could build up tension for the reveal, which doesn't happen when we've already seen him as dorothy.  there's also room for some comedy of errors if it's his first attempt at creating a female look for himself, which doesn't work after he's figured it out.  i wonder why they did it that way.

i love the jab at soap opera actors never looking at each other.

the cliche of him always forgetting his dates with his friend is so tired.  it really dragged those scenes down for me.

i cringed every time hoffman rolled his ankles because of the heels.

it's so strange to not only name the movie after a throwaway line, but to do it in a way that brands the lead character with a name she openly objects to, and then write an upbeat song about it.

[tonightsselection]

Mister Rogers & Me

it's hard to imagine anyone personifying simple caring kindness better than fred rogers.  this doc is a loving portrait of that icon of children's television, painted with anecdotes from the people fortunate enough to have known him.  much like mister rogers' neighborhood, there's nothing earth shattering to this movie other than a sea of warmth and honesty.  it makes you realize how much things have changed when you compare the old clips of fred to all the loud, garish, hyperkinetic shows that dominate today's kids' programming.

[tonightsselection]

Into the Woods

the lyrics in this musical are fantastic.  i really enjoyed the fast pace, intricate syntax and constant wordplay.  they're not holding the audience's hand.  it's in contrast to most musicals, which have lyrics that don't say much and repeat it several times just to be sure nobody misses anything.

the performances are better than we usually get from movie musicals, with the exception of huttlestone, who reprises the cloyingly precious hamminess he lent to les miserables two years ago.  dial it back.

the final battle is a bit of a let down, with the movie coasting to the finish after the witch's finale.  i would have liked to see that section pared down considerably.

i knew i was in trouble with this audience when a girl behind me had an emotional reaction to one of the previews.

[tonightsselection]

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

i kept waiting for kirk cameron to show up in this movie.  it has all the trappings of one of his projects:  a nonexistent enemy being convinced to change their ways by obsessively casual christianity, a clear delineation between "good guys" and "bad guys" with the former marked by a 1950s style cockeyed optimism, and laughably low production values.  this last characteristic is the greatest source of amusement in this movie.  a spaceship has rockets that are clearly fire extinguishers.  a military radar dish looks like it was made with paper towel rolls.  a polar bear is played by a man in a halloween costume.  you'd think the art director was twelve years old.

santa really loves laughing at his own jokes, which is probably good because nobody else does, but it made me want to slap him.

you can keep your jetpacks, i want the food pills we've always been promised.

as much as i hate neil degrasse tyson's faux film criticism, it might be fun to see him apply his nitpicking talents to this movie.

[tonightsselection]

The Trip to Italy

the big question hanging over this movie is whether it's really worthwhile to make a sequel to the trip, which started to struggle with repetitiveness toward the end of its runtime.  there's a lot here in italy that's rehashed from what was there in northern england, and the repetition returns in places, but for people who genuinely enjoyed the first trip (as i did) this is a welcome addition.  there's some before-sunrise-esque evolution of the characters between the movies that changes the mood, and the comedy is raised by the mealtime banter being supplemented with riffing ad-hoc scenes that get coogan and brydon working together to great effect.

the self-aware opening discussions of the pitfalls of sequels and an agreement to not do impressions this time (which of course is not adhered to in the least) got things off on the right foot.

what makes me last most in both trips is how one of the two will perform a fully committed bit, get a truly piercing criticism in return, and carry on with the bit as if they had gotten the laugh they expected.

[tonightsselection]

Coherence

i really wanted to like this movie.  it has a weird, silly, experimental premise, and i always enjoy seeing a filmmaker go way out there.  there were moments here and there when i was reminded of what intrigued me in the first place, and made me hope the movie would get back on track, but they were just teases.

i always say that no premise is too strange, so long as everything else flows naturally from it via airtight logic.  unfortunately, the characters behave irrationally and erratically at every turn.  this is made worse by direction, editing, and camerawork that made me constantly aware of their choices and annoyed by them.  i made lists of example of both of these complaints, but that would just be piling on.

i think if it just had either the character/plot problems or the visual problems, i would have still enjoyed this movie as a flawed execution of a fun idea, especially from a first-time writer/director.  with both combined, though, i left disappointed and glad it was over.

[tonightsselection]

Stand and Deliver

how do you make a math test cinematic and tense enough to function as the climax of a movie?  that's a pretty tough challenge.  they do about as good a job as possible in this movie.  they focus on the nervous ticks of the test takers, intercut with proctors pacing and looming behind them and tight shots of the calculus problems that look intimidatingly indecipherable to most people.  it's an admirable effort to make the most of a tough situation, and i'm glad they did their best with that rather than fabricate some silly conflict so there would be a more traditional climax.

i wonder what percentage of the viewers of the south park episode that satirized this movie actually got the reference.

[tonightsselection]

Safe

this movie doesn't really have an ending, but it has a final shot that is as powerful as a neat conclusion.  julianne moore spends the whole movie getting inexplicably more ill, and trying in vain to reverse that trend by separating herself from anything that could be polluting her body.  this necessarily means isolating herself in ever more extreme ways.  our final image of her shows her frail frame standing in a porcelain igloo in the middle of the desert, staring at the outside world through a porthole of a window.  she sacrificed everything in her life to prolong it, and it didn't even work.

dean norris always gets the prestige roles, like head furniture mover.

the casting director was jakki fink.  i wonder what her ancestors did for a living.

[tonightsselection]

Stonehearst Asylum

this movie is crazy.  it's like the rides in a traveling carnival; you know they're not going to be very well built, and you know they're not going to be a phenomenal experience, but if you just going along for the ride and don't analyze it, the twists and turns can provide an amusing evening despite the cracks and squeaks.

i feel like jim sturgess is always in movies like this; mid-level, a little bit odd, solid but unexceptional.  i wonder if he doesn't get offered bigger, broader stuff, or he just doesn't want to do that.

when's the last time ben kingsley really pushed himself?

[tonightsselection]

A League of Their Own

i really dislike the device of bookending a movie with two scenes set far after the rest of it.  it never adds anything to movie except for runtime and gratuitous emotions because "aw, old people."

this movie has a particularly bad example of it.  the opening scene says literally nothing.  an old woman is packing for some unknown reason, she doesn't really want to go, but her daughter pressures her.  she says goodbye and arrives where many other old ladies are.  then the actual movie runs.  the final scene at least tries, but fails miserably.  the group of old ladies all take turns recognizing each other, reciting character names, then they go to the baseball hall of fame and walk through an exhibit of pictures from the movie we just watched.  "hey, remember way back when... 30 seconds ago?"  it's not physically impossible to reminisce about something right after it happened, even if you sepia tone it.  this would work fine as the background to the end credits, but it leaves a really bitter taste as the final scene.

the amount of double dribbling and traveling by the kids at the beginning made me think i was watching an nba game.

jon lovitz is great in this.  there's no overacting too big for that part, and he goes for it like a champ.

i understand that continuity in a sports movie is hard, but the trajectories of the ball off the bat and then landing in the field (always with a cut between) were so often wildly different, it became very distracting.

the glee on hanks' face after hitting the kid in the face with a glove was fantastic.  it punctured the tension nicely.

[tonightsselection]

Bowling for Columbine

when michael moore asked charlton heston why he keeps a gun in his home, heston stammers and scrambles his way through several different answers, none of which are good and most of which he concedes are false in his next breath.  they're the usual talking points we've come to expect, which i presume he memorized from nra press releases, and hold even less water than usual when applied to a wealthy man living in a gated home in a very nice neighborhood.

the one that especially stuck out to me was to exercise his second amendment right.  even setting aside his sadly common misunderstanding of the second amendment, this is laughably absurd.  he admits he doesn't need a gun, and doesn't use his gun at home, but keeps it there just to exercise the right to do so.

i wonder if he exercises any other constitutional rights just for the sake of it.  perhaps he keeps a modest printing press and circulates daily diary entries to his neighbors.  if he was charged with a crime, would he seek legal counsel from a public defenders' office, even though he can afford better representation?  would he decline to testify in his own defense, simply to exercise the right?

if you're "not familiar" with gandhi and what he did, your views on tyranny and revolution have no value.

i'm amazed by how many people initially protested their reputation to michael moore, then later proudly demonstrated exactly how they got that reputation.