My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Monday, February 28, 2011

Bet you guessed all the Oscar winners, right?

Was there a single surprise in last night's Oscars, other than how mediocre the hosts were (A Hathaway at least had a lot of spunk and spirit)? I wish I'd been in a betting pool; I would've got all the major awards right - but then again, who didn't? King's Speech was so obviously the winner all along - but I do think that coming late in the year really helped it; people forgot how much they enjoyed and admired The Social Network. The two screenplay awards were absolutely the only right choices: KS and SN both fully deserving scripts, sharp, surprising, realistic, and daring in narrative style. Some of the therapy scenes with Firth and Rush were among the best-written scenes ever, I think. First deserved the award for sure (Eisenberg was good, but Firth's role much more challenging). Who can object to Portman? - though Benning's portrayal was more subtle and of course got overlooked. True Grit fell by the wayside, and I think that's about right - though I enjoyed the film a lot, it wasn't real groundbreaking movie - though I thought H. Steinberg (?) had a chance at supporting (mostly helped by the Coen Bros daring decision to lift dialogue right from the book - you'd think it would sound wrong but it sounded and played great - actually it was truly a lead role, not supporting). The two best supporting roles, both from The Fighter, are pretty much inarguable, though many liked Jackie Weaver in Animal Kingdom. Those were all pretty easy to pick - but did anyone guess all the animated features? Best song? Best trailer? Best closing credits?

Sunday, February 27, 2011

For fans of Black Swan : Check out the real thing, Polanski's Repulsion

For fans of Black Swan, I suggest you check out the source, the ur-Black Swan, and watch Roman Polanski's "Repulsion." For others, go there if you dare - for it's truly a repulsive film and also a great film, in its way - you have to have the stomach for it. Much like Black Swan, it's the story of a beautiful very young and very vulnerable woman (Carol, Catherine Deneuve) who is - we gradually understand - seriously delusional and repulsed by sexuality. In Repulsion, she's living with her older and domineering sister (similar role to the mother in Black Swan) and working in a salon, where she's bossed around by everyone. She's French, living in London, so always a bit alienated; we learn almost nothing about her family except that she seems troubled by a family portrait with her as a young woman. The film strongly suggests that she has been the victim of rape or abuse (or both), but whether by a family member or a stranger - or whether it happened at all - is left undetermined. What we do see for certain is that she pushes away from the attentions of any man and, as it becomes increasingly impossible for her to work (and her sister is traveling with her boyfriend), she stays at home and lets her apartment fester in squalor - and increasingly suffers from weird delusions: cracking walls, hands reaching our for her. Many images of repulsion, including notably a skinned rabbit left on a plate to rot. Ultimately (spoiler here) Deneuve kills at least one man (probably two - some ambiguity on that) - not a happy ending, but a great and memorable depiction of a woman in desperate need of help, a victim. Of course this portrait is all the more haunting when we think inevitably of how it was a foreshadowing of the tragedy in Polanski's life.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

The Greatest Show in Swansea : Providence Newspaper Guild Follies

Last night totally enjoyed the 38th annual Providence Newspaper Guild Follies (of 2010). Thanks, all for putting on a great show! Usually old-timers and former cast-members (e.g., me) gather around and grouse about how nothing's as good as it was in the old days - but not when it comes to the Follies. After-show conversations were filled with admiration for how the show continues to get better. The songs were always good I'd say, though years back you could barely make out some of the clever lyrics - pearls before swine, as director Andy Smith used to lament. Now, well, the sound's way better - and the lyrics are in the program, very cool. Not to take anything away from past emcees and monologuists (e.g., me again), but Frank O'Donnell brings a pro's sense of timing and ability to interact and ad lib that we never saw in the older shows. Most of all, the "spectacle" of the show continues to amaze me: the costumes (the Lady Ga Ga # killed) and hair have risen to a new level - probably better than the Oscars which will boringly be on tonight. Used to be a costume was basically a football jersey or a seersucker jacket, and you did your hair in the motel up Route 6 before the show. If the audience could ever see the cramped quarters in which all this takes place back stage they'd be stunned! Though I'll always miss the great Lioce-Mulligan-Kerr-MWilliams writing and performances of yore, the Follies continues to be the Greatest Show in Swansea (or anywhere else on the last Friday in February). Great job Andy and everyone else!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Terrorist on the run : The Fall of Carlos

If there were any remnant of sympathy you might have had for "Carlos" during the first two parts of the miniseries, you're pretty much sure to have no sympathy at all for him in part 3 and at the conclusion; in a pattern fairly typical of stories about the rise and fall of a criminal mind or criminal enterprise (think of the 3 parts of the Godfather), but the third part, the declining arc of the story, the protagonist - Carlos - becomes narcissistic (he even undergoes liposuction), paranoid, physically decrepit, and extremely violent, his worst traits exagerrated as his actual power wanes and his better traits obscured. Carlos no longer seems to be fighting for a cause, but only for himself and his ego. The third and final part of the miniseries follows his from country to country in exile - even his former Arab backers, happy enough to use him when he was in his prime - have no use for him any longer. He's horrible to his (various) wives and indifferent to his cadre. Perhaps most telling - if there was any virtue at all in his earlier acts of terrorism it was because he, in his warped way, believed he was fight for the oppressed and because he was willing to put his life at risk in service to the cause. Late in his career, he reverts to the completely craven behavior of planting car bombs and suitcase bombs, that detonate with no warning in fact - no bravery there, just pure cruelty. And there is little talk of any cause other than revenging slights and affronts. Still a totally powerful and captivating series, but hardly a heart-warmer.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Tough questions: Do you identify with Carlos? Do you admire him?

Part 2 of "Carlos" is equally, maybe more, exciting than part 1 (3-part mini-series version), especially the first half or so, which is a detailed and brutal depiction of a hostage taking, Carlos and three fellow-terrorist storm an OPEC meeting (today, impossible) and take the entire roomful of OPEC ministers as hostages, ultimately freeing some and taking off by plan from Vienna to Algiers. Many things go wrong with the plan, and we're with Carlos every second as he deals with every obstacle and condition - truly one of the most visceral movie segments ever done. One strange question for any viewer is: do you identify with Carlos? Do you sympathize? Part of the excellence of this miniseries is that you do, kind of - you admire his panache and even his idealism (he's no mercenary - he's a true believer), and you have to catch yourself, or at least I did, and remind yourself at times that he's a cold-blooded killer, and that, though I may have shared some of his left-wing ideology at one time and probably still do to an extent (though no great sympathizer with radical Arab causes, obviously), I never condoned the kind of actions he takes on: killing of innocents, attacks on civilians, terror at the barrel of a gun. He's horrible and scary and, though an idealist himself he works with some who are morally corrupt (the Stasi, Arab thugs) - buut it's hard not to watch him and be fascinated about how he goes about his chilling work.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Waiting for Clark Kent: What Waiting for Superman gets wrong

I think I was, officially, the last person in the education field in America to see "Waiting for 'Superman.' " Already, it feels a little dated - at least in my state (Rhode Island) where we've taken major steps at the state level to right some of the obvious wrongs in the education system: teachers who are not evaluated and who are guaranteed jobs for life regardless of performance. The film makes it very clear that bad teachers are harmful to students and that good teachers can advance student learning in any environment, regardless of poverty. There are a few things the film misses, however. First, it's obvious that poverty does present special challenges, which the film does not address at all. Second, the film finds a single cause for the dismal performance in American schools: teachers' unions. Yet the highest-performing states are the most heavily unionized, and the lowest-performing are nonunion states (mostly in the South). Management is as much at fault or more so. Third, the film builds a very nice drama by following 5 kids in their quest to get into charter schools by lottery, but this falsely leaves the impression that charters are the answer. No doubt there should be more charters, but far more important - there should be more innovation in traditional public schools. The filmmakers simply write off traditional public schools as intractable, partly because Michelle Rhee couldn't move the needle in DC - which is mainly because she was so confrontational that ultimately she had no support or trust. Anyway, a provocative film but it falls victim to a short-sighted view of school reform and to a simplistic narrative arc that tells a good story but misses the mark.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Idealism, solidarity, sex, philosophy - and contempt for human life : Carlos

"Carlos," Part one of the 3-part TV miniseries (it also exists in movie version) is powerful and exciting and chilling, very fast-pace account of the rise of an ideological terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, in 1970s Europe - film begins as a young Carlos offers his services to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, at HQ in Beirut, is assigned to an underling job in Paris, shipped to London for an assassination that goes wrong, and then he's off onto bigger and more dangerous jobs, including airport attacks, hostage-taking - ultimately, at end of part one, someone rats him out and he shoots 3 French detectives and takes off. The pace is rapid and keeps you totally riveted to the action, which is relentless. Maybe it's a little too fast a pace - we learn about Carlos entirely from the outside, from what he does, and very little about who he is and what he thinks and what made him the way he is, he never reflects and there's no back story - which is kind of confusing at times, very difficult to keep straight his many relations with various women. Maybe that's the point - he's rootless. He's not a "hired gun," however (unlike the namesake in The Day of the Jackal); he's ideologically committed. M. wondered whether this kind of film would glorify terrorism, but I think the depiction is so brutal and vulgar that it's unlikely to do so. The terrorists here aren't heroes, even if their cause may at times be just - they're thugs, and their lives are awful. It also captures the era very well - the idealism, the odd mixture of solidarity and sex and folk art and philosophy and contempt for bourgeois values, strangely juxtaposed with contempt for human life.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Company Men: A movie that deserves an A, at least for its intentions

"The Company Men," starring the indefatigable Bostonian Ben Afflek and a slew of other well-known actors, some in very undistinguished roles, is a film so admirable for its intentions, so noble in its aspirations, so dead-on about the insidious nature of American corporate culture with its piggish CEOs, its heartless cost-cutting and layoffs, its absurd focus on profits and lies, so sweetly romantic about the virtues of the working class, so rueful and sentimental about the bonding of the dispossessed - that I wish it were actually a good movie. It's not - it's just OK - because for all its good intentions it is at heart mostly a mishmash of cliches and stereotypes, totally predictable from scene one, largely improbable - but a nice fantasy nevertheless, if you believe adversity can transform a narcissistic corporate sales VP (Afflek) into a totally good guy, if you believe Maria Bello would be for a minute interested in the aging Tommy Lee Jones, especially after he loses his CEO-level job, etc. In other words, lots of Hollywood bunk out of the days of the great Warner Bros Depression-era fantasies. Now we have depression-era (small d) fantasies. I more or less enjoyed watching it and don't want to be too harsh on The Company Men because I'll say this for it: tendentious though it may be, at least it has a point of view and a willingness to take on corporate America - an easy target (one man takes on the system, a la Wall Street, Jerry Maguire, et al) but one too often treated with obeisance. How many movies have we seen that worship materialism? A thousand? How many that carry the message, in an honest way, that material possessions don't matter so much? Very few. Not a great movie, but I'll give it a gold star for speaking truth to power.

Monday, February 14, 2011

A series that outperforms its expectations : Battlestar Galactica

Season One of "Battlestar Galactica" ought to be pretty bad - parts of it are so cheesy, some of the dialog is so wooden, some of the special effects are so dated - but one way or another the series continues to overcome its flaws and live up to and even surpass is ambitions - and ultimately I have to say it's pretty good, kept me entertained and interested over 13 episodes (a lot!). The basic plot premise is quite intriguing - a human civilization surviving in space ships after losing an intergalactic war, now searching for their legendary home planet, Earth - and they keep it pretty straightforward, without any complex and incomprehensible plot twists. The characters are all standard types, drawn in broad brush strokes, and that's just fine for this kind of series. The most intriguing part of all is the relation with the enemy race of robotic figures, the Cylons, which can now clone and imitate human form - so the fear is that anyone on the ship could be an enemy Cylon (and we know that one is - which her cohort does not know); even more interesting, some of the Cylons are programmed to think they're human. Some very interesting side stories taking place on the home planet, now occupied by Cylons, with one Galactica soldier making his way across the ruined land. And there's another side drama of the surviving government, with former Ed secretary (Mary McDonnell) now the president, but clashing with the military authorities that run the Battlestar. And finally there are hilarious scenes during which the resident genius is tormented by the image of a sexy Cylon who has been implanted in his brain - and he carries on two ridiculous conversations at once, fending her off and trying to appear brilliant and in control. Lots of great moments throughout the whole series and it keeps you engaged. I'll wait a while before watching Season 2, but probably will get to it.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

The greatest contemporary American opera : Nixon in China

Blown away yesterday by the great LiveHD broadcast of John Adams's "Nixon in China." It's always (or often) a pleasure once in a while to see an opera in English - though it's obvious English is not as suited to the beautiful arias, as our words end on consonants generally and not on the open vowels - but on the other hand English (like German) allows for great specificity of diction, exploration of ideas, development of the depths of character - all evident in Nixon: first of all a great theme, the confluence of two such entirely different cultures and world view, second the great and complex personalities: Nixon scheming and insecure, Kissinger ruthless and dispassionate, Pat Nixon vapid and naive, and then Mao the batty and enigmatic philosopher, Chou the pragmatist, Madame Mao the ideologue. But these summaries don't do justice to the way the characters interact and play off each other, and even to the way they develop over the course of the opera - probably none more so that Pat N., who begins on an enthusiastic tour of Peking and reflects on beauty and peace, then sees the ballet that Madame Mao stages/writes in which the peasants rise and kill the landlord, and she goes crazy - she hates what she sees, wants to go home. Beautiful choral scenes, a really weird third/final act with the characters each "alone" in their bedrooms but lined up like a dormitory or a ward so we can see them all, as they variously look back on the course of their lives, stange and haunting and mournful. So much in this opera - a shame there aren't more great recent American ones - anyone remember that horrible Ghosts of Versailles? a travesty! - but at least we have this.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

The chicanery of the Bush administration revealed: The Tillman Story

The documentary film "The Tillman Story" is great for the material it presents, though it's definitely no groundbreaker or landmark in documentary filmmaking. But for the information alone, everyone ought to see it: a terrific account of how the U.S. Army covered up the truth about the death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan so that they could have a story of heroism in battle to help sell the war and stir faux patriotism. Gradually, the truth came out that Tillman was killed by other U.S. forces. By reading between the lines or seeing between the frames, we can discern that the Tillman episode was similar to the Jessica Lynch story: a narrative cooked up by the military for their own purposes (ironically, Tillman was on the periphery of that rescue). Movie makes plain that Tillman was completely disillusioned about the war by the time he was shot. Also makes clear that the Tillman fakery and cover-up had to be known by and approved by top-level military. Stunning stuff - but where the film falls short is, first, had basically no access to anyone outside of the Tillman family and their closest supporters, so the killer interview with a Rumsfeld (or a Cheney) just isn't there, though there's good usage of the footage of Rummy testifying before Congress. Second, there's not a great deal of tension here, as all of us know the basic facts already, so it's not a documentary that reveals much that's new along the way or at the conclusion. It does, however, place on the documentary record for all time solid evidence of the chicanery of the Bush administration, and for that it's a truly valuable piece of work.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Take the good with the bad : Two films with a bit of each

Claude LeLouche's "Roman de Gare" (strangely translated as Cross Tracks) is a pretty good mystery-entertainment, if you can suspend disbelief and just submit yourself for 90 minutes to the wild improbabilities of the plot. (Spoilers coming...) Story involves a guy heading south through France, picks up a woman after witnessing her violent fight with her fiance, she asks if he'll come to her parents' home and pretend to be the finace (whom they haven't met, obviously); he tells her he's a ghost writer for a famous novelist, and will work this into the next novel. The trick of the film is that for a long time we're not sure if that's the truth or if in fact he's either a., an escaped child molester (about whom we hear radio reports) or b. a teacher who's abandoned his family (we cross-cut to scenes of the teacher's wife). There's no reason we'd think that if LeLouche had not planted ridiculously misleading clues: e.g., both the escaped prisoner and the driver perform magic tricks for children. Total red herring, as it turns out. In the end, we think the driver's been murdered at sea, but he turns up later to get his rightful claim as the true author. Fully preposterous, but kind of fun nevertheless.

Also watched the last 30 minutes or so of Murnau's 1927 silent "Sunrise," a classic, which is both good and bad. Honestly, does anyone other than a cineaste still watch silents? The idiotic plots, the horrible acting with the stabbing gestures and the popout eyes? On one level, the movie was ridiculous. And yet - the photography was, by any standard, today as much as 1927 or even more, stupendous. One beautiful scene or image after another - especially sailing peacefully across the see (waving to a passing riverboat), the search at night for the woman's body in the water, with the searchboats holding lanterns, the family and neighbors gathered in the rude home on the seacoast, the men with the scruffy beards, the light from the left - looked like a Rembrandt painting. For these scenes alone, Sunrise is worth watching.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

A French film that defies the cliches - almost : Mademoiselle Chambon

A lot of spoilers here, so don't read this if you plan to see "Mademoiselle Chambon," which is a very atypical French movie - or at least it seemed to be - up to a point. Simple story involves a man, Jean, who is in builder/carpenter, working class guy in a small French town, gets to know his young son's schoolteacher (Mlle Chambon, though her name is barely used in the film). The teacher is obviously very lonely, and very attracted to Jean - (inappropriately) hires him to repair windows in her apartment/house, and thus begins a flirtation - he asks her about music (she plays violin), he stops by to borrow CDs, eventually he takes her hand, they kiss, but then he backs off. Well, good! He's in a very good marriage it seems, a totally good guy, kind to his elderly dad, a devoted father himself - at last a French film that defines the cliches, a film in which the characters, or at least one character, will take a moral stance and note treat marriage and family as some inconvenience hindering pursuit of the pleasure principle. Mlle ,Chambon herself is predatory, but not in Glenn Close-evil way - just vulnerable, lonely - and troubled and all too available. You keep wanting her to go out and meet some people her own age (Jean is badly miscast - at least 20 years too old for the part). But then, finally, minutes from the end, Jean gives in to his what seemed to be harmless and idle fantasies and they have sex and he says he will follow her as she leaves for her (family) home in Paris. Obviously, the relation would last about 2 weeks: loneliness on her part and on his part a fascination with a level of culture and education far different from his own life. Ultimately, his wife realizes the attraction between the two; Jean takes off for the train station, but, cf Casablanca, he can't board the train - becomes more a Brief Encounter than a reckless French romance. One interesting observation: the French working class are obviously far more prosperous than ours, in that Jean's life and circumstances look very comfortable, similar to the teacher's if not better. The movie is about class, but not so much economic class as cultural and familial (the teacher from a prominent Parisian family, we gather). All told, a pretty good if slow and quiet story that loses its bearings toward the end.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Australia never looked so bad : Animal Kingdom

I'd heard the "Animal Kingdom" was like an Australian Godfather; it's not - it's abut one puny and punkish family of Melbourne (I think) thugs, without the vast scope of social and historical connections and references that makes The Godfather so grand. Though it suffers by comparison (what doesn't?), Animal Kingdom is good in its own right. Once you get past the idea that this family of drug dealers and bullies looks more like an over-40 softball team than like public enemy No. 1 (and maybe that's the point, anyway - they're not stereotypical movie heavies), the film is quite compelling and frightening - most frightening of all, in a way, is not the psychopathic leader of the clan, known as Pope, but the enabling, near-incestuous mother, kissing her sons on the lips, petting their cheeks, ultimately going to horrible lengths to save one boy (at the expense of another, more expendable one). The plot stretches credulity a bit, but it ticks along very well, holding our attention with a vise grip. I think what makes it work and what separates Animal Kingdom from many others of the genre is that it's told, for the most part, from the viewpoint of a teenage boy who's drawn into the crimes of his uncles, even though he has no temperament for this life. It reminded me in a skewed way of Black Swan - like Nina in that movie, the boy has (almost) no one on his side, no chance (though he doesn't descend into madness, as she does). He gives us a real vantage point, a place to focus our feelings and a way to identify with the world of this film - it's as if The Godfather had been told from the point of view of Fredo. Movie drags a bit in the first 15 minutes or so, as far too much is narrated in voiceover - too much telling, not enough showing - but director drops this device once he introduces all characters. Another quibble: at least this American viewer found at times a need for subtitles - combination of Australian accent, argot, and a muddy voicetrack, characteristic of far too many movies these days, not just the mumblecorps. A good if troubling movie - Australia never looked so bad.