The Top 15 Movies (I Saw) in 2014

Rounding out my picks for best movies of 2014, here are the Top Five Documentary Films (I Saw) in 2014:

The Act of Killing (a 2013 film that I saw this year). Incredibly bizarre and brave movies about political terrorism in Indonesia, in which the murderers of thousands try to explain and justify their lives.

Finding Vivian Meier. Film about the the posthumous discovery of the works of a mysterious amateur photographer who lived and died in obscurity.

Muscle Shoals. The handful of white guys in a tiny Southern town who helped make some of the greatest rock, soul, and blues recordings in the world. 

Particle Fever. Incredible as it may seem, a movie that can help you understand particle physics and care about the results of the world's biggest physics experiment.

Virunga. A frightening and courageous documentary about those risking their lives to protect a national park in the Congo. Some footage shot while the cameras and crew were literally under fire.

With a nod also to the documentary on environmental activism, If a Tree Falls.

So that concludes my list of the top 15 movies I saw in 2014 (with Birdman replacing one earlier on the list, sorry Judi Dench), which are:

12 Years a Slave

The Act of Killing

L'Atalante

Birdman

Dr. Strangelove

Finding Vivian Meier

The Great Beauty

In a World

Man with a Movie Camera

Muscle Shoals

Particle Fever

Playtime

The Selfish Giant

Two Lives

Virunga

One word for Unbroken: Unwatchable

Yes Louis Zamberini was an incredible athlete and an incredibly brave and honorable man and yes I am sure that Lauren Hildebrand's book about him is great as she's an excellent writer and yes I'm all for movies that tell a true story especially with an uplifting and positive moral energy and yes I admire Angelina Jolie for managing a successful transition from movie star to director but, let's face it, her Unbroken is a just about unwatchable movie: well over two hours of suffering a torture inflicted on the stoic Zamberini - an Olympic distance runner who joins up in WWII, crashes in the Pacific, suvives 47 days on a life raft only to be "rescued" by the Japanese and tortured and abused in various POW camps. What may sound like an exciting, Odysseyan epic of adventure is really monotonous, cliche-ridden mash-up of a thousand movie tropes we've see many times before: the ethnic kid ganged up on by the neighborhood bullies, the scrawny kid struggling to make the [fill int he blan] team, the come-from-behind runner who earns the medal with a near-impossible last lap, the ethnic family offering sage and pithy advice (If you can take it, you can make it) to the sound of orchestral crescendos, the mother making pasta by hand in golden light and the family gathered around the Philco mothers hands clutched together in prayer, the aerial combat (to be fair, this was probably the best sequence in the movie), the survival at sea through storms and shark attacks (a novelty here was the attack from above by a Japanese warplane), the terrible cruelty of POW camps (the Japanese were apparently just as bad to their own soldiers, see the great Human Condition), and so on. The scene I really wanted to see - Zamberini confronting his torturers years later - is not even in the movie, just int he closing supertitles. All in all, a promising project that was maybe just too promising (which may be why it sat unmade for decades) and has led to a movie that is earnest, self-consciously virtuous, over-produced (the score especially - dreadful!), and in the end a bloated bore.

What's right and wrong with Gloria

Let's start off with what's right about the 2013 Chilean film Gloria: It was a pleasure to see a film about people who are 40+ who look and act like real people, not like movie stars and not like some 20-year-old screenwriter's idea of what people say to one another. It's also great to see a movie about a strong-willed, optimistic, relatively independent working woman of modest means who overcomes a difficult relationship and learns or realizes that she need not be dependent on a man to feel whole, complete, or happy. Those noble sentiments aside, and aside from the smart and brave presence of the lead actor, Paulina Garcia (she had to go through a number of full-body sex scenes with a not all that attractive co-star, as well as a scary bungee jump that as far as I could see did not use a stunt double), there's plenty wrong with this film as well. Most of all, it takes an f-ing hour for the plot to even begin! It's fine to establish a character, to let us see something of her home life, work life, social life, family life, but I was pretty much on the verge of checking out about 60 minutes in that nothing at all seemed to be happening; I'm all for experimental narrative style, but a story does need some kind of arc and a sense of beginning-middle-end. At last the plot begins when we see that her male companion, as I think she calls him, is a kind of a shit: he treats her badly, she refuses to take his calls, at least for a while, then they're back together again, and then things get even worse and she learns her lesson. Pretty simple. But one has to wonder (some spoilers here): Couldn't she tell that he was duping her all along? She's a smart woman and not overly dependent of clingy, and she couldn't tell that his claim to be a divorcee was shaky at best? Wasn't his refusal to introduce her to his daughters who are always calling him some kind of tipoff? And even then, he can be a shit to her, sure, but the movie, so realistic in some ways, goes a bit off the rails when he literally abandons her in an expensive hotel room leaving her to foot the bill - for no apparent reason other than that he realizes he can't continue to deceive her about his family. He's either a terribly disturbed even psychopathic guy - which he doesn't seem to be - or he's made into a monster for the convenience of the plot design. Finally, and this is emblematic: In any movie that opens with a plain-looking woman wearing glasses, the woman will eventually ditch the lenses and look great. I was really pleased that Gloria continued to wear her dopey glasses throughout the entire movie, that she didn't have to lose them to win the guy - until, in the final scene, dancing at a wedding, suddenly she loses them. Damn, what a disappointment, what a cave-in to movie convention. Couldn't the movie be as bold and brave and independent as Gloria? (There are at least 3 good rock songs called Gloria, I'm not sure why, and one of them is used over the closing credits - as well as throughout the trailer that I saw months ago and gives a completely wrong picture of the movie, no surprise.)

Please add Birdman to my "Top Ten" (now 11) list of films I've seen this year

I'll join the chorus in praise of Birdman and of director-writer Alejandro Inarritu who now definitely established himself as one of the few thoughtful, intelligent, and imaginative directors - in fact one of the few to maintain his cred when moving from his native (Mexican) cinema into the big-budget studio world. Saw his Amores Perros earlier this year and was very impressed; didn't truly love Babel but have to give it credit as ambitious and smart guilty only of over-reaching, which is not such a sin or crime in the world of under-reaching drek. Birdman takes on Hollywood and celebrity culture, yes, admittedly an easy target, but in a way that I've never really seen before in film or any other medium. The plot, very briefly, concerns a washed-up actor Riggen Thomson, played perfectly by Michael Keaton, who made his fortune playing the superhero of the title (a tremendously brave role for Keaton to take on, given the personal references) and now wants to buy back his artistic soul by directing a Broadway production of a play he's written based on a Raymond Carver short story. He comes in for some criticism, esp by his saucy and troubled daughter, for his devotion to a period-piece story by an old white guy - true of course, but part of the joke is that Carver's stories were adapted from film some years ago by Hollywood icon Altman. This is truly a backstage drama, running from various disastrous previews to opening night - and Inarritu captures the mood, feel, and look of the inglorious life behind the scenes and of the tempestuous personalities of the actors and crew, as well or better than any film I've ever seen. One of the many great pleasures is the way he shrewdly shows us bad acting (a guy who over-acts in the first preview, to Keaton's distress) who's replacement turns out to be Edward Norton, who (I think) is supposed to be a successful stage actor. Norton works the same scene with Keaton and we can see instantly the difference between stentorian over-acting and sensitive, impassioned acting - and can also see how an actor and director can sharpen a script through the production process (the only similar example I can think of in films I've seen was the pair of great sequences with Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive; she of course is in Birdman as well, great as always). All that said, this is not just a backstage melodrama but an exciting and imaginative examination of Keaton/Thomson's personality: we see from the outset that his is somewhat imbalanced and irascible, and his psychological troubles play themselves out to surprising and effect throughout the film: we watch a personality develop, emerge, and self-destruct under great stress. Inarritu's framing of scenes throughout is always breathtaking and, once again, imaginative: from long tracking shots back stage, a camera rotating around the actors on stage, unusual but never inappropriate or annoying perspectives, some hyper-real imaginary sequences, tremendous en plein air shots on the streets of Time Square; the score, too, is excellent, ranging from the syncopated jazz beat of street drummer that brings the outside world into the frame of the screen to some beatuiful excerpts from Mahler and others. In short - I have already posted by top ten films of 2014, but, having seen this one, will ex post facto add to my ten best list.

Extraordinary b/w cinematography in Polish film Ida

The 2013 Polish film Ida should definitely has a shot at the foreign-language Oscar, for which it's nominated. It's a pretty simple, almost stark narrative, sent in a remote area of Poland circa 196655. It opens with novices in a monastery, scenes almost in silence except for the prayers; the mother superior tells one of the novitiates she has to visit her estranged aunt before she can take her vows; against her will, the young woman goes to visit her aunt, who informs her that she was born a Jew (named Ida) and that her family had been killed during the war. The two - very different characters, Ida shy and saintly, the aunt a stern judge with a serious drinking problem and a promiscuous streak - set off to the village where Ida's parents hid during the war to learn what they can about the wartime fate of her family. In a way, it's a journey of discovery; in a way, it's a road-trip buddy movie; in another way, it's about Ida's grappling with her faith and trying to determine the course to take in live: secular or religious, in the world or withdrawn from the world. Despite a few plot aspects that are opaque at least to non-Polish viewers (how did Ida's aunt avoid the assault on the Jews?, for example), the story line is simple and has a few surprising twists. What makes this movie exceptional, however, is the extraordinarily beautiful cinematography - all in b/w, capturing the look and feel, I imagine, of Poland in the darkest years of postwar poverty and communist rule - the impoverished countryside, the drab cities, the freezing cold austerity of the monastery, the cheesiness of a "tourist" hotel with a trashy nightclub that seemed 20 years removed from the music scene of the West. The look of the movie recalled for me the stark beauty of Nebraska, though not filmed in wide-angle, or some of the beautiful b/w films from Italy in the early days - but with a crispness and image clarity that would not have been possible in that era.

The Top 5 Foreign-Language Films I Saw in 2014

Her is part 2 of The Best Movies (I Saw) in 2014, this one being:

The Top 5 Foreign-Language Movies (I Saw) in 2014

L'Atalante, Jean Vigo's terrific 1934 film shot almost entirely aboard a small boat plying the canals and riverways around Paris. Great, sorrowful story about a newlywed couple and a difficult marriage, filmed with extraordinary care and at great cost (essentially, the horrible filming conditions cost Vigo his life).

The Great Beauty. A movie set in contemporary Rome about a frustrated novelist become a successful celebrity journalist - in other words, a modern-day La Dolce Vita, and possibly just as good. Need I say more?

Man with a Movie Camera. Vertov's is one of the most imaginative and enduring of all the silent films, filled with witty visual imagery and creative shots and angles, a true cinematic portrait of a city (Odessa) in a time and place long gone that, in a way, still feels contemporary. 

Playtime. Jacques Tati's 1967 dystopian, comic look at what he envisioned life would be like a major world cities some 20 years hence. His love-hate with the glass-steel structures of modern architecture was prescient in some ways and way off the mark in others, as he had no sense of the preservation and gentrification movements that would come. The 45-minute scene in which the horribly designed restaurant-night club literally begins falling apart is a great sequence.

Two Lives. An under-appreciated Norwegian spy thriller with a complex plot that isn't just cloak-and-dagger but is about real people and their lives and culture. Almost unique among spy films in that we care about the characters and can actually believe their story.

With nods as well to: Amores Perros, The Intouchables, A Man Escaped, Omar, Pandora's Box, Reprise, La Terra Trema, and Together. 

Coming within the next few days: The Top 5 Documentary Films (I Saw) in 2014.

Reese Gone Wild: Totally watchable film

Wild, the Reese Witherspoon vehicle based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed, is a totally engaging movie that follows Witherspoon on a three-month solo hike north on the Pacific Coast Trail from the Mojave Desert to the Columbia River border between Oregon and Washington State. Witherspoon, as Strayed, is inexperienced and unprepared for this trek, so part of the adventure is watching her learn and grow and get smarter and tougher, and part of the fun is rooting for her survival - and who could be more winning or appealing in the role the Witherspoon, trudging along with that enormous pack looming over her back as if she's carrying an entire wall? The great thing about this movie is that it so effectively brings together the journey of discovery and recovery with the elements of Strayed's troubled past, very well revealed through many flashbacks that are truly flashes and not long narrative interruptions: he childhood with an abusive and angry father, raised by a single mom who's a bit flighty and goofy, her mother's early death, and the terrible grieving process that leads Strayed to infidelity, serial sex with strangers, drug abuse, divorce, and finally to this hike to learn about herself. for those who may have seen the recent James Brown bio-pic, contrast is textbook revealing: that movie was a mess of scenes told out of sequence to no clear effect or benefit; this one has a strong narrative line and the back pages fill inform us more deeply about the character we are traveling with. Nick Hornby did the screenplay and deserves recognition for that. This movie is adventuresome, tense, funny at times, beautiful often, thoughtful, credible, and fun to watch.

The 5 Best Movies (I Saw) in 2014: English-language

The year's not over, and I hope to see a few more good movies by the end of the month, but, spurred on by other "top ten" lists popping up all over the place, here are the best movies (I saw) in 2014. Unlike movie critics, I don't see most films immediately on their release, so some of the films I saw early in the year were clearly films of 2014, but never mind that. I've built the list from among all movies that I saw during the year, which ranges from the silent era to the just released. I'm breaking list up into several sections for an eventual total of the 15 best (with nods to some also-rans), staring with

The 5 Best Movies I Saw in 2014 (English-language):

12 Years a Slave.

Obviously a 2013 film and totally deserving of its best-picture Oscar. The movie was completely engaging, terrifying, sorrowful, had me literally in tears. A dreadful episode in American life, apparently chronicled in a memoir by the protagonist, a free black man living in Sarasota who was captured and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Very hard film to watch, impossible to forget.

Dr. Strangelove

Still holds up! Every bit as funny and troubling as it was when it came out in 1964. Peter Sellers in 3 roles is perfect, George C. Scott ditto in 1. Although the issue of nuclear annihilation isn't in the forefront any longer, the international brinksmanship and the bizarre behavior of world leaders and military fanatics is still with us, in a different form.

In a World ...

Clever, funny, touching, and weirdly informative - who knew there was such a subculture of voice-over announcers? Lake Bell - writer, director, star - shows she's quite the talent. Hard to imagine anyone not enjoying this film.

Philomena

A great Judi Dench vehicle, but more than that as well - funny, moving, based-on-truth story, chronicling a good piece of investigative journalism and exposing the evils of the church and about family relations.

The Selfish Giant

Horrible title aside, this a hugely powerful movie about some touch working-class kids on contemporary England struggling to get by, fighting tough odds, victims at every turn. Reminded me a little of the great Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Challenging to watch, and very powerful.

With nods as well to several big-studio American films that were actually quite affecting, All Is Lost, Gravity, Her, and Whiplash, and to the totally whacked-out British comedy World's End.

Coming witthin the next few days: The 5 Best Movies I Saw in 2014: Foreign-Language

Funny, provocative, a pleasure to watch: Tati's Playtime

Jacques Tati's Playtime (1967) is a pretty great movie by any measure - funny, provocative, a pleasure to look at start to finish. Essentially, it's a movie in which architecture and design are the villains: Tati sets the entire film in what I think is called Le Defense section of Paris - a district that is made up of gleaming international-style glass and steel (or aluminum) towers, with lots of traffic and no street life or neighborhood life. Part of the joke of the movie is that we follow a gaggle of American women on a group tour of Paris, and they stay in this neighborhood and love everything they see and visit - a few shots show us the Eiffel and other monuments in the far distance. It's clear that Tati is not skewering just Paris but the whole modernist movement - one shot in travel agency shows posters of various world cities, all looking pretty much the same. The story line such as it is follows Tati's Chaplinesque protagonist of several comic romp, M. Hulot, through what seems to be a 24 hour journey: arrival at a gleaming airport (at first it looks like a hospital), then a hilarious visit to an office building where he can never get the attention of the man he's trying to see, a walk through an arcade of shops - a modernist take on le marche des puces, I think, with a very funny scene at the stall of a company that makes doors that are silent even when slammed shut. The highlight of the film obviously is the long section in a nightclub - to drive home the point the club is still under construction and the architect is on site with his plans and measures - and everything goes wrong: the furnishings with sharp edges slice up the clothes of the waiters, the service slot is too narrow for the kitchen staff to pass the plates to the waiters, the bar is designed so that the bar tender can't see what he's doing. The scene ends in riotous chaos - and some pretty good dancing - and then the characters head out to a corner drug store for coffee and drinks: this sterile place has replaced the bars and clubs that (used to) constitute the life of an urban neighborhood. Even the drug-store scene is beautiful with strange green neon illuminations. Also a very funny scene in which Hulot visits the apartment of a friend (people keep recognizing him on the street)  with sheer plate-glass walls: the visual juxtaposition of what's going on in the apartment and the one next door is hilarious. Glass doors play a big role in the movie, as characters are continually walking into glass or mirrored pillars, tipping over on poorly designed but sleep furniture, etc. There's very little dialogue - the film almost harkens back to the silent era - but you don't need words to make these points and visual puns. The world hasn't quite come to the horror Tati envisioned - he did not anticipate preservation and restoration efforts and the migration back to the heart of many cities - but the movie still feels in some ways contemporary, or at least timeless.

Climbing towad the unknown: Everest

Though I'm sorry I missed the 3D version in the theater, I enjoyed watching Beyond the Edge in 2D at home; it's not the first movie to take on the theme of Himalayan mountaineering, but it's probably one of the best. The movie, about Hillary's ascent of Everest in 1053, aptly blends archival film footage, voice-over narration (probably from historical archives I would think) of participants in the trek and their descendants, and re-created scenes using contemporary actors and up-to-date equipment and film technology - all to create a seamless documentary about the ascent that makes you wonder how or why anyone would try it in the first place: some harrowing scenes of crossing the ice field and climbing the last knife-edge ridge to the summit and a vivid sense of the daily suffering and misery on the trail and in the many base camp. Makes you appreciate not just Hillary and Tenzing's ascent but the others in the team as well, the poor Sherpa schleppers especially, climbing barefoot with huge crates balanced on their backs. The equipment was so primitive by today's standards. You have to imagine that today the path to the summit, by comparison, must be a superhighway - but in 1953 they weren't even sure if humans could survive at that 29K altitude, and many had died trying to get there. I know some of the reviews weren't that strong, as some were put off by the 3D hype and others probably jaded by a thousand NG specials on this and similar topics, but it's still a pretty thrilling movie that helped me see not what it's like to make an ascent today but when it was truly a climb toward the unknown.

High School Not a Musical: Very realistic - for the most part - movie about high-school kids

Although it's a pretty slight movie all in all and covers very familiar ground - yet another movie (based on what is no doubt a very sensitive and readable novel) about high-school kids mixing with the "wrong crowd" and maturing as they prepare to take the big step toward graduation and college - The Spectacular Now stands out among the rest as being far more realistic and credible than we've come to expect from feature films about youth. The kids - particular the two leads, one a seriously addicting fun-loving popular guy and the other a serious and focused girl who's not in the "cool" crowd but is not, thankfully, a loner or outsider - who come together on a "cute meet" (he wakes passed out on her front lawn as she's about to begin her paper route - it's a cute meet, sure, but also relevant to the plot). Their awkward and flirtatious conversations seem very real, even the sex scene, tentative and a bit clumsy and not at all graphical, seems about as real as any teen sex scene on film. A real strength of the movie is how they each grow and change, influenced by each other, but not entirely in positive ways: he brings her out of her shell a bit, but it's not such a great sign that she can match him in drinking, and we sense her uneasiness; he, on the other hand, sees - especially during a very painful visit to his estranged father (played completely against expectations by the coach from Friday Night Lights - so interesting that he's appearing in piece about high-school kids coming to maturity and in a antithetic role) - the kind of person he will become if he continues with his drinking and his careless attitude toward women - and yet he can't quite help himself, either. In other words, this movie defies convention and expectation, to a large degree. On the downside, this movie like many others has absolutely no clue as to how middle-class kids in this kind of high school apply to, think about, and talk about college; and, unfortunately, a few of the scenes are so painfully wrong - the dinner at the home of his wealthy sister, the confrontation with the class president/star athlete - that they stand out against the many very fine and true moments in this movie.

Hoping for a Season 2 of Fargo

Much credit due to Noah Hawley, who wrote the entire Fargo TV series, each episode of which was smart and entertaining, just on the edge of believable without ever becoming mundane and procedural, and just over the edge without ever becoming preposterous and absurd. Unlike in so many other series, the plot felt well designed and well paced, not pulled together episode by episode from among the loose strands and broken pieces. (Possible spoilers about the end to follow.) I guess the final "message" is that crime doesn't pay and that honesty is the best policy - though of course the criminal minds at work and the gradual descent of Martin Freeman/Lester Nygaard into brutality and evil is the most engaging aspect of the series. Freeman is great and so is Billy Bob Thornton as Loren Malvo, the sadistic gun for hire who brings about his own undoing by taking on a case just for the hell of it - he should have walked away, as he advises Lester to do toward the end of the series. Hard to imagine that there won't be a Season 2, as the excellent and well-cast Allison Tollman (Molly) and Colin Hanks (Gus) have survived and it seems that they should continue, if Hawley has some other ideas for them. This unusual series - like the movie original - manages to be both brutally violent and sweetly sentimental, without ever being snide, snarky, or condescending toward its characters. Each episode began with a statement that this series was based on events that took place in Minnesota in 2006 and that only the names have been changed - preposterous on its face, but I do seem to remember there was a murder-for-hire case that went awry and I wonder what the factual basis behind the script might be; I'll have to look that up.

Phony as a $3 bill: Two bad movies

The Judge oh so painfully strives to be a great movie - and his has all the elements - family drama, prodigal son returns home, courtroom thriller, cute kid, romance between two attractive leads, even a touch of humor - and yet, and yet - it's as phony as a $3 bill, right from the first frame, when Rbt Downey Jr., playing a handsome but dislikable guy (ie playing himself?), a tough courtroom attorney, humiliates an opposing lawyer by literally pissing on him - and it gets worse from there. For some reason never explained sufficiently he's estranged from his father, and irascible tyrant paterfamilias played by Rbt Duvall (playing himself?). Downey has to go back home for first time in years when mother dies; father shuns him at first but eventually comes to need him and even warm to him, etc. etc., as Downey gets called upon to defend father in a legal matter. As in all movies, the entire town suspended its life during the years of his absence, so when he returns home, lo and behold, beautiful h.s. sweetheart is still there waiting for him! There's hardly a believable moment in the film - although some of the scenes focused on the younger brother who has some kind of retardation or mental disability are sweet in a way. The rest of the film is just contrived and listless and way, way too long. Will note for the record that I also watched the first five minutes of the crude, fake, and entirely unfunny This is 40 and for me - that was it. Screenwriters have to learn more about life and about the way people talk, act, interact, and behave - and less about script formatting and arcs of stories and three acts or whatever the # of acts is and then maybe we can get more movies that are actually funny, moving, or true to life - not like these 2 duds.

A documentary a little behind its time and a movie like the most boring reality show of all time

Caucus, a new documentary in the acknowledged tradition of Maysels, Pennebaker, et al., is a hand-held camera view of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus, with no editorial intrusions other than some still highlights of headlines and passages in news reports over the course of the primary campaign. There's a wide swath of material to cover and the team does a good job keeping a sense of narrative coherency. It seems so long ago - when there were many potential Republican challengers to Obama and the polls veered wildly from day to day, with as many as six or seven Republican aspirants leading in the poll at one time or another. And now who can even remember who won the Iowa primary? (It was Santorum, by a few votes over Romney.) And doesn't the Romney campaign seem like a generation ago, not just two years? So much has changed, especially since the devastation of the mid-terms; this documentary seems, sadly, to have waited till its moment was past. The surprise to me was the Santorum came off as the most winning personality in the entire field - you could almost imagine voting for him, until he gets onto some of the issues. But at least he was open and straightforward about his goals and beliefs. Most of the others were without a prayer (Pawlenty) or fringy, even for Republicans (Paul). The scarier alternatives were Bachman and Perry - who over time were exposed as shallow, sloganeering frauds - Gingrich, who is obviously intelligent but devious and mean - and Cain, who was exposed as morally corrupt and incompetent (a businessman to save our country? really? businesses are run so effectively?). That leaves Romney - who was possibly the most palatable in this frightening array, and I'll give him this at least: he said what he believed; he was able to stand before a group of the elderly asking about Social Security raises and telling them no, he couldn't promise that. One of the clips shows his famous "corporations are people, too, my friend" - and that pretty much sums up the Romney campaign: He cannot related to people; everything about him was abstract. And even Republicans soon realized that his view, though well expressed, were shallow: He was right about health care - until he was wrong. Also watched the first 40 minutes of Archipelago, a British film from 2010 about a family on vacation on some British island waiting for father's arrival and preparing to send off 20-something son to Africa; quite well acted, in that the entire 40 minutes seemed unscripted and like a reality show - but the most boring reality show in the history of TV or cinema. Maybe this movie was deep and subtle, but nothing in the first 40 minutes grabbed my sympathy or interest, and another hour was too much to give.

Hating sadistic teachers - yet impressed by Whiplash

First off I hate movies about mean and sadistic teachers - yes, there are some such teachers, and for the most part they are horrible teachers and horrible people and despite the romance of films (and books) about them the damage children rather than push them to achievement and greatness. That said, Whiplash, about a young jazz drummer aspirant in a school obviously meant to be Juilliard where a sadistic teacher pushes him to become a great jazz drummer, is compellingly watchable, dramatic, and quite credible. Essentially, it's a Black Swan meets Full Metal Jacket: a teacher who's much like a Marine Corps drill sergeant but in a performing-arts setting - obviously much more of a "guy" movie than Black Swan (though the young drummer has a lovely girlfriend whom he more or less abandons to pursue his obsession, there are no other female speaking roles in the movie - I would guess that's a pretty accurate picture of jazz aspirants). We learn a lot about the demands on students of jazz throughout the course of the movie, and even though the teacher's cruelty is far over the top it's quite possible that there are sadists like him at various top-level music schools. The movie is for the most part honest: instead of producing great proteges, he ruins lives and careers; however (spoilers here), it will not be a great surprise that the main character does finally show his chops with a knockout performance a jazz concert. Two elements I particularly admire: there's a significant ambiguity and openness at the end of the movie: was the sadistic teacher actually trying to destroy the student (who'd ratted the teacher anonymously and gotten him fired from the school), or did he know that by humiliating the student publicly he would drive him to one great performance? Was it all a scheme - or did a scheme go wrong? Second - a real surprise here - the hero did not end up with the girl. Even though he pushed her away, when he regains his equilibrium and calls her up, asking her to come to the big concert, she says coolly that she'll have to check with her boyfriend. Of course she would not sit around waiting for him for six months - her life has moved on, as it would in "real life" but seldom does in cinema. A powerful, thoughtful, provocative film that unearths new material in familiar territory.

Fargo continues to be smart and totally engaging

Building toward its conclusion - now finished episode 8/disc 3 of Fargo, the series continues to be odd, funny, surprising, and totally engaging - a really great job on building from the premise and ideas of the original same-name movie. By this point in the narrative we have moved a year into the future and seen an evolutionary change in the lives of the two main characters: Molly, the Bemidji police deputy, is married now and pregnant, goofily happy in her new life, but troubled by the belief that the wrong man was imprisoned for the murder of the police chief; meanwhile, Lester Nygaard, having a taste of the thug life, has now learned to stand up for himself, physically, sexually, professionally - he's married to a lovely co-worker from the insurance agency, has just won a national sales award - and the episode ends with his getting a glimpse of the thug for hire, Malvo (Billie Bob Thornton), the psychopath who got hi involved in this string of crime and murder, regaling some folks in a Las Vegas hotel bar. We know the investigation will continue and that Nygaard is due for a big fall. The acting is terrific throughout - wish I could recall all the actors' names, will do a better job next post - the writing smart, the pacing fast, the plot artfully designed.

Death in the park: Virunga

Virunga, the Netflix documentary on the efforts under way to save the eponymous national park in the Congo from exploitation by oil exploration from a British company called Soco, against great odds and lethal opposition: the brave men of the national park service are up against the Congolese army - seemingly supportive of the drilling as the national government looks for ways to advance the economy of the region - and, far more sinister, a rebel group called M23 that routs the outmatched Congolese army and essentially just pursues bribes from everyone. The very brave documentary photographers and the young French journalist with whom they're working come out with some incredible footage of live combat - the camera crew literally dodging bullets and running for their lives - and some incredible hidden camera footage of the M23 leaders dealing with bribes and of some Soco employees talking over drinks after hours about how they are coercing the populace, whom they hold in great contempt: they're like children, etc. This is set against some lovely footage of the park workers at the rescue center for orphaned gorillas and some really scary footage of the park workers assemble and anticipating the attack coming from the rebel group - you hear gunshots and explosions in the distance and you know that the park workers are far outnumbered and outgunned. It's amazing anyone came out of the alive. The struggle is ongoing and was in fact in the NYT yesterday - a rare documentary in every sense: contemporary, bold, beautiful at times, though at times a little hard to follow as it jumps about quite a bit among many locations in the park and in the region, gripping and even frightening. Thanks no doubt to ever-improving technology for camera footage and surreptitious recording, this film has scenes rarely caught on film or video, till now.

The incredibly watchable Fargo upends the rules of crime drama

The Fx series Fargo continues to be incredibly watching and intriguing through the first 5 episodes; it's notable how this series upends the rules and conventions of crime drama. We know, pretty much, exactly what happened in the triple murders in Bemidji, Minnesota, in 2006, and the story line essentially involves the pollice officers, from two departments (Bemidji and Duluth), sometimes bumbling, possibly even corrupt or maybe just plain cowardly and defensive, come to the same level of knowledge that we have. The mystery, for us, is what exactly motivates the main antagonist - Billi Bob Thornton, excellent as Lorne Malvo: is hie just a hit man, gun for hire, with no known back story, who sometimes freelances and initiates his own crimes of revenge or opportunity? Or is there more of a back story? Of course what also continues to drive our interest is the peculiarity of almost all the characters and the particular warmth of the leads: the bumbling Morton (?) Freeman as the inept insurance salesman who murders his wife (the part William Macy created in the movie), Allison Tillson (?) as Molly, the homespun and surprisingly astute small-town cop (the Frances Macdormand part), and Colin Hanks as the sweet and protective copy in the "big" city of Duluth who seems to be getting in way above his head and is developing a shy crush on Molly as they work their leads together - both opposed by dunderheaded superior officers who may be protecting something higher up or may just be protecting their own asses.

Potentially a good movie gone woefully wrong: Snowpiercer

It's easy to make Snowpiercer sound like a good movie although it actually is not - it's nothing more than a cinematic cartoon or comic book (I would certainly guess that the source material is a comic), done with no style, characterization, wit, or surprise - just a lot of "action" which mainly consists of mayhem and ridiculously staged combat. The story: after some poorly explained environmental disaster that wipes out life on earth, a group of several hundred people are on a train (how they got there is never even discussed) that circles the planet again and again, maintaining the last vestiges of human life. The train is rigidly class divided, with the "lower" classes in the cars to the rear kept in prison-like conditions and the upper classes (white and blond) living in luxury and debauchery at the front of the train. Some 17 years into this predicament, the lower classes (black, dark haired, or Asian) rebel, fight their way to the front of the train, and at last confront the mysterious "conductor." Initially, I was hoping for a film with a least some of the intelligence of Battlestar Gallactica - the premise is similar in some ways - but where as BG was about real people and their attempts to maintain a civilized environment and to preserve human life, Snowpiercer is about two-dimensional cartoon characters and makes no attempt to seem realistic even by the broadest of scifi conventions. One another level, however, Snowpiercer is quite accurate, despite its bludgeoning technique: You can see this train as an analogy for our planet or or our society whether its First World v Third World or the Koch Brothers-Romney-et al. v the 47 percent: it's certainly true that we have come to accept a world and a society of extreme disparity and far too many have bought into the ideology that the wealthy deserve all that they've "earned" and that many or most of the poor have only themselves to blame for not taking advantage of opportunities offered them etc. Once that point is made, however, the movie goes nowhere with it and just hammers home the obvious - not aided at all by a ludicrous performance by Tilda Swinton, some totally bizarre ideas (people cutting off limbs and feeding their own bodies to the hungry to ward of cannibalism - huh?). Somewhere in this mess was potentially a good movie. This isn't it.

A totally enjoyable movie if you can suspend disbelief: Chef

Though it breaks no new cinematic ground, Jon Favreau's Chef is a totally enjoyable movie - could even be a family movie, depending on family's tolerance for occasional language outbursts and a scene or two of smoking. Chef is in the long tradition of the "let's put on a how" movie: star chef (Favreau who wrote, diected, and starts) working an an LA restaurant where the owner (Dustin Hoffman, a not fully convincing heavy) insists on a traditional menu (this is the plot device that gets it moving - you have to just accept it) gets a lousy review from an aggressive online restaurant critic (Oliver Platt, under-used as the nemesis) and goes into a tailspin - but recovers his bearings, and builds loving relationship with young son (10 or so?), when he decides to go to Miami, start a Cuban food truck, and road-trip it back to LA (road-trip bonding is another movie trope, from Easy Rider to Miss Sunshine, with many in between). Add this to the list of many restaurant movies: Big Night, that ridiculous movie with Adam Sandler as a completely non-believable chef, East Drink Man Woman (four star!), Ratatouille  ... anyway, as noted, nothing much original here - yet it's a very charming film nevertheless, really seems to capture the behind the scenes style and ethos. The young actor playing Favreaus's son is excellent, by the way, and though I had trouble believing that it would be OK or even legal to put him to work in a food truck, I was very pleased that Favreau avoided a hoary movie cliche and had the son be a nice kid right from the outset - rather than a moody or troubled kid or young adult who "recovers" and becomes a dutiful and loving son (or daughter, cf Greek Wedding, for another restaurant as reform agent movie). The Cuban soundtrack music is terrific, it's always fun to watch expert chefs at work in the kitchen and at home, the dialogue is spry and credible, and if you can just suspend disbelief and accept a happy ending in which everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya (figuratively), this movie is entirely pleasant and enjoyable.

Manhattan revisited: Watching Woody Allen's movie again after 35 years

It's literally impossible to watch Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan with the same pleasure and interest we took in this film 35 years ago - knowing what we do about his troubled life. Here's a movie about a 42-year-old intellectual, comedy writer, and literary aspirant - played by Allen as one of the near-versions of himself - torn between two relationships: with a woman his age who's smart, cultured, a literary snob, pretentious at times, high strung, and gets all his jokes, in other words, Diane Keaton, and a woman, no a girl, beautiful and vapid, played by Mariel Hemingway, who is, get this: 17 years old. Perhaps that was a bit off-putting when the film came out in 1979, but looking back at the film now it's totally odd and disturbing - and mainly because nothing in the film, nobody in the film, has the slightest sense that there's anything perverse, in fact, illegal about this relationship. Allen and his friends just remark that she's "young." In most movies, the hero would have to make a choice and would inevitably realize that the young girl is totally inappropriate and would choose he coeval and intellectual punching weight, Keaton - but no, in this movie, as in other Allen films, the sad sack protagonist doesn't get the girl whom he should - he goes back to Hemingway, she's the one. The strengths of this movie are many, legion, most notably Gordon Willis's incredible cinematography; Manhattan has never looked better, especially in the stunning opening montage against the NY Symphony Orch playing Rhapsody in Blue (the score is great as well, with the NY Symph also playing orchestrated versions of various great 30s and 40s #s, Embraceable You, But Not for Me, etc.). It has rightly been noticed, however, that Allen "scrubs" Manhattan - leaving out the crime, dirt, crowds, grime, suffering - life for these characters is so easy - just one example, his best friend, a high-school English teacher of all things - on a whim drops down many thousands for a classic Porsche. Oh really? What's not noticed so often, however, is that Allen also "scrubs" the story: Hemingway (a terrible actress, by the way - no surprise that unlike so many Allen stars her career on screen went nowhere) has no life outside of her relationship with Allen: no friends, no siblings, no classmates, her parents are mentioned in passing but they seem to have no interest in or knowledge of her relationship with a 42-year-old guy? Oh what a shame and what a waste: there are so many fine scenes in this movie and some of the funniest movie lines ever (I wish people could mate for life - like pigeons, or Catholics; You're so beautiful tonight I can't keep my eyes on the meter). I wish I could like it more, or like it still.

Counting by 7s: The Amazing Up Series by Michael Apted

49 Up, from 2005, is the next-to-most-recent entry into Michael Apted's amazing multiyear documentary social examination, the so-called "up" series, visiting about a dozen English men and women at 7-year intervals since they were 7 years old back in, I think 1966? - in this entry they're 49. At this point, only one has dropped from the project, quite amazingly. By this installment, the  changes in the peoples' lives are less dramatic and surprising - in part because, obviously, the 7-year intervals become "shorter" in relation to the entire life span (7 to 14 is a huge change whereas 42 to 49 is much less so). On the other hand, as the sometimes surprising evolution of the subjects settles and as they resolve themselves into mature adult life, it's easier to make general observations about what the series shows us. First of all, the initial premise proves to be almost entirely accurate: show me the child at 7 and I will show you the man (or woman). Whether by selective editing or not, we can definitely see how the early personalities remain intact all through life. More interestingly, we see that there is essentially no movement of social class - or to the slight extent that there is, it's entirely dependent on the decision as to whether to go to "university." The working-class kids from the East End stay in the working class, by and large; the ones in the boarding schools move on to professional success. That said, with the notable exception of Neil, suffering from severe mental problems and the heart and soul of the series, the subjects have all found prosperity and happiness far beyond the hardships and brutality of their childhood: I think we're all struck by very nice home environments of those who grew up in an orphanage or the tough East End, a mark of the improvement of life in England since the postwar years; as to the well-to-do, they are still prosperous but they are much more family-oriented than their parents were, and they are not sending their kids to those horrible, cruel boarding schools - and are generally happy with whatever decisions their children make about their lives. Several had divorced in or before 42 up and those who did are all remarried, apparently very happily - although some of their children seem to be making the same mistakes regarding early marriage or motherhood. Several of the spouses, btw, want nothing to do with this project and remain in the background. It's interesting to see how the young man who grew up in the orphanage and seemed to have learning disabilities has built a nice life for himself and his family in Australia: it's impossible to imagine him attaining the same success or happiness in class-bound England. I won't say much about Neil, as many will watch this film mainly to catch up on his life (Apted shrewdly leaves Neil to the last segment), but will only say that his odyssey continues - though, again, without the seismic shifts in life that we saw in him and others in some of the earlier installments. I'll watch 56 up (if nothing else, series has taught us to count by 7s), though not right away: it's good to leave at least a few years between your own viewing of these segments.

One of the great mysteries of American cinema: Why The Magnificent Ambersons?

One of the great mysteries of American cinema is why Orson Welles chose The Magnificent Ambersons, a very pedestrian best-selling novel of his day, as the source for his much-anticipated follow-up to Citizen Kane: though there are, at least as it appears from his screenplay, some opportunities for histrionic and cinematic tours de force - the emotional breakdown of Aunt Fanny, the Christmas ball, the sleigh ride and the car ride through the snow - the substance of the script is really pretty pedestrian - the daughter of the wealthiest man in a small Indiana town marries the wrong guy and, when they're both widowed, they are basically unable to find love with one another because of the jealousy and Oedipal rivalries that surround them; their children, seemingly destined to marry each other, are driven apart - and the movie ends in wistful sorrow. Not quite a great American tragedy, and, lacking in the strong central character whose evolution over time was driving force of Kane - and of course also lacking in the great mystery that forged the unusual plot structure of Kane. What Welles did find in this less promising material of Ambersons was the opportunity once again for some truly stunning scenes: the women gossiping in the beauty salon, facing the camera, in a composition as copmlex and odd as a Velasquez painting; the above-noted Christmas ball with its very long tracking shots; the plein air scenes in the snow, challenging to film and still beautiful today; the dark gothic interiors of the Empire-style midwest mansions, the emptiness of the train station late at night. Consistently, he shoots "up" at the characters - as he did in Kane - emphasizing their grandeur and power. Generally, directors are ill-advised to cast themselves, and their was no obvious role for Welles in this script, but you can feel his absence - none of the leads, even Joseph Cotton, is powerful enough to engage us fully. The closing credits are very cool, with Welles's voice-over crediting the major contributors to the film, actors and crew. I think there's a long history to this film, with many scenes cut of with $ running short - and perhaps W. had a much greater vision of its potential - maybe it could have been a tremendous operatic film about a death of a dyanstic family and a way of life (the arrival of the motor car in the Midwest is a big theme) - a fore-runner of Visconti's The Leopard, which did have a hugely powerful lead (Lancaster) and of course a much, much better source novel (Lampedusa).

The best (or worst) example ever of cinema high camp: Queen Margot

I can't quite tell if the French film Queen Margo is so bad it's good or if it's just plain bad. Probably the latter. Is there a grander example anywhere, however, of high camp? This weird film makes Peckinpaugh look like a Disney cartoon and Pasolini look like an ABC family made-for-TV. Ostensibly, it's a film about the massacre of the Hugeuonots in 18th-cerntury (?) France, under Catherine de Medici as the regent as her idiot son, Charles the IX?, ostensibly ruled - and Catherine's marrying off youngest child, the eponymous Margot, to a Hugueonot to bring about peace between the Catholics and Protestants - but really to bring the H's into Paris to celebrate the wedding and then to kill them all. Got it? It's literally impossible to follow the plot of this movie, so don't worry - that's not the point anyway. The point seems to be to show many scenes of brutal slaughter and of grubby and extremely unlikely sexual encounters. Hey, if you want to do a film in which a bunch of guys carrying swords get to run around about about 500 naked dead bodies - do a film about the massacre of the Hugeaunots, dress it up in historical garb. The acting is ridiculously over the top, esp Catherine, with her hair pulled back in a bun so tight her face looks distorted, like a botched face lift. The movie probably cost a fortune - the production values are actually excellent - probably won some Oscar or Cannes nods for costume design - but has so much money and talent ever been spent to serve such base purposes? I watched an hour plus of this 2.5 hour monstrosity - more than enough.

A stange conjuncion of old and new: Anatomy of a Murder

Otto Preminger's 1959 Anatomy of a Murder, is a classic of the genre and the forefather of dozens of other courtroom drama - but somehow none have the earnestness, the flair, and the sense of American hegemony - postwar America, when we thought the world was ours and that prosperity would be never-ending and that all was right with American democracy and social justice - as the 50s melodramas. This movie, very long and very earnest, even for its day, is a tautly plotted movie, based I would guess very closely on a novel, with some really strong actors - James Stewart, lee Remick, Ben Gazzzara, and a young George C. Scott - in the lead roles. Very briefly, Steward is a down-on-his-luck country attorney (the Michigan Upper Peninsula - a very cool and unusual setting for a Hollywood movie, and I suspect Preminger may have shot it on location - can you imagine that today? Not shooting on the location of the lowest taxes?); Gazzara is an Army lieutenant who, in a rage, kills the man - a local roadhouse owner - who allegedly raped his wife, a very sultry Remick. If this will surprise you stop reading here - but of course Steward gets Gazzara off, building a case that he killed in blind rage and didn't know what he was doing, so he's innocent of Murder 1. Well, I don't know about the niceties of the law but I would suspect the admitted killer would not have walked off free - and though the rapist was no doubt a horrible man, I feel a little disturbed by the movie's unflinching endorsement - the innocent verdict leads to riotous courtroom celebration - of a guy taking the law into his own hands - a precursor, again, of many right-wing movies of the 60s and 70s. That said, Preminger paces the movie really well and engages us in thinking through the plot in (almost) every scene, as least up to the supposedly feel-good ending. One of the extreme pleasures of the movie of course is a fabulous score by Duke Ellington - as cool as if JS Bach had scored one of Shakespeare's plays - and Ellington even appears (as a band leader named Pie Eye) and gets to say a few lines. The movie was extremely provocative in its day - I remember my parents' discussing it - and pretty advanced in its frank discussion of sexuality and violence - a strange conjunction - of old ordder and new - looking back from 55 years - of the avant garde and the last gasp of postwar American pro-military pseudo-patriotism.

Second Time Around: The TV series Fargo may be better than the original movie

I'm off and on with the Coen Brothers, though they have done some fine films and maybe Fargo above all - my memory of the film has faded over the years, but it definitely established a tone - a mix of sentiment and snarkiness, affection and condescension - with a good story line suppposedlly based on "true events" and with some great acting - pretty much introduced Frances McDormand and William Macy to a wide audience. The TV series loosely based on the movie, from first two episodes, seems to have picked up just enough from the original while also expanding the plot wide enough to embrace a full season of episodes and possible season renewals. The seemingly ditzy but actually quite wise and brave female officer is still there, as is the self-effacing, insecure family man drawn into a brutal crime - and most of all the sense of the cold winter landscapes of northern Minnesota and the good people trying to get along with one another and live their lives of quiet desperation - until events upend their lives. The strongest character seems to be the malevolent but beguiling hit man - Billy Bob Thornton, terrific in the plot, charming and revolting all at once - who's a pro at his job but can't resist messing with the lives of others off the book, so to speak. The series works especially well - at least so far - because of the constant surprises that force us, again and again, to reconsider our initial assessments of the main characters, yet that also seem consistent with their behavior (and misbehavior); the film plays just at the edge of plausibility - OK, sometimes stepping over the edge (could BBT have actually survived so many close encounters with thugs and bullies, just by his menacing tone and demeanor?; is it possible that Macy character, Nygaard, could live in his hometown for 18 years before he suddenly re-encounters his bullying high-school nemesis? No, not really, but who cares?), and, at least to my memory, it is developing a whole new plot line centered on a Duluth cop (Colin Hanks) who encounters the killer BBT and must determine whether to report that info and risk the safety of his daughter.

They don't make movies like this anymore: Every Day

If you're going to write and direct a movie, as Richard Levine did, entitled Every Day, you better be damn sure that the movie doesn't live down to the bland diurnal mood foretold by its title. Unfortunately, this movie does live down to expectations, despite a pretty solid cast and a low-key style and 90-minute format. More than any film I've seen in many years, this one feels like an old-fashioned Lifetime TV movie, a format largely eclipsed by the mini-series and the long-form series. I waited more than an hour for something surprising or engaging to happen, and nothing did - a truth made all the more painful in that the protagonist, Liev Schreiber in the role, is supposed to be part of a TV writing team for a show that's never made clear but seems to be a medical drama - and the head of the production team is pushing the writers for more and more outrageous and shocking material (anal is the new oral is one of several very unfunny gag lines) - perhaps this movie is meant to be the counterpoint to the TV drama so crudely satirized but you know what?, if this the alternative, please shock me. We have here yet another movie about an elderly, irascible parent disrupting the lives of a young family - and of course irascible dad who swears like a sailor for the first 30 minutes of the movie suddenly, an hearing grandson play the violin, says: you have to work on your legato. Hey, he's a sensitive musician beneath the gruff exterior! And so it goes - with gay son learning a lesson in life but finally being accepted for what he is by dad, and younger son who begins movie afraid of the dark gaining confidence and ... anyway, I can't go on. They don't make movies like this anymore. Wonder why?

Season 3 feels like the end of Homeland - hope they don't just play out the string

Though I realize that the critics were less than kind to Season 3 of Homeland, I found the season to be very compelling and dramatic, the final episodes, which bring Brody, trailed by Carrie (Claire Danes) into Iran on a mission of assassination, to keep up the tension from the earlier episodes and even build up the drama. As noted in previous posts, Danes is terrific and expressive throughout - her face has to be the most expressive in all of television - and the rest of the cast is generally very good, notably Patinkin, who despite is mannered mumbling which causes us to miss a few lines here and there, has really grown into and developed his role as interim CIA chief (F. Murray Abraham, on the other hand, is really miscast - who knew two old Jewish guys ran the agency? - and perhaps as a result the season makes less of his devious nature than it could have). The plot in this season is particularly complex, but as we follow it we are always rewarded with surprises - and all told the complex plot seems pretty credible. (I won't divulge any of the surprises here, btw.) On the other hand, the weakness of the season and of the series in general is the relationship between the principals, Carrie and Brodie - I just can never buy that they're so deeply in love with one another - each is too driven, too professional, and finally too different to imagine them having any kind of life outside of the life-and-death drama they're caught up in. I think a weakness throughout has been Brody's family, which the creative team seems to have realized, too, as they have moved wife and son largely offstage and focused more on his relationship with his daughter, a truly fine young actress I believe. It feels as if the series has reached a concluding point at the end of Season 3, but evidently not as 4 is being aired and streamed right now; I will watch, no doubt, but am always troubled by great series that seem to run on a season or maybe two seasons too long - can anyone say The Killing? A great series really does not a sense of an ending, and I hope they don't just run out the string in succeeding episodes.

Love Is Strange - not as good as the song by Mickey and Sylvia

Love Is Strange is a sweet, sensitive domestic drama with likable characters and a few powerful scenes but in the end there just isn't much too it - the emphasis on domestic, not on drama. I kept wanting the movie to break out into some real dramatic confrontation, but everything here is soft and muted. That could be OK if it felt like a realistic drama, but unfortunately the plot is a little creaky and the director, Ira Sachs, has a penchant for quick solutions and self-consciously weepy scenarios. In short, the movie is about a gay couple - Ben and George - who've been together in Manhattan for about 40 years and now are getting married; as a result of the marriage, however, the Catholic school where George teaches music, fires him - his confrontation w/ the priest who does so is one of the stronger scenes in the movie. Shortly afterward - we jump ahead rather freely in time at various points in the movie - Ben and George have get rid of their apartment, as they can no longer afford the rent. (As an aside, this is another in the long line of movies that have absolutely no idea how to film an ordinary Manhattan apartment - the various interiors in the film that are meant to be affordable NYC places are palatial by Manhattan standards.) Oddly, they have absolutely no place to go, and they hit on friends and relatives to put them up; nobody has room for two, so Ben and George live separately for a time (seems extremely odd and unlikely - both that they would separate and that they have no friends who can help); we mostly follow Ben, and his relation w/ his sister-in-law, Marissa Tomei as the least-likely budding novelist I've ever seen, and his nephew. I won't give away any endings, but will only say that a # of the interesting plot lines - is the nephew involved in a homosexual relationship? - are left dormant and the housing solution that George works out is preposterous. In the end, we're left with some long, arty, moody shots and a feeling of wistfulness and lingering sorrow. It's a movie whose heart is in the right place, but the the flame is set on simmer.

Homeland keeps us on edge right through Season 3

We're a year behind the times, as season 4 is soon to debut, but in the midst of season 3 of Homeland finding the series as great as before; the 2nd "disc," encompassing episodes 5 through 8, is full of twits and surprises - and unlike so many complex shows in Homeland the twists all seem to make sense. Sure, the ease with which the CIA folks pry out arcane info about global finances and with which they track the clandestine movements of dozens of suspects, is a bit beyond the pale - but the plot holds together very elegantly, keeping us on edge constantly and introducing just enough twists to keep us thinking without making us throw up our hands in disbelief - compare with the largely successful series Damages, in which one had the feeling that clever screenwriters were making it up episode by episode without any clear idea of the destination or overall design. Claire Danes's Carrie Mathisson remains a great lead character - though as this season progresses she becomes a more conventional CIA agent and less a troubled, sometimes desperate woman. Mandy Patinkin's Saul Berenson, though highly mannered, is great in the role - and his opposition to the pending new CIA chief, a right wing, self-important senator obviously modeled on Cheney, is a good plot development. I was surprised that they let one plot line go away so easily, as the Bethesda police just dropped the pursuit of murder charges against Quinn, one of CIA agents involved in the pursuit of the Iranian security chief. In final episodes of the season, a lot will depend on how much we can buy into Carries's love for the largely absent Brodie: she is seemingly motivated by her desire to prove him innocent of the CIA hq bombing - and thereby to protect herself, as she has lied about her role in helping him escape - but the stakes on that have been pretty low, as neither Saul nor anyone else truly suspects her of enabling a suspect to leave the country. I would expect this plot element will develop further and put her into greater jeopardy and conflict with her agency. The spying on Saul himself is just starting to emerge as a plot element - though I have to say I found it ludicrous that an intruder could slip into the DC home of the head of the CIA; one would think there would be pretty tight security, esp. if he works from a laptop that he often leaves at home unattended?

Season 3 of Homeland just as great as Season 2

Season 3 of Homeland absolutely picks up with 2 left off and is every bit as gripping as the first two seasons - a rarity among series that often deflate as they move beyond the initial plot lines - and the first disc, with 4 episodes, has very helpful "previously on" sections at the head of each episode (on the other hand, these discs, from Fox 21, are horribly designed and require you to sit through endless previous each time you re-open). A couple of the great things about Season 3: most of all the incredible Claire Danes with the most expressive face on film or television, clearly at the center once again, suffering from her bipolar disorder, off her meds, blamed as the consort of Brodie who is suspected (even by us, perhaps) as the one who bombed CIA headquarter, and thrown "under the bus" by Saul (Mandy Patinkin), now acting head of the CIA - she knows or believes that they want her out of the picture because she knows too much and that they will no doubt kill her and make it look like a suicide of a mentally ill person; she goes to the press but her behavior is so frantic and bizarre that nobody is likely to believe her rant that the CIA is out to get her - sounds like classic paranoia (some may recall the very funny take on similar dilemma in the old Jerry Lewis movie The Big Mouth). As she's held against her will in a psychiatric hospital, we see Brody (in episode 3) held by some thugs in a cell-like housing complex in Venezuela - not completely clear yet who they are or why they're holding him except that he, like Danes/Kerry knows too much. Brody's daughter, Dana, runs off with a boyfriend in a plot element that seems increasingly peripheral except that she is emerging as a terrific young actress - perhaps the Claire Danes of her generation. Tremendously interesting plot twist in episode 4 that I won't divulge. Altogether a great series - two oddities, though. So funny to see not only Patinkin but alongside him F Murray Abraham as the two honchos running the CIA: who knew it was an agency run by a couple of aging Jewish tummlers? Second, Brody's sudden appearance in Caracas (he'd fled north to Montreal, last we saw) and his temporary escape into a nearby mosque (!) seems so odd - a relic from the original Israeli series when no doubt the Brody character escaped to Lebanon or Jordan: couldn't they have made a more credible plot element here? Third, some of the CIA agents and actions seem almost absurdly competent - impossible to reconcile with an agency that didn't even recognize the terrorist in its midst.

Lights, camera, silence: About as far as the silent film could go - Pandora's Box

Obviously silent movies are not for everyone and even for those willing to go there you generally have a period of adjustment to a completely different cinematic grammar and narrative pace. I've watched G W Pabst's Pandora's Box over the past few days, and it did take me a day or two to begin appreciate the beauty and originality of this 1929 film. I watched it with the pretentious and overly academic commentary on (Criterion edition), which is pretty easy to do w/ a silent, even on first viewing. Eventually, just tried to focus on the film and not the commentary, though did learn a bit about the background - based on a Wedekind play which later became a Berg opera (Lulu), the film focuses on a sexually promiscuous and alluring - to both genders - young woman, Lulu, who over a span of a few years marries a doctor, arouses his intense jealousy, shoots him (accidentally? it's not so clear) to death after a quarrel, is tried and convicted but escapes in the post-verdict mayhem, runs off with her son-in-law (also in love with her, as is the father-like wizened figure who also pimps her), escapes by train, is blackmailed by a scoundrel who recognizes her from news photos, hides out on an offshore gambling ship, escapes arrest there heads off with son-in-law and pimp by rowboat for London, where they live in a garret, she works as a prostitute, and is killed by a client - Jack the Ripper. Quite the melodrama! A few outstanding elements: first of all the great Louise Brooks in the title role is completely glowing and lively; Pabst obviously wanted an American actress who brings her particular verve to this Germanic production; second, the acting across the board - possibly the best and most naturally acted silent of them all, with none of the stagey, eye-popping posing that characterizes the genre; 3rd, beautiful cinematography, especially some of the soft-focus shots of Brooks and the final foggy sequences in London darkness, 4th, the minimalism, the whole story told in images, with very few intertitles over the 2+ hours; 5th incredibly imaginative and well-crafted scenes, complex even by contemporary standards, such as the backstage during the variety show, the crowded train corridor with a lot going on shot in very tight quarters, the Salvation Army scene in London, spooky and haunted: the Salvation Army girl to Jack the Ripper: Can I help you, brother? Not a film for all, but a great example showing how far silents could go toward true cinematic interior drama.

A taut, exciting, surprising espionage movie and a documentary I could not finish

The Norwegian film Two Lives by Georg Maas is a terrific spy drama that is unfortunately destined for obscurity because it's in Norwegian and awash in arcana of post-War European politics and features no well-known actors except for Liv Ullman in a secondary role. Too bad - once you figure out the overall political background for this film - Norwegian people were extremely intolerant of the women who consorted with occupying Nazi soldiers and removed their children and sent them to Germany; years later, the East German government used some of these Norwegian-German children as strained spies infiltrated into Norway (and elsewhere) - this, apparently, all true - and the movie is also apparently loosely based on an actual unsolved murder connected with this espionage. In any event, the plot is intriguing and tight, keeps you guessing but eventually supplies all the answers, along with many surprises, twists, and emotionally taut scenes. Great pace, some fine acting, lots of moral ambiguity - as well as some real pure evil; unlike so many other spy films this one not awash and bluster nor in excessive violence and mayhem - no superheroes, just a seemingly ordinary family holding lots of mystery and living on the edge of danger without being aware of that. Maas makes us feel sorry not only for the poor duped family members - notably the well-meaning but utterly deceived husband Bjarte - but also for the perpetrator. I won't give away any more - definitely worth watching, and perhaps someone will try to remake this in English for wider distribution, and I hope they don't ruin it in doing so. Fat chance.

By the way also watched or tried to watch the documentary Manakamana, which is billed as a movie that follows pilgrims in Nepal as they travel to a mountainous shrine; it's a documentary of the sort that I admire - no commentary, no interviews, no added soundtrack - just the camera capturing the incidents as they unfold before it (Sweetgrass is a perfect example) - but in this case: first, we watch a long take, camera steady no editing, of an old man and presumably his grandson riding an aerial lift up a mountainside - no dialog at all - it's quite a breathtaking journey, scary and beautiful. Then we watch a young woman on the same journey. About 20 minutes gone now. As a 3rd journey started, I flashed ahead on the movie and saw that the entire movies is the same aerial lift repeated 15 or 20 times. OK, perhaps each is an interesting document in itself - but is this worth an whole movie? I thought we would actual follow some of these people, learn a little about them and about the pilgrimage, something. Maybe this could play on an endless loop somewhere and people could enjoy moments of it as they pass by the screen or monitor, but it's certainly not designed for anyone to watch it straight through - at least not me, babe. 

Gauranteed that you will learn something from Particle Fever

Whether you know anything about particle physics or not, still worth seeing the Levinson documentary Particle Fever, which follows over about 5 years the development of the CERN collidor in Switzerland and the eventual confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson particle, believed to the the particle that enables the other particles to come together and form atoms, molecules, and in fact the entire physical world of our universe. By following about 5 main characters - three physics theorists and two experimentalists, the ones who confirm the theories, or not - Levinson makes this arcane material very clear to the lay audience - lots of good graphics and illustrations, some quite witty, and a strong sense of each of the main narrators, who are obviously each great teachers and communicators and thoroughly engrossed in their subject. We get a sense of how vast the experiment is in a way that none of the news accounts quite captured, and of the stakes of the experiment: in confirming the existence of Higgs boson, the physicists also get information as to whether our universe is unique but surrounded by an infinite # of other universes or whether the rules of physics are consistent across the entire universe, and that the universe is one. We see how much is at stake on a personal level for each of these physicists, especially the older ones who may learn from the results that their life of theorizing has taken them down a dead end. As one boldly puts it: Moving from one great failure to another is form of success. Levinson deserves credit for even seeing that there was potentially great material here - it will remind you, to a degree, of movies and documentaries about the space program, with large teams of scientists gathered tensely waiting for outcomes; though the film breaks no new cinematic ground - and I wish he had foregone the annoying soundtrack and let the natural sounds speak for themselves - he made great choices in his main characters and conveyed really complex material in simple forms, terms, and images.

The strengths and weakneses of La Terra Trema

Visconti's 1948 La Terra Trema feels very dated but still has its intriguing narrative power and is worth watching, despite its length (2+ hours) and poor image quality, grainy and jumpy b/w (the CD we were watching stopped dead in final minutes, but by then we had the picture): story of a family of fishermen in Sicily that, led by brother Ntoni, who'd seen a bit of the world or at least of Italy during Army service, refuses to sell their catch on the cheap to the local fish merchants, gets a loan and buys their own boat, and bucks the system - with the hope of inspiring all the other fishermen in the village to join them and get a fair price for their catch. Everything goes wrong, however, and the family ends up ostracized and impoverished. It's a long melodrama, with a clear and vibrant leftist message that, unfortunately, Visconti hammers home with all the subtlety of a blow to the forehead, Again and again the characters - all played by actual fishermen and workers from the small village - utter their thoughts in set pieces with a kind of charming awkwardness. Godard later picked up this technique for his later, didactic films. The film is worth watching, though, for its documentary account of the impoverished lives in postwar rural Italy: we really see every aspect of the lives of the fishermen and their families, from the crowded housing conditions, the dire poverty - clothes and caps rent with rips and holes and only rarely a pair of shoes - the constant battle against the cold, the wet, and the dangerous sea. Visconti brings us right into the lives of his characters; their lack of professional polish becomes the great strength of the film - we know that these are real people, whose struggle will go on long after the film is completed. If only it were shorter and more compact - Visconti should have trusted his audience more, just as he trusted his cast and crew.

Great idea for a documentary - but the arc of the story flat-lines

Gaston Solnicki has a good idea for a documentary and I greatly admire his stylistic and narrative integrity but that the end of the day I think is film Papirosen just doesn't work - perhaps two shapeless, perhaps too opaque, but I could just never make sense of it, and, when the pieces started coming together toward the end, I had to wonder whether the destination was worth the journey. We've seen many great family documentaries in recent years - thinking of Finding the Friedmans, Dear Zachary, that one set in Long Island in which the children learn about their parents' various affairs and crushes, Stories We Tell - each with its own rules of narration, and among them Solnicki's is the most pure: unlike the others there are no voice-overs, no interviews, no re-enacments, the entire documentary is built of contemporary film of family members, living in Argentina (there seems to be a segment of a visit to the U.S., but Solnicki never gives us any context or grounding) and toward the end visiting Poland, from which the family fled after WW II, mixed with some archival family footage, on what seems to be grainy Super 8 transposed to video. There are a few marvelous scenes that it's hard to believe any filmmaker could capture and I suspect Solnicki was able to do so because he shot so much footage over so long a period of time that his family "learned" to ignore his shooting: father disciplining the young boy Mateo for calling him a liar, the family gathered with some English-speaking refugees and remembering the old country and its songs (including the title song, which they translate as "cigarettes" - perhaps it was a brand of cigarette? - but what a poor and obscure title for this film), arguments about one of the women's addiction to shopping, the father - main character - trying to persuade his elderly mother to start living off her savings rather than off contributions from her children (i.e.,him); this father is the main character, but we don't really begin to focus on him till well into the film and I didn't feel I got a clear sense of how his childhood and his family history as refugees shaped him - no great family secrets revealed, either - we just, in the end, see the father as a cranky, moody, 70-year-old man who has a soft spot for and is very tender with his young grandchild. If ever a movie needed more of a narrative arc, it's this one.

Theater of the Absurd and cinema: Bunuel

Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel is a weird, short, social and political parable told in a quirky, even absurdist manner - not sure of the exact date (1960 or so) but you can clearly see the connecting lives between his cinematic work and near-contemporary theater of the absurd, esp Ionesco and Pirandello. As even those who haven't seen this film know, it's about a dinner party for some Spanish aristocrats - 20 or so guests gather for a midnight post-opera dinner - and find that, after the dinner, they are unable to leave the party - they're for some inexplicable reason trapped in the host's mansion, in fact in the dining all of the mansion. Before the dinner, most of the servants leave the estate rather than stay through the night serving the many courses - and they're told curtly that they shouldn't bother ever showing up for work again. Then we see the dinner party with his vapid and pretentious table talk, and a lot of under-the-table flirtation and assignation. We see, in short, that the ruling class is despicable and narcissistic - and of course they get what they deserve. It's unexplained why they can't leave, for days - but some kind of military or police rescue force gathers outside of the mansion - so the whole scene seems like a hostage situation. Throughout, I kept thinking about Ann Patchett's novel about the hostages in a Peruvian embassy, including a great opera singer as one of the guests - Bunuel must have influenced her, though her work lacks his absurdist humor. The absurdist qualities keep us from identifying with or feeling for the captured characters; the touches remind us that this is not in any way meant to be a literal, natural, or realistic drama. One example, a brown bear and a few sheep seem to wander at will through the mansion; the sheep get the last word, so to speak, as a few of them, the last frame of the film, bleat along a walkway and enter a church - about as literal a symbol as Bunuel ever created, skewering the flocks that follow the teachings of the church, especially in the class-bound dictatorship that ruled Spain in the 1960s.

A great compainion piece to 12 Years a Slave: Sansho the Bailiff

For those who can't imagine watch a b/w narrow-screen Japanese period piece from 1954, surprise yourself and check out Mizoguchi's unfortunately titled Sansho the Bailiff - unfortunately because the title conveys nothing of the movie's drama, themes, or emotions, which are abundant. What the hell's a bailiff, and Sansho's not even the main character, anyway. Story set in feudal Japan, a powerful leader refuses to pay tribute to the warlike emperor because his people are starving and they can't afford to give up resources - he's sent into exile. Sometime later, his wife sets off to re-join him, two young children in tow. The children are kidnapped and held for 10 years in slavery, in service to Sansho. Son escapes, through various ploys he rises to power in Japan, frees all the slaves in his province, then gives up his title, and finds his mother, near-blind, near-mad, aged and ruined, on an isolated island. That outline tells you that this is an epic, dramatic tale - but conveys nothing of the beautiful mood and sensibility - nor of the many powerful and beautiful sequences: the abduction of the children, as their mother gets hauled away by boat almost disappearing into the white sea; the celebration of the slaves upon their liberation, the final sequences of mother and son embracing on a seaweed-wracked beach. This film may remind many of the excellent Twelve Years a Slave; they make a good companion set - both about class, oppression, cruelty, the difficulty of opposing the barbarity of slavery. 12 Years is the more personal story - in Sansho the characters are less deeply developed, they're a little remote and we're not meant to truly identify with them. The actions are at times improbably and melodramatic - but this movie, as noted in its opening frames, is based on a folktale or legend and not meant to be taken quite literally. Yet it's one of those rare films that hold you start to finish, at 2 hours plus it didn't feel a moment too long.

Questions about the conclusion of The Killing

Obviously many spoilers here re the conclusion of the final (4th) season of The Killing: I don't think many fans of this series will be satisfied w/ the 4th season the core murder investigation is, as in the 3rd season, rather gory and preposterous, but I will say that the final 3 episodes really try to get at some aspects of the relationship between Linden and Holder, which is of course what's drawn us to this series in the first place. As they fight and turn on each other - under pressure of the investigation into Linden's execution of Lt. Skinner, the mass murderer, as the end of Season 3, we see some of the better writing and acting in the series; unfortunately, that's set against some of the crappiest writing and acting, which we see in their investigation of the Stansbury family murders and the hazing rituals as the military boarding school, a plot that we don't believe for a second and that makes little sense on examination. At its best, in the first 2 seasons that is, the series played of the Holder-Linden dialectic against an intriguing and far-reaching and for the most part realistic murder that stirred the Seattle community. The murder investigations went off the rails in the last 2 seasons, though, to the detriment of the show. Wondering what others think about the conclusion of the final season: Holder and Linden end in deep antagonism, and then we "flash forward" about 3 years and see that both have left the police force (I agree, how could they stay in after what they know and what's known about them?), Holder has broken off with what's her name his glass-of-water girlfriend but is a good single dad (yes, he loves kids and, yes, she was a total mismatch), and Linden has spent 3 years on the road - really? living how? doing what? That's not explained. She stops in Seattle to visit him, they briefly agree that their time driving around the city in her crappy car was the best time of all (echoes of Sentimental Education here? at least for me there were) and then she head off again on her solo journey - and honestly I thought it should have ended there but, no, the pressure of convention is just too great, and she comes back to him, they look at each other longingly, and embrace. Very sweet if it were an embrace as friends, but we're clearly meant to see that at long last each recognizes the rightness of their relationship - but how can we not know it will last about 10 days? that it will be all wrong? that it feels almost incestuous? No, she should be heading north to Alaska or something, not making yet another mistake and ruining what was good.

The Killing Season 4: What a falling otf

I am dutifully watching the final season, six episodes, of The Killing, but lamentably have to note what a falling off is there: the first two seasons were terrific, as Linden and Holder unravelled the complex case, Who killed Rosie Larsen? The 3rd season was not nearly as good as it went for a grotesque, sensational, and highly improbable case, as opposed to the original case which was, on the surface, more or a routine homicide that proved intriguingly complex and ambiguous as more facts emerged in each episode. The great thing about the first season was combined minimal and maximal approach: a lot of the focus was on the family of the victim, who at times were suspects themselves, and also on the politics of the city, as a mayoral candidate got caught up in the sweep of the investigation. And of course the developing relationship between Linden and Holder, made especially interesting in these two seasons as we never quite knew whether we could trust Holder. By the 3rd season, he was more rock solid and the two of them were like a thousand other buddy cops trying to solve a case. Few were satisfied with the wrapup of season 3, and that's where season 4 picks up, but the season never gets off the ground. L & H begin investigating another pretty gruesome case - the killing of an entire family save for the son who's at a military academy and immediately becomes a suspect. We know by now that the formula is to shuffle through a sequence of likely suspects, each one cleared in turn, until finally settling on someone we'd least suspect (or so they think - I figured out season 3 pretty quickly). The main element of the story (spoiler for those who haven't seen season 3) is L & H trying to conceal the fact that she executed Lt. Skinner at the end of season 4. There are so many loose ends to this plot element that it's not even worth analyzing or thinking about; I would say however, that episode 3 has a few fine moments centered on Holder, who, surprisingly, is beginning to crack under the pressure of concealing their crime - returning to drink and drugs, pretty much breaking up his relationship with a nice young woman (they seem a terrible mismatch, however), heading for the deep end. It's the personal stuff, not the baroque plotting, that can maybe save this final season of the series.

Fascinating story from start to finish: Finding Vivian Maier

As a work of cinema it breaks no new ground - and I really wish contemporary documentaries would give up on the idea of a pulsating, beat-driven musical score - but John Maloof's Finding Vivian Maier tells an incredibly fascinating story and is riveting from start to finish - constantly amazing us and provoking us with complex and unanswerable questions about a strange genius with a dark and mysterious personality. As all probably know, Maloof bought a cache of undeveloped negatives at a Chicago auction house - he was looking for some pictures of old-time Chicago for a history project he was working on - and found the photos he bought to be of extraordinary quality. He engaged in the research of a historical detective - he must have training in the field, as well as incredible drive, tenacity, and curiosity - and found that the photographer, Vivian Maier, was a complete amateur with no training - she worked for many years as a nanny in suburban Chicago. The film consists of interviews with the for whom she worked, the now-adult children in her charge, as well as some photographers and film historians. Maier shot thousands of frames - as well as some super 8 film - over the course of her life and never made any serious effort to show her work to anyone. Anyone looking at these knows right away that these are simply great photographs - and now they've been exhibited quite widely and she's gained or is gaining posthumous recognition as one of the great street photographers of the 20th century. It's incredible and shameful that nobody recognized this in her lifetime, but she just didn't have the connections - right school, right agent, right gallery, right friends - to get her work seen. She also was hindered by her very odd personality (actually, her oddity is probably what allowed her to approach people, often people in pain and suffering, and take beautiful photos) - she was clearly a victim of abuse, was distrustful and even hateful of men, was often cruel to the children in her care, later in life because a very serious hoarder - apparently a few people she worked for and with helped her out in the last years of her life (she died in 2009) but Maloof leaves this a little vague. She died in poverty, though, and her photos are now worth a lot of $ - Maloof quite frankly says he wishes he could share his bounty with her in some way. I think he has! One of the astonishing moments - maybe not surprising, when you think about it - is when he shows that he offered her collection to MOMA only to receive a form letter saying sorry not interested. Connections matter, I guess - be they wish now that they'd actually looked at what Maloof was offering. BTW I would not consider Maier an "outsider" artist; she was an outsider person, but her work is not outside of any tradition of unusual in itself - it is direct (as Maloof notes) in line with the great street photographers who were her contemporaries or predecessors - Arbus, Cartier-Bresson, et al.

Palestinian-Israeli conflict - a powerful film about this crisis

Not sure of the provenance of the recent film Omar - certainly suspect it's from a Palestinian cast and crew, though very often the low-budget, intelligent "foreign" films such as this one are co-produced - but in any case it's a very thoughtful and well-constructed dramatic look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict through the POV of a single young Palestinian man committed to his revolutionary ideals but torn as he begins to suspect some of his co-activists of complicity and double-dealing. The eponymous Omar takes part in an ambush attach on some Israeli soldiers; the youngest of the trio in the ambush, as a kind of initiation, takes the first sniper shot and kills an Israeli soldier. Subsequently, Omar gets arrested and tortured in prison but he refuses to give information, bravely. A fellow prisoner briefly befriends him and gives him warnings about confessing to a crime; Omar says he will never confess to anything, which proves to be his undoing - the seeming friend is an Israeli intelligence agent, who works to win over Omar to becoming a spy for the Israelis; Omar seems to agree, but then becomes a double-agent - leading to many further complications. Despite the many nuances - a great deal of tension, as we stay strictly w/ Omar's POV and have no idea who among his co-conspirators may have turned, if anyone - the movies is a very clear narrative line and easy to follow - and even has an emotional subtext, as Omar is in love and hope to marry, but the revolution - including suspicions among his people that he may be an Israeli spy - all inform against him. Like most political movies, I guess, this one is very one-sided: the Israelis are universally horrible and the Palestinians are the noble and oppressed minority: to its credit, the film shows them assassinating an Israeli soldier in a random attack, but there is no emotional component to that death - we know nothing about the man who was shot to death or how his death may have affected family, friends, others. Still, it's a strong movie on its own terms and gives yet another window into the tragic dynamics of this increasingly insoluble crisis.

Looking back at The Last Picture Show

Incredibly enough I had never see Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film The Last Picture Show until now - and maybe that's to my advantage; it was enlightening to look at the film some 45 years after its making and to see it as a triple-retro piece: it was made in 1971 but set in 1951 and using film techniques (b/w cinema, somewhat stagey dialog, ambitious plotting) perhaps more typical of the 40s or even the 30s. Amazingly, the film holds up very well and we can still see its influence today on many other films that have examined the frustrations, challenges, and social codes of small-town life and the rage of young people who feel both loyal to and stultified by their surroundings: think about the recent, excellent Nebraska, which also used b/w cinematography, though in wide-screen format and with high-def photographic precision, rather than the rather grainy cinematography that Bogdanovich sought. As noted, the film is rich in plot and has several strong lead characters - and supporting characters, notably Chloris Leachman as a sorrowful middle-aged woman ignored by her husband (there are strong hints that he, the high-school coach, is a homosexual) who turns to a young man in town for fulfillment and affection, with the obvious unhappy consequences. There's a lot of sorrow, and humor as well - all the men in town razzing the football players about their horrible performance on the field (this is a an anti-Friday Night Lights, in a sense - the town is much more isolated and lonely and the mood far, far darker). The femme fatale, played well by Cybil Sheppard in the debut, is a force who destroys everything she touches in town; the lead character, Timothy Bottoms, is sweet, weak, and trapped: what will he become? Well, we know the answer, sort of, because Larry McMurtry, who wrote the source novel, did at least one sequel - in fact, it was awful and I would ignore it. He was great on this film, and I think the film helped make his career as a writer - which culminated w/ his masterpiece, Lonesome Dove. It's a shame that the film didn't lead to better things for Bogdanovich - who was really smart and brave to pick this topic and to make such a powerful and heartfelt film from this bleak though emotionally rich material. My impression, from the documentary on the DVD, is that PB was extremely difficult to work w/, which may in part explain the relative dullness of the rest of his movie career (though he's done a lot of TV work and played a great in peripheral role in The Sopranos).

Hyper-realism in Like Someone in Love

Abbas Kiarostami's 2012 film Like Someone in Love is a further step in his unusual, international career - compare with his early Taste of Cherry set in native Iran and more recent Certified Copy set in France - and in all three cases serious, literary plot, focus on two central characters, long scenes played out in real time - like Rohmer but a step further - little character background, unexplained mysteries about the central relationships, and abrupt endings that don't quite resolve all of the conflicts. I have to say I admired Like Someone more than I actually liked it; K. becomes I think one of the few Western directors to set a movie in Japan, in Japanese, with an all-Japanese cast. This story focuses on a young woman, college student, moonlight as a high-priced call girl (why a woman with her youth, beauty, and charm would do so is completely unexplained and unexamined - she doesn't appear to have a drug problem or any other issue that would drive her to such behavior). In first scene her pimp gives her an assignment with a man whom he says he really respects; she tries to get out of the deal, but relents - blowing off a visit from her grandmother who came to Tokyo unannounced to see her - we hear many poignant voice messages from this elderly woman, and the girl, Akiko, takes a cab to the train station where she sees her grandmother waiting and she keeps going - obviously shamed. The man who's hired her turns out to be an elderly professor; their relationship, at least that night, is chaste - he takes her to her college where she is to finish an exam and there he's confronted by her "finance" who believes him to be her grandfather, and he asks for advice and for his blessing, and of course complications ensue. On the one hand, I do admire K's films and others that develop their story lines slowly, lovingly, and carefully - and he's among the best at use of real time: when we talk with someone for say 10 minutes it seems like nothing but when characters in a movie engage in one scene of dialog for 10 minutes it seems eternal - and K uses this dichotomy very well for effect, the scenes seem realistic but also, within the faster paced grammar of cinema, they feel strange and artificial, hyper-realistic. Sometimes, as a result, my patience waned and I just wanted the story to move along - and as it builds toward its conclusion it ends with a burst of energy and violence, which K keeps at the periphery of his film - though others would have used this as their central conflict, or even their opening scene. He has a style all his own, or mostly his own - one that's not for all viewers but a accomplishment in and of itself.

Unusual and highly personal documentary about the Killing Fields of Cambodia

The French-produced documentary The Missing Picture about the killing fields of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the 70s and 80s is a very powerful, imaginative, yet also flawed movie: the greatest strength is the highly unusual way in which the filmmaker, R. Pranh, uses painted ceramic figures to reenact and recreate the many scenes of the horror of those days, which he apparently lived through as a boy and young man, because the scenes are lost to history - few were recorded or documented in any manner as the country itself shunned all "imperialist" art and forms of individual expression and moved ever closer to a peasant society from the middle ages - except that it was really a horrendous autocracy under the rule of the evil Pol Pot. Pranh strikingly juxtaposes the scenes he creates with the ceramic figures against some of the surviving footage from the era: Pnomh Penh being emptied by the Khmer Rouge, children working in the rice paddies and building stone sluiceways, Pol Pot cheerful and smiling in front of massive "adoring" crowds - just awful, frightening, and the juxtapositions Pranh develops - sometimes through montage and sometimes through superimposition - are very powerful moments: the sorrow and pathos of a grown man re-creating his youth through ceramic figures will remind some of the great documentary about an outsider artist, Marwencol; the weird acceptance of horror will also recall the recent Danish-made documentary about the killings in Indonesia. Unfortunately, the film - narrated in first person by (a stand-in in English) for Pranh, his own long narrative jumps around quite a bit from theme to theme and could definitely use more of a developmental arc, either a timeline some other form of organization. I also would have like to know more about him in later life and more about the creation and use of the ceramics: was it just of this film? or some other form or expression or obsession? We see a little bit of the use of these in the closing credits, but not enough. There have been other films about the Killing Fields and the Khmer Rouge, but probably none so personal as this one.