100 Classic Movies # 21 - Roman Holiday (1953)

Unrated, 1 hr. 58 min.  Directed By:  William Wyler.  Release Date:  Sep 2, 1953.  DVD Release:  Nov 26, 2002.

It’s taken me only a few of Audrey Hepburn’s movies to make me realize why people loved (and still love) her work.  In some ways, and I don’t mean this comparison negatively, so those of you who are inclined to dismiss every movie and film career made in the last thirty years as garbage, please bear with me, Ms. Hepurn was the Sandra Bullock of her day.  What I mean by that is that Hepburn, with few exceptions to this rule, plays slight variations on the same character over and over, but that she does it so well that it’s hard to fault her.  I haven’t so far, and I’m not going to here.  Her portrayal of a princess trapped within the gilded cage of her own life was… utterly charming.  Hepburn has a way of playing these savvy but still naïve characters with a believability that I don’t think many actresses of any age could pull off.  It would actually be refreshing to see more characters of the type in films today.

About thirty minutes in to this movie, I caught myself grinning like an idiot.  I couldn’t help it.  A sort of faintly pink, warm, fuzzy glow surrounded the monitor of the laptop computer I was using to watch the DVD and it was infectious.  I’ve spent the day sort of lazily going about my business, but I’ve steadily perked up over the run time of the movie.  My mood is even elevated.  Today wasn’t going to be in the running for the best day of my life, but now I’m kind of in the zone.  I have Roman Holiday to thank for that.  

The makers of this movie had a fine line to walk.  There was serious danger that this would fall on the wrong side of the sweetness line.  Too much and you have a syrupy piece of crap that inspires little affection; too little and it’s hard for the audience to get involved with the characters.  While this wasn’t a romance per se, it certainly had romantic intentions.  Strangely, at the end, it also reminded me a little bit of The Princess Diaries, but to make a comparison between Anne Hathaway and Audrey Hepburn… oh crap, now I just noticed that they have the same initials.  Anyway, it wouldn’t be a good comparison, despite a few similarities in choice of roles, at least until Anne Hathaway went on the bender to distance herself from her Disney roles.

I liked the story, despite the unrealistic idea that a princess could escape for a whole day and not be recognized by anyone, even in the 50s.  When royalty hits town, it’s always a big deal, and it would be hard to miss photos of the princess in the newspapers (or television, for those folks who would have had access back in the day).  I also love the fact that the newspaper reporter’s scheme ended up working like a double edged sword.  I won’t go in to more detail than to say that this particular sword could have cut in lots of different ways.

Now I’m wishing there were more Audrey Hepburn movies on my list of recommendations.  I think there’s only one more, although Charade made my list of alternates, but I think it was made too late.  I’ll double check should one of my other choices not be available for some reason. 

Mean Girls 2 (2011)

PG-13, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Melanie Mayron.  DVD Release Date: February 1, 2011.

I did it.  I broke my sequel rules (again).  If you remember my post for Queen of the Damned, I discussed my guidelines for knowing when a sequel is going to be unsuccessful.  I know the rules, and I know when I’m about to be fed a steaming pile of crap, and I ignored all my internal warning systems.  And all because Mean Girls is one of my guiltiest pleasures. 

Quite frankly, this was terrible.  I didn’t find a single thing redeeming about it.  There wasn’t a single moment where I laughed (not even a mean spirited one, and I can usually bust loose with one of those).  The story was a cross of several mindless teen movies, none of which were the original movie.  The cast was a haphazard collection of no-names, with the only returning cast member being the principal.  He was also probably the best performer, which gives you an idea of what we’re working with.

But here’s my biggest problem.  Mean Girls lived up to its name, but there was a sense of good fun about what was going on.  Most of the “mean” we saw was basically pranks:  cutting holes in a girl’s shirt, putting foot cream in her moisturizer, that kind of crap.  There was some name calling, but that was the extent.  The sequel left that kind of stuff behind and went for the life-ruining spite that even I couldn’t find amusing.  You simply don’t do shit like these girls do.  No one should find it amusing. 

Dandelion (2005)

Unrated, 1 hr. 34 min.  Directed by: Mark Milgard.  Release Date: October 7, 2005.  DVD Release Date: January 3, 2006. 

In some ways, this is almost the perfect small town story.  Certainly, the whole bit where everyone knows each other fits in with the small town, as does (unfortunately) the drug use and manufacture, but the rude people don’t really do so well in a small town.  Mason doesn’t fit in, but lacks the ambition to try and figure a way out of his town in what I suspect was Texas.  I don’t know why, because it was green and summer, and my experience of the Texas summer had very little green to it.  He takes the blame and penalty for something his father, a local politician, did and spends some time in juvie as a result.  When he comes back, everything is changed and he –wait for it –still doesn’t fit in.

I actually enjoyed the cast.  Specifically, Vincent Kartheiser and Taryn Manning, neither of whom I knew by name, but Manning’s face was a bit familiar.  She wouldn’t have rocked my world, even at that age, but I thought they both played their parts well through the inevitable romance and predictable progression through the tale.

The setting is a bit… sleepy.  It’s too picturesque, too quaint, and too much like a Norman Rockwell painting to do the story any good.  It kept me lulled into well, a lull.  I was watching the story unfold, although I predicted about two thirds of what happened.  Predictability isn’t the only problem to work with in this movie, there’s a massive lack of conflict.  It’s also very possible that I’ve become so used to explosions and gunfights that anything less feels… well, less.  There’s some promise after Mason has a run in with a local drug addict/dealer and gets his life threatened, but we never see any results of that conflict.  By the time a curveball’s finally thrown, I couldn’t have cared less, and it was the only part of the tale I hadn’t predicted.

This movie needed some work, but it wasn’t terrible.  It wasn’t interesting, either.  Dandelion is kind of the reason why I invented the “Meh” yellow light rating back in the day.  It’s worth checking out, but in the same way that movies like Enchanted April are… for the artistic merit alone.

100 Classic Movies #20 - 8 1/2 (1963)

Unrated, 2 hr. 15 min.  Directed By:  Federico Fellini.  Release Date:  Jun 25, 1963.  DVD Release Date:  Dec 4, 2001. 

8 ½ starts out without dialogue, a montage of moving still life scenes, the kind of black and white images that people frame and put on their walls, the kind they pay a lot of money for, even if they don’t know who the subject of the photo again.  To see film treated in such a manner was unusual but captivating.  I’m not sure how else to put it.  I haven’t ever seen anything like it before, and I’m not sure I’ll ever see it again, unless filming in B&W comes back in to vogue for some reason.  I have to say that about 90% of my score for this comes entirely from those early scenes, images filled with people that we never meet, never get to know, but are somehow poignant and powerful.  I’d suggest watching this movie for those first few minutes alone.

Ten minutes after the wonderful moving “still” life montage, I was wondering where the hell I’d seen this before.  Then, in one of those “for the love of…” moments, it hit me and I was a little mortified that it had taken me so long.  My first recollection of “seeing this” was an REM music video back when I was in high school, back when I still had a flair for the dramatic and “Everybody Hurts,” the song in question, spoke to me in ways no other song could.  Second was NINE, a movie I saw on Christmas Day… two years ago?  It seems like a lifetime ago.  It was the first Christmas since my dad died, and I snuck away from the awkward (or worse) tear-filled silences with my uncle to see it, although it hadn’t been my first choice.  My post on Nine was brief, and not entirely positive.  I liked the singing, hated Daniel Day Lewis (per the status quo) and had been vaguely disturbed by Judy Dench in what was basically lingerie.  Nicole Kidman was way too white, especially when she wore white.

I liked 8 ½ better, but I’d be lying if I said by much.  The story still feels vaguely self-important, and it’s hard for me to get behind a protagonist who was pretty much the root and source of his own dramatic conflict.  However, the story is a celebration of the Italian love of life, love, and beauty.  It’s hard not to smile at that, even as you watch someone you’re supposed to like get his just deserts.  As someone who tries very hard to produce creatively on a regular, if not daily basis, I also liked how the film describes the struggle inherent in the creative process.  I get why people love this movie, but I struggled to deal with any of the characters except the central character.  Most of the supporting cast felt like a supporting cast, like these people who floated in and out of his life.  That may have been the point, but I like to feel like all the characters are fleshed out, and I didn’t here.  I also wish that the characters could have picked French or Italian and stuck with it; dealing with both pretty much hosed my efforts to avoid the subtitles.

Fellini could teach us all a few things about photography, even his photos moved.  There are few filmmakers ever (in my opinion) who have been able to capture so much interest with so little as he does in the opening scenes of this movie.   It’s powerful and has clearly been an influence on a good many other films I’ve seen over the years, so I sort of view it as the “grandpappy” of the movies that actually discuss the business.  There aren’t many, but they all seem to share qualities that appear here.  Unfortunately, adrift in a sea of amazing technique and meaningful tales, I just didn’t have fun… and very rarely do I allow fun to be slighted.

Best Picture Showcase, Day 2 - The Artist (2011)

PG-13, 1 hr. 40 min.  Directed By:  Michel Hazanavicius.  Release Date:  Nov 25, 2011.  DVD Release Date:  Apr 24, 2012.

I'm going to admit it.   When I first heard people talking about The Artist, I wrote it off as a blatant Oscar grab, the kind of movie that plays right into the Academy.  You know, the kind of movie that usually involves Hillary Swank.  We've had "talkies" and color film for almost a century now, so the idea of going back just didn't seem right.  I get that it takes a bit more acting talent to pull off a silent movie than a sound film, and I believe I talk about that during my discussion of Nosferatu last October, but I'd rather listen to the actors' voices than sit there with an orchestral score playing in the background. 

When the credits started rolling I started paying attention, because I wasn't liking what I saw:  Penelope Ann Miller, who is famous (in my own mind) for her roles in The Goonies and Kindergarten Cop, but she's not exactly who I'd have gone for in casting a movie that was always going to get Academy attention.  Ditto John Goodman, Missi Pyle, and well, just about every B-lister on the cast roster.  By the time the credits were done and the movie started, I was frowning and I looking around to see if'n I'd gotten beamed aboard the U.S.S. W.T.F.  Unfortunately not. 

Five minutes later, I was kind of in love.  It helps a lot that I think Berenice Bejo bears a striking resemblance to Rachel McAdams, but there wasn't anything I found terribly distasteful about the movie.  It has a few problems, but nothing that kept me from seeing why people have been in orgasmic apoplexy about this.  I suspect it was the dressing room scene that really won me over, because it was the first time where I laughed out loud.  The good news is that it wasn't the last. 

It wasn't all good.  I found the story to be ridiculously predictable (even in the details) and even considering the romantic comedy formula that was strictly followed. Some of the plot points were things I'd seen in a million other movies, and I would have probably liked this better if it had been a talkie, because if my lip reading is any good, the "dialogue" would have been even funnier than the facial expressions and physical comedy.  I hope this doesn't start some sort of retro wave, but once in a while, this makes for a nice change.

Best Picture Showcase, Day 2 - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)

PG-13, 2 hr. 9 min.  Directed By:  Stephen Daldry.   Release Date:  Jan 20, 2012.  DVD Release Date:  Mar 27, 2012.

What little I knew about Extremely Loud was that most folks on the 'net consider this a sign that the Academy has sold out for ratings.  There are plenty of people who assume this is pandering at its worst, a grab for an Oscar on popular sympathy because of the topic of the film, which discusses the personal aftermath of a family where the father/husband is killed in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.  Let's face it, 9-11 is an open wound, a gash in this country that only political turmoil of the likes brought to the country by the current administration.  I was so distracted by potential shutdown of the government that I don't even remember what things happened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.  There's a lot of steam behind this movie, a lot of emotional charge, but at the end of the day, I think the Academy is going somewhere a little more artsy.

I'm going to start off with what I liked about this.  First, the young star of this movie is incredible.  We see the world through his devastated mind.  This is a kid that totally needs to be in therapy, and I spend about two-thirds of the movie wondering what breakdown caused his mother to miss that Oskar needed help.  I thought this was a study in the personal impact of the 9-11 attacks, and a fairly good one at that.  I also thought that it was a very decent metaphor for the American society in the wake of 9-11.  None of us are doing a good job coping, and somewhere between pretending it never happened and invading a foreign nation is the appropriate middle ground response. 

I found this to be a poignant, touching film... but it needed more levity.  The appearance of the grandfather helped that happen a little bit, but there was a lot of melodrama here.  I think the kid pretty much carries the supporting cast, to include Sandra Bullock.  It's not that the supporting cast is bad per se, but this kid is a force of nature.  Other than him, the only other person whose performance I really enjoyed was Viola Davis, but that may be because I loved her in The Help so much. 

Basically, I think everyone should see this movie.  But, probably only once.  I'm not sure that I want to go through it again.  It's an emotional roller coaster that might be too emotional for its own good. 

Best Picture Showcase, Day 2 - Hugo (2011)

PG, 2 hr. 6 min.  Directed By:  Martin Scorsese.   Release Date:  Nov 23, 2011.  DVD Release Date:  Feb 28, 2012


I try and do at least one showing of this AMC-sponsored movie marathon every year. I'm currently in the "dinner break" that they give us. Because I've already talked about The Help and Midnight In Paris, I won't say more, except that I still love them and, at the moment, they're my favorites for Oscar gold. We started with Hugo, which isn't surprising. The pattern is to show the animated movie up front and to break up the melodrama whenever possible. I have more than a few mixed reactions about it. I get, and agree that the animation that makes up most of the setting and backdrops to the film was stunning. There was work with light and color that matches, if not exceeds the quality of any animation work I've ever seen. The clockwork mechanisms were fascinating and a visually interesting, but you could make that argument about just about every aspect of the movie.

How many times have I bitched about Ben Kingsley's choice of roles? How many jokes have I made at his agent's expense. Dozens? Hundreds? A lot at any rate. Kingsley finally lands a decent movie and I hated him. I suspect the problem is he gets shown up by just about everyone in the cast... although we aren't meant to like him. I had other problems: why is everything said in English, but every written word in the film is clearly in French... and not everyone had the same accent. I know, I shouldn't ground creativity in reality, but I usually do. I also found Hugo to be boring. Ron White might have called it a borehole. I couldn't get involved with the characters and more conflict was needed. My thought's on Hugo taking the big prize are that chances are slim. The last animated film to win Best Picture was... I believe nothing, because the Academy isn't generally looking at mass appeal, although plenty of people will argue that point in recent years.

Hugo wasn't terrible.  It had a certain head/gut dichotomy that is becoming increasingly common:  high marks from my brain, low marks from my gut.  I've always considered my tastes largely "beer and pizza," although I'm not amiss to the Art House fare... but I do expect Art to be entertaining, and Hugo didn't do that for me. 

100 Classic Movies #19 - M (1931)

Unrated, 1 hr. 45 min.  Directed By:  Fritz Lang.  Release Date:  Aug 31, 1931.  DVD Release Date:  Oct 20, 1998.

I went in to this expecting a movie that was, if you can excuse me for being more crass than usual, all brains and no balls.  I knew this was a movie, much like Metropolis, that dealt with a lot of social concerns of the day.  I was expecting a lack of emotional response to this movie because I very rarely get a reaction from old horror or mystery.  Occasionally, I get a bit of a rise while watching suspense, but even then, I’m too used to the graphic tools of the modern slasher flick.  It took me about fifteen minutes to write down my question about whether or not this movie was based off the work of Peter Kurten.  I have the same sort of unavoidable fascination for serial killers that a train or car accident creates, you know you shouldn’t look, but you just can’t look away.  I’ve actually used the Wikipedia entries on serial killers to give myself a major case of the wiggens on those nights when I can’t sleep. Wikipedia, along with a brief mention in the movie Copycat are what taught me about Peter Kurten, and how I made the connection. It was a very good connection… and there are lots of comparisons to make between what we see in the movie and what Germany would be seeing in the late 30s and early 40s. 

What surprised me with how creepy I found the early scenes of the movie that surrounded the actions of the child murderer played by Peter Lorre.  I also found it interesting to note that the discussion of the murderer’s pathology was… smart.  Concepts that were probably decades ahead of their time were discussed at length, and were so close to a modern crime show that I was a little impressed.  Even more interesting is that the events described in this movie, particularly public reaction to the actions of the murder, resemble what Patricia Cornwell (and other historian accounts of the time) describes in her biography of Jack the Ripper.  I’ve said that good science fiction has a base in good science, and I’m beginning to think that good murder mysteries have at least a nugget of truth in them.

And M is a great murder mystery.  I’m going to fess up that I had a few problems with the subtitles, which is unusual for me.  I’m also going to admit I had some problems getting through the scenes that didn’t have anything to do with the killer and his work.  There were a few things that I think were… rooted in German culture that I didn’t get.  But the rest of this movie was absolute magic. 

If you like the genre, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not seeing M.  If you’re on the fence, M is the kind of entry to the genre that could change your mind.  Definitely go check this out.    

Super (2011)

R, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: James Gunn.  Release Date: April 1, 2011.  DVD Release Date: August 9, 2011.

A friend of mine, one who needs to start playing WoW again in the near future if he isn’t already so he can tank for me, recommended I check this out.  It had been on my “movie calendar” in early 2011, back when I was watching a movie a day and when I originally realized that I was going to have to SCHEDULE that movie a day crap, otherwise I was either going to miss a day or I’d watch the same movie twice by accident.  But, I was once again foiled by geography, and Super never seemed to appear at my local theaters… or those theaters within the 2-hour drive time I occasionally considered reasonable to see a movie of high interest.  

I didn’t love this movie, but it did have one performance that I enjoyed thoroughly:  Ellen Paige’s.  For a “superhero” movie that walked the line between light and dark for quite some time before the shit quite literally hit the fan, Paige’s performance being equal parts insanity, rage, and humor were really a sparkling high point.  In theory, Boltee was a hero, but you’d never know that from anything she says or does, and her very presence in costume seems to encourage escalating violence.  If it wasn’t for her performance, I probably would have given up.  Because she was the only thing here that occasionally made me smile.

At some point, I wonder if Mr. Gunn just decided that he’d done enough violence and that was when the movie ended.  It felt like that.  The movie continued, wavering between the pathetic glimpses into the life of Frank, played by Rainn Wilson, and the senseless, possibly humorous violence against small crime brought to bear by Frank’s alter ego, the Crimson Bolt.  I also wonder if this was ever intended to be a comedy.  Certainly the presence of Wilson and Paige (at least, for those folks who think Wilson is funny) suggests a comedy, but there was little I found to be genuinely funny.  There was a variety of events that elicited a stunned gasp; the sort of noise I make when something might be considered funny, but I’m more shocked than amused.  Kevin Bacon’s overwrought performance as the local drug peddler and stealer of Frank’s wife (Liv Tyler – which reminds me, I need to talk more about that later) also suggests an attempt at humor, but it wasn’t funny so much as sad.  I also had trouble having much faith in an antagonist who seemed completely uninterested in doing ill himself, rather preferring to let other people do bad things in his immediate vicinity.  Oh, and Nathan Fillion was totally wasted in a cheap bit part.

Which I guess brings us to Liv Tyler.  When the movie first starts and we’re introduced to her as Rainn Wilson’s wife, I think time stops.  Just for a minute, but still.  I spent at least five minutes wondering in what Bizzaroworld the two of them would have married until they explain her flaw.  I’m sad to report that as soon as that weakness is detailed, my first thought was:  “Oh!  That makes more sense.”  Which probably says some horrible thing about me, but I’m willing to accept that about myself.  The character spends about half the film as in a drugged out haze while serving as Crimson Bolt’s kryptonite, and it wasn’t well done.  It wasn’t even moderately done.  Liv Tyler thrashes her way through the role in marked counterpoint to Kevin Bacon’s “good ole bad guy” impression.  

So, other than Ellen Paige, there wasn’t much here I liked all that much.  The rather explosive and graphic violence in the final scenes helped not only keep my interest, but keep this from sinking in to a pit of suck from which it otherwise would not have escaped.  It was an interesting attempt at a counter-culture superhero flick, something that was probably supposed to serve as a beacon to the counter-superhero movie movement that is becoming popular, but I’d sit through a Green Hornet – Thor – First Class – Green Lantern – Captain America revival multiple times before sitting through this one again. 

Friends With Benefits (2011)

R, 1 hr. 42 min.  Directed By:  Will Gluck.  Release Date:  Jul 22, 2011.  DVD Release Date:  Dec 2, 2011.

When I hit the eject button on my DVD player, I was stunned.  Something happened that I never, ever believed would happen.  I mean there was zero chance of this.  I actually liked Justin Timberlake.  Now, don't get me wrong, there were still aspects of this movie where he proved me right in my theory that he's a total douchenugget.  There was the chronic singing, that reminder that his "talents" aren't limited to his onscreen performances.  I was mostly reminded that if he had any shot at the musical big times, he would still be playing, and he isn't.  He had a decent run in the 15 and under set, but those days are over.  I also caught him checking himself out in mirrored surfaces on several occasions.  Lame.  But, he found a character I didn't totally hate, and at least he wasn't clearly dry humping Mila Kunis like he did Cameron Diaz.

When this was out in theaters, I decided to take a pass because I'd already seen No Strings Attached and wasn't impressed enough to sit through a repeat.  I also had a hard time thinking this would be funny, since I've never known an attempt of a relationship like this to work out well, so I couldn't fathom a comedy with this as its major theme.  Certainly, I don't remember No Strings Attached being funny, although it would be true to say that I don't remember it at all, except for Natalie Portman slutting around, which wasn't terrible.  FWB was, well, hysterical, and I think it was a fairly accurate portrayal of this type of relationship up until the last twenty minutes or so.

Kunis and Timberlake managed some decent chemistry, and I think both of them have had some hit or miss careers.  The latter seems to be plagued by landing the worst possible rolls in good (and sometimes bad) movies, the former always seems stretched thin by complicated rolls in good movies, or flighty in bad ones.  This was a decent performance by each.  I actually thought the supporting cast was even better, but they weren't holding up all that much.

There are a few scenes in this movie that are absolutely brilliant, and a few others that felt vaguely like rip-offs of things I've seen before, but I couldn't pin down where I'd seen them, which I always find frustrating.  But, this is filled with interesting characters and most of the folks were people I wouldn't mind having in my own life.  That's unusual and worthy of comment.

If you haven't seen this, check it out.  It was funny, and (mostly) devoid of the kind of emotional entanglements that cause men to hate romantic comedies.  There are; however, just enough of those emotional entanglements to keep the ladies involved.

100 Classic Movies #18 - The Killing (1956)

Unrated, 1 hr. 23 min.  Directed By:  Stanley Kubrick.  Release Date:  Jan 1, 1956.  DVD Release Date:  Aug 15, 2001.

I’m sure if you go digging, you’ll find the review where I talk about how much I hate heist movies.  In a modern context, that’s mostly true.  I liked the remake of The Italian Job to a certain extent, and the Ocean’s Eleven remake, and then I liked The Muppet Caper when I was a kid.  There might be a few others, but they weren’t memorable enough to stick around now that I’m kind of foraging for titles.  In the noir-ish, 1930s-1950s context, I find that heist flicks’ approval ratings with me goes way through the roof.  I liked The Asphalt Jungle, but mostly because it reminded me of those Bugs Bunny cartoons where they clearly were spoofing the genre. 

I don’t know much about directors, because they generally get filed under the heading of “celebrity” and if you read this blog with any frequency, you know that I’m an oddity:  I love movies and tend to hate the people who are in them, with only a double handful of exceptions.  Even more strange is that I do know a thing or two about Stanley Kubrick, and this feels like a strange film for him, although as I look at his filmography, it does appear that pretty much anything has gone over the course of his career.

I will say that when this started, and for about the first ten or twenty minutes, I wasn’t impressed.  I found it a little difficult to follow all the separate stories and to figure out how they were interconnected.  Once the story lines converge, the movie picks up a lot of steam and gets very enjoyable.  I have a problem that a couple of the characters have dialogue that makes them feel a bit like cartoon caricatures of the “type” of person they were supposed to be, but by and large I really liked this.

There are a lot of easy comparisons to make with The Asphalt Jungle, and since I just watched it last month as part of this project, I think the comparisons are fair, especially since Sterling Hayden, the lead in both films, plays a very, very similar role.  I do think that The Killing feels like a more genuine portrayal of criminals and their associates, but then, that’s probably because I can’t accept that there may once have been people who did that “you dirty rat, see.  You dirty rat” stuff.  It’s too hokey, and The Killing has a lot less of it.

One last comment.  Where’d they pick up the wookie to stage the barfight?  Man, that was terrible.  I also thought it was interesting that they dressed him in an untucked sport shirt and wrinkled pants when the other men at the track were in hats, suits, and ties... I'm not sure if there's some reason he was so dressed down, but he stuck out like a sore thumb.

Double Feature Blogathon - Reposted

The Mission:  As per the challenge from Go, See, Talk, I'm a theater owner that's doing a week-long schedule of what's now a rare concept in a movie theater:  the double features.  What movies would I show and why? 

I've decided to add this feature page to help me participate in Blog-A-Thons hosted by fellow LAMBs and other bloggers out there that peak my interest.  This way, I don't spend a few hours rearranging my movie schedule when one of these catch my interest, which seems to be frequently these days.

When I saw this post on The Mad Hatter’s blog, in which he discusses his own choice for his "movie theater," my first thought was that if I participated in this, that I’d take my readers around the world.  I have always dreamed that I would have a job that allowed me to share my love of the world's places with others.  Then, I read two lines down and started swearing, since that’s exactly what Hatter did.  I like the world's people as much as I like its places, so I considered the interest that might be brought to bear if a theater ran double features with cultural messages.  Today, films with a cultural context (or sub-context in the case of some of my choices) are abundant, but you'll have trouble finding non-documentary movies that were made before... say 1995 or so.  They exist, but they weren't as numerous and (in my mind) weren't as enjoyable.

Monday:  The Great Melting Pot

I think it was one of the Roosevelts (FDR?) who referred to America as "The Great Melting Pot," referring to the large numbers of Europeans, Asians, and Africans who made up the vast majority of the country's population at the time.  Despite the ongoing "melt," ethnic tensions in the US are a chronic problem within our borders, and both of these movies describe, in occasionally gruesome detail, how the various "types" of American people interact.

Tuesday:  Exploration, Exploitation, and Colonization

These movies have a similar theme:  they both detail the exploitation of native populations in the course of England's expansion through the New World.  That wasn't intentional when I chose these movies, and I don't think the Britons in those days were doing anything differently than the other colonial powers, but these efforts provided much of the empirical data for modern theories of cultural interaction and conflict.  So... there you go.

Wednesday:  Impact of Globalization

Your average American thrives on globalization, is dependent on it in many ways, but doesn't recognize the costs or even acknowledge that there might actually BE costs, because other than shifting job locations, Americans pay relatively few of them.  These two films give us a hard look at the uglier side of globalization, the price that other people have paid for the accumulation of staggering wealth, tons of material goods, and the rapid advancement of technology.

  

Thursday:  Culture in Conflict

If you’re paying attention, you’ve realized that the number of conflicts between and within nations have increased since the Cold War ended (as has the use of terrorism in order to gain political or social power).  Hotel Rwanda shows an internal conflict wherein one side of the conflict perceives that they have been oppressed by the other and does some serious oppression in turn.  In Traitor, we get a look in to the mind of a terror cell for a Muslim extremist group and why the increasing perception of their culture as a vanishing thing has these people trying to defend their way of life at any price.  For a post-9/11 film, the less-than-critical view of Muslim extremism was an interesting viewpoint.  Pay no attention to the Cheadle on the screen in both of these, since that's totally coincidence.

Friday:  Through the Keyhole

When I travel, which is less frequently than I would like, I try and get a look at how the people in that new place are different, and what they do that I might to adopt into my own personal life philosophy.  Those travels generally allow me a way to glimpse their culture through a keyhole made in the framework of my own cultural idiosyncrasies and beliefs.  Each of these films has a similar venture:  a Westerner who travels to a far-away land and ends up adapting to a new way of life despite their resistance.  Looking at a new culture through a keyhole allows both of these men to adapt, survive, and even create a positive impact on the people around them.

Saturday:  Acclimation and Acceptance

The hardest thing about moving far from home, whether it be within your own country or internationally, is adapting to the new rules and expectations from the people around you (most of which are unspoken).  Try dealing with a rampant and slightly drunken Buckeye fan when you said too loudly that you didn't know (or care) who Jim Tressle was.  In my homestate, no one would have batted an eye... but a few thousand miles east in Ohio people were suddenly concerned.  These movies discuss this problem in two distinctly different ways:  one young woman moves across the globe and finds a way to survive.  The other is born of two cultures and tries to find a happy middle ground between the two.

Sunday:  To Infinity and Beyond

For people who study culture, space may actually be the final frontier one day, and I've always wondered whether it might take the arrival of non-humans on our world to actually unify this planet.  Even now, space rears it's ugly head, and it seems to be a common thing for political science and cultural studies professors to use sci-fi as a learning tool.  I’ve seen the Next Generation episode where Riker goes to serve on the Klingon battle cruiser in more than five classes to date.   The first two of these movies are cross-cultural allegories for true cultural events.  Neither are great allegories, but they are recognizable and effective.  The third tells a story of how humanity might be judged by folks who are so far advanced from our level of technology and understanding that we couldn't fight against their ruling. I'm still torn between the original from the 50s and the '08 remake, but Keanu Reeves still manages to pack butts in to the seats.

On a side note.  I happened to turn on my television and started flipping through channels only to find myself watching the aforementioned Next Generation episode.  

Sweet Karma (2011)

Unrated, 1 hr. 25 min.  Directed by: Andrew Thomas Hunt.  DVD Release Date: June 14, 2011.

Generally, it’s a bad sign when you see a brand-spanking-new movie, even a straight-to-vid one,  appear on Netflix’s Watch Instantly.  But, conceptually, I thought that this was a rather solid effort at a film: it had a story that most of us could get behind, although I think the devil really was in the details for these guys.  Those details kept this film’s solid concept from translating out in to something that was executed solidly.

When I did research (by which I mean I used Google) on this movie after watching it, I was a little embarrassed how many mean-spirited folks on the internet were saying that the lead character was made a mute because the woman cast for the part, former Playmate Shera Bechard, couldn’t “act her way through a porno” as one person put it.  There might be some truth to that, but, by and large, I didn’t have all that many complaints about Bechard’s performance, silent or otherwise.  Granted, there is that whole burlesque scene that lends credence, to the GIFTer stance on Bechard, because they spent a lot of time cashing in on some of her greatest assets. 

There were a lot of characters, many of whom possessed those complicated Russian names.  Once upon a time, while I foolishly chose to take a Russian Civ class in my undergrad days, the professor suggested that we rename the characters to something we could track.  In her words, “there are only so many Mikhail Mikhailoviches that you can remember, after that, it’s all borscht.”  Professor Savelieva hadn’t steered me wrong before, and it would have been nice to have that option during the film.  By the time this revenge plot unfolds, I couldn’t remember who half the characters were… but in truth, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Basically, I didn’t think this was terrible, and I thought it showed promise from what I’m guessing is a relatively new director.  Give him a few more films under his belt and I think we’ll see really good things. 

Hearts In Atlantis (2001)

PG-13, 1 hr. 41 min.  Directed by: Scott Hicks.  Release Date: September 28, 2001.  DVD Release Date: July 27, 2004.

I’ve started to watch Hearts In Atlantis maybe a dozen times over the years, and I’m not sure why I stopped.  It’s probably because Stephen King and metaphysics (in my mind) don’t generally equate out to a happy mix, as is the case in The Langoliers and god help us all, Rose Madder.  My grandmother gave me a Stephen King book about a guy who could teleport himself in to a fantasy world that may or may not have been the Queen’s garden from Alice In Wonderland, and I wanted to scratch my eyes out by the time I finished it.  I still love my grandmother after that, but maybe not as much.This was a bit mellow, and frankly, a bit like other King works that I’ve read over the years, as well as one Koontz book about folks who got super powers after being injected with a mysterious serum.  Sound familiar?

Anthony Hopkins was kind of running around being psychic, but it wasn’t as showy as other works by King would be.  I actually would have been okay if he’d been more overtly psychic, with mind reading and special effects, but not much more.  It was a tool I’ve used elsewhere before, most recently in Push, wherein a character that we see for only a few seconds in the film has not only predicted the entire series of complicated events with unerring accuracy, she’s set half of them in motion while imprisoned.  Like Push, Hopkins clairvoyance generally serves to drive the story forward and remind us that just because it’s the 60s doesn’t mean the story has to be boring.

Hopkins, unsurprisingly, basically carried the entire cast through this movie, with the arguable exception of a very young Anton Yelchin.  When Hopkins isn’t in a scene for very long, the movie begins to drag something terrible.  Story-wise, I also thought there was too much other stuff going on in the wings.  The primary story revolves around Hopkins, but there are also side stories that involve Yelchin and his first love, Yelchin and a friend, Yelchin, the girlfriend and a bully, and Yelchin’s mother.  I’m also wondering whether or not Yelchin’s mother shouldn’t have given her son to Hopkins and walked out of his life.  It’s a bit of a weird role, and I have to wonder why she was made to be such a bad parent.  While it sets the stage for her actions at the end of the film, it made me hate her.

Chances are good that most of you have seen this already, but if you haven't, it might be worth checking out.  I had thought I would hate this movie, but I can’t really tell you why.  I was pleasantly surprised by my reaction, although I did find some of the later “dramatic” scenes to be poorly written.

Almost Famous (2000)

R, 2 hr. 2 min.  Directed By:  Cameron Crowe.  Release Date:  Sep 15, 2000.  DVD Release Date:  Mar 13, 2001.

Without mincing too many words, this is a fantastic movie.  I didn’t expect to like it this much, because having seen many, many other movies that talk about the music scene in this particular point in history, I’ve come up with the opinion that they’re frequently dull, and mostly surround the drug abuse that seems to have characterized the industry for, well, forever.   It helps that I have a crazy nostalgia for this point in American history.  We were in the process of major social and political changes.  We were becoming more a part of the world around, but we still had some of our introverted innocence.  We were looking at things in ways we had never thought of before, and it was the last of the “good old days.”  Don’t get me wrong, I miss the 80s, and unlike the 70s, I’m actually just old enough to remember the 80s, the years after ’84 at any rate.  As much as I miss the 80s, and to a lesser extent, the early 90s, I wish I’d been born a few decades earlier so I could have seen these times. 

For me, this movie was all gut reaction.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s much to complain about.  The cast is outstanding, and the believable tale spun by Cameron Crowe is something wonderful to see.  But, I was so blinded by my emotional reaction to this movie that I didn’t really look at the production or execution.  I was blinded I couldn’t even complain about Zooey Deschannel, who never fails to give the same performance twice. 

What caught my attention was the character William Miller.  His passion for writing and music was so strong that it drove him to make it happen.  While some of what happens in this tale is pure, dumb luck, William works hard to make his dreams a reality.  I’m a little envious of his drive.  When I was his age (depending on which of his ages you believe), I wanted to write professionally, and by the age he’s wandering with Stillwater, I had completed my first novel.  280 pages that I never showed anyone.  I’ve written a few more novels over the year, mostly as a way to relieve stress.  I’ve never wanted to be in the spotlight for any reason, but maybe this will be the inspiration that moves me towards seeing if I might be published.  Based on what I’ve been reading these days, the standards aren’t all that high, so who knows.

But anyway, back to the movie.  Almost Famous is possibly my favorite coming-of-age tale so far.  It has an endearing quality to it that makes it stick around in your head; I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I watched it a few days ago.  I wish now that I hadn’t waited 12 years to see this for the first time.

I experienced Almost Famous.  I enjoyed it.  I also fell for it a little, despite the warning in the dialogue.  Oh, Fairuza Balk almost wasn't scary in this movie.  Almost.