Classics: The Fallen Idol

What a gorgeous movie with a screenplay by Graham Greene, based on one of his short stories, and the elegant, sensitive, taut direction of Carol Reed.
The Fallen Idol is a morally complex story about the loss of innocence, and the nature of lies seen through the eyes of a child, the wonderful Bobby Henrey, who speaks both French and English and delivers one of the most natural performances of a child in film. Some people find him irritating; I think he is adorable. Inquisitive, needy of attention, but sweet and goodhearted (not all children are). He plays the son of the French ambassador to England, a neglected, motherless child living alone in a huge mansion, in the company of his butler, Baines, the inimitable Ralph Richardson (looking a bit like Kevin Spacey, I dare say).
Baines is the butler we all would want if we could have a butler, infinitely crisp and efficient and wonderful. He is married to a horrid housekeeper, portrayed to the hilt of evil by Sonia Dresdel (beware of people who clean too much). Thus, he is in love with Michele Morgan, a secretary at the embassy and possessor of most amazing cheekbones. So Baines, who is a hero to his charge, is a liar. And the child, due to his loneliness, somehow gets enmeshed in the adults' web of lies. This is a world in which there are many kinds of lies, from sins of omission, to actual enormous lies, to tall tales of courage in Africa. Point is, the kid can't tell the difference between one lie and another.
Graham Greene said he converted to Catholicism because "I had to find a religion to measure my evil against" (how fun is that?), and so his enduring themes are those of man's fallen nature, of innocence and and evil, free will and redemption.
But being a novelist, not a saint, Greene multiplies the ironies. The lovers are kind people who care about the child, even if they are committing a sin. Mrs. Baines is their victim, but she is an awful human being. The poor kid is caught in the middle, actively trying to make sense of this complicated world, in which he has been made to feel responsible. 
The intimation of unwitting (on the part of Baines) cruelty to the child is very hard to stomach. Everything converges on the vulnerability of this child and on how he has been tainted by the adults' mistakes. Meanwhile, if this assessment makes the movie sound like Catholic Dogma 101, it isn't. There is nail biting suspense, ironic twist after ironic twist, amazingly sharp humor, and the most riveting, suspenseful, and comical scene involving a little paper plane.

Classics: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

This is such a fantastic movie. It should be required viewing for all the captains of banking and industry that have been looting this country lately. It is, in essence, a biblical parable of capitalism and one of the most convincing portrayals of The Ugly American ever committed to film. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
It's a brilliant little story about greedy American gold prospectors in Mexico in the 20s.
It's about how the quest for gold corrupts, distorts and makes people toxic.  Need I say more?
Director John Huston goes for authenticity by shooting most of the film on location in Mexico. He has big swaths of dialog in Spanish that are organically translated by the American characters, and thus need no subtitles. There is one Mexican meanie, the great Alfonso Bedoya, (chewing the scenery on a par with Walter Huston) who turns out to be a scrawny bandido with an excellent command of English. Which seems preposterous, but he has so much fun being bad that somehow it's believable.
I am amazed that Humphrey Bogart, who was a huge movie star, was willing to play one of the most unsavory characters in the history of movies.  I am amazed that a studio (Warner Bros) allowed that to happen. I bet this movie would have never been made in Hollywood today (well, maybe by the Coens, or it would be a little bitter independent film).
Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart). What a character! This guy has not one redeeming quality. Not a one. But he is not a mustache twirling villain or a one-dimensional portrayal of a greedy bastard. He is utterly human. This is a man who follows his cravings like a junkie. His greed seems to come from a deep, unsatisfiable hunger. He is greedy for money, for water, for women, for sleep, for recognition. He is lazy, spineless and dishonest. And he thinks he's the shit. A pest, a drifter, a man with no dignity. I love the opening scenes where he begs fellow Americans for money, feigning pathos. He is all macho bluster, but he is actually weak. And then he becomes paranoid and gets uglier and uglier as the film goes along. Bogie goes at it with gusto, unafraid to look bad or to go all out on the nasty side of human nature. He sinks incredibly low with enormous conviction. It's a brave performance.
I believe there are people like Fred C. Dobbs roaming the Earth as we speak. But they don't necessarily have his charisma.
About Walter Huston, what can one say? His Howard is one of the best good guys ever committed to film. He is not holier than thou, not saintly, not virtuous. Just a man with enormous repositories of hard earned experience. One look at him and you believe he has been everywhere and seen everything. He knows where this quest for gold leads. He is just waiting to confirm what he knows about human nature. But instead of being bitter and nihilistic, he just has a ball. His wise good cheer is unforgettable. So is his weathered wisdom. And so is his mischievous laughing at all that gold.

The trivia section in the imdb page of this film is great fun.
This is my favorite quote, from Bogie: "One Huston is bad enough, two of them is murder".
Salud!

Moon

Sadly, the trailer is better than the movie. The trailer looked like Sam Rockwell had lost his marbles in space. It looked like Kevin Spacey, playing the revamped version of Hal 3000, was going to do some nifty psycho damage just by wielding suavity. It turns out that Moon, directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son) is far less accomplished than it should be. Which is a pity, because the seeds for something interesting are certainly there. The first thing one notices is the fantastic music by Clint Mansell, who has scored every Darren Aronofsky movie, and more. There are some very nice touches, such as the grime inside the space station. Usually, in space stations everything is spic and span, as if the astronauts had an army of obsessive-compulsive housekeepers at their disposal. In Moon, everything is grimy and in desperate need of a thorough cleaning. I really liked that. I also liked that it wasn't shy about owing a huge debt of production design (more like a conscious homage) to 2oo1, the mother of all sci-fi films, including the design and concept of GERTY, the robot, played with his usual sangfroid by Kevin Spacey. Who else?
Sam Rockwell is excellent as Sam Bell, a technician sent by himself to supervise some mining on the moon. He plays two versions of Sam Bell. He is a charming, quirky (in a good way), resourceful actor, very physical, very emotionally elastic, and he brings character and intensity to the table. In fact, I am almost certain that he added enormous gravitas to the film. The problem with Moon is that it seems overconcepted but underwritten. Maybe it's a gender thing, but neither I nor my female companion could understand what the hell was going on in terms of narrative.
My first problem is with the notion of a corporation sending someone by himself to the moon for three years. We now know that loneliness is the worst form of torture (as in solitary confinement) and there simply is no reason or explanation why anybody would think it a good idea to send someone to space on his own. Yes, it's a corporation, and we all know what those are capable of; and yes, the guy is in the very soothing company of Kevin Spacey, but still. So we start off having to greatly suspend our disbelief. This is one of the most wonderful paradoxes of movies: you can be watching a fantasy set in planet Bulu, there could be fire spitting dragons and people who walk on their noses, but things still have to happen in a logical, human way. This is why King Kong, for instance, is a masterpiece.
Many of the coherence problems of the film could have been avoided if the writer wasn't so mortally afraid of making certain logical connections or transitions. Sometimes it's important to flesh out the obvious. I also had problems with the emotional logic of the film; I simply did not understand the characters' reactions. Once there are two Sam Bells, one of them decides to pursue the silent treatment. This is utterly flummoxing and extremely uninteresting. Again, I don't know if this is a gender issue but had the film been written by a woman (or by a more experienced screenwriter), the two Sams would be having a gabfest, at the very least. I also was unclear on the motivations of the robot. Is he as evil as Hal? Is he just trained to help? The choices here seem unclear.
The other problem is with the direction. The production design is very good, the special effects (Sam Rockwell arguing with himself) are very well done, but the dramatic staging is shoddy. I wish I could pinpoint exactly why, but I kept having a feeling, particularly at the beginning of the film, that the scenes were kind of messy and unclear. That is, I could feel the lack of chops in the director. I think he has great potential, if he can understand the importance of good writing.

By the way, I forgot to mention one of the highlights of Inglorious Basterds, and that is the music, culled from great film scores by Ennio Morricone, Lalo Schifrin, etc. The music rocks.

Inglorious Basterds

The Weinstein Bros. have done it again. Once more, the Nazis are doing just fine by them, to judge from the sold out crowds this opening weekend.
I am not a fan of Quentin Tarantino, but I will go see any movie where Jews scalp Nazis and bash their brains in with baseball bats.
For those of you who wonder why I am not a fan of the Quentin, in short, because I think he is an idiot savant, who is quite talented, and encyclopedic in his knowledge of movies, but who is not interested in putting his cinematic nerdness to better use. I find his reverse snobbery about blaxploitation and cheesiness really annoying. The only movie of his that I like is Pulp Fiction. Having said this, in Inglorious Basterds he is going for something more ambitious than celebrations of grindhouse and shit like that, I could not care less about.
Inglorious Basterds is cheeky for several reasons other than coming up with an alternate, much happier ending for the enemies of the Third Reich. It shows its utter chutzpah not only by imagining bloodlusty Jews, but actually by making the American audience READ SUBTITLES in a movie spoken mostly in French and German. For that reason only I am willing to forgive Tarantino his usual mindless grotesquerie. For that reason only, I'm ready to kiss and make up with him.
As my friend Sarah says, the movie is so meta. For Inglorious Basterds is more about movies than it is about the Second World War. It's about movie Nazis and about WWII revenge fantasies. It is delightful to see the Nazis get their comeuppance, and then some, only to remember that alas, it's only a movie.
Inglorious Basterds is long and talky and only intermittently witty, and sometimes its vacuousness is tedious, but it also is fun. Super violent fun.
Having more fun than any actor I have seen in recent memory, is Christoph Waltz, who won the best actor award at Cannes this year, for his performance as the suave Nazi "Jew Hunter" Hans Landa. Waltz is a marvel to behold. Not only is he prodigious and effortless in French, German, English and Italian, he is so alive and mercurial at every second, you never want him to leave the frame. He relishes the part yet never overdoes it. One of our biggest movie stars, Mr. Brad Pitt, who gets paid gazillions of dollars just to show up, mangles his one supposed Tennessee accent and tries to have some fun but he is absolutely no match for Mr. Waltz. Why he has to be from the South and speak in an accent he can't handle is beyond me. Why he could not be an American Jew is also beyond me. I find it interesting that the actors chosen to play the Jews all have the same physical type. Why the typecasting? It seems to run contrary to the entire concept of the movie.
The rest of the cast is a mixed bag, with the excellent Michael Fassbender (unrecognizable from Hunger) playing, of all things a British spy who was a former film critic and some very good, well known German actors. I thought that Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger sucked. Eye candy, but they totally lack the glamour, sophistication and pizazz of the actresses of yore.
You have to love an audience that hears a familiar voice over the phone and whispers in recognition: "it's Harvey Keitel!".
Tarantino has a Jewish woman kissing a Black man, which is fine with me, and Nazis saying horrid things about Jews and Negroes, for which they get beautifully punished. I wish Tarantino had made a little more of the fact that when the Nazis took over, they killed their wonderful film industry (to our good fortune, because many talented people came to Hollywood and gave us brilliance). He alludes to it, but as many things in this movie, swiftly and only in passing. But he does show the great German actor of the time, Emil Jannings, a man who made it in Hollywood and went back to Germany to make films for the Nazis. May he be rotting in hell as we speak.
The movie is filled with references to other movies. Nazi Hugo Stiglitz is named after a Mexican actor of crappy seventies movies. A Nazi soldier says that Goebbels thinks he's going to be the German Van Johnson (in my estimation one of the worst actors of all time). Such were the Nazis. Tasteless and clueless.
The plot doesn't make much sense, and everything is half-baked, except of course for the violence which is as usual, overbaked. Without the moxie and the diverting sense of mischief, this movie would probably be untenable.
The audience clapped at the end. Hurray for Hollywood.

Classics: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

This is such a fantastic movie. It should be required viewing for all the captains of banking and industry that have been looting this country lately. It is, in essence, a biblical parable of capitalism and one of the most convincing portrayals of The Ugly American ever committed to film. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
It's a brilliant little story about greedy American gold prospectors in Mexico in the 20s.
It's about how the quest for gold corrupts, distorts and makes people toxic.  Need I say more?
Director John Huston goes for authenticity by shooting most of the film on location in Mexico. He has big swaths of dialog in Spanish that are organically translated by the American characters, and thus need no subtitles. There is one Mexican meanie, the great Alfonso Bedoya, (chewing the scenery on a par with Walter Huston) who turns out to be a scrawny bandido with an excellent command of English. Which seems preposterous, but he has so much fun being bad that somehow it's believable.
I am amazed that Humphrey Bogart, who was a huge movie star, was willing to play one of the most unsavory characters in the history of movies.  I am amazed that a studio (Warner Bros) allowed that to happen. I bet this movie would have never been made in Hollywood today (well, maybe by the Coens, or it would be a little bitter independent film).
Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart). What a character! This guy has not one redeeming quality. Not a one. But he is not a mustache twirling villain or a one-dimensional portrayal of a greedy bastard. He is utterly human. This is a man who follows his cravings like a junkie. His greed seems to come from a deep, unsatisfiable hunger. He is greedy for money, for water, for women, for sleep, for recognition. He is lazy, spineless and dishonest. And he thinks he's the shit. A pest, a drifter, a man with no dignity. I love the opening scenes where he begs fellow Americans for money, feigning pathos. He is all macho bluster, but he is actually weak. And then he becomes paranoid and gets uglier and uglier as the film goes along. Bogie goes at it with gusto, unafraid to look bad or to go all out on the nasty side of human nature. He sinks incredibly low with enormous conviction. It's a brave performance.
I believe there are people like Fred C. Dobbs roaming the Earth as we speak. But they don't necessarily have his charisma.
About Walter Huston, what can one say? His Howard is one of the best good guys ever committed to film. He is not holier than thou, not saintly, not virtuous. Just a man with enormous repositories of hard earned experience. One look at him and you believe he has been everywhere and seen everything. He knows where this quest for gold leads. He is just waiting to confirm what he knows about human nature. But instead of being bitter and nihilistic, he just has a ball. His wise good cheer is unforgettable. So is his weathered wisdom. And so is his mischievous laughing at all that gold.

The trivia section in the imdb page of this film is great fun.
This is my favorite quote, from Bogie: "One Huston is bad enough, two of them is murder".
Salud!

It Might Get Loud

I didn't have much faith in this film because the preview looked to me like this was some sort of sinister integrated music marketing tool . If it is, it doesn't show it. It's very enjoyable and it would be even more so, if there was more music in it.
Three very different and talented guitarists (Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin, The Edge from U2 and Jack White from White Stripes and Raconteurs) get together to talk about their guitars, their beginnings, their influences, and to make some glorious noise. This movie reminded me that I love rock. So sad, I had almost forgotten. I came home to blast U2, something I had not done in ages.
Even though I recently went on a Led Zeppelin spree in iTunes, I had never really looked at Jimmy Page.
As far as I was concerned, Robert Plant stole the show with that torso, those extremely low rise jeans, that hair and that feline growl of his. But look (and listen!) to Mr. Page now. He is seriously the sexiest man alive. Particularly when he holds a guitar between his hands. And plays it. With supreme ease. And out comes trouble. Out comes sexy.
This is what happens when you get older. When you are young you love Bono and admire The (inscrutable, solitary) Edge. When you mature, you love The Edge and you love The Edge some more and you are very much over Bono. The Edge has no antics. The Edge just is. And plays. He is a revelation in this movie. One, because he has a droll, Irish sense of humor. At one point he does yoga with a blackberry and claims it's some sort of ancient Celtic yoga, with as straight a face as they come. Two, he shows us his guitar tricks. You can tell an Edge riff from a zillion miles. Unique and not worth imitating unless you want to sound just like U2. He doesn't mind disclosing how he does it. He plays a magnificent, layered sound and it turns out that he is just strumming two notes (the rest is pedal work and effects).
Both he and Mr. Page are supremely laid back and confident (I guess in their success and their wealth and their age). Jack White, however, comes with a built in need to show off. That he is extremely talented there is no doubt. This movie makes one want to see him when he gets to be older, wiser, and less self-conscious.
The guys talk about how they started, and particularly for the elder statesmen, there is very funny footage of their younger selves. Nobody can escape the phallic grandstanding of rock & roll, but if there is a good corollary to rock stars aging in tranquility is that, at least in this case, they are a repository of gorgeous, experienced sound. When the three play together it's sheer joy, but I have to say, I was missing the bass and the drums. Without them, it may be the blues, but it ain't rock & roll.

NYFF: The Headless Woman

It's official: Lucrecia Martel is my current favorite filmmaker.
She is a talent to behold. If you haven't, you need to see her first and best movie, La ciénaga (The Swamp). Then you see her second film, La niña santa (The Holy Girl) and then you see her latest, La mujer sin cabeza.
My expectations were lowish because I had heard it wasn't as good as her other two films. Well, I loved it. I loved every second of it.
Martel is a truly original filmmaker, with a style and a point of view all her own. She explores the social and family dynamics of people who live in the province of Salta, Argentina, but it's the way she does it that is totally different from anything you've ever seen. In Spanish literature there is a genre called costumbrismo, and I guess the closest equivalent in English would be the "comedy of manners", except that costumbrismo is not always necessarily a comedy. Martel's films are a most original, modern, fiercely intelligent example of costumbrismo.
In her movies, the frame is always full of people, people who don't really like each other but who are almost on top of each other all the time. Families stick together like molasses. Everybody talks at the same time, mothers are exasperated with their children, relatives say horrible things to one another, and volumes are also left unsaid. As in all her movies, this is a film about the inequalities in Argentine society, particularly in the provinces, where the differences between the middle class and the poor are very noticeable, mainly because there is close cohabitation between them. Servants live in the homes of their employers. There is a strange symbiosis between people. In Martel's films I feel like being in biology class dissecting frogs, when in fact it's humans and their customs and behaviors we are asked to observe.
Her films don't remind me of anybody else's films. Sure, you could say that her jaundiced view of family and society may recall Luis Buñuel's, but Martel is a much more technically accomplished filmmaker. Her films are strangely, oppressively gorgeous. She creates an atmosphere that feels incestuous and sticky and she does this with great aesthetic discipline. In The Headless Woman, she shoots everything at very close range, with all the focus on the foreground. There are almost no wide shots in this film (I recommend you sit towards the back of the theater). This creates a very claustrophobic feeling and it is very disquieting, as if the world outside one's body is fuzzy. Martel sticks to this choice and it works, for this is a movie about a woman who loses her head. She has a car accident and she becomes disoriented, forgetful and confused. However, we don't really know if she was already like that, or if the accident triggers a response in her that is bigger than the incident itself. For a while we don't know if she is imagining stuff. Martel leaves enormous spaces open to interpretation, but these are not arbitrary or manipulative, because she gives you enough clues to solve the puzzle in a logical, organic, coherent way. In the end, everything makes sense in this world that is strange and banal at the same time. You can fill in the blanks of this woman's life by the incredibly observed details that Martel hands out with delicate, powerful brush strokes, among them dialog that is sharp and revelatory, and totally natural and an incredible ensemble of actors.
If you take the basic plot of this movie, (a woman is involved in a car accident; she is disoriented, then there is a coverup), you would never imagine the kind of richly layered physical, psychic and political space that Martel creates out of such an incident. The story is very intimate, but it also reverberates beyond the confines of the characters' lives. It makes me think about what happened in Argentina during the military dictatorship where murders and disappearances were covered up for years. The clique of those in power is all about protecting themselves no matter what. If somebody loses their head, questions their actions, misses their place in the established order, the clique, acting instinctively like a silent organism will make sure everything remains the same.

My friend Katya was saying Martel is the most interesting filmmaker out of Latin America. I think she is one of the most brilliant filmmakers in the world today.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the best Woody Allen movie in what? 15 years? Unfortunately, this is not saying much. The reason why it is compelling is because there are two bona fide movie stars in it: Penélope Cruz, in an incredibly intense, scary funny turn, and Javier Bardem, who is God's gift to women and probably the other sex as well.
When these two are together on screen it is as good as the best paella, the most delectable Spanish wine, the most delicious tapas you've ever had. I basically drooled for both of them.
However, even though I laughed here and there and I was very entertained, there are some aspects of the Woody Allen School of Express Filmmaking that really bother me.
Namely, things do not happen in the actual world. Lately, it looks like Mr. Allen gets paid by the tourism boards of European countries to create moving postcards with characters. In the case of this movie, I find it borderline offensive that Barcelona looks like a photoshopped postcard of the non-threatening tourist variety, as opposed to the vibrant, charismatic city it actually is.
In Woody Allen's movies, bohemian artists have mansions and every restaurant in Spain has a patio and a guitar player. You will say that I should extract the hair out of my ass toute suite but why can't you base a movie in such a great place and make it look authentic, instead of going through the trouble of shooting it there and making it look utterly fake, an unadventurous American's fantasy of what Spain must look like. The Disney version (and this is not a compliment). The cinematography by the great Javier Aguirresarobe is the color of paella valenciana. Everything is bathed in a golden light. Hard to tell whether it's pretty or cheesy.
As for the story, it is actually an endearing parable of a classic dilemma: do you risk all and live life to the fullest or do you play it safe and succumb to boredom and dissatisfaction? This is presented in the guise of two young friends, played by the lovely Rebecca Hall (very impressive as a neurotic control freak) and the luscious, yet strangely flat, Scarlett Johansson. I won't go into the plot, but Bardem represents love and danger and when confronted by him, each one of the young women makes the opposite choice. One experiments and explores and the other one seethes and worries.
Which brings me to my other beef with the movie. While Woody Allen has considerably toned down his misogyny in this one, the women (and to be fair the men as well) are completely one dimensional. In the case of the women, they either are tightly wound up and miserable, like Miss Hall, pliant ciphers, like Miss Johansson, or completely batshit nuts, like Miss Cruz, who not only is the fairest of them all but a formidable actress. In less cunning, dignified hands, this character would just be a crazy bitch on wheels, but Cruz makes her madness both believable and understandable. She is the best reason to see this film. She is also the only one who doesn't sound and act like a female version of Allen. Woody Allen tries hard to feel sympathy for the women, but I detect a certain patronizing tone. Call me crazy.
Meanwhile, horny Javier Bardem is a beatific and sage romantic, like a defanged version of Picasso, who tries to make 3 women happy and treats them like a benevolent father. If it wasn't because he is who he is and he looks like he does, as a character he would be totally ridiculous. He doesn't overdo the charm, he refuses to play the Ricardo Montalbán Latin lover and he finds dignity where there is none.
It is possible that Woody Allen has never been able to write multidimensional characters, but at least he once was a comic genius. Now he has mellowed (and so have the jokes), and in his golden years is content to direct his lascivious gaze at younger flesh. However, the sex scenes in this movie are shot as if he was mortally afraid to show his lust, which makes them awkward rather than erotic. The same goes for the sapphic kiss and the alleged threesome. It all feels embarrassing and forced, even with gorgeous, sexy actors like Bardem, Cruz and Johansson acting game.
Still, the movie has a wistful quality that is actually touching. It seems to say you better live life to the fullest (like they do in Europe, where they don't fret so much about sex and fat and alcohol and cigarettes and material possessions) and find your way in the world through embracing experience, not convention.

Ponyo

 

On a sweltering day, nothing more refreshing than to dive into an air conditioned theater to see an animated film about a tiny, feisty, creature of the sea. Ponyo is Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated feature and it is very beautiful. I was extremely moved by the magic of the animation. I confess it made me cry several times. It's absolutely gorgeous. The way Miyazaki and his artists capture the floating underwater world, the way they render the spectacular force of a typhoon, their devoted appreciation of nature, their generous explosions of fancy, the movement, which is exhilarating yet never frantic, Miyazaki's bounteous imagination, it is all magnificent. I think he comes from the tradition of great Japanese artists like Hokusai. Like them, he brings nature alive with his artistry.
As the implacable Magnificent Arepa points out, the problem with American animated features is that they think they are action movies. They are exhausting. And that's after five minutes. They seem to be made for people with ADD. They're all crazy, frantic, dizzying movement, but they rarely stop to breathe and observe the beauty of the natural world. Everything has to be over the top. They are technical show-offs, but they have no soul. (Haven't seen Up, but I'm skeptical).
Everybody says it's better to see Miyazaki's movies with subtitles, because the dubbing tends to sound cheesy. This is no exception. The stellar cast includes Liam Neeson (I think miscast), Tina Fey (totally obnoxious as the Mom) Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Chloris Leachman, Betty White and Lily Tomlin and none of them bring anything particularly spectacular to the voices, although the elderly ladies are very sweet. However, the voices of the kids are quite well done. Ponyo, nicely voiced by Noah Cyrus and Sosuke, voiced by Frankie Jonas, are more natural and funnier than the adults, which is a relief, because I expected cringing. We went at 2 pm, so there were plenty of kids in the audience. The audience for Miyazaki is a mix of children with parents and random adults, some of which look like they are not allowed anywhere near a playground, but that's another story. It was delightful to hear the tiny hands applauding and the little voices hooting in recognition when the Totoro Studio Ghibly logo appeared (nothing of the sort when the overdone Disney castle showed up).
For the record: I want to have a live Totoro. That's the only pet I countenance having. I want it now.
The movie starts with a breathtaking underwater sequence, mercifully devoid of dialogue, and there are many intensely beautiful moments, including a magnificent rainstorm, an island underwater, and the gorgeous depths of the sea.
My beef with the story, which is reminiscent of The Little Mermaid (the H.C. Andersen tale), is that there are gaping holes in it. Do we really believe that a mother, even a reckless one, would leave a five year old alone in the house during a typhoon? Even in a sweet little island in Japan? Miyazaki lets children know they can explore the world, and that there is the potential for darkness out there. I love that he has a five year old striking a match and lighting a candle. Don't Try This At Home, Kids! But at the same time, the intimations of potential grief are brought in and quickly swept away. So I wonder if the kids feel the same unease as me. I was mortified at the possibility of the father's ship lost at sea during a storm. And more mortified about Sosuke losing his mom. Miyazaki's kids are strong and resourceful, though they still need their mommies. It's right to be gentle: Miyazaki doesn't want to traumatize entire generations (remember Bambi and Dumbo?), but there is something a little too pat about easily resolved dangers.
The story is about love and loss, and it is much better at love than it is at loss, which is perhaps the way it should be, since it is for children. The way Ponyo falls in love and then defies everything because of her love is amazing. She has this incredible power, this focused, overpowering energy that anybody who has ever been in (early) love will feel. And I loved the irony that because of this explosion of feeling, she unleashes the forces of nature in a destructive way. Too much love of the human, too little respect for the sea.
Our damage to the environment is handled very eloquently and without preaching. I wonder if the kids get it that all our crap ends up floating in the beautiful sea.
But I guess mine are minor nitpicks. Ponyo is gorgeous and lovely and deeply moving.

Julie & Julia/Funny People

Considering this is always a wasteland of a season, there are far more interesting movies this Summer than ever. Why that is, I don't know, except that perhaps things are so bad that studios and distributors are trying anything to make their films stand out, which is good for moviegoers.
You can see two small, well crafted movies like Adam and Cold Souls, and you can also see the two big, slightly disappointing movies of the title. (You can also see the morally rotten garbage also known as Summer fare, but I don't go to those. I think they actually make you stupider).
So, the superhyped and long awaited Julie & Julia:
I'm sorry to say this, because I so wanted to like it, but the preview is better than the movie. I like Nora Ephron. I like her more than I like her movies. I am trying to figure out why, even though I enjoyed the movie as it was playing, I felt so unsatisfied with it after. The very game and funny Meryl Streep clearly has a ball playing Julia Child and getting to flex her voice muscles. The way she says FISH, in that Sesame Street Swedish Chef crazy voice, (which was obviously patented on Julia Child's eccentric speech) is delightful. I loved the love affair with food (there are shots of a perfect tarte tatin, beef bourgignon, and other delicious things that provide more interesting drama for us food lovers than what actually happens to people). I loved every scene in which Stanley Tucci, playing husband Paul Child, and La Streep are together. These two pros, as weird a couple as they are, have a totally believable intimacy and their scenes are sweet and tender and fun. Now, as other people have pointed out, the movie kind of loses charm any time we are not in Julia Child's world. I usually love Amy Adams. She is a wonderful actress, but she seems lost in this part. Is she a goody two shoes pining to make it as a writer or a calculating ambitious woman? I'd prefer if it was the second, because then she would have had something to learn from Julia Child. But she is conceived as a wide eyed innocent, and that is so boring. I did not believe for a second she lives in New York, much less in Queens, and works for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. She is too wholesome for all that. I must confess I have very little sympathy for successful bloggers who turn their blogs into books and movies. But that is just me, choking with envy, dear readers.
But even without me casting personal aspersions, Julie Powell's story of success, although it's absolutely true, gets the trite, overbearing treatment. It feels like a total cliché; whereas the story of Julia Child is exceptional.

Word on Judd Apatow's Funny People was so mixed, that I had to see the movie. I like Mr. Apatow. I like that his comedic world is complex, that it makes no apologies for being so male-centered, and that there is always an undercurrent of genuine emotion cursing through the funny, filthy, gross out stuff. He also taps the dark vein of where humor springs, inadequacy, insecurity, loneliness, pain. He is not at all afraid of the Jewishness of it, bless him for that. The man invented the bromantic comedy. Credit is due. As a writer and producer, he has spawned an entire cottage industry of male-oriented sophomoric movies, some of which I love, like Talladega Nights and Anchorman and Step-Brothers, and Don't Mess with the Zohan, required viewing for anybody who has ever been to Israel. He is a comic genius for our times. For our times, these are the comic geniuses we get: Apatow, Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry David. Oy gevalt.
Funny People is a very ambitious movie. It's a serious comedy. It is best when it depicts the desperation of young comedians trying to make it in a ruthless environment, doing anything to get a laugh. As we know, funny and happy are not one and the same, and funny always comes from pain. Adam Sandler is excellent as George Simmons, a very famous (Jewish) comic, who got his start like everyone else, killing or getting murdered at stand up, but became rich and famous, sold out by doing moronic comedies, and is now a lonely, nasty piece of work. He learns he is dying and he gets "a second chance" in life. And this is where the movie falters. There is some very funny writing throughout, some biting commentary on whether one can remain a mensch in show business, but the love story involving Sandler and Leslie Mann (the director's wife and muse), feels very strained. The last third of the movie is a total mess of ridiculous plot points and contrived reversals. And it ends, as in most Apatow films, with the bliss of male bonding.
Yet I liked it better than Julie & Julia. It has much more bite.

Two Good Small Movies

I really liked Adam, a charming, tender, smart love story about a guy that has Asperger's syndrome (a form of highly functional autism). It is very well written and it avoids all the clichés with a nice dose of reality and much equipoise. Credit goes to the wonderful writing and direction by Max Mayer, who resists sentimentality and going over the top in any direction. This is a very good example of an extremely well crafted, intimate film (not a common ocurrence in these shores). The cast is excellent, particularly mega cute good actor Hugh Dancy in the title role, and Amy Irving, who is amazing.

Cold Souls, a quirky sci-fi movie by Sophie Barthes, is very enjoyable. The conceit may remind you of Being John Malkovich, because it stars Paul Giamatti, playing an actor called Paul Giamatti, who wants to get rid of his soul, which is weighing on him too much (he's currently rehearsing Uncle Vanya). So he goes to a company that takes your soul out and stores it for you. Humans being the fuck ups that they are, bureaucratic complications ensue. Like in Adam, there is a sureness of tone, a poise, that keeps the movie from silliness.
But this is a much simpler movie than Being John Malkovich. It doesn't try as hard to be out there.
It presents its very imaginative concept matter of factly, which is very cool. Do not expect much metaphysical exploration. If you ask me, if you lost your soul, you'd lose your personality and your emotions, and you'd be like Wall-e without his chip. But since nobody knows exactly what the soul is, the movie is free to play gently with the concept. It is very entertaining, funny and smart. And because it deals in part with the Russian soul, also sweetly melancholy. Paul Giamatti is delightful. He'd be a great Uncle Vanya, by the way.

I Hate Mumblecore

I had to listen to the reviews, instead of trusting my instincts.
And so there we are, wasting a good two hours of an otherwise lovely Summer evening, at a screening of Beeswax, by mumblecore's resident genius, Andrew Bujalski. I had never seen any of his movies, so this was as good a time to try. I have seen many previews to other films of this "genre" (independent movies made by hipsters who seem to think that their arrested development and that of their friends is somehow interesting fodder for a film).
To judge from Beeswax, it isn't. Earwax is more like it.
This is what I could glean from almost two hours of nothing much happening:
We are supposed to be impressed at the forced and inauthentic inarticulateness of the characters, who spend much of their time on screen being unable to say a complete sentence. I posit to you that nobody on Earth speaks like, huh.... I... don't... know... gee... wow... hmmm... these... ha.... ah... peeo...ple. Unless they think that acting like a retard is a sign of hipness. In the movies, dialogue like this is also known as excruciation. But we are supposed to think it's very original and iconoclastic.
There is a plot, which if it weren't weighed down by the conventions of the genre (charmless hipsters, horrible lighting, mumbling, a forced sense of spontaneity), would be mildly interesting. Two twin sisters live in Austin (where hipsters need to counteract their Texan surroundings by toxically overdoing the hipsterness). One of the twins has one of those cute vintage stores that make me break out in hives. She is in a wheelchair and she is a bit of an asshole. The other one is some sort of teacher and tomboy who wears purposefully ugly clothes. The store owner has problems with her partner, another inarticulate person. Everybody has deliberately ugly haircuts. The partners can't understand each other, and end up suing each other. I could go on, but I can't because it is so boring.
I can surmise that perhaps the film is about the personal and the entrepeneurial, but it is as inarticulate and as sophomoric as its characters and I simply don't find these traits worth celebrating. I am not a phillistine who wants just action and explosions in films, but I want some drama. Some crackling dialogue. Some conflict that is not idiotic. Some energy from the performers. And some respect for the audience. Maybe, unlike the audience of mumble lovers, I wasn't born yesterday. I don't confuse deliberate sloppiness with originality.