When is the next 3:10 to Yuma?

I can't wait! I have decided to skip the apparently killjoy (to judge from the headline) review by A.O. Scott and I am ready to take that train tonight. I'm not a fan of westerns, but if they happen to have both Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, I'm so there.

Deep Water

A fascinating BBC documentary now showing at the Angelika, Deep Water chronicles a race to circumnavigate the globe singlehandedly on a sailboat and the conditions that led one of the contestants to a tragic end. The movie is not particularly suspenseful or gripping, but it provides a touching, troubling insight into the nature of failure. It's a film that investigates failure, which is sort of a breath of fresh air in a country where we seem to be incapable of admitting it.
Deep Water is less an adventure documentary than a meditation on the psychology and the human nature of failure. As usual, hindsight is always 20/20. As is the case with the other documentary about failure not showing at the multiplex near you, No End In Sight, about our debacle in Iraq, Deep Water calmly explains the accumulation of bad decisions, hubris, unrealistic optimism and undue pressure from sinister outside forces that hounded Donald Crowhurst, a guy who was way out of his league in even signing up for such a grueling race.
It also explores what it is for the mind to be alone at sea for months, most of it with fascinating footage of the men at sea.
They spent months and months of seeing only water; sometimes calm and infinite, sometimes furious and life-threatening. As a counterpart to the tragic figure in the film, the filmmakers present not the winner of the race, who doesn't seem to interest them in the least (a creative decision that's to be commended), but of another competitor, Bernard Moitissier, a Frenchman, who found in his solitude a transcendent, mystical experience. Before the race he said that any man who entered that contest wishing for fame and fortune was going to come to grief. Of course, he was totally right.
It is a terribly sad story and one of the most interesting visual aspects of it is to look at the difference between the footage of Mr. Moitissier, who turned the camera towards the sea, and showed splendid vistas, of glorious sunsets and also stormy waters; and the very crummy footage of Mr. Crowhurst, who was so overwhelmed and underprepared that he just turned inwards, towards madness.
It is a film that gives one much pause, a haunting meditation on character, hubris, the fragility or endurance of the human psyche, why we take risks, why men are always looking for crazy challenges, why some fail and others triumph.
It is about being human.

Poor Owen Wilson

It is by now old news that blond, crooked nosed, cutie Owen Wilson tried to take his own life yesterday. The only reason I mention it is to see if I get a million hits.

ps: I hope he feels better. We like him.

Superbad

With very high expectations, given the glowing reviews and the box office success, I went to see Superbad, the new Judd Apatow production. I'm a huge fan of the 40 Year Old Virgin, less so of Knocked Up, but still I consider Apatow a phenomenon in recent film comedy history.
For a teenage buddy comedy, I noticed that around me was the most diverse film audience I have ever seen in a theater. There were plenty of women, young and older, plenty of young males, but also older males, black and white, and plenty of diverse people. Alarmingly, there were a couple of children. This movie should be x-rated. You don't see it, but boy do you hear it, and it is unbelievably filthy.
Superbad is an unlikely love story between two mega nerds, Evan and Seth, played by the fantastic Michael Cera, who is a young master of the excruciatingly gentle deadpan, and by Jonah Hill; physically, the only true heir to the great Zero Mostel, and in this movie an unbridled monster of male teenage need. The filth that comes from this young man's mind, let alone his lips, is heart-stopping. I'm all for freedom of expression and particularly freedom of sexual expression, and freedom in comedy, where nothing is sacred, and long live Lenny Bruce and all that, but the obscenity in this movie becomes a bit tiresome after a while. There are the seeds of subversion in this extremely explicit, and sometimes funny, talk of sex, but how effective can subversion be if it becomes monotonous? I wonder whether Superbad does in fact reflect the culture or is it just that the writers have dirty minds? Are kids today so truly influenced by porn and so obsessed with sex? Or is Superbad setting the pace?
Still, even though I confess that I found the relentless barrage of vulgarity a bit off-putting, I welcome that a mainstream hit movie will make all those Bible thumpers call for the apocalypse. Now they will have even more reason to blame the Jews in Hollywood for the evils in this world. The obscenity is a slap in the face to the hypocritical virtuousness of an immoral God-fearing president, and as such, bring it on!
What Superbad makes clear is that the culture in America is permissive in everything but in deed. For a teenager, it is faux liberty. Porn is abundant, but real sex is not. Booze is abundant, but it can't be had if you are a teen, (and still they do get sloshed); adulthood is thrown right in front of your face, and it is a scary thing. Superbad explores the dark side of the nerd's angst, and by God, this is the angsiest trip since Gregor Samsa turned into a roach.
I read somewhere that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote this script when they were teenagers, and it shows, even though it has been massaged into something more substantial. The movie is great and most funny at exploring the tribulations of the teen mind. In the surprisingly tender coupling of Seth and Evan you have the division between civilization and barbarity. Evan, the one with the moral conscience, is a sweet bumbling loser with genuine decency. There is quite a disturbing scene of a sloshed young girl being extremely sexually aggresive with him. The moment of truth has arrived, and Evan is mortified and terrified, not only because of the act itself but because of the moral implications of taking advantage.
The lust and fear verging on panic of women is a constant in Apatow's male buddy comedy as is his insistence that real sex and intimacy make men very afraid.
Seth, on the other hand, is a monster of selfishness and his hysteria is palpable, as is his hurt at being abandoned by his friend. The best parts of the movie are when you see these two in action, whether they are parsing the mysteries of sex as if they were Talmudic scholars and particularly when they have a spat. They have a true relationship, a dependency that staves off loneliness and fear, and Hill is wonderful when he is wounded. Most reviews I read talked about the sweetness of the movie, so I was rather taken aback by its depiction of bully behavior, which is a constant in teenage life, and in this movie, practiced by adults as well, since in the Apatow universe (and therefore possibly in America) no man is ever really a mature adult.
The more puerile parts, like a too long subplot involving two irresponsible, childish cops and Fogel (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), the biggest nerd ever to hit a movie screen, are intermittently funny but they distract from the meatier conceit of male bonding in the time of hysteria.
I love that this motley bunch of Jews, white nerds in a totally white universe, sway and jive, or try their best, like superbad black guys. That's another subtle dig at a culture that is desperately in need of macho cred. Apparently, nowadays only ghetto talk provides that and the actors and writers know there is nothing funnier than a white nerd trying to pass off for a badass motherfucker. The funky music score, by the way, is excellent.
The movie redeems itself by ending like a love story, with a tender (platonic) love scene between the two friends, who go on to face their respective rites of passage on their own, lost in a mall, as befits the new romantic comedy in America.

French Class

Now that I'm back from France, I'm forgetting the French I learned. So I'm watching lots of movies in French, both at theatres and at home, to see if somehow something sticks.
So far, I've seen Blame it on Fidel, by the daughter of Costa Gavras, which is a diverting but kinda lukewarm coming of age story about a snotty little rich girl who grows up with very lefty, albeit bourgeois, parents. I wasn't as taken with the film as I expected, although the little girl is appropriately snotty and it is interesting to see an unsympathetic little girl for whom you do muster some sympathy. The politics of the parents may be virtuous, but in the highly hierarchical, unforgiving world of childhood, they may wreak havoc while you are growing up and finding out who you are. It's a wonderful subject for a film yet one watches this movie thinking that there is a better movie buried in there somewhere.
Dans Paris is a terribly obnoxious film starring my darling Romain Duris. The film tries to be now like the films of the nouvelle vague were in the sixties, except that what was fresh and new and bracingly disorienting then seems painfully embarrassing done today, even if it's an homage. The only reason I sat through it was because it was French Class. Otherwise, I'd have seriously considered leaving after five minutes. Which was good, because it gets slightly better as it progresses. Dans Paris is a melange of French directorial styles (early Truffaut and Godard), including an actually lovely musical number over the phone, a la Jacques Demy. It starts out in a completely maddening, pretentious way, but somehow it grabs you. Some of it is relatively charming, most of it is just very proud of itself. It's interesting to watch French people trying too hard to lay on the charm. Ces't ne marche pas, like they say.
At home I saw the very scary horror movie by the Fréres Dardenne, L'Enfant, which won a Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2005. As a French lesson it wasn't very helpful, because the characters are barely literate themselves. But it is a tense, chilling film, in which the horror (no blood spilled, minimal violence) is that of total human detachment and a lack of moral consciousness. It is a fantastic movie, with an amazing story that keeps you at the edge of your seat, (including even a scooter chase) but it is intelligent and chilling and ultimately heartbreaking and the kind of movie you will never see done in America, land of the formula.