“We Are Marshall,” 24 December 2006, theater.  Our traditional Christmas Eve movie, this time we chose an inspirational one “that the whole family could enjoy” or at least watch.  And we did enjoy it.  Matthew McConaughey  (spelling?) stars along with David Straithorn in this retelling of the true story of a town/university/and individuals who rise from disaster.  In 1970, almost the entire football team (three weren’t on the plane), coaches, boosters, etc. of Marshall U in Huntington, West Virginia were killed when their plane went down in a lightning storm.  To rebuild or not to rebuild?  Led by the team co-captain who was not on the trip, the school and it’s president (DS) agree to try to rebuild.  They hire an unusual and inspiring coach (MM).  The result is a story about playing, not winning.  It is a good one for kids and parents.  I’m glad we saw it.  More sophisticated viewers may find it overly simplistic and treacly.  We did not.  It is formulaic but it is also good and meaningful.

“Borat.” December 2006, theater.  What can I say about this Sasha Barron Cohen Rorschach Test?  It is outrageous, offensive, absurd, anti-racist, hysterical (there’s a wrestling scene to die for or from), brilliant, mean spirited, sly, disgusting, and worth seeing all at once.  Cohen’s alter ego, Borat, is the 6^th most well known TV news anchor in Kazahkstan.  He comes to America with his chicken, his vial of gypsy tears to ward off AIDS, and his producer to study and learn more about America.  His racism, sexism, and anti-semitism are palpable.  The scenes at the rodeo, the Confederate chachka shop, Hollywood, and a bus trip with three middle class white kids are simply classics.  His over the top crudeness is straight out of the middle ages and is a joke about American provincialism as much as it is an attack on some ‘backward’ peoples.   Bronwen hated it, I found it left me breathless and feeling astoundingly conflicted.  Still, it’s a must see.  

“2046.”  December 2006, dvd.  See this brilliant Wong Kar Wai meditation on memory.  The followup to the interesting “In the Mood for Love,” it chronicles the post affair life of its lead, Tony Leung, in1960s Hong Kong.  The cultural revolution plays out in riots in the city while he goes to night clubs and has affairs.  This is an amazing movie.  Wong works like Mike Leigh with storyboards alone yet he manages to extract magical performances from his leads, including Gong Li, while working without either a script or a big budget. 

“High Noon,” October 2006, video.  Hard to imagine, but I’ve never seen this 1952 classic of the Cold War western genre.  Gary Cooper, Grace Kelley, Lloyd Bridges, and Henry Morgan, among others, tell the story of the sheriff (GC) who’s about to leave it all and go off with his new Quaker bride (GK) when he hears the baddest man is coming back to get him.  He takes up his badge and gun again.  The townsfolk turn yellow on him.  Some see this as an anti-McCarthy film.  Others see it as a metaphor for how real heroes need to fight against evil no matter what the risk and the cost.  It’s an anti-appeasement film to them, and thus anti-communist (given the context) and anti-fascist.  The film writer was a Red but GC wasn’t.  Apparently John Wayne hated this movie.  We liked it but also found the acting more than a little stilted in many places.  I loved the scene in the church.  A serious “Blazing Saddles” moment.  One of the few films of its day to deal with race in a serious way (and to acknowledge Mexicans) and also to deal with gender in a more serious and textured way.  Very interesting.  It is very high up on the list of AFI inspirational films.

“The Lake House,” September 2006, dvd.  Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in this nice little magical romance about a man and woman communicating and falling in love by sending letters to one another over from two years in the past and future.  It seems to me as though the man’s father’s ghost is mediating (so to speak) through the magic mailbox of the house he built, the lake house.  A nice little confused film.  Bullock and Reeves are good together.  Saw it with B4 and she enjoyed it also.

“Chariots of Fire,” September 2006, dvd.  Very fine, inspirational film we watched with BCS although she seemed bored by the whole thing.  Wonderfully acted and inspiring story of the British athletes of the 1920 Olympics, and especially the evangelist and the Jewish sprinter.  Worth seeing regularly. 

“Batman Begins,” August 2006, dvd.  Eric Rana stars as Bruce Wayne with Michael Caine as Alfred the Butler and Katie Holmes as Batman’s love interest.  A good and very dark movie (Caine is excellent!)  This is much better than the second or third of the series.  Too much Eastern cosmic mumbo-jumbo and ninja-like silliness, but it’s still a good show and I enjoyed it.  B did not see it.

“Munich,” August 2006, dvd.  I very much enjoyed this Steven Spielberg piece on the Israeli assassination program that followed on the Munich massacre of 1972.  It is really a meditation on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  It offers no easy answers, the acting is good, the passion is genuine.  Every now and then it slips into setups that are too easy, too pat, but generally it avoids those.  I’m not a big Spielberg fan but I really enjoyed this film.  Well worth watching.

“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” July 2006, dvd. Matt Damon stars with Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Blanchett, and Seymour Phillip Hoffman as a young man who aspires to be somebody and fakes it all the way.  It’s a world of double-identities, duplicity, and murder.  But it’s set in sunny Italy and the world of the super-rich where the lavatory assistant/pianist Ripley has arrived to supposedly bring a rich American ex-pat (Law) home to take over his dad’s shipyard.  It’s a very well-acted piece, but it was so very unpleasant to watch, most of the characters so distasteful, that I didn’t like the film.  It really disturbed me as a movie (which I guess is good).  But I didn’t enjoy it.  Only the women are ‘nice’ and even Blanchett’s character is a spoiled, albeit genuine, young woman on the tour.  A hard one for me to recommend because I found it so creepy, but a good film.

“Transamerica,” July 2006, dvd.  We enjoyed this very American film about a mtf pre-op transsexual, Brie (Felicity Huffman) who learns she has a son one week before she’s to have her gender reassignment surgery.  She has to fly to NYC and bail him out of jail.  He’s a male hustler, adolescent, who aspires to work in the porno business.  Their road trip back to CA is, of course, a story of self-discovery.  It’s not one big happy ending, but it is a good tale with uniquely American resolution to things.  None of that French ambiguity here.  Still, it’s well done, Huffman is great, and many of the supporting cast (Fionnula Flannagan as Brie’s harridan mom, Burt Young as her Jewish father, and Graham Greene as an Indian rancher they meet on the way) are really a pleasure to watch work.  A fun, interesting, and rather heartwarming, if not necessarily a challenging film.  Compare the interviews with the director with that in “Cache.”  These are all “aren’t they wonderful” while that is analytical and intense.

“Terminal,” mid-July 2006, dvd.  Minor Spielberg.  Tom Hanks stars as a visitor from Krachovia, some Eastern European country, who is stuck in diplomatic limbo when he arrives in NYC and can’t get out of the terminal because the US doesn’t accept his papers.  He also can’t return home.  Over time he becomes a beloved construction worker due to his diverse and remarkable set of talents, a friend to all, and a figure of immense meaning in the terminal.  His nemesis is, of course, the head of security/immigration, played by Stanley Tucci.  All in all, very minor, although it was fun to watch and harkened back to ‘screwball’ comedies of errors of the past.

“Cache,” mid-July 2006, dvd.  Excellent French film about social and personal guilt.  A couple start to receive surveillance videos of their house.  Who is it and what’s going on?  It all ties into the husband’s experience as a spoiled young boy, and that, in turn, ties into France’s horrific past of mass murder of Algerians, and that, in turn speaks to both Iraq and how we relate to our children today.  It’s a very good film with fine performances and enormous and intentional levels of ambiguity built into the film.  See the fine, if sometimes pretentious, interview with the director/auteur, who speaks to the issue of ambiguity, film, and history.  See this one.

“Failure to Launch,” 12 July 2006, airplane.  Light and trivial film about a 30-something who still lives at home with his parents. Matthew McConaughey is good, Sarah Jessica Parker is ok.  Cathy Blake and Terry Bradshaw steal the show as the parents who hire Parker to seduce their son and get him out of the house.  The premise is rather crazy and requires massive suspension of disbelief.  Still, it has it’s funny moments, and the friends of MM and SJP are also nicely quirky, fun characters.  Otherwise too white and predictable.

“Ice Age 2,” July 12, airplane.  Maybe it was just the small screen and the fact that it was on a plane, but I was less impressed with this sequel that featured the usual cast of playful mammoths, sloths, and saber-toothed tigers.  The work was funny but just lacked the sparkle of the original.

“United 93,” 13 May 2006, theater.  This is not a docudrama.  It is a fascinating, painful dramatic exploration of the fourth 9/11 plane featuring the uprising of the hostages.  It portrays a system caught with no plans for such eventualities and VP and Pres very much not in evidence or in charge.  Quite fascinating, especially about the air traffic controllers and the military who sought to act and were powerless to do anything at all.   The power of chaos.  Were the terrorists as they are portrayed in the film?  Some deranged zealots, others calm and almost sympathetic figures?  We’ll never know.  The scene of hostages and hostage takers praying at the same moments both works and grates as overly contrived.  But this is a powerful and disturbing movie that should, like “Bloody Sunday” made by the same filmmaker, be seen. 

“Life & Debt,” April 2006, dvd.  Interesting look at IMF controls over debt and underdevelopment in Jamaica.  The game is rigged, kids.  Narrated by Jamaica Kincaid.

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” April 2006, dvd.  Cartoonish Brad Pitt-Angelina Joie mating dance about a couple of assassins who—unknown to the other—work for competing government agencies, marry, live together in matrimonial boredom (the film starts with them at a marriage counselor) until they are sent to kill the same man.  This scheme pits them against one another.  It is a explosive, if not an orgasmic, festival.  Pitt is the better actor.  My God, I can’t believe I said that. 

“Luther,” April 17, 2006, dvd.  Choppy but almost too complete, and strangely flat historical drama about the life of Martin Luther (Joseph Finnes).  Most critics really liked this 2003 production and it caused a religious war on IMDB, but I still went unmoved.  Stellar work by Peter Ustinov as the prince of Wittenburg who protects him and goes along with his reformation, and by Bruno Ganz as his priestly pseudo-father.  Interesting because of the stuff it deals with but far too reverential.  Funded by Provident Financial, the financial arm of the Lutheran Church in America.  Makes salvation by faith vs works mean something in context.

“Danny Deckchair,” April 2006, dvd.  Cute Australian romantic comedy fantasy about a guy (Rhys Ifans) who sails away from his mind/soul numbing life on a chair lifted by helium filled balloons.  He’s ‘deposited’ into an idyllic town full of wonderful characters where he meets the true love of his life (Miranda Otto).  An open life is the only one worth living.  Nicely acted, if typically Aussie in being over the top in its humor.  Miranda Otto is gorgeous.  

“Office Space,” April 2006, dvd.  Funny comedy by Mike Judge based in part on his “Milton” shorts.  Three cubicle rats working at ‘soulless inc.’  Two are being fired, one promoted for no reason.  Very funny stuff and the thing with the stapler is quite good.  Still it feels like and is a cartoon come to life.  One of Jennifer Aniston’s first films.    Worth watching, especially about life and living death in the cube.

“Syriana.” April 2006, airplane from Bahrain (how apt as it appears to be almost about Bahrain itself).  George Clooney et.al. screw up the Middle East in this rather muddled look at CIA duplicity, American manipulation, oil company power, and the seeming futility of ‘good rulers’ trying to change the game.  It’s rather confused but still worth seeing just for the attempt at dealing with something this big and meaningful.

“Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” 15 March 2006, airplane to Bahrain.  Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, quick witted, perhaps too quick witted, neo-noir piece about LA with a crook masquerading as an actor, a gay private detective, an actress and a producer running around one another.  Very good dialogue but false through and through.  Rather like LA itself.  Too many side plays to be truly satisfying, but the critics sure liked it.

“Jarhead,” 15 March 2006, airplane to Bahrain.  An ok if overly long piece about Marine snipers during the first Gulf War.  Craziness and boredom, lack of meaning, false patriotism figure large, along with ill-health, depression and lack of meaning.  No one kills anyone directly.   Based on one man’s story. 

“Brokeback Mountain,” 11 March 2006, theater.  We saw this gorgeous film at the Lexington Flicks.  Won’t they ever fix the damn sound system and get better copies?  Even with the viewing flaws, this is a stunning, painful film about two gay cowboys who can’t come to terms with themselves and can’t live the lives they know they should.  Heath Ledger is brilliant as the taciturn, closeted, mostly inarticulate yet deeply loving and emotional Ennis Del Mar.   He is so good I now question Hoffman getting the Oscar.  Jake Gyllenhalle shines as the softer, more troubled Jack Twist.  Both give performances of profound depth.  Excellent supporting work by Randy Quaid as the bigoted rancher who hires them that first summer and Michelle Williams as Ennis’s wife Alma.  Ennis and Jack fall in love in a summer of sheep herding but it can’t be realized.  The times and the world of ranching and the American west aren’t ready, to say the least.  Stonewall never happens in this universe, although you know that Jack knows it’s going on in the world outside.  Ennis never seems to get it.   Maybe he just can’t.   This Ang Lee piece (Oscars for best directing and Larry McMurtry-best screenplay) is brilliantly photographed.  It is a loving and very sad film filled with grace and pain.  It felt to me as though their love remains adolescent and pure (although their situations become more and more complex) because it’s never allowed to truly ‘become.’  This is a very good film.  See this one.  Although Bronwen and my mom disagree with me, I think this one should have won the Oscar for best movie.  I wonder whether in addition to the ‘homie’ vote for Crash there was something of a concern about being seen as too ‘pro-homo.’  Very interesting looks at rural poverty and bigotry.

“Crash,” 10 March 2005, theater.  B- is off at a kallah, so B+ and I took ourselves out to see this Oscar winner at the Capital in Arlington.  A packed house.  We were both impressed (Bronwen more than me) by the intensity (Paul Haggis wrote and directed) and the fine acting of some of the ensemble as it confronts race relations in modern LA.  It’s a rough movie with elements of high humor.  Matt Dillon shines as the brave but racist cop, Ludicris is primo as a fast-talking carjacker who won’t become a slaver, Don Cheadel as a black detective with a carjacking brother, Brendan Fraser as a politico is all DA, and many more.  It’s well acted and very intense. I really liked Michael Pen~ a as the honorable Hispanic locksmith and Jennifer Esposito as the sharp Hispanic cop.  It’s a film that manipulates but delivers.  Still, no one is pure (except the locksmith and his daughter), all are affected by the undercurrent of distrust, dislike, hatred, fear, and just plain stereotyping.  No one is all good or all bad.  It’s a good film in that way.  We really liked it.  Would it, however, have won the Oscar if it had been about Houston or Kansas City instead of LA?  I think not.  A large part of this was a hometown vote by Angelinos rewarding a feel good/bad film about their own world.  Again, narcissism rules but that’s ok.  It’s a very good film and you should see this one but I think Brokeback Mountain should have won.

“The Cooler,” February 2006, dvd.  I liked this quirky William H. Macy vehicle from 2003.  He’s the unluckiest man in Vegas, where he’s employed as a cooler, whose mere presence lowers the boom on winners.  Alex Baldwin shines in this as the mobster-manager of the Shangri-La, an old-style casino faced with significant competition from newer houses in the new ‘family-friendly’ Vegas.  Nostalgia and brutality; friendship and cruelty.  Maria Bello is excellent as the cocktail waitress who, paid to seduce him to keep him in Vegas, truly falls for the sadsack.  It’s a nice comic book fable.  Paul Sorvino does well as the over-the-hill lounge singer.  The biggest problem is it can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s a cartoon or a mob movie. 

“The Squid and the Whale,” 22 February 2006, theater.  Off to the movies a second time this week.  What an excruciatingly painful film looking at a collapsing marriage and divorce in Park Slope (Brooklyn) 1986.  This is an autobiographical piece by the director. The shallow, no longer successful novelist father (Jeff Daniels is stellar, although the piece gets old as it goes on) with his limited trick vocabulary and arrogant pained defensive awareness of his own failure, his wife (Laura Linney) with her now ascendant writing career who goes from affair to affair while living off him and, when finally successful, leaves him, the two boys (one’s Kevin Kline’s son) so relentlessly fucked up by this couple, their vanity, and their juvenile selfishness.  It gets the time, the music—at least some of the stuff, not the punk or rock—the class stuff, and the agony of the divorce experience all right on.  It was one of the hardest films I’ve watched in a while and it left me feeling terrified about how my daughter will relate to me later, especially when I think of them in NYC while I’m up here.  Totally depressing.  A powerful, short (only about 80 minutes) film.  Excellent supporting work from Anna Paquin as one of his students and William Baldwin as a tennis instructor.  See this one but be advised, it’s hard to watch.

“Capote,” 21 February 2006, theater.  Bronwen and Bronwen are in NYC so I took myself to the movies to see this fascinating biopic about Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood.   Seymour Phillip Hoffman channels the dead author.  He is simply remarkable.  The film is very good, if a tad long.  The story of his journey west and the creation of a new form of writing, the ‘non-fiction novel’ really is quite impressive.  It deals with his drinking (omnipresent), his narcissism, his ambivalent feelings about the killer(s), and much more.  It also gives us a look into NYC elite culture, Nell Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird) his assistant in the original research for the book, and the people whose story he’s telling ‘out there.’  Excellent support, especially Chris Cooper as the officer in Kansas who helps bring the killers down.  But the movie is Hoffman’s.  For me, it’s a race between him and Straithorn (“Good Night and Good Luck”) for the Oscar. By the way, just as the movie ended, Bronwen called to tell me B+ had broken her wrist in NYC.  What a bummer.   See this one.

“Last Holiday,” theater, January 2006.  Queen Latifah is ok in this nice, romantic piece about a proper New Orleans working woman (works in a department store.)  She loves to cook but won’t eat what she cooks for fear of the weight, adores celebrity chefs, and has a crush on another sales clerk (LL Cool Jay in a really nice little bit of work.)  Then she learns that she’s dying and only has three weeks to live.  She flies off to Switzerland where she wins over the staff and makes the world right for all.  Very funny in many little bits.  Sweet and predictable.  Interestingly, it’s worth watching mostly because of a delightful bit by Gerard Depardieu as a celebrity chef.  He is an absolute joy in his role.

“Before Sunrise,” dvd, 15 January 2006.  We both really liked this 1995 Richard Linklater piece about Jessie (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) who meet on a train going to Vienna.  They ‘click’ and she agrees to get off and spend the night with him, and what a night it is.  Nothing insanely out of the ordinary just real, good, playful, serious, meaningful conversation by two smart young people still finding themselves.  It’s a real pleasure to watch and I think it resonated with both Bronwen and me because of our own travel experiences.  Things like this do happen.  It’s a good one to watch, and would make a great ‘date’ flick for adults at home or in the theater.  See this one.

“Walk the Line,” theater, 14 January 2006. Bronwen liked this biopic about Johnny Cash (Juaquin Phoenix) and June Carter Cash (Reese Witherspoon) that takes the tale from his youth to her finally agreeing to marry him.  It’s a good film about the music (lots of music and that’s fun!), the drugs, the sex, and the personal and family stuff (his brother’s death).  Phoenix is good, and Witherspoon is really fine!  Still, this is a very white film that needed to do more about the times, in Tennessee, about race, the war, about new cultures.  Yes, he’s the first (1964) to get Dylan, but how does that play out?  Where was he regarding civil rights?  Black/white in music?  The war?  The issues of the day?  Other than locked inside a prescription medicine chest.  I think that needs to be explored to make the movie more contextual.  Still, the music was lots of fun and the love story (especially Carter) was really interesting.

“A Mighty Wind,” dvd, 6 January 2006.  I liked this gentle send-up of the folk scene and the culture of musical reunions as perpetrated for and by TV.   Bronwen found it boring, irrelevant, and flaccid (perhaps like the scene itself as portrayed here, white, treacley-sincere, in some cases, just plain plastic and overproduced).  I found that to be part of its sly charm.  Another Christopher Guest-Eugene Levy collaboration, it reunites them and their ensemble: Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Ed Begley, Katherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, and several others from their earlier works “Best in Show,” “Waiting for Guffman,” and that classic of the genre, “This is Spinal Tap.”  This is no “Spinal Tap,” indeed, it lacks the edginess of that masterpiece and even the darkness of Guffman and Show, but I enjoyed it nonetheless as you get The New Main Street Singers, the Folkmen, and Mitch and Mickey coming back together for a benefit to memorialize their recently deceased producer.  I enjoyed the inane songs (well, most are inane, especially the title piece), the silly sincerity, lots of little sight and verbal gags.  The initial look at the producer’s family is hysterical and Ed Begley actually seems at home as the Yiddish spouting, Swedish-born, accent-free public television producer, but I also found it too kind to be entirely satisfying or exhilarating. 

Viewed in 2005:

“Cheaper By the Dozen, Part II,” theater, 30 December 2005.  I went to this one in Westfield, NJ along with B- and my sister Erica.  B- really liked it, Erica disliked it enormously, and I found it weak but less toxic than I’d expected.  It starts very slowly, to say the least, and really isn’t funny for quite a while.  It has nothing to do with the original “Cheaper By the Dozen” with Clifton Webb-Myrna Loy from 1950, based on the play of the same name.  There are 12 ‘fun-loving’ kids with an odd, insecure, dad (Steve Martin) trying to stay meaningful as they grow up and grow away.  The family goes off for one last summer vacation to the lake where they reconnect with their dad’s old nemesis, now a rich real estate mogul, Eugene Levy.  ‘Fun’ happens sporadically.  The best I can say is that it wasn’t as awful as I’d expected and I laughed a couple of times.

“Pride and Prejudice,” theater, 26 December 2005.  Little Bronwen went to a rock concert so we ran to the theater and saw this wonderful, sometimes cold, lush working of Jane Austen’s classic novel of class, avarice, and the moment of transition from a culture of pure formalist marriages of convenience to a world of romantic love.  Quite a fine, well written, well crafted, film.  Keira Knightly was wonderful as Elizabeth, Matthew McFadden works so well as Mr. Darcy, but (and I’m embarrassed to admit it) I really loved Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennett (he’s absolutely grand as the loving, much worn father), Brenda Blethyn as Mrs. Bennett (she of the fluttering nerves), and Judi Dench as the vile Lady Catherine.  Everyone is just great in this movie.   I found it moving and passionately romantic as it played the tension of class/caste formalities against love.  What a pleasure.  Another on many peoples best of lists.   Emma Thompson reworked the script.  She is a goddess and a humble one to boot.  She only gets a thank-you at the end of the credits!  See this one. 

“Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” theater, 25 December 2005.  The three of us went to see this one at the Capital.  Bronwen and I really enjoyed it.  Our daughter, who’d seen it three months before, was so dismissive that it really took a little bit of the fun out the thing.  But just a little, because this movie is one hell of a lot of fun, with silly homages to everything from “King Kong” to all the wolfman and vampire movies you’ve ever seen.  It’s playfully vulgar visually and a real hoot!  Lots of folks rated this in their top ten and I concur.  Great vocals by Ralph Fiennes (who’s everywhere these days) and Helena Bonham Carter.  They clearly had fun making this.  Great hand-crafted work as with the other W & G pieces.  Much better than “Chicken Run.”  See this one. 

“21 Grams,” dvd, 24 December 2005.  Fine 2003 Alejandro Innerita (he of “Amores Peros”) directed film staring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro (“Traffic”) with an outstanding piece of smaller work from Melissa Leo as Del Toro’s wife.  Wow, where to start.  Separate lives brought together through a car wreck, rather like “Amores Peros.”  Also, death and salvation are the endless themes here, but the movie really works.  Very brutal yet meaningful story of a math professor (Penn) who gets another man’s heart (Watt’s husband) when Del Toro, a reformed ex-con Jesus freak runs him and his daughters down.  Sound s weird?  Well, it is.  Justice and revenge in a battle after that.  A very fine and disturbing film.

“The Talent Given Us,” dvd party, 20 December 2005.  I saw this at a salon-like dvd party at Bruce Sylvester’s and that was half the fun of it.  Thanks Bruce.  This is an odd family road trip movie written, directed, produced, etc. by Allen Wagner.  It stars his mom, dad, two sisters and several friends.  The dysfunctional but long-lived Wagner family take a trip cross country to find Allen, who’s just not responding to their calls.  He is, of course, filming the whole thing.  They are a mid-60s parents, mid 30s daughters.  Dad has diabetes, high blood pressure, and probably had a stroke.  Mom is intense and controlling.  All are totally open about sex, their affairs, etc.  Not any family I know, or am I just from a repressed background?  Elder sister is an aspiring actress and LA phony?  The other bails early, totally freaked.  Is this part of the script or not?  Has to be to get friend Judy into the car.  All are total narcissists.  Most are heavily medicated.  It is a funny trip, a bit longish, and there isn’t a lot of emotional downtime, since they live their lives like Woody Allen’s family in Annie Hall but on steroids.  Wagner’s camera follows his parents and sisters into their bedrooms, their intimate lives.  Is this scripted?  Real?  Who amongst us truly wants to film our parents about to get it on?  The Lound family redux? Who can tell.  Some of course is silly conceit (they’re looking for Allen but he’s filming, they head west with nothing but the cloths on their backs but soon have a U-Haul full of cloths, an old girlfriend of Allen’s describes their relationship as a nightmare as she enters into her new life as a minister who issues popous graces) but the rest?  It’s well worth watching although it’s really painful in parts. 

“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” December 2005, dvd.  I didn’t like this teen chick flick very much, I’m afraid.  Too simpleminded and in all honesty, almost none of the characters are very interesting.  Another movie with rich, remarkably talented kids, all of whom have the world at their feet.  Even the one who works at the Walmart clone.  B- liked the movie. Yucky but relatively harmless.

“National Treasure,” December 2005, dvd.  Nicholas Cage as an obsessed historian/treasure hunter seeking to unravel the endless clues of the greatest treasure in the world, that of the Knights Templar, which somehow, inexplicably, came to be buried under NYC by the Masons before the American Revolution.  The mindless absurdity is breathtaking.  Still, clean idiotic fun and genuinely historical drivel.  Worthless, but B- liked it, although she found it scary.  She’s still not used to ‘realistic’ films with violence and danger.   I’ve got to get her watching real stuff.

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” 23 November 2005, dvd.  Willie Wonka done by Johnny Depp in this Tim Burton extravaganza.  It got bad reviews and my mom and sister didn’t like it, but Bronwen, Bronwen and I really did.  I miss a couple of the Oompa-Loompa songs from the old Gene Wilder piece but otherwise liked this.  Depp is truly creepy as a Wonka merging Michael Jackson/Mr. Roberts/Carol Channing (my sister’s suggestion) and the lyrics of all the songs are from Dahl.  I wasn’t happy with the Oompa-Loompa as one cloned figure (ah, the marvels of technology), nor was I thrilled with the inane justification of massive exploitation of workers, and I missed the deranged terrifying boat trip of the first movie, but this was a really fun and funny film and we just plain enjoyed it in a good laugh-out-loud way.  I think it may even have been better for the adults than the kids.

“Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring,” 20 November 2005, dvd, (Korean, subtitled.)  This is a very good, contemplative and slow moving story of a Buddhist monk and his young disciple on a floating, one-monk pagoda in a river.  The seasons chronicle the cycle of life of the young man as a child, an adolescent, an adult who has left the cycle and ‘fallen,’ his return, and the arrival of a new acolyte.  It is a powerful story, simple yet meaningful and moving.  Some of the acting is, in its own way, a bit over the top, but the bulk of it is well paced and apt to the scene.  There’s a great bit with doors placed in rooms without walls or outside the space without connection, where the doors are meant as mental barriers denoting consciousness in life.  Very nice.  To go outside the barrier is to move outside consciousness and be ruled by passion.  Very interesting stuff., and well worth the watch.

“Vera Drake,” 19 November 2005, dvd.  Bronwen and I both liked this painful yet straightforward story of Vera Drake, a straightforward working-class woman of 1950 who, for 20 years, ‘helped girls out’ of a pregnancy out of an understanding that they did not want to have a child, or with married women, more children.  It’s not hard to get, but it is hard to watch, because the performances are so good.  Quit the paradox.  We see her home life go from happy and rich emotionally to shattered after an arrest.  Directed with his usual skill by Mike Leigh, this one is textured and rich.  The class content is powerful but never overly bombastic.  The characters, including the male doctors and police officers, are not cardboard cutouts.  A few things are silly (the band of three musicians that sound like the Dorsey Brothers big band) but otherwise, this is one worth watching.  Fantastic performances by Imelda Staunton as Vera, Richard Graham as her husband George who stands by her, Eddie Marsan as the lonely poor neighbor, Reg, who comes to fall for and eventually marry Alex Kelly, the awkward daughter Ethel.  The contrast with the situation of the wealthy girl who, pregnant after a rape, goes for an abortion as well, is remarkably well done.  It’s interesting to see that Leigh’s father was a surgeon and his mother was a midwife.  The film is dedicated to them in the final frame of the credits.  A fine, fine film but disturbing and emotionally painful.  We went off straight away and wrote out a check to NARAL.  We hope you will too.  No additional features on the DVD.

“Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride,” theater, 14 October 2005, animated.  Johnny Depp again, this time as a voiceover in this short (77 minutes) macabre, funny, and perverse look at life, love, and death.  Interesting, Bronwen and I both liked it, enjoyed the music (Danny Elfin) and liked the romantic plot, but neither little Bronwen nor her friend Katherine liked it.  The voices are fun.  But you should see it with a better sound system that allows the music to be clearly articulated. 

“Finding Neverland,” dvd, 16 September 2005.  Johnny Depp is marvelous as James M. Barrie, author of  “Peter Pan,” “The Admirable Crichton,” and other pieces of Edwardian theater.  This movie is the story (loosely of course) of his creating Peter Pan based on his contact with  the Davies family.  Depp’s love affair with Sylvia (Kate Winslet), the dying mother who seeks Neverland in her heart is handled only as a friendship and the terrible losses of the kids (were they abused?) that led them to suicide are not even considered as possible but the film is very good and quite loving.  Depp is wonderful, Winslet truly fine, Julie Christie as her mother is really cold and inspiring, while Dustin Hoffman is a pleasure to watch as Barrie’s producer.  See this one, although learn more on your own.

“Hotel Rawanda,” dvd, September 2005.  An important and sad film that is well acted but not very well written.  Great work by Don Cheadle as the hotelier in Rawanda who saves thousands of Tutsis, a Hutu Schnindler, but he’s already there as his wife is Tutsi.  Nick Nolte as the Canadian colonel who cares and isn’t allowed to fire.  Very brutal but nowhere near as brutal as life.  Sanitized but still powerful.

“Because of Winn Dixie,” dvd, September 2005.  On ok film version of the children’s story about a young girl and the dog she finds who changes her life and the life of her father, a poor Baptist preacher (Jeff Daniels).  It is a kid’s film but has an ok little bits by Eva Marie Saint and Dave Matthews (who sings the title cut and a has a really nice little piece in the film.)  So very nice to see them and Daniels does well with predictable materials.  The kid and dog are boring.  Little Bronwen liked it.

“Ray,” dvd, September 2005.  We liked this well done biopic about Ray Charles.  And yes, Jamie Foxx is simply channeling Charles.  It’s remarkable.  The supporting actors are good and the discussion of the music business is enlightening.  Charles manageing to keep control over his work is amazing enough, but to do it the way he did while blind is quite remarkable.  A very good film.  Foxx deserved all the awards he received.

“How to Draw a Bunny,” dvd, September 2005.  A very interesting and unusual documentary about Ray Johnson, a performance artist and fine graphic artist in the NYC scene during the 50s-90s when he finally committed suicide.  Bronwen knew him a bit.  Even his most intimate friends and lovers really didn’t know him.  He remained brilliant, eccentric, idiosyncratic and opaque throughout his life, and the film makes this clear.  See this one.  A good discussion of both the artist and the avant garde scene with interesting interviews.  It pays quite a bit of attention to the question of how people make a living in that scene yet stay ‘true’ to their own understanding of how they ‘should’ live.  That’s really fascinating. 

“March of the Penguins,” theater August 2005.  A good nature documentary about the emperor penguins of Antarctica.  These individuals and this community struggle to reproduce in one of the most hostile environments in the world.  Well photographed and narrated by Morgan Freeman, although they are anthropomorphized too much.  Still, see this one.

“Broken Flowers,” theater, August 2005.  A fun and interesting film by Jim Jarmusch starring Bill Murray as a man of many silences.  Some people have raved about this film but, while we enjoyed it, I think it’s been praised a bit too much because Murray got stiffed with other Oscar awards.  Anyway, when his girlfriend leave him, Don Johnston—Don Juan (Murray), a man of wealth earned in computers, receives an anonymous letter saying he’s got a 19-yo son.  His neighbor (wonderfully played) sets up a plan to find out which of his old girl friends is the mother and sends Murray on his way.  Meetings with Sharon Stone and her daughter Lolita—and she is, Francis Conroy now a real estate salesperson living in plasticity (6 Ft. Under), Jessica Lange (a lesbian shrink who communicates with animals), and Tilda Swinton as the biker babe from hell.  Murray remains silent much of the time and you can’t even begin to see why they would have liked him now or why his new ex loved him now.  Much doesn’t fit (Conroy is too old by far and they place them together in the late 60s/early 70s) but there are some fine and really quirky bits.   Most affecting is Murray’s buildup to a small confrontation with emotion at the tomb of a much-loved ex and his efforts at breaking through with someone he thinks may be his son (played by his real life son Homer).  Much is left unexplained, as in so many Jarmusch films.  We liked it but I did crave some closure and a sense of who he is/was.  Murray needs to range further, although I remain one of his true fans.

“Kitchen Stories,” dvd, 15 August 2005.  We both really liked this funny if slow-moving and poignant Norwegian movie with an unlikely premise.  Swedish home economists are studying the movements of folks to try to design better kitchens.  To do this, they position ‘recorders’ who track the movements of people throughout the day.  In this case, they set a rather lonely single man in the home of an older rather lonely single man as they’re now studying the kitchens of bachelors in Norway (who’d-a-thunk there was enough of a market to be concerned about it!)  Anyway, there is supposed to be no contact, but over time that breaks down and these two men learn much from one another about observing, meaning, and contact.  It is a good, droll, and kind film.

“Motorcycle Diary,” dvd, subtitles, 14 August 2005.  I really liked this film about the young Che and a 9000 km trip around South America he took with a friend when he was 23/24.  Wonderfully acted by both professional and non-professional actors (Bernardo Gael is great as Che and the guy who plays his friend is really marvelous)  and directed with real skill by Will Sallas, this film truly allows you to watch the ‘birth’ of Che.  He is a different young man when he finishes this journey.  A wonderful, funny, real road trip on a Norton 500 through Argentina, Chile (not the most fun), Peru (the make or break of the trip) into Columbia.  It culminates in a leper colony with truly affecting developments.  See this one.  See also the features, including an interview with Che’s friend, now in his 80s and living in Havana for 45 years, Bernal, Sallas, the other main actors, Che’s daughter, and producer Robert Redford.  Really worth watching, although it is really ignores entirely the brutalities Che supported and perpetrated later in his life.

“Napoleon Dynamite,” dvd, 12 August 2005.  I watched this slight teen comedy about a total nerd with an amazingly dysfunctional family in Idaho and enjoyed it despite myself.  Its ending is really well done.  I loved the boy and girl geeks. What’s lovely about the thing is that they truly remain geeks and you do understand why other people find them to be so weird and unappealing.  In my heart of hearts, of course, I identify as one of those nerds who are socially inept and whose grip on reality is thin at best.  Anyway, better that this become a sleeper cult hit (which it did) than the slasher and sex garbage that most kids get to watch.

“Osama,” dvd, 8 August 2005. We both were strongly moved by this painful and powerful story of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban.  It is a film that shows reality going from bad to worse, where no good deed goes unpunished and where all joy in life is suspect.  It is a horribly and brutally painful movie without any gore.  It is all in the knowledge that this is real.  A young girl is passed off as a boy so that she will be able to earn money for her starving mother (a war widow) and grandmother.  The results are not good.  The trailer interview with the director is not great, but it has some moments that make it worth watching..  See this one, but it is seriously depressing.

“Kung Fu Hustle,” dvd, July 2005.  Very silly, sometimes funny, sometimes dumb kung fu movie that’s fun to watch but all empty calories.  I mean, I enjoyed it, but I don’t know why everyone raved about it so much.

“Cinderella Man,” theater, July 2005.  Traditional and very effective boxing film from Ron Howard that shows the life and travail of James J. Braddock, heavyweight champion of the world.  It is a fundamentally conservative film starring Russell Crowe that ‘rejects’ collective action by workers.  It also is a well made and good film that works on its own terms, pitting the gallant Braddock against the vicious pit bull of a Maxie Baer, a man who, according to the film, killed for pleasure.   The Irish vs. Jewish component of the thing in the popular mind/press is washed out entirely, especially since the Braddock’s manager and financial angel, the man who risked all to revive his career, is also Jewish.  Played with spectacular wonderful verve by Paul Giamatti, he outshines the rest of the cast.  Renee Zellwenger plays Braddock’s lovely supportive wife but she’s mostly a set piece.  The depression is powerfully portrayed and it’s good for people to see what could happen again.  As I said, a powerful if conservative film that acknowledges reality but twists history for its own purposes.

“Fever Pitch,” theater, July 2005. We all liked this silly love story about a high school teacher-crazed Red Sox fan (Jimmy Fallon) and a PR professional (Drew Barrymore).  It doesn’t happen that way, but it’s fun to watch and that season was sooooooooo good.  Go Sox.   A bit racier than I’d have wanted for Bronwen and her friend Alex when we took them to the movies, but so it goes.

“The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi,” dvd, May 2005, Japanese with subtitles.  This is a remake from a very popular series of films from the 1930s and again in the 1960s about a blind swordsman (Takeshi Kitano) who wanders around the country as a masseur.  He stumbles into a village ruled by two warring gangs of murderers and thieves.  He also encounters two siblings one woman and one a male transvestite, living as geisha prostitutes and thieves, who have vowed to avenge their family murdered by one of the gangs.  The film is very gory with remarkable swordfights, not long drawn-out affairs, but rapid slaughters.  The gang hires a traveling samurai who fights as an assassin and bodyguard to earn money to cure his ill wife.  The film is rough with lots of blood and flying body parts as well as ninjas appearing out of nowhere, but it’s also comic and it becomes increasingly surreal when the farmers all work in time to a beat they create (almost like “Stomp,”) one of the gangsters produces a modern pistol, a friend of the swordsman tries transvestism himself, and by the end, we have an entire village, including every dead gangster and the child versions of the two siblings tap/clog dancing in a Busby Berkley visual bit to drum music.  When does this take place in Japanese history?  Who knows.  The story is apparently traditional but the film is pure cinema un-verite.  My odd description doesn’t it justice.  It’s very good and well worth watching.

“Fog of War,” dvd, May 2005.  Robert McNamara is the subject of this auto-bio-documentary from Errol Morris.  Morris interviewed McNamara about his life, WWII, Vietnam, and much, much more.   Words of wisdom?  Sometimes.  Honesty? Sometimes.  Fascinating?  Always.  Horrifying? Frequently.  The war criminal as thoughtful policy wonk?  The loyal follower who knows the policy is doomed and acts out of love? The power broker who never did wrong?  It’s all in his mind but it’s fascinating.  See it.

“Look at Me,” theater, May 2005, subtitled.  This is a fine French film about Lolita,  the overweight daughter of a renowned novelist with a trophy wife barely older than the daughter.  She is desperate for her father’s affection (he’s narcissistic and so is she).  Indeed, her unpleasant characteristics are part of the film’s strength.  She’s tried acting and now wants to be a singer.  Her voice coach tolerates her and uses her connection to get her novelist boyfriend/husband in with the father.  The film examines narcissism without simply trashing those who become stars.  Indeed, it’s really a study in the tensions induced by success, the drive for it, the people left behind, the willingness of someone to care for a person because of who they are, not what they can do for you.  It’s a wonderful, complex, genuine, meaningful movie.  See this one.

“The Spongebob Squarepants Movie,” dvd, May 2005.  Yuck.  Not worth the time.  The first really bad kids film we’ve seen in a long time.  Sad to say, because both Bronwen and I really like the tv show and looked forward to seeing the movie.  I think even our daughter was disappointed.

“The Station Agent,” dvd, 22 April 2005.  This is a tough film to describe.  It’s also a pleasure to watch.  It is sly, smart, civilized, and very humane.  A very lovely, small American independent film that follows Peter Dinklage’s Fin, a very isolated dwarf with a personal and professional interest in trains, as he inherits a shack of a train station in rural NJ.  There he meets Joe and Olivia, Bobby Canavale and Patricia Clarkson, the former a loquacious hotdog vender, the latter an artist mom who’s lost her son in a fall.  It’s a very, very good movie that is touching and invigorating.  It doesn’t have the tightest ending in the world—an alternate ending is one of the outtakes and they were right to leave it out despite the flaws in the conclusion as it stands—but the film is really worth the watch.  The acting by all three of the principals is fine, and Canavale is especially endearing; the only exception among the secondary characters is a little girl who delivers her lines as though she were reading them.  And Dinklage is a pleasure.  I’ve not been thrilled with acting by ‘little people’ who seem to be chosen because they’re small.  Dinklage can really act!  The film was, a friend who knows him has told me, written for and around him.  He’s a real talent who should go far in film.  See this one.

“Millions,” theater, April 2005.  What a change from Trainspotting!  This little religious fantasy follows the journey of two brothers who ‘find’ about L250,000 14 days before the pound converts to the Euro over Christmas.  What do they do?  One, the elder, wants to spend, launder, and invest.  The younger, who talks to saints, and yes, they talk back, wants to help the poor and find out the status of his dead mom.   Is she really Saint Maureen?  It’s a good film that makes plenty of use of director Danny Boyle’s signature love of special effects.  It’s critical, analytical, and very funny in parts.  Devotion to doing good is also a key component of the film.  It’s good for kids and adults alike, although our 10-year old daughter and her friend (they sat on their own away from us for the first time!) thought it scary.  Worth watching, but the dvd will be fine!

“Million Dollar Baby,” theater, 25 March 2005.  Bronwen and I both liked this sad and well written boxing movie produced and directed by Clint Eastwood.  A strangely loving and kind film about a horribly violent world populated by unusual men and women.  It stars Eastwood and Hillary Swenk as a boxing manager and a woman fighter.  This one won the Oscar for best picture and Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman as an old, wise boxer who cleans up the gym Eastwood owns and runs) and it’s a fine script with excellent direction.  I must admit I thought it a bit slow (unnecessarily) in a couple of moments, and just a little longish, but otherwise it’s a really nice piece of work from a genuine talent.   It also flirts with melodrama but never sinks to wallow in the tears, although I shed a few.  See this one.

“Help!,” video, 19 March 2005. B and I are trying to show oldies but goodies to our daughter (now age 10).  This is the sillier and less interesting of the two Beatles films from about 1965.  I remember laughing my ass off when I saw it the first time and the first hour is still very funny with Leo McKearn as a Thuggie priest in search of his sacrificial victim for Kaili, the Indian goddess.  It’s all incredibly silly, borders on racist (ok, maybe it’s over the border) but it’s really funny and the music and set ups are good.  “A Hard Days Night” is next and then the Marx Brothers movies. 

“The Manchurian Candidate,” dvd, 12 March 2005.  Bronwen and I really liked this Jonathon Demme remake of the Sinatra/Lansbury classic, and yes, we know we’re almost alone in that.  This one featured Denzel Washington as the Gulf War major brainwashed by the Manchurian Corporation to make one of his soldiers, again Raymond Shaw played by Liev Schreiber, a congressman and then vice president and then president to please his mother, this time played with wonderful abandon and control by Merrill Streep as the loving, incestuous, and brutal mother/Senator staging all this.  All the acting is very good, and the script is taut and true in a totally paranoid manner.  I really liked it and bought into it immediately.  Others felt it palled beside the original.  I think this a less stylized piece and, in that sense, more believable.  Perhaps it just pushed all my paranoid buttons.  Again, the acting is really fine.  We also liked the shorts included on the dvd about the making of the film, the actors, and the director.

“Little Shop of Horrors,” (the musical) video, 11 March 2005.  I liked this piece of mindless fluff, although B didn’t and I’m not sure what b- thought about it.  Steve Martin all but steals the show in the role of a crazy sadistic dentist, and the plant otherwise stars. It’s not Nicholson or Corman, but this tale of a race of carnivorous plants from outer space come to conquer the world is fun. 

“House of Flying Daggers,” theater, 19 February 2005.  Bronwen and I liked this lyrical fantasy action film from Jiang Yimou.  It is a long piece about the battle between the forces of the state and the rebels who are expert with daggers and all aspects of martial arts.  Beautiful people abound in this classic and it is quite a pleasure to watch until it’s ending simply goes over the top with snow and perpetual conflict between the two guys as they fight over the woman both love.  That ending literally had people in the audience giggling.  I must admit, even I found myself saying “oh come on.”  Still, it’s worth if for the first 100 minutes.  It runs 2 hours.  Great special effects, unlike Crouching Tiger of a couple of years ago.  Somehow I feel like I missed a lot with bad subtitles.

“Control Room,” video, 18 February 2005.  Bronwen and I liked this documentary about Al-Jezeera, the Arab satellite tv station that has so much audience in the Middle East and the Arab community in the US.  It is both supportive and critical, acknowledging the bias of these Arab journalists (their despair and confusion on the fall of Baghdad is palpable) and the desire of some to transcend their philiopietism and become critical journalists.  At the same time, by using the war in Iraq, it trashes much of the US media as equally biased and controlled by the US military.  Pay special attention to the tumbling of the statue: both the distortion by the US and the Arab’s refusal to accept that any Arab might actually do this.  It is a powerful film.  Some of the journalists are very impressive and one of the most sensitive folks in the film is the US Marine Captain Rushing who is the spokesperson to the network.  The targeting of the network by US jets led to the murder of one of their journalists.  One moment of great interest is when one of the more critical reporters (critical of both sides) proclaims his belief that the American people will not accept such lies and bad policy.  His faith almost makes me weep.  It is a good film worth seeing.

“Shark Tales,” video, 12 February 2005.  Little Bronwen and her friend Katherine liked this story of a fish world at the bottom of a reef with its shark mobster rulers and its timid fish and crustaceans.  The adults in the room didn’t like it.  It’s nowhere near as good as “Finding Nemo.”  The hero, Will Smith’s Oscar, works at a whale wash (they’re literally playing Car Wash) and Renee Zellwenger (the clerk at the ww) is in love with him.  You throw in a vegetarian shark (Jack Black) who doesn’t want to take over father Robert DeNiro’s mob empire and control over the fishes, with aid of blowfish Martin Scorcese who is also Oscar’s boss.  Anyway, Oscar claims to have killed a great white shark (the vegetarian’s brother) and this leads to a battle.  Throw in Angelina Jolie as the sultry “Lola,” a fish only out for Oscar’s newfound fame and fortune, and you’ve got something that just doesn’t work.  The technology of the fish world is painflul compared to the silly simplicity Nemo’s ocean.  Don’t bother unless the kids need something colorful to watch.  The one really bright spot are the jellyfish thugs played by Ziggy Marley and Doug E. Doug who do the rasta bit and silliness that works.  Oh well, if you have to sit through it be sure to catch the fun music/dance number after the credits at the end.

“The Miracle Worker,” dvd, 11 February 2005.  We loved this 1962 Anne Bancroft/Patti Duke tour de force.  I hadn’t seen it since it came out.  Don’t confuse this with the remake that, I think, had Duke in the Annie Sullivan role.  See the original.  Black and white film covers story of Helen Keller’s early years and her coming to consciousness (rarely a more apt term) under the demanding tutelage of Annie Sullivan.  Somewhat romanticized about their relationship, but in all, a real marvel that should be seen again.  Our daughter really like the movie.  It’s a good film to show to kids and a good one to talk about with them.  See it again!

“Dinner Rush,” dvd, 4 February 2005.  We both enjoyed this very interesting look at elite restaurant culture in NYC’s Tribeca, starring Danny Aiello.  A homey trattorria run by Aiello and his partner (a pair of resteranteur bookies) has become a huge trendy hit under the guidance of the star chef, Aiello’s son.  A pair of mobsters want to take over the action and appear on the same night a major restaurant critic (an over the top performance form Sandra Bernhard mocking both elite critics and herself) and a prominent art critic and his minions show up.  It’s about the culture of the restaurant world with its star chefs with egos to match, the speed and craziness of the work and the kitchen, addictions, gambling, the transition from one culture in American immigrant life to another (nuveau Italian), mob life in NYC, and the permeability of NYC and American culture.  It’s a rich little sleeper of a movie marred only by a flawed and overly simplistic wrap-up.  It didn’t have to end that way, a big gap in the screenplay from my point of view, but it’s still a good little film that no one seems to have seen or heard of.

“I Don’t Want to Talk About It,” video, 4 February 2005.  Bronwen and I watched this Felliniesque Argentine/Italian piece from the early 1990s for her class on Spanish language film and conversation.  It stars Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last roles, and chronicles the tale of small village in rural Argentina (what do they do there, anyway?) A young woman whose husband has just died learns her daughter will never ‘grow’ and is a dwarf.  The daughter, Carlotta (Charlotte) grows into a curious, talented, creative, sparkling young woman and Mastroianni falls in love with her.  The title is about the mother’s demand that no one speak of or acknowledge the dwarfism, and then the circus comes to town.  An interesting if relatively minor film that’s worth seeing nonetheless, it’s got great supporting characters in the town’s men and women, including the incoherent mayor, the priest with his Protestant mistress, the lovable and loving prostitutes all of whom adore Mastroianni, the proper doctor, and the mother of the town’s other disabled girl, a loveable mute. 

“Law of Desire,” aka, “La Ley de Deseo”, 18 January 2005, vhs.  Wow, three in one long weekend.  Anyway, Bronwen and I enjoyed part of this mess from Pedro Almodovar’s later early period, that is to say, 1987.  Unlike his more structured pieces of recent years where, for example, plots sort of make sense, things happen in this that don’t make much sense at all (the exploding typewriter at the end of the movie, for example.)  Still certain things from this movie presage “Bad Education.”  A cool, calm script writer/director (clearly Almodovar talking about himself) confounded by an outside force in the person of a young man who completely disrupts his world.  The crazy transsexuals, in this case the directors own sister and former brother, and lots of great weirdness.  But this one holds together for about 2/3 of the story before devolving into utter silliness and bad twists and turns.  A madcap comedy gone sour in some ways, it’s also a crime story and a stage for Antonio Banderas’s first ‘big’ role as a young man obsessed with the director and willing to do anything to get close and then closer to him.  Interestingly, the guy who plays the priest in this one plays the priest who molests the transsexual character as a boy in “Bad Education.”  Almodovar’s recent films may be more mainstream but they are also more coherent and more meaningful.  As I said, we liked the first 2/3 of this but then it fell apart.  Better acted than many of his early films.  The woman with the face like the Picasso painting is in this one too!

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” January 2005, dvd.  Bronwen and I both really enjoyed this well-made Charles Kaufmann look at a man (Jim Carey) who decides to have unpleasant memories of a relationship removed via a new process.  (It won the Oscar for best original sceenplay a month after we saw it.)  Kirsten Dundst is in this as well.  Some parts don’t fit together, indeed, there’s almost an interpenetration of minds excised, and the thing is like a puzzle that doesn’t quite have all the pieces to fit inside the frame, but the movie is a pleasure to watch.  Carey and all the other principles do a very fine job, and they bring a lot to the making of the movie with their own memories acted out in their characters.  We really enjoyed the movie despite its flaws.  The dvd features are also worth watching, especially the interviews.  See it.

“Barbarian Invasions,” 17 January 2005 dvd.  Both Bronwen and I loved this 2003 look at characters we first saw in 1987.  I didn’t like the first one that much, quite frankly, all talk and no content.  Sex was there but never there.  This one is much better.  The leftist Remy, a failed teacher, lothario, and non-publishing American historian (yikes!) is dying in post 9/11 Montreal (re: the title, as well as references to other elements of cross border invasions), and his ex-wife (she left him because of his playing around), old friends, and the kids he’s alienated (his millionaire math wiz broker son and sailor daughter) come in person or virtually to share his last days.  The hospital scenes are horrifying about the failure of Canadian health care.  The leftist filmmaker is frank in his critique.  I’m sure there are many comparable horror shows in the US.  Anyway, the language is a joy, the culture is remarkable, and I shed more than my share of tears over this one.  The scene where the students come to say goodbye is priceless and tore my heart out.  I must admit I really, really appreciated this film.  “Do not go gentle into that good night, rave, rave against the dying of the light.”  It’s a film that makes you truly long for friends who you can discuss anything with.  America is such a repressed place.  I crave those friendships once again.  I had them in grad school.   It’s also a film that allows you to recall those days of free love that were never free.  What you lost and never knew you were losing.  I suggest people see it on dvd and watch the special track that involves the cast musing much as their characters did.  It’s a pleasure (and very humbling) to watch both such a smart film and such smart people.  That left me feeling sad about being so dumb myself and envious of their wit and openness, but also happy to have seen the film.  See this one.

“Bad Education,” 15 January 2005, theater.  I can’t believe we haven’t seen a film in two weeks but it’s true.  Anyway, Bronwen won a pair of tickets in her department raffle and so we saw this at the $9.25 a ticket (yikes!) Kendall.  Nice art deco.  The film is the latest from Pedro Almodovar and is another in his series of homages to classic genres, this one in film noir.  It’s ‘about’ an actor who shows up at a director’s office and tells him he’s his long absent best friend/first lover.  He’s got a story about their days in the school together and the priest who both molested him and expelled the director to keep them apart.  Lots of remarkable twists and turns, as in any noir.  As with all of his work, it’s set in the gay/transvestite/transsexual/junkie community and, as with the last few of his pieces, its primary role (beyond being a good film noir) is to normalize deviance and the community in Spain.  A good film, with fine acting from folks who were also in “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and other Spanish language films (including “The Motorcycle Diaries”) although I don’t think it’s as good as everyone says.  Very stylized and very analytical, but also emotional.  As Bronwen says, it draws you in and then forces you to step away.  Not as cold as something by, say Peter Greenaway, but the form entails considerable distance for the participants and the viewer.

Viewed in 2003/2004:

“Where the Red Fern Grows,” 27 December 2004, dvd.  A nice (not great, but nice) and engaging remake of the 1974 classic Disney dog flick/novel, this follows a young boy through the joy and tragedy of owning a pair of wonderful hunting hounds.  Set in hardscrabble rural Oklahoma in 1935, a boy earns enough to buy a pair of coon-hunting hounds and becomes very good at what he does.  OK acting (singer Dave Matthews first role), but Dabney Coleman is out of type as the nice grandpa.  As always, Ned Beatty is a pleasure to watch as the local sheriff.  Sad ending, to say the least.  Pleasant to see and very good for the kids.  Very pretty photography.  It may confuse some kids, of course, about why you’d want to hunt, kill and skin raccoons.  If there’s one big problem it’s that Disney is kowtowing to religious tendencies of the moment (made in 2003), putting way too much God into the movie.  “Meeting God halfway,” miraculous winds, sacred ferns, well, they just irritate me.  I’m getting disgusted by this sort of prattling on.

“Bye, Bye, Birdie.” December 2004, video.  Whatever you do absolutely avoid this wretched remake of the charming 1960s (50s-style) romantic, neurotic comedy about the rock star, the mamma’s boy, and America.  This turkey starring the very talented Jason Alexander (why is he stuck doing total trash since Seinfeld?), George Wendt, and a supporting cast of always-will-be-unknowns.  In the Anne Margaret role, they actually put an anorexic young woman with a nice voice but she’s supposed to be ‘busting out all over.’  Like June.  It’s a total embarrassment and it goes on forever!  We should have watched the lame “Princess Diaries II” which Bronwen 4 picked out and which was much better (albeit a little chick flick) than this.  Whew!  I’m really glad I didn’t have any strong opinions about this movie!

“The Incredibles,” 27 November 2004, theater.  I know that most progressive critics disliked this animated Pixar piece about superheroes forced to deny themselves (it’s all in the blood, superheroes are born not made, it’s biology over environment, normals are totally fickle/superheroes are true to their nature), but all of us liked this engaging and very funny film.  Wonderful send-ups of Edith (Edna) Head and the whole superhero comic book culture, it follows the “Incredible” family as they hide from the public in the superhero protection program to avoid lawsuits until the evil “Syndrome,” a superhero wannabe runs amok, killing the supers and attacking them all.  Yes, its stereotypical with dad superstrong, mom superelastic, son superwired and fast, the daughter who makes herself invisible and can block out the world with a force field, but its well made, funny, and very creative.   Good voiceover work by Holly Hunter, Craig Nelson, and Sarah Vowel from “This American Life” on NPR.  So sue us, we liked it.

“Sideways,” 24 November 2004, theater.  This is a very good movie by Thomas Payne (“Citizen Ruth,” “Election,” “About Schmidt” all reviewed in this list) about the road trip by two unsuccessful former college roommates, one a failing novelist cum English teacher (Paul Giamatti “American Splendour”) and a failing soon-to-be married actor (Thomas Hayden Church) through the central wine district in California.  Neither are very appealing but this film is as they ruminate on success, failure, their insecurities, maturity and immaturity with candor and hypocrisy.  Giamatti is totally depressed and a divorced failure.  Church is marrying for money and security.  He chases Stephanie Oh while Giamatti holds long conversations about wine and life with Virginia Madsen.  Very dark and very funny in the tradition of Paynes other three films.  Some hysterical bits with Church and a breathtaking discussion of Pinot Noir and other wines by Giamatti and Madsen.  See this one!

“Coffee and Cigarettes,” 20 November 2004, dvd.  The latest from Jim Jarmusch, this is sort of Jarmusch does Beckett over lots of coffee and lots of cigarettes.  Funny in parts, meandering in others, this is a plotless exercise in meaning, lack of meaning, conversation, social climbing (in a lovely piece staring Alfred Molina and James Coogan).  Some wonderful acting (a dialogue between Kate Blanchett and herself is very cool), Steve Buscemi as a waiter, and a totally flipped piece featuring a couple of Wu Tang Clan members and Bill Murray is a must see.  Finally, musings by Taylor Reid (including a fun interview with him) make it a good if uneven watch.

“Polar Express,” November 2004, theater.  Technologically sophisticated digital tracking joined to animation brings this children’s tale about a young boy and other kids who take a ride on the express on Christmas Eve.  Believing is what it’s all about.  Tom Hanks in several interesting roles and Steve Tyler of Aerosmith continues his film cameo run.  Interesting as a technical piece, but it’s cold and joyless, and not just because it’s at the North Pole.  Both Bronwen and I both felt uncomfortable with this from a Jewish point of view.  The little one, of course, felt no contradiction and was happy to see it to be part of the herd.  Some cool visuals.

“Bourne Identity,” November 2004, dvd.  Matt Damon stars in this good remake about a CIA assassin who develops amnesia and sets out to find out about himself.  Chris Cooper as the evil spymaster.  The whole system is rotten.  A good spy mystery/action flick.  Very well made.

“The Piano Teacher,” November 2004, dvd.  Isabel Huppert stars in this very good, well made and very painful look at sexual repression, S&M, passion, and the terror of giving in to it.  Huppert is astounding.  The film flips back and forth between eros and horror.  It is a very intelligent and very painful film to watch.  See it on DVD and be sure to watch the excellent interview with Huppert.

"Ararat,” November 2004, dvd.  Very interesting Atom Etgoyan film about the making of an historical film about the Armenian genocide that is itself fraught with half-truths and outright falsehoods to make the larger point about the masking of the genocide.  It also chronicles the modern legacy of the acts and their proximate ones, as in the short and unhappy life of the painter, Arshile Gorky who killed himself.  In turn, it looks at the moderns filming those older stories and the historians analyzing them, as well as the self-delusion of those thinking they can get the truth by going to the source and filming.  It contains many of the scenes Etgoyan filmed when he made “Calender” (see the last review in this list).  Fine acting from Christopher Plummer, Elias Koteas, Charles Aznevour, and Etgoyan’s usual cast, especially his wife.  Eric Bogosian overacts a bit, but that’s ok.  Layers of layers, some of truth some of falsehood that, when filmed, become truth.  One sees the film and knows it contains falsehood yet it plays as history.  A real meditation on film and history worth seeing.

“Around the World in 80 Days,” October 2004, dvd.  Little Bronwen and I watched this video while her mom was off at a conference.  The original, with David Niven and an amazingly young Shirley Maclain and Cantinfloss as the Mexican butler make this worth watching as a curiosity piece.  Lots of very silly cameos by stars of the day (Sinatra as a piano player, and Marlene Deitrich come to mind right off the bat).  It lays out every ethnic and racial prejudice of its day, that is the late 1950s.  Watch it with a kid so that you can explain why its such a mess.  It’s long and scenes go on way to long (a five minute bullfight that goes nowhere?)   But it was shot all over the world, and that was very unusual for its day also.  It’s really from another time and era.

“Together,” 11 September 2004, video.  This is a marvelous Chinese film about a child prodigy violinist and his peasant father.  The father, seeking the best for his child, sacrifices everything to get him to the city for lessons.  It is a lovely and humane film.  Really worth watching.  See this film.

“Rabbit Proof Fence,” 6 September 2004, dvd.   This is a very fine and serious Australian film about the shameful period from 1930-1970 where the Australian government stole the mixed race children of aboriginal women and ‘reeducated’ them to civilize them and eventually encourage their deracination.  It chronicles the journey of three young girls as they attempt to run away and return to their bands.  An intense and a bit of a scary movie for the little one, as it had a very serious theme and dealt with children really being ripped from their families by the government.  This was something we were worried about in our early years as parents.

“A League of their Own,” 5 September 2004, video.  We saw this fun film about the women’s professional baseball association during WWII again with the kidlet and really enjoyed it.  She enjoyed it too although the language was a bit coarser than I remembered.  I’d forgotten Tom Hanks’s part in the movie (including some language and behavior of an inappropriate nature).  A good if sort of hokey film

“Outfoxed,” August 2004, dvd.  Good documentary about the Fox Cable News network.  A serious attack on that reactionary bastion.  Worth seeing.

“Fahrenheit 911,” August 2004, theater.  We enjoyed this M. Moore polemic against Bush and Republican idiocy.  Some stellar footage, although Moore is an inconsistent demagogue and really should decide if Bush is too weak or too tyrannical.  What is he disgusted by beyond the whole package?  A double barreled attack that’s worth seeing despite its flaws.  It drifts into sentimentality with the mother of the dead serviceman and suggest that Bush went to war against Afghanistan to build a pipeline from the Caspian see (which strikes me as poppycock) but is otherwise excellent.  The clip of Bush at the dinner telling moguls “some call you the elite, I call you my base” is priceless.  See it despite its flaws.

“Intolerable Cruelty,” August 2004, dvd. George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones star in this Coen Brothers lightweight.  Clooney plays a take no prisoners divorce lawyer, while Zeta-Jones is the gold digging former wife of one of his clients.  Some pieces work, but as a whole the film is less than the sum of its parts.  Tricks and double crosses abound, but the people are all so nasty and selfish that we just don’t care very much.  In the end, I guess Clooney’s character is played for more sympathy, but no one is very nice in this piece of California’s divorce culture.  It’s like voyeuristic dumpster diving so that we can feel better than the nasty rich in the sun.  Not worth much.  I’ve much preferred their other films.

“Second-Hand Lions,” July 2004, video.  A good if hokey piece of work about two old men who become real uncles to a young boy in Texas.  Fun stuff with Robert Duvall and Michael Caine (especially Duvall) doing very good work.  Way too pat, politically incorrect, and fun to watch, it’s nonetheless romantic, full of silliness and racial stereotypes, and good for a laugh.

“Shrek II,” July 2004, theater.  Myers, Murphy, and Diaz are back as Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona in this fun sequel.  Not quite as good as the original, but less pitched to the kids also.  More grown-up and it loses something in that.

“Harry Potter 3: The Prisoner of Azkaban,” July 2004, theater.  Darker and more interesting in some ways, this is nonetheless less satisfying than the two earlier and sweeter pieces.  Certain elements don’t hang together unless you’ve read all the books (which I have) and the film is choppier and less complete that the others.  Why, for example, does he conjure his father’s stage image?  In the book, he knows his father used that as his shape-shifter form.  Here, well, who knows why.  It’s just not there.  I miss Richard Harris as Dumbledore and the kids are just getting older.

“Open Range,” 5 July 2004, airplane.  Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner are fine in this slow moving western about independence, justice, and evil.   Great gunfight, but too trite for its own good.  And Duvall really is good.  Costner’s relationship with Annette Benning doesn’t fit or work, but the movie is worth watching for Duvall’s total control, Costner’s delivery of trite lines, and Michael Jetter in his last role (he died of AIDS shortly thereafter) as a crotchety old livery stable keeper.  The battle of settled ranchers versus open rangers but not quite that simple, even here.

“Starsky and Hutch,” 5 July 2004, airplane.  Silly and occasionally funny redeux of the 1970s police show.  A couple of laugh out loud pieces spoiled by fake seriousness to carry the plot along.  Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as S & H are funny together and Snoop Dog is cool as Huggy.  Will Farrell as a truly bizarre con/coke dealer/gay voyeur is worth the admission.  The plot is worthless, the bits are all. 

“Goodbye Lenin,” 21 May 2004, theater.  We really liked this lovely little German film about a young man dealing with his true-believer mother after she wakes up from a coma following the fall of the Berlin wall.  It is a healthy critique of the west, a loving nostalgic piece for the east it admits never was, and a profoundly humane look at love and family in any ideological setting.  Well scripted and well acted.  See it.

“Triplets of Belleville,” 14 May 2004, theater.  We saw this one in an exhausted state late at night.  It’s good and it’s weird.  French animation, it trashes the US but is barely kinder to the French themselves.  It follows obsessed Gallic bike fanatics and mobsters.  Funny and exhausting, it is a bit long in parts, but wonderfully animated. [ed. and a fantastic soundtrack!]

“Master and Commander,” 7 May 2004, video.  I liked this one, and Bronwen slept through it.  Based on a 20 volume saga of the Napoleonic wars.  With Russell Crowe in a good role.  Presaging Darwinism, it gives a sense of how wars were fought at sea, how children fought those wars, and how small these ships really were.  A good film.

“Spellbound.” April 2004, video.  A very cool look at the national spelling bee with some truly geeky kids.  Really worth seeing.

“School of Rock,” 7 March 2004,