Cinema Paradiso
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WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Cinema Paradiso is the story of the relationship between Toto, a young Italian boy who needs a father figure, and the local cinema projectionist, Alfredo, who assumes that role. Brought together through their shared love of the inner workings of the local cinema, they remain fast friends throughout Toto's youth up until Toto's departure from the small Italian city where they live.
WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT
After a brief opening scene, the film starts with a flashback sequence that begins in the church and then quickly transitions to the local cinema where the town priest, the sole audience member, rings a bell to signal portions of the film he deems unsuitable for public display. These portions are cut out by Alfredo and then either spliced back in before the film is returned or left on the cutting room floor, effectively censoring objectionable scenes from community viewing. As sources of stories and points of view, both institutions play a vital role in the community, reflecting internal community changes as well as external changes via the movies and newsreels. It's a fascinating view of the significance of a theater at that time to such a community. The movies shown at Cinema Paradiso are not so much "a" form of entertainment as they are "the" form of entertainment and the cinema itself a meeting place not just for watching movies but for activities as diverse as sleeping, carrying on clandestine affairs, reinforcing class boundaries, and providing fodder for the shenanigans of the local boys.
The film is described in the Wiki entry as "nostalgic postmodernism." I don't know about the "postmodernism," but the film does a superb job of building in 123 minutes a sense of nostalgia developed over 30 years, and that is as good a testimony to the magic of film as anyone is ever likely to achieve.
WHO ELSE LIKES IT
Everybody: The film won awards at Cannes, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and the Academy. It has a 90% critic rating, and a 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
P.S.- Recommend staying away from the "extended cut" remake. I shouldn't, I guess, because I haven't seen it, but apparently it "fixes" the decision to avoid over sentimentality by not revealing the mystery of what happened to Elena, the love Toto leaves behind when he departs for compulsory military service.
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil
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| "That's a PBR buddy." |
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
In Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, two self-described as well as stereotypically viewed hillbillies are on their way to spend some time at a "vacation home" cabin in the woods. The plan is to do some fishing, drink some beer, and spend some time fixing the place up. Coincidentally, a group of college-age kids likewise are camping in the vicinity. Their plan is to smoke some weed, do some skinny-dipping, and tell scary stories around the camp fire. As luck would have it, their paths cross--chaos and hilarity ensue.WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT.
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil isn't rocket surgery. Mostly what I like about it is that it's gut-bustingly
In an award-winning entry for The Criterion Blogathon, Film Dirt connected David Lynch's Eraserhead to silent films. This approach must still be on my mind because, having seen Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, I am reminded of the screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s. According to the Wiki entry, screwball comedies "often depict social classes in conflict" and feature "farcical situations," "escapist themes," and "plot lines involving courtship and marriage." Throw in a high body count, and you basically have Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil. Even the trope of challenged masculinity is there, both metaphorically and literally (watch out for traps!).
Ironically, my last review, also for the Criterion Blogathon, for the movie Paris, Texas, likewise centered on separation and anxiety brought on by a breakdown in communication (And what is stereotyping anyway if not a hindrance to communication hard-wired into us?). I ended that commentary on a cautionary note, warning readers that it can get pretty rough out there and reminding them to "just ask" the central character, Travis. Heck, I should have waited. Travis has got nothing on Tucker and Dale. This is no hoity-toity ivory tower existential crisis here. It's life and death, executed (pun intended) hilariously by two good old boys never meaning no harm. Squeal like a pig indeed.
WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT IT.
The plot twist lacks subtlety and therefore loses the element of surprise. We sort of know this already from the title. If it's Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil then Tucker and Dale themselves cannot actually be evil, and the real villain is identifiable from a mile away. Other than that, it's a bit gory and potty mouth, but if you can stomach a bit of gore, it serves a direct purpose and is less gratuitous than usual.Paris, Texas
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Following is my entry for The Criterion Blogathon, hosted November 16-21, 2015, by the blogs Criterion Blues,Speakeasy, and Silver Screenings. Head over to one of these blogs to check out tons of great content.
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Having done so on 19 August, I think I must have been one of the earliest to claim a title for this blogathon. I actually own a hard copy of Paris, Texas, and though I had not seen it in a while, I remembered that first viewing as a powerful and moving experience, so I picked it. Now I feel a bit like Travis, wandering purposefully, but aimlessly through vast, empty spaces, changing direction occasionally but ultimately making no progress. Like Spirit of the Beehive or Picnic at Hanging Rock, the economy of plot and dialog of Paris Texas make it a difficult film to explore in terms of its storytelling, so instead I've tried to approach it on literary and philosophical terms.
What's out there, Trav?
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Has there ever been a more arresting depiction of the absurd committed to film than Travis? Walking on the outskirts of Terlingua, Texas, his appearance is bizarre, his face haggard. To use a West Texas expression, he looks rode hard and put up wet, and yet he is wearing a suit and jacket with tie still firmly tied. His actions are likewise puzzling. He takes a drink of the last few drops of water from the plastic milk jug and then carefully screws the top back on only to immediately discard it. We do not know the cause of his suffering or how he has come to be where he is. We know only that he has suffered and yet continues so long as he is physically able relentlessly on toward the void. "What's out there, Trav?" his brother Walt asks rhetorically, "Nothing. There's nothing out there." The American Southwest it may be, but it is also the wasteland. Walt evokes this theme again later in the film with Travis' son, Hunter. Finding him behind the wheel of the car pretending to be driving, Walt asks him, "Where you going?" "Just driving," responds Hunter. No doubt it's better when you can do it at high speed in a 1970 Dodge Challenger, but the metaphysical grounding is the same in this film as it is in Vanishing Point--we are all "just driving."
No safety zone.
As Walt says, there is "nothing out there." However, this does not mean we must march relentlessly toward nadaalone and without solace. We may lose our way occasionally, but so long as we are on this side of the void, there is a chance for redemption. Dr. Ulmer, who examines Travis when he emerges from the desert asks him pointedly: "Do you know what side of the border you are on?" It is the central question of the film. Travis obviously has come perilously close to losing his way irreversibly, but because he has a brother who will go to the considerable effort it takes to intervene, he is still able to be retrieved from the brink. Not all are so fortunate. No one is coming for "the screaming man" whom he encounters on the bridge, and he's too far gone even if there were. Unlike Travis, who is mute when Walt finds him, the screaming man cannot stop talking; however, if he has a message, it has long since been lost in the cacophony of his own mind. Both have lost the ability to communicate. Walt, Ann, and Hunter are on one side of the border; the screaming man is on the other. Travis, who has himself teetered on the brink, understands this. At first visibly frightened by the screaming man, Travis reaches out to touch him.
Magritte's Pipe
The ability to communicate is what allows us to form bonds with one another, such as those that exist between brothers or spouses or fathers and sons. When we lose the ability to communicate, we risk becoming lost like the screaming man. Unfortunately for us, the tools we have for communication, such as language, are woefully inadequate and misunderstandings abound. Travis' first word to Walt is "Paris." The audience knows from the film's title that Travis is referring to Paris, Texas, but Walt of course thinks he means Paris, France. The misunderstanding is then extended to include the photograph itself. When Walt asks Travis where he got it, he responds that he bought it. Travis means the land shown in the picture rather than the picture itself, but, again, Walt misunderstands. This Magritte's pipe type confusion between the thing itself and some representation thereof recurs later as they are watching 16mm films of a family vacation when they were all still together. When Ann identifies Natassia Kinski's character as Hunter's mother, Hunter corrects her, saying, "That's not really her; that's only her in a movie." Such small scale confusions and deceptions happen all the time and do not normally set us adrift and lead to perilous journeys into the desert. It's when they are complicated by our emotions and scaled to fit those things most important to us in our lives that they become dangerous as they did for Travis and Jane. When Travis finds Jane, having since gone through the long dark night of the soul, he finally has the clarity he needs to be able to communicate their story poignantly, even through the artificial barriers of phone and glass. The pathos of the moment reaches us so effectively because of Stanton's superb performance and because we are intimately familiar with the steep price his character has paid.
Conclusion
What a brilliant, beautiful, melancholy film Paris, Texas is. Brilliant in its execution, beautiful in its performances, and melancholy in its presentation of the plain and simple truth of man's existential angst and the fact that the road to redemption--our relationships with one another--is also the road to destruction. To say we hurt the ones we love most is trite, but showing the devastating effect of the aftermath as effectively as this film does is anything but. Let's hope we're all watching this from a spot comfortably within the safety zone. When communication breaks down, it can get pretty rough out there. Just ask Travis.
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
George Lucas' creative genius is unparalleled. There's no question about that. That one guy is responsible for both the Star Wars and the Indiana Jones' franchises is just ridiculous. He's the Robert Johnson of the film world. And yet the steaming pile of poo that is The Phantom Menace along with the many happy accidents behind the development of the original Star Wars point to serendipity as the true force (pun intended) behind episodes IV-VI.
In 1976, Star Wars, of course, was not what it is today, and George Lucas was not given complete creative freedom. Had he been, we wouldn't have had Alec Guiness as Obi Wan, and the cinematography would have looked substantially different. The addition of Guiness, in particular, was extremely fortunate. The intent of bringing him in was to lend some gravitas to the project. He did that and more. Per the Wiki, Lucas, a loner uncomfortable around large groups of people, "rarely spoke to the actors, who felt that he expected too much of them while providing little direction." At that time, Lucas had completed just two films. They are two very good films, yes, but they are not on the same scale as Star Wars. Guiness, on the other hand, had an extensive filmography under his belt and was there to fill the directorial void. Lucas credits him as as having "contributed significantly to the completion of the filming." Although it's well known that Guiness did not think much of his role, especially the dialogue, by all accounts he was a consummate professional who mentored those around him, and as someone who had negotiated for a portion of the royalties, he certainly had a vested interest in seeing the project succeed.
Okay, so one down, two more to go to get back to something that's actually worth watching. Sigh. Oh well, regardless it'll be a certain amount of fun watching them with the kids!
When Marnie Was There
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What I like about it. When Marnie Was There has a way of keeping it real while simultaneously building an incredible fantasy world to get lost in. The protagonist isn't a robot or a monster or an anthropomorphized car trying to win the big race or save the world. It's a pre-teen girl struggling to understand a complex relationship with her foster mother and overcome crippling social anxieties stemming from a negative sense of self-worth. "Supernatural elements aside," says Kerry Lengel in his review for the Arizona Republic, "the heart of the story is a portrait of a frightened girl who learns to heal her fragile heart by building connections, both to her past and to the community around her." It is the supernatural element; however, that moves the story forward. The plot, while not altogether novel, isn't predictable either, and the story overall benefits tremendously from the old-school hand drawn animation.
Recommended for fans of Studio Ghibli, G-Kids Films, hand-drawn animation, and anyone curious to see just how engaging and thoughtful young adult fiction can be that doesn't involve death matches or warring factions of vampires and lycanthropes.
The Lady with the Dog
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What I like about it: First, who doesn't like a well-told story of true love that, for whatever reason, simply wasn't meant to be? Dmitri's reference to Tristan and Isolde serves as a reminder that this plot is nothing new. My particular high-water mark for this plot device is Brief Encounter, the 1945 film by Noel Coward, and while this film isn't quite as good as that, it comes pretty darn close. Oddly, although The Lady with the Dog actually post-dates Coward's work by fifteen years, it seems the earlier work of the two. No doubt, in part, this owes to the earlier setting. If the possibility of divorce and shame of infidelity were difficult in pre-war England, they were positively unthinkable in 19th century Russia, and unlike the lovers from Brief Encounter, Dmitri and Anna are not going to find any happiness at home either. It's very Russian in that regard. Even their happy moments together are tinged with a melancholic presentiment of departure. Also making it seem more dated are some of the scenes with Anna that have a very silent-era feel to them. They're done well though and lend a poetic sensibility rather than an anachronistic one.
Second, although simply and straightforwardly told, it's done very artfully. Several motifs, such as acts of charity and gloves from a lady's hand are repeated throughout the film. Whether this is simply to build characterization or to function symbolically, I don't know, but it certainly adds to the film's overall interest.
Third, the cinematography is gorgeous. The shots are composed beautifully, and many scenes could stand as works of art in themselves. I can't believe the film hasn't been chosen for inclusion in the Criterion Collection based on the strength of the cinematography alone.
And finally, I love the ending. Ikiru and Lost in Translation are the only films I can think of with endings that are as poetic, and speaking of the end of Lost in Translation, it clearly owes a debt to the final conversation between the two lovers in this film.
Who will like it? Fans of Chekhov, fans of cinematography, and hopeless romantics. I would call it and understated melodrama, and, yes, I know those terms don't make any sense together, but watch it, and you'll see what I mean.
Ball of Fire
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What's it about? Ball of Fire is an opposites attract story involving a worldly-wise nightclub singer, played by Barbara Stanwyck, and an ivory-tower linguistics professor, played by Gary Cooper. Both start out using each other for their own ends but inevitably fall in love. He needs her to complete research on slang terms, and she needs him for cover while she hides out from the police who are hoping to elicit testimony from her against her gangster boyfriend.
What I like about it. On account of because--Barbara Stanwyck. Seriously though, fanboyism aside, she's great in it. The list of folks involved in the film reads like a who's who of golden age Hollywood. The film was directed by Howard Hawks and written by Billy Wilder. It stars Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, and includes S.Z. Sakall and Dana Andrews in the supporting cast. Can't miss, right? It doesn't, though there are a couple of near misses. Cooper is a bit stiff and doesn't have the best chemistry with Stanwyck, and the film loses its way a bit toward the end (tickling scene, anybody?), but it comes in well above average overall thanks to snappy dialogue and great performances from Stanwyck and the supporting cast. It's not that Cooper is terrible; he's not, I just can't help wondering how much better the it might have been with Cary Grant in it. Still, this one's going on my list of Chicken Soup for the Soul movies.
A Canterbury Tale
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Following is a quote taken from Xavier Amatriain, an engineering director for Netflix: "We know what you played, searched for, or rated, as well as the time, date, and device. We even track user interactions such as browsing or scrolling behavior. All that data is fed into several algorithms, each optimized for a different purpose." Psssshaw, I say to that. All for naught. My Netflix recommendations are crap. Luckily, there are a few passionate humans left out there still making recommendations too. John Farr, who runs the website Best Movies by Farr, is one of the better ones, and judging from my first pass, I'll bet his recommendations against that algorhym any day. The website is very well laid out and aesthetically pleasing, and the format for the reviews refreshingly simple and effective, so much so that I think I'll steal it. He answers two simple questions: (1) What's it about? and (2) Why we love it.
Today, I chose A Canterbury Tale, a 1944 Archers film by Powell and Pressburger. Were I to create my own algorithm, I would want it to include finding any movies by those two, for it's as close to a sure bet as you are likely to get. Other notable films by Powell and Pressburger include The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I'm Going, A Matter of Life and Death, and Black Narcissus.
So what is the film about? It's about a British land girl, a British Army Sergeant, and an American Army Sergeant brought together by circumstance and kept together by their shared desire to solve the mystery of "the glue man," a mysterious figure who literally drops glue on the heads of unsuspecting females from the cover of bridges. What the movie is really about, however, is spiritual redemption through the trans-formative powers of the land and sacred places, such as Canterbury Cathedral. If you're wondering how the mystery of the glue man possibly leads to redemption in the Cathedral, well, that is the genius of it.
What I love about it. I love the way The Archers films incorporate transcendent themes. They remind me of Capra in that regard. Both do a very good job making movies as much about the forces surrounding the characters as about the characters themselves and without sacrificing character development or seeming overly didactic. Also, as mentioned above, I love the deftness of the way the narrative takes a right turn. It should be sharp and bizarre; the two have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and yet it manages to be anything but. It's hard to imagine what the pitch might have been for this movie. The component parts simply shouldn't fit together as well as they do. Oh, and the cinematography is great too.
Well worth a watch. According to the Wiki entry, there's an annual festival based around the film and its locations. I'd love to go to that.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
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The amazing thing about water drops is that they always take the path of least resistance. For humans it's exactly the opposite.--T.S. Spivet
Every movie creates a world that falls somewhere on a continuum ranging from the fantastical, such as the worlds ofStar Wars or Harry Potter, to those more or less like our own, like the settings from Ordinary People or Into the Wild.The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, the latest film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who also did Amelie, falls somewhere in the middle, offering a world simultaneously bizarre and familiar.
T. S. Spivet opens on a rural, idyllic setting in Montana where two very ordinary looking boys entertain themselves in very ordinary ways, ranging from dropping cans into the creek to playing on a see saw. The boys, joined by their sister, father, and mother, form a typical Eisenhower-era nuclear family. Underneath the surface, however, these family members each have their own quirks, as is evident from their description in the Wiki:
"T.S. Spivet is a 10-year-old prodigy with a passion for cartography and scientific inventions. He lives on a ranch in Montana with his mother who is obsessed with the morphology of beetles; his father, a cowboy born a hundred years too late; and his 14-year-old sister who dreams of becoming Miss America."Most boys, we know, are not passionate about cartography. And yet these characteristics are described so matter-of-factly (via voiceover) and moved on from so quickly that the viewer just accepts them as a part of the background of the story. Such is the magic of a Jeunet film. Because the viewer is given no time to consider these peculiarities, the cease to be peculiar, and an obsession with the morphology of beetles becomes no different than an obsession with gardening. In this way, Jeunet is able to introduce the viewer to a fascinating world that is enjoyable of itself but doesn't interfere with the story. The characters are not there simply to be quirky.
And what is the story in The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet anyway? Fittingly enough as Jeunet's first American film (let's just forget that whole Alien: Resurrection thing happened, ok?), it's a road movie. T.S., having been chosen by the Smithsonian to receive the "Baird" prize, must make his way to D.C. to accept the award. This story line moves the action steadily forward and drives the often hilarious external conflict. Additionally, a second, separate thread also drives an internal conflict. T.S.'s brother Layton, we learn, was accidentally killed when trying to unjam a rifle, and the family has become fragmented, not through their differences, but through the separate ways each member tries to deal with grief.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet is a very entertaining film that satisfies on multiple levels. Highly recommended.
Peggy Sue Got Married
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Of all the decisions one makes in life, few are as important or have such long-lasting consequences as the person one chooses to marry or otherwise spend one's life with. Peggy Sue Got Married takes the fantasy of being able to go back in time and do everything over again and explores it in the context of this particular life choice.
Peggy Sue, played wonderfully by Kathleen Turner, feints at her 25-year high-school reunion only to wake up back in 1960, the year she graduated. No explanation is given for this phenomena; the audience is simply expected to go with it as a necessary plot device or perhaps interpret it as a dream. What she knows now that she didn't know then, however, is that Charlie, the love of her life and the man she is set to marry shortly after high school, will turn to philandering when his dreams of becoming a singer melt into the ho-hum life of a salesman. Armed with this knowledge, she explores as an alternative a handsome loner beatnik kid who quotes Keats and Kerouac, rides a motorcycle, and dreams of becoming a writer.
It's interesting to compare this movie with the other time travel movie of the 1980's, Back to the Future, which came out a year earlier in 1985. In that film, it's all too easy to unintentionally make changes that drastically impact the future, and the plot revolves around preventing such changes from occuring. In Peggy Sue Got Married, the opposite is true. Peggy fully intends to secure a completely different outcome; however, she finds this surprisingly difficult to accomplish. Experiencing again all the things that attracted her to Charlie in the first place rekindles her feelings for him, and seeing things from a mature perspective she understands other options carried their own risk and uncertainty.
In Back to the Future, Marty has Doc Brown. Peggy Sue also has a genius friend to help her plan her course of action. Unfortunately, the attempt to integrate him into the story line is half-hearted and falls completely flat. The circumstance of the return to the present, which builds so successfully in Back to the Future, is reduced to farce and then to nothing at all in Peggy Sue, resulting in an ending that's a bit anti-climactic.
Though not as good as it might have been with a better ending, Peggy Sue Got Married is still very much worth a watch. The idea is intriguing, Kathleen Turner gives a great performance, and the sets and costuming are perfect.
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