confessions of an amateur cineaste

* Lars and the Real Girl. I queued this mostly because Patricia Clarkson & Emily Mortimer are basically always worth watching, and I was curious what drew them to the project. I still don’t know. It required suspension of disbelief that eluded me, and I am, honestly, a pretty credulous viewer. In this case I was constantly irritated by the things I was supposed to believe and the questions I wasn’t supposed to ask… or at least the questions the filmmakers weren’t going to bother to answer. Skip it.

* Night on Earth was a surprise arrival when Netflix decided to pass up the five ‘available now’ discs ahead of it. Which is fine, because it’s a great movie that I should have seen a long time ago. It’s totally my sort of movie, being basically five vignettes of cab rides all starting at the same moment around the (Western) world. Stick with it past Winona Ryder’s overacted LA segment for New York & Helsinki in particular.

* When I was on the east coast, friends made me watch Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. And I laughed. A lot. I feel compelled to admit this to you, the Letterboxed reading audience. Judge me if you must.

* I missed Heavy Metal in Baghdad at the film festival, but that was okay because it just came out on DVD. It tracks Iraq’s only heavy metal band, Acrassicauda. (There’s a heavy metal scene, but holding a band together, as you’ll see in the doc, is nigh on impossible.) It’s about living in Iraq, about being a refugee, about wishing you were home and that home is what it used to be. And it’s about metal. Rock on.

* Grace Is Gone is, so far as I can tell, the first decent movie John Cusack’s been in since High Fidelity. He’s the husband of a soldier killed in Iraq, and the film follows his initial grief as he tries to figure out how to tell their daughters what has happened. It’s a little unavoidably sentimental, but I also bought it enough to tear up a bit, so there you go.

* In preparation for seeing Ann Savage in My Winnipeg next week, I picked up Detour. It was really a terrible transfer, but the movie itself is classic noir — an average Joe getting caught up in a web of troubles to put it lightly — and she’s the ultimate femme fatale, hard and manipulative. Good times!

* While I was at it, I got Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee, which is an essentially silent film. It’s funny and weird (v weird) and includes hockey and a wax museum, which is pretty much win so far as I am concerned. I have to get it out again at a later date so I can watch it with Maddin’s commentary. Delicious!

* First off, did I forget to post about For the Bible Tells Me So? I am thinking I did! Fail. Every year at the film festival there are movies I hear about in line, but never manage to see. For the Bible Tells Me So was 07’s, and now I understand why. I’ve seen a lot of queer-themed documentaries, and even a few others on gays-and-religion, but this one was easily the best. American-focused, of course.

* On a recommendation from a friend, I queued Shackleton, the story of the 1914 trip of the Endurance to the South Pole. Beautifully filmed & acted. It is long, yes, but I thought it was well-paced. I have to admit I was particularly taken with all the scenes including the men singing, showing how they passed the time at sea. Also, I have to give a shout-out to Matt Day who played the photographer Frank Hurley. He’s in one of my favorite comfort movies, the criminally underrated Love and Other Catastrophes (which seriously needs to come out on DVD soon, before my VHS wears out.) Oh! It was also neat to see it after going to the Maritime Museum in Greenwich this summer — they have the replica of the James Caird used in the film.

* The Lion in Winter was utterly delicious. I’m just sorry that there wasn’t a revival of it to pair with last winter’s big screen adventure with Becket.

* Kiss of Death was in my queue already after Noir City, but I bumped it to the top after the death of Richard Widmark in late March. It’s a solid enough noir on its own, but (as everyone knows) it’s Widmark’s portrayal of the villain Tommy Udo that makes it particularly worth seeing.

* The week after Widmark passed, his Night and the City director Jules Dassin died, so Rififi moved on up the queue. I wrote a bit about Dassin on the ephemeral blog already, but in between the two films, he was blacklisted, which is why Rififi was filmed in France. It’s *the* classic heist film, worth seeing for lots of things, but in particular for the heist itself, something like a half hour with no dialogue but an excellent score. Um. No pun intended. This is not a hijinks sort of heist movie. It’s very dark.

* The Best of Youth was a six hour Italian film, originally aired on television in four parts, and then as an edited version in the theater. I am a total sucker for any sort of epic family history piece, and this was beautiful and satisfying. Also, I might now have a bit of a crush on Luigi Lo Cascio.

* Toy Story, I realize, is sort of a random selection, but I’m in a group on Ravelry that’s working through the AFI Top 100. I actually hadn’t seen it in years, possibly not since shortly after it came out on video, and I was surprised to see how well it stands up. The animation is still strong (my favorite bits being the details like scuff marks at the bottom of doors), the story has a lot of great stuff going on, and probably the use of classic toys helps it feel all the more timeless. But the thing I noticed most about it this time around is that Andy’s is a single parent household. His mom cares for him & his sister, maintains a gorgeous home, plans his birthday and the family move, and there’s never a mention of a father. So cool!

I stopped posting Netflix stuff at some point last year because, really, I saw a lot and it was impossible to keep up with. I do want to still post some things I see on DVD, because they are interesting or lesser-known or just old or perhaps really terrible and you should be warned away. Basically, if I have something to say about it, I’ll post, but you don’t need to know that I watched In Her Shoes for the third time this month. For example. Not that I would do that. Do de do.

* Away From Her was a brilliant directorial debut for the astonishingly talented Sarah Polley. I heard a lot about Julie Christie in the (American) press, but Gordon Pinsent’s performance is what I took away from the film. Beautiful.

* The Lives of Others. Gorgeous. See it.

* Children of Heaven. This was so great! It’s an Iranian film about a brother and sister who have to share a pair of shoes (he lost hers, and they can’t afford a new pair). A lovely small film about a family trying to protect each other.

* Rope. Somehow, I had never seen this before! It was pretty cool to see John Dall again so soon after watching Gun Crazy. What a delicious role. I really loved the interview portion of the special features. It’s rare to watch a behind-the-scenes and have people be critical of a film. The screenwriter (if I recall correctly), thought that the murder should not have been shown (so as to increase tension as to whether or not there was a body), that Jimmy Stewart was miscast (his part should have had a sexual undercurrent with at least one of the murderers), and he also questioned the way it was shot. That point is interesting to me, because I think the illusion of seamlessness increased tension. It’s something that could be done better now, but was an interesting experiment then.

Being in Seattle, I also get to see Old Stuff on the Big Screen. It RULES.

The Prowler was part of this season’s Noir City festival. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a corrupt cop story, and I particularly liked that I never knew where it was going, right up to the end. That happens less than you’d think.

It was a double feature with Gun Crazy (with a young Russ Tamblyn in the prologue!) A forerunner to Bonnie & Clyde, with two fantastic leads, and some really great camerawork for the time, particularly with the getaway scenes.

Another night of noir featured Richard Widmark in Night and the City and Road House, the first of which is pretty much the ultimate noir role, and the second of which was a rather strange movie but totally engaging.

Finally, Cinerama ran Lawrence of Arabia again, and how could I resist? The first time I saw it for the whole package, this time I saw it for the visuals. Maybe next time I’ll watch it for the dialogue. It was best not to do that this time, as the sound dropped out for a bit near the intermission. Fail, Cinerama, fail.