June movies, part the second

Harper – A Paul Newman flick from 1966, one of his H movies (Hud, The Hustler, Harper, Hombre, all very successful). Part 60′s sex comedy, part gritty detective drama, and all Newman. The tone of the film changed dramatically from the first half to the second half, when things went from hep-cat talk and bikini dancing to majorly sadistic and violent, but again: there’s lots of Newman to go around, which meant I was happy. A surprisingly crappy screenplay (in my opinion) for someone who’s such a spectacular writer. Lots of interesting little performance details. Generally, two and a half stars out of five.

Broken Flowers – Jim Jarmusch directs Bill Murray. I find that I get pretty much nothing out of the indie filmmakers that broke out in the early 90′s: Jarmusch, Linklater, etc. This was no exception. The glaring, screaming point of the movie is that there are no tidy answers in real life, but I don’t need a film to tell me that. Terrific women in this film – Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, very briefly Julie Delpy and Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton in a non-weird role – and some visual discussion of The Female in a way that was splendid, and a scene of grief from Bill Murray that was moving, but otherwise, it took forever and was so noncommittal as to be obtuse.

The Woods – Reasonably good psychological horror. I like movies that work hard to evoke what it’s like to be a teenage girl, and I also like stories about nature being murderous and spooky, so despite its holes (would have made a better novel), I liked this. Patricia Clarkson and Bruce Campbell both do good work, but it’s Agnes Bruckner’s movie, and she does wonderfully for being so young.

Bottle Shock – A very uneven film, clearly meant to capitalize on Sideways, about an event that really interests me: the Judgment of Paris. Polonius would call it comical-tragical-historical, but it does none of those particularly well, dipping and diving between emotions and evoking largely confusion. Alan Rickman’s performance is well-tuned if a little repetitive (there are only so many times an actor can sip wine, reorient his face to show some significant realization, and look meaningfully at the person who gave him the wine before this procedure becomes a little tired), Chris Pine is pretty good under a truly horrible wig, Bill Pullman plays well a character with an idiopathic and almost comically enormous chip on his shoulder, and the 70′s are evoked nicely. Made me absolutely desperate to spend about a month in Napa Valley, driving over golden hills and going to tastings and eating wonderful California food and going to more tastings and perhaps never coming home.

Maxed Out – A documentary about American credit and its continually increasing critical-mass quality. There was not much about it that was new to me, but for people who don’t know much about credit, it will be a serious and frightening eye-opener. Very, very sad stories in it, up to and including suicide. Recommended.

The Remains of the Day – I put this one on the Netflix list in utter certainty that I’d seen it before. I thought I’d refresh my memory; as I am female and a romantic, I love Merchant Ivory movies. After several minutes of watching it, I thought, “Hm, I don’t seem to remember this.” After half an hour, “Wow, this movie has totally evacuated my brain.” After 45, I looked it up on the internet. Turns out I’d seen Howard’s End, the other early-90′s Merchant Ivory film with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Oh, gee, my bad. This one is everything a Merchant Ivory fan loves: it’s gradual, it’s elegant, it’s a period film, the performances are nuanced, the ending is tragic, the production design is lush, the setting is like a stage play: a beautifully made film, and only a small percentage of the population will not be bored out of their skulls by it.

The Fountain – I had heard that this movie was plain awful, a muddled and failed experiment. I beg to differ. It’s by no means a perfect film, nor is it even an extremely strong art film, but its message is one that’s close to my heart and its colors and visual themes are quite beautiful. There are moments of the sublime in it, which the most I can ever ask for from cinema. I find it most interesting as a contrast, though: Aronofsky made Requiem for a Dream around the same time that Christopher Nolan made Memento. Aronofsky went this way; Nolan made Bale into Batman. Ah, filmmakers and their career choices.

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – The BBC miniseries from – wait for it – 1981. The special effects etc. are really pretty decent for being from that year. The Vogons, not so much, but Jabba was not exactly a miraculous effect either. In any case, this rendition was much more faithful than the 2005 movie, but slightly less fun. And some of the actors were very plainly radio actors and not television ones. Still, not at all a bad way to spend three hours. (Adams is probably BF’s favorite author, so I hate to give this work such a lukewarm review – but I just didn’t fall in love.)

Swimming Pool – A French mystery thriller. Lots of sex, some drugs, very little rock ‘n’ roll. Overall, decent-to-middling; the plot twist in literally the last three minutes of the film made some radical change in what I just watched, but I wasn’t sure what it was. The movie contained long periods of low-level tension broken by sudden, often inexplicable behavior by the main characters; I was definitely interested enough to keep watching, but not enough to recommend it very highly. Rampling’s performance is good, with lots of interesting details, and I definitely believed her as a British fuddy-duddy with some oddnesses under the surface that are never fully revealed. Ludivine Sagnier is the latest for me in a long line of young French actresses who are thoroughly intriguing and whom I never see in another film.

Scanners – A little slow and crude, but a terrific premise, and while grody in the extreme, not as black-spirited and ugly as most of Cronenberg’s films. It also evokes the story of thalidomide, which is a tale I like to keep in mind whenever a new drug (or a new sugar substitute) comes on the market to solve all our problems. Great cult fare.