August movies, part the second
Altered States – Weird, and talky. There was some 2001 in it, and it sometimes resembled Scanners, but more Mamet than Cronenberg. The film debut of both Drew Barrymore and William Hurt, and the latter was wonderful – he is such a secure, thoughtful actor, and doesn’t seem to have changed his technique or ability in 30 years. I was pretty glad to reach the end of the film; it was kind of punishing in its coffeeshop philosophy and constant arguing. If you like ‘em bizarre, check it out, but don’t expect it to hang together at the end – I still don’t really know what happened during the last two minutes or so.
U.S. Marshals – Balanced differently than The Fugitive, possibly to its detriment; this one was more ordinary, even if the script was almost as good. Snipes just isn’t Ford, is the thing, and his story was less interesting to me. Good, though, with really fine stunts and solid work from all involved. Downey especially wowed me at one point in the long middle, with three or four different things passing over his face when looking at a woman; a nice little glimpse of the psychopath within. Oops, did I give something away?
Lisa Gerrard: Sanctuary – A poor excuse for a documentary, from one perspective, and a glorious and poetic portrait, from another perspective. Virtually zero hard facts about Gerrard, and SO ARTY that I thought my eyes were going to roll right out of my head. If you are already a worshipper of Gerrard, this will be 90 minutes of heaven; if you know nothing about her, it’s unlikely that you’ll become interested in her from watching this. (She is a vocalist and composer with one of the most unique voices ever given to a human. She’s best known as the female contingent of Dead Can Dance.) I know something about her, not very much, and I was irritated and bored, because I Netflixed the documentary so I could learn something I didn’t already know and couldn’t get from Wikipedia. Which did not happen.
To Have and Have Not – From Hemingway’s novel, co-scripted by William Faulkner, you’d think this script would be less clunky and repetitive. It’s too bad. Of course, a good deal (if not most) of the novel went out the window so as to make it to Hollywood, but that’s no excuse. However, this is the first pairing of Bogart and Bacall onscreen, the film on which they almost certainly fell in love, and the celluloid sizzles and snaps when the two of them are together. It’s well worth watching for that…if for few other reasons. BF liked it more than I did, so maybe a second go-round would change my opinion, but I doubt it.
The Public Enemy – The second 1931 film this month, and just as good as Platinum Blonde, although very different. It’s violent and sinful, and although there are weak title cards slapped on the beginning and end to make the viewer believe it’s a morality tale, I think it’s about sex and guns more than it is about teaching us a lesson. This is actually the first film of Cagney’s I’ve ever seen, and, in 1931 at least, he’s a strange actor – ultra-natural one minute, with terrific expressions, and stiff and cliched the next minute. His character is indelible, captivating (without ever consuming him the way that Scarface did Paul Muni), even if the over-loving ethnic mamma and the inevitable bad deaths are less than creative. More pre-Code work, including what may be the screen’s first obvious homosexual, the implication of a blowjob, and more. I’ve now seen this, Scarface, and Little Caesar, which are the triumverate of 30′s gangster movies, and I think this one is the best. The camera work is certainly above and beyond, and there are subtleties here which Scarface painted on good and thick and which Little Caesar ignored entirely (probably because Robinson was such a firecracker). Also, this is the film wherein Cagney pushes a grapefruit into a dame’s face, one of the great iconic moments in cinema. Really good stuff.
All That Jazz – If I’m not mistaken, Fosse‘s continued purpose was to show that singing and dancing need not happen only when one is happy and excited, but when one is miserable, lonely, frightened, or otherwise not bound by MGM and Technicolor. One of his themes was the exploration of life lived on the edge of disaster – the Cell Block Tango, the cabaret in Berlin. I think he was captivated by the spectre of life through the lens of show business, and it’s possible that he was personally incapable of seeing life any other way. This film is his conversation with himself about mortality, dance, women, and work. It is totally brilliant, but it’s deliberately unpolished, and that makes it sometimes difficult to interpret with precision. I watched it twice, and I still don’t think I absorbed it altogether. I took great pleasure in its 70′s-era self-seriousness, in the frankness with which it moved relentlessly into people’s lives, in its dispensation with traditional narrative. I walked away convinced that Fosse is a significant artist, whose work should be studied, not merely mentioned in passing. Also – now I know where Aronofsky’s montage technique in Requiem for a Dream came from, and the homage that Mendes was paying in the “Dancing Spartanettes” scene in American Beauty.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – Thoroughly awesome. Totally fresh, hilarious, fun, poking fun at hipsters even as it behaved hipsterly. Stylistically, this is what Ang Lee was trying to do with his Hulk, and what he unfortunately failed to do; he was unwilling to take as big a leap as Wright did. It’s too bad, because the leap really paid off. Flawed only in that it never stops moving, but that’s not necessarily bad when the movement is fun and happy instead of dire and murky a la Dark Knight. A love letter to 8-bit video games, it’s an absolute crime that I saw this before BF did. See it in the theater before it’s gone. Go now!
