Current music: Iron and Wine - "On Your Wings"
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ALIEN (1979) - d. Ridley Scott
I love the new edition director's cut. It's better than the first release, and Scott's proven that he's more adept at tinkering with finished product than most. The commentary track is great.
LE CERCLE ROUGE (1970) - d. Jean-Pierre Melville
Fucking genius. Melville is a fucking genius. 'Le Cercle' isn't his best film; it's better than 'Un Flic' or 'Le Deuxième Souffle', but it doesn't have the power to transform the viewer, which I think the holy trinity ('Bob le Flambeur', 'Le Doulos', and 'Le Samouraï') does. This is the most routine story I've seen Melville tell. It's as much a police operational as it is a gangster film, and anyone who's seen 'Rififi' (a film he easily could've directed) is going to be in comfortable territory. The movie it most reminds me of is 'The Day of the Jackal', and while 'Jackal' is English-language and highly politicized, there's much in common between the narrative structures of the two films. Once again, Henri Decaë is behind the camera, and while it never achieves the visual heights of 'Le Samouraï', there are few director/DP teams who deliver the goods like these two can.
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) - d. Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
I didn't expect to like this movie. At all. Singing and dancing aren't generally for me, and I've been avoiding 'Singin'' for years, even though I loved everything about Stanley Donen's 'Charade' and knew how good this movie's rep was. I was wrong, everyone else is right. With my personality, it'd seem like that alone would be reason to go on loathing 'Singin'', but I can't. It really does rule; it's a billion times sexier and smarter than my best-case scenario, even if the second half of the film flags and Jean Hagen is clearly a man in drag. I wasn't sure going in, but now I'm positive that this is the first time I've seen a Gene Kelly movie. I'd always assumed he'd be too mincing and cutesy and I'd want to kick his ass. Instead, he seems like a guy you'd want to have a beer with. Bizarre. And don't get me started on Debbie Reynolds. Or get me started on Debbie Reynolds. Either way, I'm happy.
THE FOG OF WAR (2003) - d. Errol Morris
This is a great movie, but you only really need to watch it once.
FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR (1986) - d. Randal Kleiser
Holds up amazingly well. Great cast (Veronica Cartwright and Cliff De Young as the parents!), great production design, just about everything in this movie is good. Joey Cramer never made a movie after this, which is surprising, because he handles everything the film throws at him like a born star. He also looks just like my eight year old brother, which is more creepy than actually interesting.
THE CINCINNATI KID (1965) - d. Norman Jewison
I watched this a while back, right when I was getting into 'movie lover' mode. I'd seen Norman Jewison on 'Inside the Actors Studio,' and never having seen a director speak at length about his career, I became fascinated with Jewison. My love affair with Jewison didn't last forever, but 'The Cincinatti Kid' kind of stuck with me. After all, it was my introduction to Hal Ashby (who cut the film, and three other Jewison features) and Steve McQueen.
Anyways, s'good. As good a poker movie as was made pre-'Rounders,' and it could teach that film a few tricks. Great cast, good script (Ring Lardner Jr. & Terry Southern), and it all builds to a nice ending. Am I out of my mind thinking that Amy Locane is the spitting image of Tuesday Weld? Is that just me?
SALTWATER (2000) - d. Conor McPherson
Conor McPherson's directorial debut. McPherson's an Irish playwright best-known on American shores for his play, 'The Weir,' which played to packed houses on both Broadways and won awards in Ireland, the UK and the US. I love his plays, but I like him best because of his brilliant screenplay for the film 'I Went Down,' which is probably the best Irish film of the last ten years not called 'The Butcher Boy.' Anyways, 'Saltwater' has never seen an American release, but I have a tape (I'm sneaky like that), and I love it. It stars Bryan Brown, Brendan Gleeson, Peter McDonald, and a bunch of lesser-known, equally brilliant Irish actors. It's a tiny piece, really, a comic character study, and while it's mostly stripped of McPherson's trademark banter, it's also pretty great. The real find is the actor Laurence Kinlan, who plays Joe, the youngest of the Beneventi family; it's pretty hard to make me miss being an awkward 16 year old, but Kinlan pulls it off.
Not available for loan-outs.
8 MILE (2002) - d. Curtis Hanson
I have a feeling that '8 Mile' will stand the test of time. It totally hedges its bets, which is why you see both Brian Grazer and Rodrigo Prieto in the credits, but I think it works pretty well. There haven't been many Detroit films since the seventies - all I can think of are the 'Robocops,' 'Detroit Rock City,' 'Out of Sight' and 'Zebrahead' - and it's always a cool city to see on-screen. I think both Kim Basinger and Brittany Murphy feel like they're in another movie, and it was clearly Grazer's idea to put Mekhi Phifer in silly fake dreads, but almost everything else sticks, and Eminem is further along as an actor than Mark Wahlberg was in 'Boogie Nights'. The biggest knock on the movie is that the hip-hop isn't real enough. The battle scenes, the rival gang, the radio-station stuff, it all works in the context of the movie, and it's not bad, but it just doesn't go far enough, feel real enough to me. That doesn't take away from the film's end, which is as good a music-movie ending as you'll see for a long time, but it still ain't 'Wild Style'.
BELOW (2002) - d. David Twohy
I hate sub movies. After 20 minutes of this crap, I hate them even more.
IGBY GOES DOWN (2002) - d. Burr Steers
I genuinely like 'Igby Goes Down'. I generally loathe movies about spoiled boarding-school types, and I know it's just 'The Catcher in the Rye' warmed over, but I still like it. Kieran Culkin, Jeff Goldblum and Susan Sarandon are all great. I think the editing's a bit too jagged, and the costume design is flat-out bad, but pretty much everything else works. It's too clever for its own good, but, if I were Burr Steers, I'd be feeling like I could've done a lot worse on my first go-round.
GHOULIES (1985) - d. Luca Bercovici
'Ghoulies' is no 'Critters'.
'Critters' is no 'Gremlins'.
Feel free to do your own math.
'Ghoulies Go to College'? Now that's a different story..
SHORTS
LUCKY THREE (1997) - d. Jem Cohen
Now that I have Tivo, I've started camping the schedules of Sundance and IFC for short films, grabbing whatever I can. Once again, Sundance comes up aces, and IFC disappoints. I don't really get it, but I think it has to do with money more than anything else. At this poin, it's clear that Sundance is the better-financed of the two networks, and while I'm always going to root for IFC and against Sundance, there's no doubt that they've done their homework and are delivering the better films, especially in the shorts department.
'Lucky Three' is an eleven minute portrait of Elliott Smith, shot in Portland, and it's just basically some shots of him walking around the city for some nice place-holder shots, and then him playing three or four songs on his acoustic, either in the kitchen or a recording studio. It's a perfect little film, great to look at, melancholy, and sweet, and the second the end credits started with the words 'A Jem Cohen' film, I knew why. What a fucking genius the guy is.
OCULARIST (2002) - d. Vance Malone
A nice little nine minute portrait of Dr. Fred Harwin, a Portland, OR (theme?) MD/Medical Illustrator who makes fake eyes. The look of the film is beautiful, and it engages the subject head-on in a way that feels just right. There are moments when Malone, who also photographed the piece, goes too deep into Mark Romanek territory, but it doesn't take away from the overall effect of the piece. Very cool.
SILVERSTAR (1999) - d. Harry Flöter & Jörg Siepmann
Like 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,' except live action and in German. A middle-aged supermarket employee is fired and sneaks back to work in the middle of the night to conduct a parking lot symphony of grocery carts. Some of the effects work nicely, others are too obviously miniatures.
WEEPING SHRINER (1999) - d. William Preston Robertson
This was the IFC entry in the short film sweepstakes, and it sucks. Stupid story, crap performances, bad location sound, worse mix. God only knows why it made it to TV.
DELUSIONS IN MODERN PRIMITIVISM (2000) - d. Daniel Loflin
Another Sundance short. Maybe the best of the bunch. I'm not going to explain it because it would ruin the fun.
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