What movies did you see last week? (5/27-6/2)

Law Abiding Citizen
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Face/Off

Planet of the Apes - REWATCH. The OG one. A classic for a reason. It's particularly amazing how well the makeup holds up after so many years. There're shots specifically dedicated to showing off its plasticity, and it's kind of breathtaking. Thank God AMPAS had enough sense to give it a special achievement Oscar. Now, where was that sense when it came to The Elephant Man, I wonder...

Coach Carter - As good as a mainstream inspirational sports movie can be, I reckon. I'm not a huge fan of them so I merely enjoyed it but that's good enough for me. Sam Jackson rules.

Paterno - Prior to watching this, I was rather confused as to why Pacino didn't get a single nomination for it - not at the Emmys, not at the Globes, not at the SAGs - despite the project seeming like it was made for that type of thing. Turns out the answer lies in the film itself: Pacino's certainly good in it but Levinson simply doesn't give him enough opportunities to shine. Half of his scenes (maybe even more) is just him staring at TV screens or listening to other characters' dramatic dialogue. There are interesting traces of guilt Pacino buries within his portrayal but for Levinson they're mostly a device to be used for a final twist of sorts. What I'm saying is that it's a case of a director misusing the goods at his disposal. And the movie itself is very bland. What a letdown.

The Bay - A nice Barry Levinson palate cleanser after the mediocrity of Paterno but still very flawed. Levinson offers a very good interpretation of the found footage device but doesn't go hard enough on the creature aspect of it all. Which is a bit of a shame because the creature in question is the tongue-eating louse - literally the creepiest fucking thing I know of. How can you make a horror film about them attacking people and not have even one shot of this goddamn monster sitting inside a person's mouth a-la this? Not a bad film but a wasted opportunity.

Monte Walsh - I love me a good "our cowboy time is passing" western. This is a good one of those.

Miss Lonely - Obayashi's ability to conjure emotions and create a nostalgic atmosphere is truly remarkable, but I do feel that the movie's supernatural aspect is sort of unnecessary. Even if it does lead to some excellent comedic/dramatic setpieces. I just think the piece would've worked better as a straight dramedy. Without, you know, ghosts and stuff. Especially with hardly any internal logic behind them.

Beach Red - Why argue about Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line when you can just watch a combination of both which came out 30 years earlier? A very impressive and bold (particularly for its time) war film in desperate need of rediscovery.

Robin and Marian - This one's let down by Richard Lester's fairly faceless direction. He does seem to wake up while handling the more touching scenes but the rest of the film feels like it's flying on autopilot. Thankfully, the premise and the performances do keep it afloat, particularly the luminous Audrey Hepburn who's just heartbreaking.

Mira - A Russian asteroid blockbuster which is shockingly kind of decent. Its biggest problem is that it has its show-stopping action sequence fairly early on and never manages to live up to it with the following setpieces, although it always tries to keep the entertainment level going. Still, it's sorta slick and sorta enjoyable.

Angels & Demons - The sheer lunacy of the last act is genuinely enjoyable... too bad it's preceded by about 100 minutes of boring stumbling about the Vatican and pointing at uninteresting clues.

The Wind and the Lion - Although handsome and kind of epic, this one seemed to follow the Ridley Scott Robin Hood principle: "people aren't important - what's important is that you put them on horses". You got a movie about a sword-wielding but charming Moroccan sheikh (played by Sean Connery, of all people) kidnapping an American woman and her kids, and the most interesting character in it is Teddy Roosevelt. And I think that's a bit of a problem. All the good character stuff is in the Roosevelt sections, while the Connery bits are all about the horses. Many, many horses. An imperfect balance, if you ask me.

The Subterraneans (1960) Super rare MGM title that I found on a distant corner of the internet (not exactly proud of myself about that, but it's also how I saw the film below this as well). It's very odd for the time: MGM doing a sanitized version of a Kerouac story about beatniks. It's very fascinating in a way for being so far against the grain of the early 60s MGM mileau, while also being too square for the late 60s. And it is helped by a strong performance from Leslie Caron, and George Peppard is quite too. It's definitely something different.

Limbo (1972) This one is rare. So rare that a shortened cut (about 91 minutes as opposed to the 110 that Maltin's movie guide cites) is the only existent print online. And as such, I'll take it. Like many a Universal release of the era, it feels like a TV movie but a good, perceptive one. This film concerns three women (including Kate Jackson and Kathleen Nolan) whose husbands are missing in action or are POWs in Vietnam, and how they cope in the homefront with their worries about their spouses and their dealing with the issues of day-to-day life. As one of the few major-studio films about the effects of the Vietnam War that was made while the conflict was ongoing, this is a fascinating time capsule.

An Angel at My Table (1990) Long Jane Campion film looking at the life of an author (played by Kerry Fox) detailing her adolescence, her troubled years in a hospital wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia, and her attempts to write and get back into the world. It is meticulously made, but the middle section is very hard to watch, and the film could have bee tightened a bit.

Any Given Sunday (1999) Oliver Stone turned his eye to football, and we end up with a film that's almost three hours. Much of that time is spent on flashy imagry of violent games, which could be tightened a bit. Otherwise, its decent enough though, with fine performances from Al Pacino as a coachat the end of his rope, Cameron Diaz as a hard as nails new manager, Jamie Foxx as an egocentric player, Dennis Quaid as an aging quarterback, and Ann-Margret as Diaz' tipsy mother. But really, did it have to be this long?

The Affair of the Necklace (2001) Or how not to make a historical film. This is riddled with inaccuracies and seems to be an equivalent to the National Enquirer for the 18th century (schemers hoping to undermine Marie Antoinette! Corrupt clergy! Satanism! Sexual intrigue! See page 6 for more details!). It is also, quite frankly, pretty much inert and the cast seems to be ill at ease. A real botch, although the Oscar-nominated costumes are impressive.

The Door in the Floor (2004) What is it with John Irving? His books seem to set out to talk about any and every controversial issue under the sun, and this film, based on the first quarter of one of his books, deals with adultery, masochism, statutory rape, exhibitionism, and psychological warfare. It also has some scenes that involve a little girl aged 5 bearing witness to the full nudity of her father and her mother in relations with a teen, so this seems to want to outdo Rambling Rose in being a film where a child shouldn't be. In spite of it all, Jeff Bridges is typically wonderful as always playing a gorgon of a man (verbaly lashing into his wife, extremely well played by Kim Basinger, even before her involvement with the teen, and forcing full kamikaze disrobings of Mimi Rogers, his mistress) and the film is made with skill. If only it could have been more restrained than going with the sexual excess.

Melinda and Melinda (2004) is lesser Woody Allen, largely due to a plot that makes it an academic exercise that makes it hard to warm to: it's basically cutting back and forth between two versions of the same fictional premise, comedy and tragedy, perceived by two playwrights. And so, over 90% of the film is just a figment of the imagination. Blah. Radha Mitchell is good though as the central character in both stories.

Let Him Go (2020) is a neo-western, up until closing passages that more resemble some Charles Bronson offering. Diane Lane and Kevin Costner play a couple in the early 60s who go searching for their grandson after their widowed daughter-in-law remarries and suddenly vanishes. As traspires, it seems she married into a horrible family presided over by Lesley Manville, suggesting Ma Barker played by Mercedes McCambridge. Before the film ends, fingers will have been chopped off, and many dead bodies have resulted. It's a bit much on the violence, but Diane Lane is wonderful as always and Manville is one of the most terrifying villains in recent memory.

Father Stu (2022) is a film that managed to tick off everyone. For liberals, the idea of a Mark Wahlberg film co-starring Mel Gibson (looking haggard) is a terrifying concept in and of itself. For conservatives, it is a film about a religious conversion of a most unlikely individual, but it has over 75 f-words in the script, thus scaring off most who would go to a religious film and also thus richly deserving that R rating. I approached this an in between way, so to speak, with an apolitical viewpoint. It's ungainly, yes, but there are scenes, mostly in the second half, dealing with self-sacrifice and resignation to God's will that I found to be very moving. But I don't think this will be for most people.

The Shipping News (2001) I carped a bit about the taboo nature of John Irving stories when dealing with The Door in the Floor. But Door in the Floor, in spite of it all, had good performances and a cohesive story. The Shipping Where might not be based on an Irving story (it was actually written by E. Annie Proulx), but it feels like one of his. Light material involving romance and quirky locals coexists uneasily in this film with nymphomania, child abuse, rape, incest, abortion, black market adoption, mental retardation, and sundry other bleak things. The film is thus entirely two-faced, and it also happens to be mishandled on practically every level. The film is incoherent, the general look of the film is harsh, Kevin Spacey is miscast in the lead, Julianne Moore and Judi Dench look lost, Cate Blanchett is in and out in less than 10 minutes, and only Rhys Ifans in a small supporting role seems to hit the right notes. This is a dreadful film.

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) has some true benefits to it: wonderful cinematography, decent performances from a young cast mostly little known to me, handsome wildlife of Louisiana (filling in for North Carolina where this is supposed to be set) , but the basic storyline is inadequate, with a nasty final twist that soils its main character, making me wonder if even more of what we though we knew didn't add up. There are also too many preposterous PG-13 sex scenes for my tastes.

Spy Game (2001) Redford and Pitt team up on screen for a dull, drab race against time film with typically over the top Tony Scott antics. It's all pretty lifeless although Charlotte Rampling makes a welcome, lively cameo.

Breaking and Entering (2006) Anthony Minghella's final film, this met with bad reviews and apathy on its fist release, but, in spite of an episodic nature that doesn't cohere, it is still a thoughtful, intelligent film with a literate script and exceptional performances from Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, and Robin Wright.

Faithful (1996) Stagy three-hander involving a suicidal woman (Cher), the hit man hired to rape and kill her who ends up doing neither thing (Chazz Palminteri), and her husband who hired the assassination in the first place (Ryan O'Neal). The script is too profane, but in spite of it all, Paul Mazursky whips the proceedings along at a good clip, and the film is interesting.

Rent (2005). I am assuming this must have looked better in the 90s on Broadway than it does now. As it stands, the music isn't much and the film is often arch, irritating, and cloying.

The Caveman's Valentine (2001) Truly nasty piece of work with Samuel L. Jackson as a schizophrenic homeless man who between insane ramblings uncovers a a series of sex murders of men branded with hot irons on their backsides. Blech.

Scarecrow (1973) I was looking forward to this one, but it never clicked for me, too bland, too dull, even with Hackman and Pacino plus the underrated actresses Ann Wedgeworth and Eileen Brennan. A major disappointment.

To Kill a Priest (1988) is a slightly fictionalized version of the saga of a priest killed by the Secret Ploice for daring to stand up against the Communist government. Christopher Lambert plays the ill-fated priest, Ed Harris plays the KGB assassin who pretended to befriend him. It is intelligently done.

Harrison's Flowers (2000) Andie MacDowell's photographer husband David Stratherin disappears while covering the Bosnian war, so she heads into the killing fields to try to find him. Well-intentioned, but let down by a numbing, clumsy story structure.

The Naked and the Dead (1958) Big screen version of Norman Mailer's classic war novel feels way too heavily sanitized on screen, and suffers from lethargic pacing. This was one of the last films to come from RKO before they went out of business.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) - I wasn't a big fan of the first one. I really loved the special effects in this. Very groundbreaking and unique. However, the story went on way way too long. It did not need to 3 hours and 12 minutes. 5/10 for me.

Red Rocket (2021) - This is probably my first Sean Baker film, and it was quite good. Simon Rex and Suzanna Son were excellent in their roles. They definitely deserve more mainstream acting roles.9/10

Shaolin Soccer
A Sticky Woman
The Cleaning Man
La Bous-Bous-Mie
The Long Roads
No! You're Not Going Anywhere Without Me!
Rosalie and Her Phonograph
Fear of Shadows
Aani Maani
Project A
The Other Love

I was struck by the number of parallels I was able to identify between Two Girls on the Street (an early, Hungarian work by André de Toth) and The Other Love (a later, American movie, but with fellow Hungarians Ladislas Fodor and Miklós Rózsa on board): a female musician as the protagonist, a visit to a clinic, friendship between women through shared difficulties, a traumatic loss, a flight, a love triangle, harassment, a suicide attempt. And yet, despite ultimately being more tragic, The Other Love is clearly a "softer" film: there's nothing in it as unseemly as an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, no hint of feminism, no struggle to make ends meet as a woman working in a big city, no realistic setting. Even the style feels blunted: elegant and competent, but never as daring as in that scene on the bridge in Two Girls on the Street.