Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "World War Z" again last night.  We both find it gripping.  The pace is fast enough that niggling details escape your notice, and the plot has clean points to make that build to the solution to the problem.  It all has the illusion of realism and is over before you can worry over zombie physiology or likelihood.  The center of the story is Brad Pitt as a UN experienced navigator in the world's hot spots.  His lived in face, his gravitas even as he makes himself ordinary, like all great movie stars enforces our trust of his character.  There are twists and turns that surprise us, and a perfect balance between zombie chaos and intimate scenes.  This is a super well edited film, and the music enhances our dread and emotional involvement.  Each time I see nice details I missed the last time around.  One of the most powerful lines is about how we bury our heads in the sand until forced to look, and it has an obvious echo in climate change and the destruction of our environment.  This film is about something important without naming it:  it aims viserally.  Why not?  All the Al Gores in the world haven't awakened us.  Nor the hurricanes and storms.  Let's cut to the chase:  what if we ALL die?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "Invisible Woman" last night, Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut.  The story is about Charles Dickens and Ellen Tiernan, who were lovers and for whom Dickens separated from his wife.  It's a fascinating story of what both risked, but of course the risk was far greater for Tiernan.  It exposes the codes of the time, the sexism, the entrapment of propriety.  Fiennes is perfect as Dickens.  Felicity Jones is Ellen, and I thought her fine, though my husband felt her acting was weak.  Kirsten Scott-Thomas is Ellen's mother, and the woman who plays Dickens' wife is superb.  Fiennes manages to convey the emotions and constrictions of that era succinctly, and also the all consuming passion of a writer.  The film made me want to read the book upon which it is based, and also a big biography of Dickens.  The fear of poverty is shown as a motivator of Dickens' actions and also his desire to escape the domesticity which he loved and was strangled by.  His many children, adored but ignored, and his 19th century lack of responsibility for their existence, are disturbing and familiar.

What one is left with is the plight of a woman who falls in love with an unavailable man, and how hers is the back that must bend to the crucible of passion, while he, ultimately, is free of constraint.  It's the tragedy of a woman's lot, though in this case she survived and went on to have her own family and memories.  And the books.  Which in this film are like the treasures of Aladdin.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night I watched part of one of my husband's favorite films:  "Courage Under Fire".  Men like combat films, but he really loves Denzel Washington's performance in particular.  Washington is great as a man who has made a mistake for which he cannot forgive himself.  Regina Taylor is his match, as his wife who is trying to be patient while he is abandoning her and the kids.  Matt Damon and Lou Diamond Phillips are stand outs as two soldiers on the mission in Iraq that kills their officer, played by Meg Ryan.  She is more than good here, and it makes you wonder where she has gone and what happened to her.  At her age, usually actresses switch to TV, but I don't hear anything of her.  Scott Glenn is his usual complex self as a journalist, and everyone in the movie shines.

The topic is still of the moment:  women in combat and their hard fight for authority and respect.  And we can easily see the second Iraq war and Afganistan in the battle scenes.  We know nothing has changed.

But the most interesting thing about the movie is the Rashamon type narrative.  We see the incident where Captain Walden (Ryan) is killed from different perspectives.  Everyone has a different story, and sees what he can bear seeing or what is self-serving.  This choice makes the film transcend the details and forces us to look at interpretation and what we can believe of what we hear from others.  Washington's character senses something untold, and that is because in his life he is struggling with unsaid truths begging to be spoken.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I went by myself last Sunday to see a matinee of "Transcendence", with Johnny Depp.  I can't honestly say I recommend it, though visually it is beautiful, and it has interesting ideas to think about.  Depp plays the film straight, or as straight as he can.  His "look" is too studied, and really no Berkeley science professor looks like he thinks they do.  I got a kick out of his perfect Berkeley house and scenes around campus.  One thing I am liking to see:  like Tom Cruise, Depp is no longer hiding how tiny he is and everyone towers over him.  Unfortunately, that includes Rebecca Hall playing his wife.  She looks so big boned and almost hulky beside him, and although, yes, real life couples can be physical opposites, it just doesn't work and and there is no chemistry between them.  And this is supposed to be, in essence, a love story.

Saving the day is Paul Bettany, much more gorgeous than Depp, tall and sexy, and you keep hoping he will end up with Hall.  Not a good complication.  I always love seeing Bettany, and here he and Hall get to do all the emoting.  There's weeping, gnashing of teeth, and more weeping.  It's a very gushy film.

The science makes no sense, despite countless drips of water and particles flying up in the air.  But I don't mind that so much.  Morgan Freeman plays himself or a variation thereof, but as usual, his presence lends a weird kind of credibility.

I really want Depp to win an Oscar, and it looks like he's figured out he needs some "normal" roles to get it.  He should have gotten it for "Neverland", but oh, well.  He needs to have roles that show his ordinary humanity, and this film is a step in that direction.  But gorgeous as he is, he needs to get over his own face and sink more into his character.  I love his Tim Burton films, but they have somehow hurt his credibility.  Some moviegoers find him vain and flippant.  The Oscar is a popularity contest, and it's hard to call Depp likeable, though it's easy to call him a genius.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My favorite Alfred Hitchcock film is "Notorious", but it used to be "Rebecca", and the first VHS I ever was given was that film.  I was thrilled.  As a kid I adored Laurence Olivier films on TV, and I loved reading Daphne Du Maurier.  I loved the romance, melodrama and suspense back then, but now, when I watch "Rebecca" I see a very dark film, in which a naive girl with no experience is trapped by superficial charm and glamour to yoke her life to a murderer's.  Because Max is a murderer in the book, and it's implied in the film, despite Rebecca tripping on the rope.  There is tremendous psychological depth to each of the characters.  But in a nutshell, they are all undone by romantic notions.  Mrs. Danvers is foolish about Rebecca, as is the estate manager.  Max is stupid to think he should take what he wants and that he won't destroy it.  George Sanders as the cousin is really the only person who sees clearly the complications of the situation and understands exactly what Rebecca was.  Because he's like her:  he takes what he wants with his eyes wide open. 

Though Olivier is great, it's Joan Fontaine's film, and she should have won the Oscar for this and not "Suspicion".  Her reactions are transparent and subtly layered.  She's like Euyridice, pulled into hell by Orpheus.  The great symbol is the one tree her father painted over and over again before he died.  He wanted the security and comfort of the familiar and the heroine is his daughter in spirit.  She's too fluttery and frightened to fight for herself, she's instead constantly giving herself away because she supposed it's the right thing to do.  There is a reason she has no name.  She is not a person.  She wants to please in the most self destructive way.  She's not "good", she's terrified to be unmoored to her old life and her father, and she finds a father who has less innocent obsessions.  Unconsciously, he has desired the opposite of Rebecca, but that means he wants a child, not a woman, and that need is base and selfish.  In the book they are huddled away in obscurity and never have children.  Thank god for that.  This story is a horror tale.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"High Noon" has been discussed ad infinitem, but it is a great western, and Gary Cooper deserved his Oscar for it.  His face tells it all.  The rest of the cast is brilliant as well.  I am not a fan of Grace Kelly's acting, she was a model, not an actress, and her voice, like Winona Ryder's, was thin, scratchy and carried no power.  She was best when she was looked at:  "Rear Window", "To Catch a Thief" and roles with great clothes.  It was a travesty she won the Oscar for "The Country Girl".  Basically, they gave it to her because she didn't wear makeup, as they gave one to Nicole Kidman for marring her model face with a false nose.  But her casting works here, because she is shallow and pretty, without any life knowledge or wisdom.  Supposedly in real life she slept around, but she makes a perfect virgin.  She is a girl. 

The woman in this movie is Katy Jurado, perhaps the most beautiful woman ever on film.  And she could act.  The flaw of Cooper's character is that he wants a church going girl, when he could have Jurado, sensual, smart, wise and with a depth of passion Kelly would never know how to muster.  She's the other reason to see the movie besides Coop.  Maybe if she'd been born later they'd have dared put her in films, like Salma Hayek and Eva Mendes, but even those two get short shift, given their beauty and talent.  Ingrid Bergman could use that lusciousness to advantage in her career, but Jurado was Mexican, and the film industry wasn't ready for her.

Lloyd Bridges is terrific as Jurado's lover and a cowardly deputy not up to Coop's courage.  And the character actors are all icons in westerns.

The movie is helped greatly by it's conciseness, it almost happens in real time, and a great song that sets the tone.  Is there a better western?  I kind of doubt it.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Cary Grant is my all time favorite film actor and one of his most pleasing roles is in "The Batchelor and the Bobby Soxer", from 1947.  It won the Oscar for best original screenplay by Sidney Sheldon.  Grant plays an artist, famous, who speaks to a high school audience containing Shirley Temple, who develops a crush on him.  Temple is funny in this, and the perfect age and attitude.  Her aunt, Myrna Loy, is a judge, and low and behold Grant comes before her as a witness in a night club altercation.  When later she discovers he's the object of her niece's misplaced affection, against her instincts she is persuaded to let the obsession play out by her uncle (Ray Collins in fine form).  Loy has a kind of fiance, Rudy Vallee at his most obnoxious, and her niece has a boyfriend with a jalopy who is crushed to be displaced.

The lines are delivered with just the right amount of pizazz, and the chemistry between Loy and Grant is, as always, powerful.  Grant's performance is delightful.  He toes the line by being amused but not attracted to Temple, and ridiculous, but in the most adorable way.  Who could resist him?  Not Loy, who slowly and subtly melts around him, and becomes a passionate woman, trading her robes and principles for a warmly beating heart and a knockout evening gown.

This film was made in an era when "Lolita" couldn't have been, because there was still a belief in growing up and that maturity had its merits.  The youth culture had not begun to dominate our fantasies, and appropriate behavior was considered an asset.  Grant wanted a woman, not a girl, and how wonderful it is to look back and see that world again.  Now the dream of middle aged men is underage girls, and Loy would be on a matchmaking site hoping against hope for the one man in a million who wanted a beautiful, mature woman with a strong career.  Lots of luck, lady.