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.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night my husband and I watched "Jack Reacher", with Tom Cruise.  I've never read the books, but I've heard about the furor over Cruise being so physically miscast.  I respect that, especially as I have trouble with the "Longmore" TV series because Henry is physically wrong, as is the deputy.  So it can get in your way.  But Cruise, though little, is believable as the tough guy, his action scenes seem real and his car racing even more so.  Bigger is not necessarily better, and I like the way Cruise doesn't hide his height any more.  He doesn't need to, as he is leaner, harder looking and with a focus that pops on the screen.  Yoda wasn't tall and it didn't hurt him any.

The whole movie is lean and spare, with an engaging plot that we want to puzzle out along with Reacher.  Rosamund Pike is good as the assistant DA and Richard Jenkins is great as her dad.  David Okelolo is also excellent and Werner Herzog as the bad guy and Robert Duvall as the crusty gun range expert steal the show.  Everyone is distinctive and interesting, with not much dialogue but a lot of expression. 

Reacher is an outlaw, but one who cleans up messes the law gets entangled in, and makes sure the bad guys lose.  It's gratifying, if bloody.  His actions at the end of the film seem inevitable and necessary.  That's how good Tom Cruise is.  He may be a nut in real life, but he's a commanding presence onscreen.  He's a star, and we trust him.  We're pulling for him all the way.  You know if you go see a Cruise movie the quality will be high and you will like the ride.  That's worth a lot.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We've seen "Conspiracy Theory" quite a few times over the years.  It's a very funny movie, and Mel Gibson is at his best.  He and Julia Roberts make a good team, and Patrick Stewart as the bad guy is terrific.  I have a new consciousness about the state of mind of Gibson that I didn't possess when this came out in 1997.  So it's bittersweet to watch him clown around.  He's so good at it.  And maybe because he turned out to be "off" himself.  He's only 41 in this film, but you see the worry lines on his forehead, and his skin is aging fast, probably because of his manic energy and smoking and drinking.  But he still has those eyes and that lost boy persona that made him honey to girl bees.  Roberts is 29 in this film, so he seems a bit stale for her, but given the story line of her murdered father it fits that she would be attracted to a protector. 

There are so many funny lines just tossed hither and yon  that you can't catch them all, and your own laughing will cause you to have trouble hearing them, but what a hilarious script!  And the whole time you're thinking:  wait a minute, this could be true, as you listen.  Gibson is the master of this chatter.  And so many funny scenes, with the best being him tied to a wheelchair barreling down a staircase causing mayhem all the way to the bottom. 

We lost a star when Gibson self-destructed.  His mind was wired wrong, probably from his father, and yet for many years his talent shown bright despite his ideas, both as an actor and as a director.  He's brilliant, but dangerous.  Beautiful, but damaged.  In the end, I felt sadness for the turn in his life, but that was after he made me laugh so hard I almost burst a blood vessel.  Oh, Mel, we hardly knew you.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"The Boys from Brazil" is a fun thriller.  From a book by Ira Levin, who also wrote "Rosemary's Baby", it has an even more plausible premise today:  Joseph Mengele, hiding in Paraguay, has cloned around a hundred Hitlers, sent the babies off to various countries to be raised in circumstances as Hitler was, and then later unleased upon the world.  Gregory Peck plays Mengele, James Mason is one of the Nazis in the plot, Laurence Olivier is the Nazi hunter no one supports, Lili Palmer is his sister, and Steve Gutenberg is a journalist hot on the trail. 

It's delightful to see the three old lions chewing up the scenery, and the kid who plays young Hitler is scary, Jeremy Black.  The pace is perfect, the tension is bundled between scenes with humor, and the film leaves you with a lot to think about:  nature versus nurture?  how much of our destiny is in our hands?  what if Hitler had lived with a different set of circumstances.

The movie is fun, and even zany, while being scary and bizarre.  There is a scene with Rottweilers that may make you stick to cats.  It's worth a look.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "Terminator:Salvation" last night.  It was not a hit in theaters, and rightly so, as it is an attempt at a pre-sequel for greedy reasons only.  And yet, and yet...Last night, and no, I had nothing to drink, it struck me as interesting. The casting is good:  Christian Bale is the perfect choice for John Conner, and Sam Worthington as Marcus does have a look of Arnold.  Also, it is fun to see the machines from a different angle, and the film makes you curious about what has happened to Marcus.  And what has been done to him is left in suspense and not fully revealed until the end. 

The message is very Buddhist:  we are not our minds, but our heart/mind, and Marcus has retained his human heart, even though the bad guys have screwed around with the rest.  We can choose.  No matter how we are programed by culture or experience, we can choose.  Compassion is our salvation.  That has a nice ring to it for me.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night I saw a movie I love that my husband dislikes, "Hereafter" directed by Clint Eastwood.  It is a strange film, and attempts to explore near death experiences.  There are three stories presented:  the first is Matt Damon living in San Francisco, a psychic who is tortured by his gift, the second is Cecile de France, a famous French TV personality who is caught in the tsunami in Indonesia, and the third story is of twin boys in London with a druggie mother more or less fending for themselves.  The first images of the film are powerful and strangely beautiful yet profoundly disturbing:  the ordinary moments before the tsunami and the rush of the water and the turbulence sweeping up de France's character as she is pulled under and buffeted around.  But Damon's character is being pulled under by despondency and lonliness, and the twin boys by their struggle to keep social services from taking them away from their mother, though she is patently unfit.  They have become "other" through their experiences.  Miraculously, they find each other.  The stories and amazing acting of these characters make us feel with them almost immediately, and there are twists and turns that surprise us and show some wit and test the strengths of these main people.

I find this film lovely and truthful, acknowledging the experiences we cannot rationalize, the affinities we cannot understand.  Eastwood was courageous in tackling this subject, and has done it with compassion, tenderness and good taste.  His guitar music is a lovely woven thread through the film, underlining the motif of fragility and strength.  There is a wisdom in this movie that is rare.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A few nights ago we watched "Wait Until Dark" a sixties film with Audrey Hepburn.  She plays a recently blinded woman, married to Ephram Zimbalist Jr, a photographyer.  He is the unwitting recipient of a doll filled with heroin and the woman who asked him to hold it for her is murdered and her killers are after the doll. Richard Crenna, looking very young, is one of the two excops drawn into the scheme and Alan Arkin plays the psychopath who hires them.  They send the husband away on a wild goose chase in order to terrorize the wife, Hepburn, into giving them the doll, but it has disappeared and they don't believe her.  This was a play, but the claustrophobia is perfect in the basement flat, and most of the plot twists are clever and plausible.  Hepburn is excellent.  What I couldn't quite get over is her thinness; she is wearing clothes that have her looking skeleton like.  In other films this is better hidden.  I couldn't help but think of her and her mother as refugees in World War II, starving and desperate.  Sometimes Angelina Jolie looks emaciated as well, and to me at least, it is disturbing and hurts the story.

I think this film wears well, and the suspense is gripping and the only real flaw is Zimbalist's character, who is too paternal with his wife, and my last thought of the movie is she should definitely divorce him and find a more sensitive man. 

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We saw "Noah" yesterday, after the recommendation of our son.  The film left us with lots to talk about, and caused my husband to read about various flood stories in history and even read the Bible.  As our son said, it's not perfectly done, but the ideas are interesting, and the acting excellent.  I thought the "watchers" were neat, though they resembled the rock guy in "Neverending Story", and the special effects were good.  The drama of a man who thinks he knows the will of God is, well, biblical and timeless.  The rifts within the family are engaging and realistic.  That Noah sees the inevitability of man destroying nature and each other again and still chooses hope is touching, and something each of us undergoes in our modern world.  The king's vision of man as conqueror and user of the world for his needs and pleasure is equally prevalent in our time.  They run Wall Street and most of everything else.

Russell Crowe is perfect for the role and Jennifer Connelly is fine as his wife for a second time (remember "Beautiful Mind")?  Emma Watson and the other kids are good, and Aronofsky makes you care about all of them.  I love some of the details surrounding the animals, and the scale of the Ark is perfect.  The watery effects are great.

I wish there had been more of the landing and we had seen the animals disembark.  There is something dimmished about the last part of the movie which makes it anticlimatic.

But the questions raised are as big as it gets and transcend cultures and times.  Are we stewards of the earth or lords?  Were we meant to eat our fellow creatures?  And what does it do to us if we choose to do so?  Is our nature more dark than light, or have we choice to turn from the dark to the light?  Will man bring about his own destruction yet again?  Something to ponder.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My hand is still in a cast, but in a couple of weeks I should be able to write in this blog regularly again.  Last night we watched Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", 1939, and it's patriotic and clear eyed at the same time.  Jimmy Stewart is a bit hysterical throughout, but then he does anxiety so well.  Jean Arthur is Saunders, his secretary when he comes to D.C. as a newly minted Senator, his perfect foil, so calm and pragmatic and depressed she's bound to fall for him and does.  Claude Rains is terrific as the senator Smith worships, and Harry Carey wonderful as the President of the senate.  Thomas Mitchell plays a reporter in love with Arthur and everyone does their bit to make the film vivid.

Seeing boy pages is fascinating.  Now they are twenty somethings the senators sleep with.  All the boy scout stuff is baloney, but fun, and the year this film was made shows in the reminders of what America stands for, versus the looming Europe of Hitler.  It's a great history lesson, vastly romanticized.  It sends my heart soaring, and I'm glad I will be visiting D.C. next month, as I've loved the city since childhood.  If you're in the mood, all the speechifying is inspiring, and you almost believe all over again that good can triumph over greed and corruption.  Almost.  Except for the Supreme Court, making money the only coin of the realm.