Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched an oldie but goodie a few nights ago:  "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".  A goofy combo of old Lost in Space TV shows, Sci Fi movies of the fifties, and druggie seventies take on life, it catches just the right tone for delightful viewing.  It stars Martin Feldman as a man whose house is destroyed when aliens claim the earth, and Mos Def as the alien who saves him.  They hitchhike a ride on a space ship with amusingly boring aliens who read terrible poetry aloud.  Then they end up on a ship with Sam Rockwell, the King of the Galaxy and human Zooey Deshanel, queen of the space cadets, who is Feldman's crush.  Alan Rickman voices a depressed robot, and practically steals the show from Rockwell, who is terrific. 

I laugh out loud every time I see this movie, and it's a great way to unwind after hard day.  Spaciness has never been so easy to watch and participate in.  To me, this is better than the book and more relevant in any decade.  I know, heretical.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I fractured my wrist in a fall, hence the gap, and also probably the brevity of comments until ith heals.  Last week we watched Ron Howard's "Rush", which my friend and I had seen in the theater and loved.  I don't even like cars, or racing yet I was riveted.  My friend suggested seeing it because she has a crush on Chris Hemsworth, and I readily agreed because he is gorgeous.  To my surprise, the story, true, is fascinating, the race scenes gripping and the acting excellent.  I was continually surprised with the twists in plot, and the contrast between the two rivals was thought provoking. 
Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl as Niki Lauda are opposites, and yet both complex, with flaws and strengths that Howard reveals cleverly.  Bruhl really stands out, as does the woman who plays his wife, Alexandra Maria Lara.  Olivia Wilde is Hunt's wife, but is barely on the screen and not really developed.  It's Lauda's movie, because though both men had dramatic lives, it's Lauda who had to overcome the most.  I'll spare details, as you will want to come to the story fresh, as we did.  My husband loved the film as much, so it's a good couples' film and you'll have a lot to talk about after.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Yesterday my movie buddy and I went to see "The Grand Budapest Hotel", Wes Anderson's new film.  It's quite funny and delightful, with an amazing cast, but Ralph Fiennes is practically the whole show.  His "lobby boy", an actor in his first film, is one note but perfect, with big liquid black eyes and a drawn on moustache, and the stare of an ideal straight man.  As usual, the set design is the real star, and the colorization; you can just be hypnotized by the visuals if the sound were to be cut off.  But this story is more solid, like "Fantastic Mr. Fox", with action and drama, all over the top.  Set supposedly in 1932, before the second World War that changed the old Europe forever and left many rich or titled people dead or in exile, it makes fun of luxury hotels while loving every inch of them.  There was a concept of service that is long gone now.  Maybe it only ever existed in the movies of the 1930s. 

Monsieur Gustave is a lost soul who has made his way up the ladder to Concierge.  He rules his palace with exactitude and love.  He has a thing for old ladies, and when one of them dies (Tilda Swinton) he inherits a painting and her estate, but is hounded by her relatives (led by Adrien Brody with the most electrifying hairstyle).  He and his lobby boy try to escape, are put in prison, and while all this action is going on, we glimpse Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Wilem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray and Anderson's irregulars.  It's great fun, except for a cat being thrown out the window.  "Moonrise Kingdom" had a dog being killed.  I don't understand why Anderson finds that humorous, and it makes me suspect psychopathic tendencies he is unaware of but seem bizarre and misplaced.

The story is told as a story within a story, so we see the lobby boy, now old (F. Murray Abraham), being interviewed by a journalist (Jude Law).  This 1950s setting makes the post communist world seem in stark contrast to the vanished world, and the barren, utilitarian design seem bleak and tragic.

I'm so happy to see Ralph Fiennes get a great comic role and run around the bases with it.  The film makes us reflect on how we hug our myths of "the old days" and why.  Underneath all the fun is the orphan nature of the lobby boys, the violence they have fled, and the horror of the world outside the door of the hotel.  We construct our stories to escape, and Anderson gives us the guilt free joy of playing along with us.  His dollhouse world is as rich as his imagination and ours.  It's like a balloon ride, where everything below is tiny and manageable, unless you think about it too hard.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My husband finds it too depressing, so I watched "Traffic" by myself last night.  It is a downer, but beautifully crafted and acted, with a Shakespearean tragedy tone.  The colorization alone is gorgeous, and the movie has something to say.  No answers, but something powerful to say about the way we drag Mexico down and they drag us down, over drugs.  Each story is poignant and feels truthful.  The cast is phenomenal:  Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Dennis Quaid, Albert Finney, and many more fine actors getting their frisson going. Benicio del Toro won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a Mexican cop struggling to stop the carnage.

Does it help to lay out the true state of the drug war?  Maybe not, but Director Steven Soderbergh tried, and his film is an elegy to those who died or are crushed in this quagmire. Clearly, nothing has changed since 2000, when the film came out.  Kids still find it easier to get drugs than alcohol, no job can compete with the bucks to be made by drug dealing, the various administrations in Washington, D.C. pay lip service and have a show of force, but cannot control the flow of drugs.  Mexico is being crushed under the cartels' violence, and well meaning, ordinary families are losing their members to death and destruction. 

I personally adore Don Cheadle, and he is great in this film, hoping against hope he can make a difference, with all the odds stacked against him as a DEA agent.  Douglas is similarly distinguished as a judge who accepts the position of drug Czar and finds the war in his own home.  Zeta-Jones is fiery and truthful as a Lady Macbeth determined to keep her extravagant lifestyle no matter what she has to do.  Erica Christensen is amazing as a teenager lost in drugs.  And yes, Del Toro deserved the Oscar.  I haven't seen him since, but the quality of his work in this film is superior. 

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I liked the old days when you could browse in a store and find DVDs you'd never heard of and discover treasures.  Nowaways, you must order, so no discoveries are made.  A few years ago I came across a BBC production of Elizabeth Gaskell's "North and South" (2004).  Set in the turmoil of the industrial revolution, with the culture in England changing quickly, we see a young girl, Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe), brought up in rural southern England, forced to move to the industrial north when her father uproots them to move to Milton.  Margaret's immediate reaction is revulsion at the lack of culture, the sooty environment, the condition of the mills.  Her father takes on a student of classics, John Thornton (Richard Armitage), the owner of Marlborough Mils.  Gradually, Margaret's sympathies are engaged by the mill workers, their struggles and their kindnesses. 

Margaret finds herself increasingly attracted to Thornton, despite his strange and vulgar family, and he is drawn to her intelligence and refinement.  Their chemistry is powerful, and the plot and subplots are engaging and educational.  Sinead Cusack as Thornton's mother is excellent, as is Tim Pigot-Smith as the worker torn by who to trust and his desperation to support and save his family, including his young daughter whom Margaret befriends.  When Margaret comes into money, will she abandon her new friends and head for London or be pulled to a new and different life in a place she once scorned?

The series, at 233 minutes is well worth watching, and the class issues are fresh and riveting.  

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "The Last Samurai" last night and it is definitely a well done movie with excellent acting, cinematography and story.  For the first time, I noticed that it is ultra romantic, like "Last of the Mohicans' and "Dances with Wolves".  Each has a caucasian central character who embraces the tribal culture of a people undergoing swift and huge transformation.  Algren falls in love with Japanese culture:  the samarai code, the Buddhist philosophy, the simplicity of the life in the mountain village.  In the end, he leaves his own heritage to become an honorary Japanese.  In "Mohicans", Nathaniel is already half Mohican, having been raised by Chingnachcok, and he flows easily from one culture to another, although he has already chosen to be Indian.  Costner's character in "Dances" like Algren, is war weary, suffering post traumatic stress disorder, and ripe for a change of values and a dose of spirituality. 

Some of the scenes in "Last" have the look of Hokusai or Hiroshige prints.  There is a sense of time travel back in time, even if that era is fast slipping away.  Costner is pulled backward in time as well.  It is patently true that a person can be born into one culture but feel out of joint and "fit" more successfully into another.  All three of these heroes find their hearts and homes in tribal structures.  They are not really wild west individualists, they are beings who long for interconnectedness.  Ken Wantanabe's samarai warrior immediately sees his connection to Algren, and opens himself to learning about another culture.  After initial hostility, Algren responds.  This curiosity is the key to the attractiveness, liveliness and admiration we feels for these characters.  Wantanabe is fantastic in this role, for which he was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar.  The battle scenes are wonderful, and as in "Dances" so sad.  These warriors have seen too much.  They each make a retreat to heal themselves.  Algren's is at the village as he is healing from wounds.  Costner's is at the Sioux village and by himself on the plains.  Nathaniel retreats at the end, mourning his lost brother and what he has seen.  He and Cora head south for Kentucky, away from the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars.  Algren will disappear back into the village to live out his life.

There is nothing wrong with a romantic view of tribal people as long as you are aware that the picture you are getting is filtered through a white man's lens and not authentic.  After all, there were many older movies that romanticized pioneering whites as they killed the savages.  Such a picture may be beautiful, and lovely to look at, but it does not represent the way it was.  This is not history, folks, it is romance.  As such, it is a fine romance.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

The 1942 noir movie that introduced Alan Ladd to film audiences is fascinating.  It's a better than usual noir, from a book by Grahame Greene, which means it's got a complex plot.  "This Gun for Hire" is more than a crime drama, it is a spy case, with bad guys who are not just screwing over each other, but the U.S. of A.  Veronica Lake and Robert Preston are the ostensible stars, but it is Lake's and Ladd's movie, with him playing a stone cold killer who turns out to be something more, and her playing a songstress/magician who soothes the savage beast.  both her musical numbers are terrific.  Lake and Ladd are so beautiful it's no problem watching them, and they layer their performances nicely. One of the bad guys, Willard Gates, played by Laird Cregar is wonderful, as a crook with delicate sensitivities. 

Ellen Graham (Lake) has just gotten engaged to her cop boyfriend Michael Crane (Preston) when she is enlisted by a Senator to spy on Gates, so she accepts a job in L.A. at his nightclub.  Gates has already hired Phillip Raven (Ladd) to kill someone he says is blackmailing his boss.  But after the hit he double crosses Raven, who ends up on the same train with Graham and Gates.  The action is fast and furious, with lots of twists and turns.  The patriotic tones stem from World War II and the poison gas threat adds to the danger.  Graham can't tell her boyfriend what she's doing, and he tries to save her with none of the relevant information, with the bad guys playing him and only his instincts to go on.  The psychological bent to this film, like Hitchcock's "Spellbound" makes the characters more interesting and fun.

What's not to like with two gorgeous leads, powerful photography in black and white, and a plot with some meat on it?