→ June 23, 2011
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Brick.

When I wrote about Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom a year and a half ago, I asked if any of you had seen his previous movie, Brick, a hard-boiled detective story set in a modern high school. Nine of you said in the comments I needed to see it, and several more of you have suggested it since then. I’m usually pretty safe with reader recommendations … and this was no exception. I was blown away by Brick – very smart, occasionally funny, great narrative greed, and all kinds of homages to one of my favorite genres in literature. (Worth mentioning: it’s just $3.94 on DVD right now at amazon.)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan, an intelligent but slightly aloof high school student whose ex-girlfriend has gone missing for several weeks. He receives a panicked phone call from her, sees her one more time, and within 48 hours she ends up dead, leaving him to try to unravel the mystery, which leads him into his school’s subculture of dope-dealing and hilarious posing along with the full allotment of tough guys, fake tough guys, violence, and apple juice.

The film is characterized as “neo-noir,” although I’d stick with “hard-boiled” given Brendan’s character and the terse, quick dialogue through nearly all of the film. Brendan is quick with the ripostes, and a few other characters manage to match him quip for quip, like the character Laura, of the high class and uncertain motives, responding to him on the phone.

Laura: Who is this?
Brendan: I won’t waste your time. You don’t know me.
Laura: (slowly) I know everyone, and I have all the time in the world.
Brendan: Ah, the folly of youth.

The characters nearly all speak quickly – occasionally unintelligibly – and the pacing is brisk, while the dialogue has just enough slang to give it an altered-reality feel without overselling the noir feel. Johnson layered the plot with a red herring or two and even gave Brendan a brilliant sidekick, just called The Brain, complete with thick-lensed glasses (with hipster frames, as it turns out) and a machine-gun delivery.

The script is brilliant, but the performances elevated the movie to plus. One of the hardest things for a teenaged actor or actress to do is to play a teenaged character who’s supposed to act like an adult – it usually comes off as forced, often with unintentionally comic results. But Levitt sells his character quickly and easily; by the one-quarter mark, you’re no longer distracted by that age/speech discrepancy and are buying Brendan as a viable young adult, rather than a kid playing dress-up. Without that performance, the center of the movie wouldn’t hold.

Most of the other cast members filled their roles admirably with Brendan at the center; Meagan Wood, who seems to be better known for appearing in African-American sitcoms and bad horror films, stands out as one of two femmes fatales (and the much more convincing of the two) as a cold, manipulative actress tied up on the fringes of the central crime but who enjoys toying with Brendan when he comes for information. The other femme fatale is played by the adorable Nora Zehetner, who simply doesn’t fit her part, not in looks (it would be fair to say that a doe was Nora Zehetner-eyed) or in articulation (the precise, upper-class speech of her character doesn’t fit her actions or motivations). That’s not on Zehetner, but on whoever made the casting decision. You wouldn’t cast me as Tug for similar reasons – I could be the greatest actor since Olivier but I couldn’t sell you on a character I’m not physically built to play.

For someone like me, infatuated with the style and tension of hard-boiled literature, Brick is sublime – a brilliant adaptation of a great story Dashiell Hammett forgot to write. It’s the rare movie I’d actually want to watch again.

Next up: In Bruges.

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→ June 18, 2011
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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Amazon’s deal of the day (for June 18th) is pretty good – the Toy Story trilogy in a combo Blu-Ray/DVD plus a digital copy for $45 total. My daughter saw the third one at preschool, swore she didn’t like it, and still talks about it all the time.

—

Continuing my run of catching up on movies I should have seen years ago, I watched the half-parody detective film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on the flight back from Charlotte, in which Robert Downey Jr. plays a thief turned wannabe actor dragged into a detective story via a coincidence and a sleazy Hollywood agent. It’s funny on its own, and the parody elements are clever (and clearly done in homage to the tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction), although the reliance on parody made the story a little wobbly in parts. (Amazon currently has the Blu-Ray edition of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on sale for $6.99.)

Downey Jr.’s thief character, Harry Lockhart, inadvertently crashes a screen test while running from the cops and a gun-toting old lady who might have taken the whole “neighborhood watch” thing a little too seriously, after which he finds himself in LA where he’s assigned to tail a private detective played by Val Kilmer, who a little too obviously says that nothing ever happens on stakeouts. Of course, something happens, and the film is loaded with deadpan statements or seemingly minor events that merely foreshadow bigger happenings, one of many aspects of the film that dance on the the line between homage and parody.

The film is based loosely on an out-of-print Brett Halliday novel called Bodies are Where You Find Them, but the movie’s chapter titles all come from Raymond Chandler novels or stories, and the homage is more to the hard-boiled genre rather than to any one writer in particular. But the hard-boiled detective isn’t the central character – and he’s gay – while the femme fatale is less fatale and more flaky. The story mocks the routine elements to classic detective novels – you have the scene where the central character is told by some thugs to get out of town; the scene where he’s captured and has to fight and/or shoot his way out of trouble (in this case, both guys are captured together); the sexual tension between the protagonist and the lead female character (here played largely for laughs); and so on.

Downey Jr. and Kilmer are both outstanding – this might be Kilmer’s best work since Top Secret – in their roles as Harry and Gay Perry, respectively, and their interactions are far more entertaining than those between Harry and Harmony. The character of Harmony isn’t so much the problem as the actress, Michelle Monaghan, is; she seems directionless, darting in and out of flighty, obsessive, distant, and femme fatale roles but mostly just taking her shirt off a few times. Her character was the least believable of the three, though; acting not just unpredictably but irrationally, and adding little to the film. The chemistry is between Downey and Kilmer in a bromance before the term became popular and then hackneyed to the point where I just fined myself for using it. Viewed as a buddy-movie that’s also a parody of classic detective novels, it’s clever and often very funny, but that’s such a niche audience that the studio seems to have marketed it as more of a modern crime/humor film, which it isn’t.

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→ June 11, 2011
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Fight Club.

Am I allowed to talk about Fight Clubicon?

This one has been sitting in the Netflix queue – which we don’t use enough anyway – for years, but I knew my wife would never watch it with me, and having seen it I have to say even if she’d consented she wouldn’t have stuck it out. Even I found some of the fight scenes tough to take, although I don’t see how you could make the film without it. The film is based on the book of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk.

As with The Big Lebowski, I’m assuming most of you have seen this before I did. The basic plot, for those of you who haven’t (and I’ll warn you I am going to largely spoil the ending below): Ed Norton’s unnamed narrator is a 1990s version of Camus’ Stranger, a white collar worker who exists to work and consume but has no emotional attachment to anything and suffers from insomnia. On a business trip, he meets the charismatic soap-maker Tyler Durden, and the two form an underground “fight club” that becomes a national movement for the disaffected, eventually morphing into an anarchistic terrorist group called Project Mayhem.

The inevitable first question will be whether I liked the movie; I did, and I didn’t. I think it tackled big themes, although I’m not sure how well it did in addressing them. Most of the film was riveting, but sometimes it was simultaneously revolting. Although the narrator has an everyman quality, the film never fully gets at the causes of his alienation from society – that alienation is a symptom, but of what we never begin to learn. It’s anchored by several terrific performances, even in some of the smaller parts. I thought the final scene was cheap. I thought the twist was clever, even if they gave it away earlier in the film.

I keep coming back to the question of what exactly Fight Club means, as I can’t accept this as just some anti-consumerist (did this film coin that term) manifesto that presents nihilism as an equally valid and equally abhorrent alternative. The film also tackles – sometimes literally – the question of reduced masculinity in late 20th century western civilization, from the narrator’s wandering into a support group for testicular cancer sufferers, where he befriends a man named Bob who has grown breasts as a result of his reduced testosterone levels. Through sheer violence and the spilling of blood, are the men in Fight Club suddenly self-actualized through a return to primitive roots?

The fact that Fight Club and particularly Project Mayhem seem more than anything else to attract disenfranchised men – it’s full of service-workers but seems very light on white-collar workers beyond the narrator – made me think perhaps there was an up-with-the-proletariat message, but the latter group’s all-black uniform seemed more Nazi than communist, and whether or not you agree with Marx’s views (I certainly don’t), his philosophy had an end beyond sheer destruction.

Another possibility was that Palahniuk was describing how numb we have become in a world where basic needs are taken for granted but emotional (or, although the subject barely comes up in the film, spiritual) needs are unfulfilled. The characters’ reactions to getting the tar kicked out of them reminded me of porn star Annabel Chong’s comment from the documentary on her, where she mutilates herself and says that she did it just to feel something (she’s later recanted, although the credibility of the later statement has to be questioned, but that’s another story entirely). They get hit, and they smile, because they felt something.

…spoilers below…

I didn’t think the big twist was that surprising. You can see Tyler Durden spliced into at least two early scenes where he flashes in and out for a frame, and it’s not like they didn’t give you a big fat clue about that. (Second clue: The scene where Ed Norton leaves a building (Marla’s) with the words “MYSELF MYSELF MYSELF” in graffiti behind him. Third clue: Tyler lives on Paper Street.) Catching on to that from the start gives the middle of the film a whole new meaning – I wonder what it would be like to watch it without knowing the real relationship between the two main characters. But watching this essentially as a cult that takes the words of a madman with dissociative identity disorder as gospel was fascinating. And it did have me wondering for part of the film if Marla was real. Speaking of which, she’s basically Bellatrix Lestrange with shorter hair, right?

Despite my general dislike of unreliable narrators, though, this conceit worked beautifully until the final showdown between the two personalities. The idea that he developed this alternate personality in response not to the trauma of sexual or physical abuse but to the abuse of everyday life in our society is incredibly clever. (Speaking of which, that “How’s that working out for you?”/”What?”/”Being clever.” exchange had to be my favorite exchange in the movie.)

And I suppose I’d be remiss – or reminded by you of it – if I didn’t link to the surprisingly funny Jane Austen Fight Club.

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→ June 8, 2011
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The Big Lebowski.

The 2011 draft is safely in my rearview mirror; you can read my team-by-team recaps for day two, separated into the American League and the National League. I also wrote a recap of day one on Monday covering ten teams who did well or made me scratch my head.

—

I finally rectified a major hole in my movie-viewing history by seeing The Big Lebowski. (It’s also the first movie I’ve watched on the new iPad, and, well, f-yeah-movies-on-the-iPad and all that.) So how exactly do you write about a movie that 90% of your audience – conservatively speaking – has already seen, many of them more than once? I’m guessing I’ll say nothing that hasn’t been written before about the film, so please forgive any unoriginal thoughts that slip in here.

There’s no real reason that I never watched the film; I liked Fargo despite its brutality, and might be one of the few people on earth who liked The Hudsucker Proxy (too saccharine for Coen brothers fans?). I like quirky comedies and dark comedies and films with great characters. I just never got around to this one when I was watching movies more regularly in the early 2000s, then my daughter was born and I ended up in a job that often has me watching baseball games at night rather than films or TV, and now I look up and realize many of my readers/followers have been speaking a dialect I didn’t understand. At least I finally get the title of Matthew Leach’s blog (which, by the way, got the biggest laugh out of me of any line in the film).

My favorite aspect of The Big Lebowski was its connection to the hard-boiled detective stories I love, even though The Dude isn’t actually a detective by trade. He’s intricately involved in the crime, which itself involves at least one con (I don’t want to ruin it for the four of you who haven’t seen the film), and ends up threatened by multiple elements, a standard of Philip Marlowe novels. The motives of everyone else involved are generally unclear. There’s a lot of drinking, although the Dude’s drink of choice seemed a little more soft- than hard-boiled, and a lot of petty violence like whacks on the head. He spends a good chunk of the story suspecting the wrong people. The familiar story arc made the movie much more enjoyable for me and I could concentrate on the witty dialogue*, from “obviously, you’re not a golfer” to “he fixes the cable” to “thank you, Donny” to “I’m just gonna go find a cash machine.” And John Turturro … well, now this makes a little more sense, too**.

* Did anyone else think Tara Reid’s one significant line was delivered a little too, um, naturally?

** I was convinced that Turturro’s character would somehow figure more prominently in the main plot. The fact that he is pure comic relief turned out to be even better.

About the only criticism I could offer is that there was no question how the scene with the new red car was going to end. Maybe that’s the point – you’re supposed to cringe and laugh simultaneously as you watch the metaphorical trains collide – but for a movie with so much obvious attention to detail, like The Dude’s obsession with making sure the half-and-half is fresh, the car seemed a little like a cheap laugh. It’s not like we didn’t already know Walter had a temper to match his exceptionally bad judgment.

That’s sort of like saying that Troy Tulowitzki should steal more bases, though. Julianne Moore was phenomenal. The nihilists (and the nod to Kraftwerk) were hilarious in their mannerisms and their incompetence, and I loved the cameos by Flea and Aimee Mann. (Pretty good German accent from her, by the way.) I can see why it’s such a cult hit and hang my head in shame for not watching it sooner. Anyway, tell me what else I missed about this film’s greatness while I figure out what to watch on my next flight.

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→ December 20, 2010
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One – the seventh Potter film, covering the first half of the final book of the series– is by far the best Harry Potter movie yet, with better acting, better effects, and, most importantly, much better pacing so there’s no more feeling that we’re racing through the story (while hitting as many fun details as possible) to get to the ending before the 180-minute mark.

The pacing results from the overdue decision to split any of the Potter books into two movies, rather than to pack one of Rowling’s detail-dense stories into a fairly short movie. Five of the six previous screenplays took the same tack: Try to make the movie look as much as possible as the depiction in Rowling’s text, adding in the most fun or memorable details, while skimping on back story and compressing or omitting key plot points. The exception was the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Y Tu Mamá También director Alfonso Cuarón, who went after the spirit of the book rather than just another faithful yet rote translation. The Gothic look and more rational pacing produced a film that was watchable even if you weren’t immersed in the Potter mythology with imagery that stuck with me long after the film was over.

Deathly Hallows Part One takes its time getting through what is still a dense 400-odd pages of text, assuming that by now you know the back story, ripping through a very tight, effective, emotional intro sequence to set up the almost immediate jump into action-film territory – and there is a lot of action in the movie. There are several major fight and/or chase sequences, and since you know Harry can’t die in this film (there’s a Part Two already on the schedule, which is sort of a clue), developing true tension when he’s in peril comes down to timing on the parts of both the director and the actors. The more natural pacing of the film also helped, as I could sink more into the story as opposed the arm’s-length perspective of the earlier films, where things happened so quickly and without explanation that my investment in the underlying plot was never very deep.

The stars of this film, as in the book, are Harry, Ron, and Hermione, getting their greatest chance to stretch out as actors and succeeding across the board. The acting in the earlier films in the series was often paint-by-numbers – parts were handed out based on appearances, or the fun of having a big star appear in a role, with the actual performances secondary. Rupert Grint (Ron) was probably the best actor of the young troika at the start, but Emma Watson has made the most strides as an actress from start to finish, to the point where she’s able to carry a few scenes in this film.

(Unrelated to the film, I’ve been very impressed with how Watson has handled herself and her career over the last few months, setting an example for taking control of your life and your work that more young women, famous or not, could follow. Watson has made an aggressive move into the fashion arena and attached herself to a bleeding-edge cause, fair-trade clothing – an uncontroversial affiliation, but one that’s several steps beyond where the public consciousness is on fair-trade anything right now. Given the vicissitudes of the film industry and the short times in the limelight for many young actors and actresses, this looks like a savvy business move to extend her personal brand and increase her own control over her career.

And then there’s the hair. I can’t remember the last time a non-insanity-induced change in hairstyle produced such a reaction – Jennifer Aniston on Friends? – but Watson’s decision to cut off her locks in favor of a pixie cut seems like more than just standard-issue rebellion, but a retaking of her own image distinct from that of the only character she’s played on the big screen to date. Again, there’s control at work; Watson described doing it on the sly, but as a planned, thoughtful move, as opposed to, say, showing up in an airport barbershop and shaving her own head. It helps to be cute enough to pull off such a short haircut, but as a way to transform her image on the fly and make positive headlines for something unrelated to the Potter film – although I’m sure Warner Brothers was thrilled for the added bit of publicity around the time of the film’s release – looks to me like a shrewd maneuver that establishes her as her own boss while promoting her careers in film and in fashion.

The risk of pigeonholing is huge for the handful of actors who played the kids in the Potter films – this Collider interview with Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) gets at that issue as well – and the only practical solution is for the actors to take control of and develop their own brands independent of the characters to whom they’re so closely tied. It looks like Watson is doing so aggressively and intelligently, staking out territory for herself beyond acting; tying herself to a good, underplayed social issue; and stating unequivocally that her image is hers, not Warner Brothers’ or Hermione Granger’s or anyone else’s. In a world where young actresses and celebrities typically make headlines for bad or even self-destructive behavior, I worry about being able to show my daughter positive role models beyond those in our immediate circle – women who still bring the natural appeal of celebrity but are also smart, successful, and responsible. So far, at least, it looks like Watson is on her way to becoming that kind of person, and if that helps her achieve her own career goals, it’s just a virtuous circle where everyone benefits.

That said, I’m guessing that, like Watson’s father, I will someday be quite upset when my own daughter decides to cut off her curls.)

Daniel Radcliffe had settled comfortably into the Harry role a few films ago, and despite the fact that he’s front and center for almost the entire film, he has very little latitude within the role – he’s usually being chased, being attacked, or attacking someone else. He gets a bit of comic relief up front when various Order of the Phoenix members take Polyjuice Potion to resemble him, and there’s a fun (and apparently improvised) scene where he dances with Hermione to relieve the tension after a spat with Ron. Rumor has it that the Harry/Voldemort confrontation is even larger in Part Two than it was in the book, so I’m hopeful we’ll get to see more of Radcliffe’s range when he’s not under assault.

That comic relief I mentioned is necessary in a film that’s dark and foreboding and filled with action and mayhem, as well as two deaths of named characters. They don’t feel forced, but comfortable, similar to the scene in Prisoner of Azbakan when the Weasley twins intercept Harry while he’s wearing his invisibility cloak. (And this would be a fine time to point out that the actors playing the twins, James and Oliver Phelps, have been criminally underutilized throughout the series of films. Oliver, playing George, has a hilarious moment in this most recent film where he doesn’t speak a word, but just stands against a kitchen counter with a cup of coffee in hand.) That relatively seamless quality has been lacking throughout the series; often it would seem like a joke was inserted because it was a highlight of the book and the screenwriter couldn’t omit it even if it didn’t flow with what preceded and followed it.

The scenery in the film is remarkable, both indoors and out. I was sure they’d shot some of the film in New Zealand given how much it reminded me of parts of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Wikipedia (which we know is never wrong) says it was all shot in the United Kingdom; if someone in London is paying attention, they’ll use footage from the film in future U.K. Tourism adverts, because many of the landscape shots are breathtaking. The Ministry of Magic, which you’ve seen before, remains one of the crowing achievements of Harry Potter set design with its mix of mundane (seemingly century-old elevators) and magical. The Malfoy mansion represents the best in abanoned-property chic, dark, desolate, and appropriately eerie. Even the Lovegood shack is – as so much in the films has been – strikingly like Rowling’s descriptions.

As a part one of two, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One ends without full resolution, but doesn’t seem the least bit unfinished, nor does its status has half of a greater whole hang over the film in any way. There’s a gradual crescendo that will certainly accelerate in Part Two, but the longer format means we get more meaning, more detail, better dialogue, and more chance for several actors – notably Grint and Watson – to stretch out. I’ve watched the first six Potter movies out of a sort of obligation, but the success of this film has me avidly looking forward to the finale.

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→ December 2, 2010
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Tangled.

Chat today at 1 pm EST/11 am Arizona time.

—

We took our daughter to the movies for the first time the other day to see a movie she’d been asking about for weeks: Tangled. It was a big deal for us beyond the movie, since it was a family outing, and the first time my wife and I had been in a theater together since before our daughter was born. The day planned around the child turned out to be a bigger hit for the adults, as we thoroughly loved Tangled but our daughter’s feelings were more mixed.

The story is only loosely based on the Rapunzel myth, but is updated in a way that gives the film’s two central characters (Rapunzel and her accidental savior, the thief Flynn Rider) much more to do while also increasing the opportunities for merchandising. Rapunzel is now a princess, stolen from her royal crib shortly after birth because her hair has healing powers that the film’s villain, Mother Gothel, wants to use to continue to keep herself eternally young. So, of course, she keeps Rapunzel in an inaccessible tower in a hidden part of the forest, convincing her that to leave the tower and enter the cruel, dangerous world would be sheer lunacy. (I imagine a psychologist would have a field day here.) Flynn Rider, himself on the lam after stealing the crown Rapunzel’s grief-stricken parents have set aside for her hoped-for return, stumbles upon the tower and eventually sets off with Rapunzel … at which point the real movie starts.

And it’s some movie – not a princess movie by any stretch, but a Disney adventure flick, with thugs, fights, chases, trickery, and, in the best trick of all, some actual plot tension even though you know more or less how the story is going to end. It took about a third of the movie to get to the point where Rapunzel leaves the tower, but after that, the movie flies, with three different parties chasing Flynn and Rapunzel, leaving (thankfully) less time to dwell on the budding romance between the two characters. I feel like Disney gave the Pixar gang minimal directions – “make a movie about Rapunzel, and put her in a purple dress*” – and Pixar did what they do best: They turned it on its head and wrote a fantastic, fun, energetic story.

*So my daughter is completely caught up in the princess stuff, which means my wallet is caught up in the princess stuff as well. We were last at Disneyworld in November of 2009, right as they introduced the Tiana character from The Princess and the Frog. Her dress was green, which, I noticed as we walked through that massive store at Downtown Disney, left only purple as the likely color for the next dress, since we already have pink, blue, turquoise (twice), yellow, and green, not including the fairies. I’m wondering what color is next – orange? Magenta? Some other blue? This stuff matters when you know it’ll be on the Christmas wish list a year from now.

The animation in Tangled is absolutely absurd, the most impressive I’ve seen so far, even exceeding the normally high expectations I take into any Pixar-made film. You would expect that, in a film about Rapunzel, the main character’s hair would be superbly animated, but it’s not just her hair – Flynn Rider’s rakish hairdo and Mother Gothel’s curls* look rich and textured, more real than real, if that makes sense. But there’s a scene where a torrent of water breaks loose and heads towards the camera (I assume for the 3-D version) where I couldn’t get over how un-animated the water looked – clear, glassy, almost like I could see the drops of water making up the flood. And my wife and I both noticed that the Rapunzel has realistic-looking feet, something you almost never see on an animated character (and important since she’s barefoot through the whole movie).

*Figures that they give the film’s main villain curly hair.

The Wikipedia entry on the film explains that the animation style was inspired by a rococo painting called The Swing, although I can’t say I would have noticed the difference if I hadn’t read that beforehand. I know nothing about art, though, which is probably the reason.

Tangled was scary for my four-year-old, who particularly disliked “the bad woman” (Mother Gothel), I think in part because that character separates Rapunzel from her parents and then is increasingly wicked as the film goes on. I was more disturbed by the extent of comic violence, especially that involving blows to the head. Some of the physical comedy is brilliant, such as Rapunzel’s trouble stuffing the unconscious Flynn into a closet, but one of the best running gags in the movie involves whacking people in the head or face with a cast-iron skillet. I use one of those almost every night I cook, and a blow to the dome from one of those won’t just knock you out – it would probably fracture your skull. And in Tangled it happens over … and over … and over, to the point where I couldn’t sustain my suspension of disbelief. It lost its humor for me, until Flynn’s one great line about it near the end of the film. There’s other violence in the film, including a stabbing and an implied death by defenestration, that probably makes this inappropriate for younger viewers. It is an action flick, Disney-style, and while I’m glad they didn’t just make a dull princess movie, I don’t think we’d have taken our daughter to see it if we knew just how much of a grown-up kids’ movie Tangled was.

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→ January 15, 2010
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The Brothers Bloom.

I saw bits of The Brothers Bloom on the flight back from Arizona in October – and when I say “saw,” I mean that in a literal sense, as I didn’t put on headphones – and was interested enough to add it to our Netflix queue, but promptly forgot to do so. Seeing the title on a ten-best-films-of-2009 list (CNN’s, I believe) two weeks ago reminded me, and it was right up my alley.

The Brothers Bloom had a number of things working in its favor before I even pressed play. I love movies or books about con men – it doesn’t get much better than The Sting, despite the movie’s massive musical anachronism, and many of the hard-boiled detective novels I read are built around cons of one sort or another. It alludes to a number of literary works I’ve read – including, as you might guess, the one I’m struggling through reading right now. (And that is a major reason I’m reading Ulysses; without that experience, I often feel like I’m ignorant of a secret language that later authors used in their works.) It’s filmed all over Europe. It stars Adrien Brody, who I thought very much deserved his Oscar for The Pianist. (Or, one might argue, he deserved what he took along with the award.) It’s witty. And it has heart without excessive sentimentality.

The Brothers, Stephen (older) and Bloom (younger), are passed from foster home to foster home as children, earning their tickets out of each home for one sort of mischief or another, a pattern that culminates in a con that launches them on a roughly twenty-year spree of defrauding wealthy people as a way of life. Bloom, whose first name is never revealed, is always telling Stephen he wants out of the racket, but can’t commit to such a decision. When they pull what is to be Bloom’s “final” con, on wealthy, beautiful loner Penelope Stamp, Bloom falls in love with the mark while she finds the excitement her life has always lacked. Oh, and their Japanese sidekick, known as Bang Bang, never speaks but is a wizard with explosives.

Rachel Weisz ends up stealing much of the show in her role as Penelope as she manages to produce a fairly compelling display of social awkwardness and low self-confidence. Her effusive celebration when she pulls off, against all odds, her part in their biggest con, has an endearingly nerdy quality to it – she can’t believe she did it, and her celebration lacks the self-restraint of someone more conscious of how she looks to others around her. Brody’s performance was as strong, but the weakness and passivity of his character blended him into the background more than you’d expect for an actor of his caliber. Mark Ruffalo, as Stephen, oozes with confidence in a role that calls for a little overacting. Rinko Kikuchi says three more words as Bang Bang than she did in Babel, although she looks great throughout the film.

The richness and pace of the script were what made the movie work for me, even more than the performances or the con man angle. Everything is quick, quick cuts, short scenes, and no drawn-out monologues or lingering tension until the movie’s final sequence; it’s a hard-boiled movie, right down to the bantering among the characters and the remorselessness of the head fraudster. Writer Rian Johnson must be a fan of classic literature, from the overt reference to Herman Melville’s final novel, The Confidence Man, to the names Stephen (Dedalus) and (Leopold) Bloom (the two main characters in Ulysses) to Robbie “Hagrid” Coltrane’s stint as a Belgian man who pays far too much attention to his thick mustache (a nod to M. Poirot, I presume), which I admit is a cheap and easy way to win points with me. I haven’t seen anything of Johnson’s before, but I see he made a hard-boiled detective film in 2005 called Brick; if any of you have seen it, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

The Brothers Bloom did fall short in one regard – the path to the climax, where Bloom is forced by the script to make some, in my opinion, unrealistic choices, leading to an unrealistic (but poetic) choice by Stephen. Bloom’s desire to keep Penelope out of the con game is much more easily solved by him leaving the con game than by what ultimately unfolds, but having him simply walk away would have eliminated the slam-bang finish, where only Bang Bang’s exit is truly clever or memorable. It’s a forgivable flaw given the strength of the first 90 minutes, but I am, as always, a sucker for movies with a little heart.

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→ December 25, 2009
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Top ten musicals.

Just one more sleep till Christmas, at least for those of you in the western hemisphere, so this post is an early present of sorts. For those of you who celebrate this particular holiday, have a safe and Merry Christmas tomorrow. And for those of you who celebrated Hanukkah, I hope you thought of me when you fried up some jam doughnuts.

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We got The Sound of Music DVD for my daughter for Christmas – not among my favorite movies, but she loves all the songs the kids sing, and I have to admit that the bonus feature with all seven child actors reunited for the 40th anniversary of the film is awesome – but that spurred me to post a list I’ve meant to throw out there for a while: My own ten favorite musicals.

You’ll notice the absence of Judy Garland films, because I can’t stand her – not her voice, not her acting, nothing. And Meet Me in St. Louis was a stupid movie anyway. I also didn’t include West Side Story, which was ruined for me by the first scene; street “toughs” who run around New York dancing in tights are not tough and nothing they do afterwards will convince me otherwise.

Films that didn’t make the cut included The Muppet Christmas Carol (not enough of a musical), Brigadoon (good movie but the songs didn’t grab me), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (too long by half). One movie I have not seen that makes all of these lists is Cabaret. You’ll also notice that fatherhood has influenced this list quite a bit.

10. Mary Poppins. Probably my daughter’s all-time favorite movie, to the point where she heard a Julie Andrews song from the soundtrack of Camelot and shouted, “That sounds like Mary Poppins!” There’s enough humor for adults here and some strong visual effects, as well as a few songs that you still know by heart whether or not you want to, plus a performance from Arthur Treacher as the Constable, which makes me laugh just because of the fast-food chain that still bears his name. Best song: When my daughter was smaller, I’d swing her all around to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.”

9. Moulin Rouge!. It still amazes me that the huge success of this movie didn’t spur a new run of musicals from Hollywood, but apparently only Baz Luhrmann has the balls – or the good sense – to capitalize on the market for musical films. I thought the movie was incredibly creative in its reworking of pop songs into key plot elements, with lots of silliness and some very good performances by Ewan Macgregor, Nicole Kidman, and several of the supporting players. Best song: “Your Song.”

8. Aladdin. I’m not sure if any movie has had me laughing as consistently as Aladdin did on my first viewing, and it’s one of the only movies I’ve ever seen more than twice. It’s also one of the only animated films that had songs I might actually want to hear outside the context of the movie. Best song: “Prince Ali.”

7. Holiday Inn. A sentimental favorite, since I’ve been singing “You’re Easy to Dance With” to my daughter since she was a few days old. The plot is silly – it’s an excuse to sing a bunch of holiday-themed songs, and it features perhaps the worst business model ever depicted in any movie: a hotel that only opens on holidays. There’s also an unfortunate blackface scene that’s woven into the plot, so if you watch the movie without it, a thin story gets thinner and a few lines won’t make sense, but watching the original version will have you cringing. Fred Astaire’s July 4th number is one of his best dances in any film. Best song: “You’re Easy to Dance With.”

6. Royal Wedding. Two iconic dance scenes make this movie: Fred Astaire dancing with a hatstand, and Astaire dancing on the ceiling. He had surprising chemistry with Jane Powell, a new partner for him who turned out to be perfect for some of the slapsticky numbers in the Astaire’s love interest is played by Sarah Churchill, daughter of Winston, although I found the idea that Astaire’s character would be smitten with her a little tough to swallow. Best song: “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You When You Know I’ve Been A Liar All My Life,” a rare comic-dance number for Astaire, and later a Muppet Show sketch.

5. White Christmas. A little more story and better music than Holiday Inn, and the film avoids any racist undertones by sticking to an all-white cast. (Lest anyone get the wrong idea, that’s sarcasm.) Danny Kaye doesn’t have Fred Astaire’s dancing chops but is better with physical comedy, and Vera-Ellen was a much better dancer than either of the female leads in Holiday Inn. The film’s climax, while just as absurd as everything that leads up to it, has a lot of heart. Best song: “White Christmas.”

4. Once. A cult favorite that should have been a bigger hit, made on a shoestring budget with a plot that fit on the back of a napkin, it’s carried by two great performances and a heavy emphasis on realistic dialogue. It’s magical without magic other than the magic of music. Best song: “Falling Slowly.”

3. The Music Man. I’ve certainly made enough references to this movie in chats and on Twitter, but I have to admit I thought it was dumb the first time I saw it; it took a second viewing for me to realize how witty the movie is and the way it straddles the line between admiration and parody of the small-town Iowa culture of writer Meredith Wilson’s upbringing. The film’s vernacular is unique and comical – “You watch your phraseology!” – and the use of a barbershop quartet as actual characters in the film (they play the school board) instead of just props who sing was another nice touch. The only negative for me is that Shirley Jones gets stuck with three dud ballads, making her character boring next to all the fun that Robert Preston’s Harold Hill gets to have. Best song: “Wells Fargo Wagon,” although I imagine the most popular pick would be “Seventy-Six Trombones.”

2. My Fair Lady. Take a great play (Pygmalion) by a great playwright (Shaw) and add the most beautiful actress in the history of motion pictures (Audrey Hepburn) and a handful of memorable songs and you have the shortest three-hour movie ever made. Stanley Holloway, as Eliza Doolittle’s ne’er-do-well father, is a scene-stealer and gets the two funniest songs in the film. A remake is supposedly in the works, which strikes me as a brazen money-grab and a terrible idea, as movies like this should never, ever be subject to the indignity of a remake. Best song: “With a Little Bit of Luck.”

1. Singin’ in the Rain. The granddaddy of musicals, including no end of outstanding dance numbers – the title track, “Moses Supposes,” and “Good Morning” – a great comedy number from Donald O’Connor in “Make ‘Em Laugh,” and an actual plot aside from the standard-issue romance. The silent film era comes to an abrupt end and the characters, mostly silent-film stars, have to adapt to life in the talkies, which proves very difficult for Jean Hagen’s Lina Lamont, whose voice is like nails on a chalkboard and who mistakenly believes that the film studio’s marketing angle about a romance between her and Gene Kelly’s character has some basis in fact. Kelly, a raging perfectionist as a dancer, was at his peak here, and while he reportedly drove costar Debbie Reynolds to tears, the “Good Morning” number still amazes me every time I watch it. Best song: “Singin’ in the Rain.”

By the way, if any of you happen to end up with the new Tinker Bell DVD (The Lost Treasure), check out the fake blooper reel called “Scenes You Never Saw.” I still haven’t made it through the entire film proper (although my daughter loves it), but the four-minute outtake clip is hilarious.

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→ April 10, 2008
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On Charlton Heston.

Quick note – there will be a KlawChat today at 1 pm over at the four-letter, and I’ll be on our Omaha affiliate (1620 AM) today at 2:30 CDT.

I was saddened to hear of Charlton Heston’s death, but I can’t say I’m all that familiar with his work, having never seen any of his most famous movies. The Heston role that I know the best only lasts for a few minutes, although it was a tour de force on par with Judi Dench’s turn as the Queen in Shakespeare in Love. Heston appeared in the definitive adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet as the King of the Players. Kenneth Branagh’s film is, as far as I know, the only complete adaptation of the text of Hamlet, and Heston dominates the screen each time he appears. The entire film is four hours long and probably only for Shakespeare devotees and high school English students, but a clip of Heston’s work in the film is, unsurprisingly, available on Youtube.

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→ March 13, 2008
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Harry Potter and the two-part finale.

The final Harry Potter book will be
split into two films, with the first to be released in 2010. So at least one of the books will receive enough time for a proper film treatment.

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