one month, 13 movies

I like to write a summary of every new movie I see, so that I’ll have a record of it later on. I want to be able to recall what I thought about it, when I saw it, and so on. If you’ve been reading my stuff for awhile, you’ve probably noticed these summaries/reviews.
I am way behind on these, so I have decided to catch up all in one entry here. That’s 13 movies, a couple of paragraphs each, just to jog my memory. It’s a pretty interesting collection. These are the movies I’ve seen for the first time in the past month.

I’m No Angel: 1933, dir. Wesley Ruggles. Seen at Paramount (June 2). If Mae West were around today, people would be calling her fat. The only actress I can think of who compares to her, body and attitude-wise, is Queen Latifah. She isn’t photographed in a flattering way, either; you can see her double-chins.
None of this matters because Mae West is still so charming and sexy and funny that the audience is captivated entirely. In I’m No Angel, she plays a lion-taming, social-climbing woman who goes through men like no one’s business, not just for money and pretty jewelry but obviously because she likes men and sex, and eventually falls for a very young Cary Grant. Well, that’s understandable. The divorce sequence in the courtroom is sidesplitting.
The movie is full of famous lines like “It’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men” but even so, you don’t remember the lines as much as you remember Mae West sashaying through this movie in unbelievable outfit after outfit, and the wonders of pre-Code permissiveness. Mae West was definitely a target of the original Production Code—her risque writing and acting was targeted by Mary Pickford and others—and I’m told that later films are considerably more sanitized. But I’m No Angel is simply a joy to watch.
The Bank Dick: 1940, dir. Edward F. Cline. Seen at Paramount (June 2). W.C. Fields is an acquired taste, I think. Also, I’ve heard other people say that you must see his films more than once in order to catch all the incidental asides and throwaway lines that are truly hilarious. The Bank Dick wasn’t quite as funny as I thought it would be, but then I’ve seen Never Give a Sucker an Even Break and I’m not sure it’s possible to top that particular Fields movie for pure surreality and chaotic humor.
Three Kings: 1999, dir. David O. Russell. Seen on DVD (June 3). This was a really weird movie to watch in the middle of the current Iraqi situation. Characters kept saying stuff like “Americans have deserted us Iraqis!” and I would think, yeah, but we’ll be back, unfortunately. George Clooney is less suave and more rugged than in later films.
I can understand now why everyone keeps sticking Mark Wahlberg in their films—he’s better in Three Kings than in anything else I’ve seen him do. He’s more like a person and less like a block of wood. Still, even in this movie he’s hardly hero material and he’s no George Clooney.
I didn’t like all the visualization of various internal organs and the showy camera effects. I wasn’t sure that was necessary and in some scenes it felt like overkill. We got the point. We’re not dumb.
I thought this movie would be more like a heist or caper film, so it was difficult to deal with the downshifting into politics and humanity and drama and so forth. Still, not a bad movie. Not sure I need to see it again.
Modern Times: 1936, dir. Charles Chaplin. Seen at Paramount (June 13). This is a difficult movie to watch because there are so many scenes that were terribly sad, but the characters (particularly Chaplin’s Tramp) were doing terribly funny things. Seeing the Depression only reminded me of the bad economic situation that so many of us face currently, and watching characters desperately job-hunt certainly hit a relevant note. I don’t think this film will ever be dated.
The sound thing is weird: it’s a “silent” movie because no one speaks, and there are occasional title cards, but we can hear the sounds of various machines and things, there’s background music, and near the end we hear the Tramp sing a nonsense song. It’s strange to realize that this movie is from 1936 and is contemporary to so many of the Thirties romantic comedies I like, because it seems to be in another world entirely.
We saw a beautifully restored print of Modern Times in a movie theater and I highly recommend seeing this movie in that kind of setting if you can manage it. I think it would lose a lot on a small TV. I might want the DVD anyway.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 2004, dir. Alfonso Cuarón. Seen at Alamo Village (June 18). Everyone else has said this but whatthehell. This movie is so, so, so much better than the first two Harry Potter movies. We now have tangible proof that Chris Columbus should not be directing the things. Characters are better defined, particularly Hermione, who was turning into another shrill stereotypical girl (Mr. Columbus seems to think all girls are prissy little shrews). The books get lazy with characterization sometimes and I hope this boost from a good director will help future movies too.
The problem with this movie is that it relies on the audience having read the books. If you haven’t, you won’t understand what the hell is going on at the end. Too many gaps are left unfilled, and I think a little extra background information scattered earlier in the film might have helped considerably. That’s a shame.
Please, bring Cuarón back for the fifth movie, which will need all the help it can get, especially with nuances of characterization (that was my least favorite book).
While this is the best movie in the series so far, I still don’t find the series of films to be very memorable. They’re great fun when I watch them, and this one was especially entertaining and touching, but a week later I can’t remember much. Same thing happened with the LOTR movies. Maybe it’s because the books are more vivid in my head than the movies.
Oh, and I loved Emma Thompson. I can’t wait to see her in future installments of the series. I also thought Michael Gambon was fine as Dumbledore (I was worried he would be too scary for the role) and hope he’ll get more screen time in the rest of the series.
Spellbound: 1945, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Seen on DVD (June 19). We saw this movie under unique circumstances. I was telling my boyfriend it was a shame that Alamo wasn’t doing any of their outdoor movies, it was a perfect night for a drive-in or a movie in the park. So he put my laptop on a table on the back patio, plugged in little speakers, set up some chairs and popcorn and played the DVD on my laptop. That was a lot of fun.
Despite the fun setting, neither of us liked the movie much. We expected something better from Hitchcock. I love Notorious and many of his other films so this was a disappointment. The characters were entirely unbelievable, the psychology was laughable, and parts of it were just plain ridiculous. They solve the murder by analyzing someone’s dream? Please. Not to mention that it’s annoyingly sexist. And lame. Laaaaaame.
The Fog of War: 2003, dir. Errol Morris. Seen on DVD (June 20). I was very much impressed by this movie. We’d been putting off watching it, knowing it would be heavy and possibly depressing, but when we finally sat down to watch the DVD it was well worth it.
The Fog of War is essentially Robert McNamara talking, telling us about his experiences in World War 2 and at Ford and as Secretary of Defense for JFK and LBJ, interspersed with audio taped conversations and relevant video footage. The interviews with McNamara are divided into 11 “lessons” that director Errol Morris wrote as a summary of the McNamara books and interviews.
McNamara is fascinating to watch and Morris built an excellent film around these interviews. I found this movie much more frightening, much more eye-opening than Fahrenheit 9/11. I kept wondering if, in 30 years or so, we might see Colin Powell in similar interviews, talking about being caught up in the hype and fog and intensity of the “war on terrorism” in the same way McNamara and his contemporaries were caught up in the Cold War. It was chilling at times.
Go rent this movie. I mean it. Also, one advantage to seeing The Fog of War on DVD is the 30 minutes or so of extra footage included on the disk. Not as compelling as the movie itself, but worth watching.
Waiting for Guffman: 1996, dir. Christopher Guest. Seen on DVD (June 26). I have been working my way backward through all the Christopher Guest movies. I started with A Mighty Wind, then saw Best of Show, and finally rented Waiting for Guffman because I was tired of everyone making jokes about it that I didn’t get.
This is a funny, funny movie. I loved Parker Posey. I loved Catherine O’Hara (and her hair). Hell, I loved everybody. And everything. The store at the end. The scene in the Chinese restaurant. The song about aliens. The clothes. The auditions.
Afterwards we realized it was filmed in Lockhart, which is very near Austin. I wondered what Turk Pipkin was doing in there and once we saw it was filmed nearby, that made more sense. Now we want to go to Lockhart and see if we can find some of the locations, because my boyfriend and I are geeks that way. Plus, Lockhart is supposed to have good barbecue.
This is another DVD with good extra footage, although it was of course much funnier than the extra footage in Fog of War.
Fahrenheit 9/11: 2004, dir. Michael Moore. Seen at Alamo Lake Creek (June 27). This is really difficult to write about from a film-review perspective, because of course everyone is looking at it from a political perspective.
I didn’t like Bowling for Columbine at all. I thought Moore patronized his audience and used the people in the film like little puppets promoting his agenda. And the points he was trying to make in the film were sometimes downright ridiculous. I felt he could have made a much more tightly focused movie about the culture of fear in America without bringing in all these incidental stunts.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a better movie, although not without its own flaws. We know Moore’s flavor of flim-flam a little too well to trust some of the conclusions he draws and the facts he presents to support them. For example, his segment on the Bush-Bin Laden connections seemed highly suspect, and in fact the “Shiny Happy People” portion was downright racist at times.
As other people have said, the first half of Fahrenheit 9/11 was weak and unfocused in general. Once Moore turned to the development of the US/Iraqi situation, the movie gained strength and credibility. He relied less on stunts than in previous movies. The segment with Lila Lipscomb did not strike me as manipulative, since she was well aware of what she was saying and doing, and Moore appeared to treat her with respect. Instead, her interviews were extremely moving.
Moore does better at showing us what’s going on than telling us. The less of his voice we hear (literally and narratively), the more impact the movie has. If he would have edited this movie to tighten and clarify his points, focusing more on Iraq and less on irrelevent Bushisms, this would have been a much more effective movie. As it is, it’s half of a very good film.
The Thin Blue Line: 1988, dir. Errol Morris. Seen on VHS (July 2). We were in Vulcan Video, which has an amazingly comprehensive VHS selection, because I wanted one of the Wilder-Brackett-written movies not on DVD. My boyfriend picked up The Thin Blue Line because I’d sent him a very good article on Errol Morris and we both wanted to see more of his movies.
The Thin Blue Line is supposed to be more typically Morris than The Fog of War. We’ll have to see more of his movies to find out. This is the movie that forced re-examination of the conviction of Randall Adams, who was serving time for murdering a Dallas policeman, but who kept swearing his innocence. Morris re-examines the case, going over the facts, interviewing witnesses and other relevant people.
Not that you ever hear the voice of the director or any narrator. I liked the lack of the “voice of God” narration you hear in so many documentaries. Instead, Morris shows us re-enactments of people’s versions of the crime, blending one story with another and demonstrating through visuals how implausible the stories might be. The movie is manipulative as hell, more manipulative than any Michael Moore movie, but Morris is extremely skilled and subtle and you are happily led to the conclusion he wants you to draw: this man is innocent, this other man is probably guilty.
We’re planning to see more Morris movies, although very few of them are on DVD. I have heard that The Thin Blue Line may be released on DVD in November, possibly with some other Morris movies. I hope so. The VHS quality was noticeably poorer than what one generally expects from a DVD, and I think this movie deserves a much wider distribution than it currently has.
(I also find it really, really weird that we saw this movie the same week that one of the interviewees, David Harris, was executed for an unrelated murder.)
Bring It On: 2000, dir. Peyton Reed. Seen on DVD (July 4). I liked Election. I liked Dick. (Just hush, you.) But these are good movies that happen to have teens in them. Y’all stop recommending movies with teens in them to me without telling me they’re movies made for teenagers, like Clueless and Bring It On, because I do not find them entertaining and don’t understand the hype. (Ten Things I Hate About You is the exception. I liked that one a lot.)
I thought Bring It On was going to be some kind of satire or black comedy, but it’s not. (I think I had it mixed up with Drop Dead Gorgeous.) It’s a very cute movie about … cheerleaders. Admittedly the head cheerleader is Kirsten Dunst but still, I got very bored very fast. The minute I saw the high school was named Rancho Carne High, I knew this was going to be one of those movies. Every joke was predictable. Every line was predictable. It picked up a little near the end, but I nearly turned the TV off after 15 minutes.
After 30 minutes, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “You know what this movie needs? Christopher Guest.”
No more teen movies. Especially if they have Lindsay Lohan in them or any of those other excessively perky types. Spare me, please.
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife: 1938, dir. Ernst Lubitsch. Seen on VHS (July 5). I made a special trip to Vulcan to rent this after writing about its not being available on DVD. It’s a minor Lubitsch movie, not nearly as good as Trouble in Paradise or Ninotchka, but still containing some very amusing moments. This is the first collaboration between writers Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and it’s not quite as good as their later comedies. I wouldn’t buy the movie unless I were planning to write about something related to it.
The biggest difficulty with Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife is that I don’t quite understand how the characters fell in love. They “met cute” back when that was still a novelty in film, but the transition to love, particularly with Claudette Colbert’s character, doesn’t make any sense. We don’t see it happen. And Colbert’s actions throughout the film, her attempts to keep Gary Cooper married to her for keeps, don’t make much sense if you can’t tell that she really loves him. Individual scenes can be very funny (Colbert punching Niven, the kissing scene with the onions)
but the overall story is weak. (I kept wanting to yell “You should have signed a Massey pre-nup!” at one point, but then I wanted to do that during I’m No Angel too. Those damn Coens.)
The fine acting carries the film over its weakest spots, but you can see all these actors in much better movies of the same type: Colbert in Midnight (Brackett/Wilder again), Cooper in Ball of Fire (yes, also Brackett/Wilder), and Edward Everett Horton in half the romantic comedies of the Thirties, I swear.
This is one of those frothy Thirties comedies that you enjoy while you’re watching it, mostly for the witty dialogue, but you forget about it later—like The Invisible Woman or Breakfast for Two. Personally, I could watch a new one every week.
Grand Hotel: 1932, dir. Edmund Goulding. Seen on DVD (July 7). If I’d seen Greta Garbo in this film before I saw her in anything else, I would never watch her again. She’s awful. She overacts terribly and it’s almost painful to watch, like Katharine Hepburn in Morning Glory. I attribute this to the acting style of the time, but these days it’s terribly overwrought. Lionel Barrymore is borderline overacting, but he gets away with it because, well, he’s Lionel Barrymore. The stories of five or six guests at the lavish Grand Hotel all entwine in a fairly predictable fashion.
Grand Hotel was released as MGM’s star-studded extravaganza, but time has not been kind to it. It’s the kind of movie that gives Best Film lists a bad name, because it has this amazing reputation and then it’s so difficult to watch. John Barrymore and Joan Crawford are the only good reasons to watch this movie today. However, John Barrymore is much more fun in Twentieth Century.
(Whew. Now I don’t have to worry about writing reviews anymore … until I see another new movie this weekend, anyway.)