Saturday, 2:45 pm (home)
I saw Stagedoor this morning. Not to be confused with Stage Door, of course (although I did actually see that film again last weekend, coincidentally enough). Stagedoor is a documentary about the Stagedoor Manor summer camp, a theatrical program in the Catskills where all kinds of kids go to participate in productions. The documentary focused on five kids, but didn’t delve too deeply or focus too much on just these five kids. The movie spent a lot of time looking at the overall camp culture.
Category: theatrical reviews
SXSW: first Friday night
I’m writing things as I go along. These are just various impressions I got from going to the festival. Hopefully I’ll have time to write full reviews later for some of these movies.
Friday, 9:20 pm, Alamo South parking lot
I just saw The Chumscrubber. This was not what I thought it would be. I was worried it would involve people dealing with a decomposing corpse or something.
The summary I read was misleading because it listed all the name actors, who are older—Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, Allison Janney, etc. However, the main characters in this movie are all teenagers (I guess the teen actors aren’t as well known; I didn’t know them, but I am out of touch with them kids today … gads, what a terribly old-farty thing to say). [After checking IMDb on Saturday] One looked very Culkin-ish, and sure enough, Dean’s little brother was played by Rory Culkin. And I am very much out of touch, because Jamie Bell, the lead, also played the title role in Billy Elliot.
Kinsey (2004)
Kinsey: 2004, dir. Bill Condon. Seen at Paramount (Feb. 20).
Kinsey is not a movie about sex. Kinsey is a movie about nerds.
My boyfriend pointed this out after we saw the movie. He noted how refreshing it was to see a movie in which the main character, with whom we are sympathizing and identifying, is a nerd. And a geek. He gets more excited about the lifespan of the gall wasp than anything else.
I have to say I like the nerdy parts of this movie, and of the character, much better than the sex parts. And no, I am not a prude.
Last Days of the San Jose (2005)
Last Days of the San Jose: 2005, dir. Liz Lambert. Seen at Alamo Downtown (Jan. 12).
Last Days of the San Jose premiered at Alamo Downtown as part of the Texas Documentary Tour. It is a documentary about the San Jose Motel, a notoriously seedy joint on S. Congress Ave. in Austin, which Liz Lambert bought with the idea of tearing it down to build a cool boutique hotel. But it took her two years to get a bank to loan her the money, and in the meantime she decided to manage the old motel in order to make ends meet. She used a digital video camera to document many of the colorful characters and odd experiences she encountered during that time, which were cut into this documentary.
If you have lived in Austin for many years, Last Days of the San Jose is a kind of loopy Valentine to the days when S. Congress was more disreputable, before anyone ever thought about using the abominably pretentious term “SoCo” to describe the area.
About Schmidt (2002)
About Schmidt: 2002, dir. Alexander Payne. Seen on DVD (Jan. 20).
I had not actually intended to watch About Schmidt. My boyfriend rented the DVD and I figured he’d watch it one night when I wasn’t around. I was around when he put it on, and I thought I would do some computer work or read in my room, but I ended up watching the movie anyway. If you think this means that About Schmidt is an absorbing and entertaining film that I would recommend … you’re wrong.
We ended up seeing About Schmidt a week or so after we saw Sideways, which was adapted and directed by the same filmmakers. The problems I encountered with Sideways were magnified in About Schmidt.
Jackie Brown (1997)
Jackie Brown: 1997, dir. Quentin Tarantino. Seen on DVD (Jan. 8).
This is what I get for waiting a month to write a damn review. All I can think of was, “Damn, this was a good movie, and much different than what I expected.”
A lot of people have called Jackie Brown Tarantino’s least typical film. There are a few of his trademark touches: using 1970s actors (Pam Grier), the thin and slightly crazy blonde (Bridget Fonda instead of Uma Thurman this time), nervous trigger-happy criminals, Samuel L. Jackson, odd jumps and rewinds in time, scenes in which the camera is placed oddly for stylistic effect, and so forth.
However, the storyline is stronger and the dialogue is less annoying to me than in other Tarantino films, and for that I wonder if we ought to thank Elmore Leonard. I did not know this until after I saw the movie, but it is adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel, Rum Punch (although Michael Keaton made me wonder … he plays the same character in Out of Sight). Sometimes Tarantino movies make me feel like I am supposed to stop and marvel at the wonderfulness of the director and his unique style of filmmaking, which annoys me and makes me want to throw things. That did not seem to happen in this film.
Sideways (2004)
Sideways: 2004, dir. Alexander Payne. Seen at Arbor Great Hills (Jan. 15).
Sideways was an enjoyable movie, although I don’t see why so many people feel it ought to be raking in the big awards. But then I feel that way about most of the 2004 movies that have been nominated for Oscars and other yearly awards.
It took me awhile to get to the theater to see Sideways, and not just because I am a procrastinator and lazy and all that. I got the impression that this was a movie about two guys going through a mid-life crisis, and I could not have been less interested. But then people started talking about Paul Giamatti, whom I enjoyed very much in American Splendor. I heard further rumbling about Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen. And then everyone was going on about A.O. Scott saying that critics only liked this movie because Giamatti’s character was the type to appeal to most critics, who would sympathize with such a person. Somehow I found that weirdly tempting.
And then it took us two or three weeks to see the movie because it kept selling out whenever we wanted to go.
I realized after seeing Sideways why it was that everyone was telling me to go see it for this performance or that one, and talking about the actors rather than the movie as a whole. This movie is as good as it is because of the actors in it. If it had been differently cast, it would be a much less entertaining film, if not downright unpleasant.
Baadasssss! (2004)
Baadasssss!: 2004, dir. Mario Van Peebles. Seen on DVD (Jan. 14).
I cannot stop talking about Baadasssss! I have been urging everyone to rent it. I wish it had been nominated for some kind of award. I think it was one of the best overlooked movies in 2004.
Baadasssss! tells the story of Melvin Van Peebles trying to make a movie in 1972 in which black characters weren’t relegated to the horrible stereotypes common to Hollywood films. His movie, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, featured a character who fought back when corrupt cops tried to beat him up, and who most importantly did not get caught or die at the end of the movie. Melvin Van Peebles scraped together money from all kinds of sources, used a porn-film non-union crew because he wanted a cast and crew with a racial mix that reflected the racial mix of America, practically went blind in one eye trying to shoot and edit the film the way he wanted it, and then had to find theaters that would actually show the finished product in public.
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Million Dollar Baby: 2004, dir. Clint Eastwood. Seen at Galaxy Highland (Jan. 30).
It is difficult for me to talk about Million Dollar Baby without giving away some major plot elements. I saw the movie without knowing much of anything about it except that it had a lot of boxing scenes in it, and I think that was the ideal way to enjoy the film. It’s very good, very smartly written and directed, and the performances are excellent.
So. If you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading now. Go see the movie. Forget all the deprecating comments you have heard about how this is “just another formulaic Hollywood movie.” Don’t listen to the whispers about controversial this-and-that. Go now, go see Million Dollar Baby, and you can thank or strangle me later.
If you’ve seen the movie, keep reading if you want to know what I think about it beyond “This was a very good movie.”
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: 2004, dir. Wes Anderson. Seen at Alamo Village (Jan. 21).
The credits rolled at the end of The Life Aquatic and the theater lights came on and my boyfriend turned to me and said, “See, it is possible to make a movie with quirky characters that aren’t mean-spirited stereotypes.”
Many fans of Wes Anderson appear to be somewhat disappointed by The Life Aquatic. It does not contain as many of the arresting images that are so memorable in The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, for example. On the other hand, unlike The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic has a stronger storyline. You can call it a narrative sellout if you want, but it was a more entertaining movie overall.