Friday, June 30, 2006

Movie Review - Superman Returns

Superman Returns (2006)
directed by Bryan Singer
rating: 1 out 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Oxford Studio Cinema

Somewhere in the Superman mythology, there's a great love story. That love story would involve a sense of humor and more time at the bar. It wouldn't include Bryan Singer.

Movie Review - Superman III

Superman III (1983)
directed by Richard Lester
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
on DVD at a monkey's

Somewhere in here there's a great drinking movie, but it doesn't last.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Movie Review - Death Race 2000

Death Race 2000 (1975)
directed by Paul Bartel
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Black Lodge Video

Is it the freewheeling nudity? A mad grinning Carradine? The fuck-off attitude of racers, announcers, and revolutionaries? Stallone's sneer? The stunts? The chaos? The cars? Start with the cars.

Movie Review - Equinox

Equinox (1970)
directed by Jack Woods and Dennis Muren
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from a monkey

My diagnosis for "Equinox" is a case of Bonzai-itis: great B-movie directors don't try to make B-movies. They try to make masterpieces.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Movie Review - Happy Accidents

Happy Accidents (2000)
directed by Brad Anderson
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

If you want to remake La Jetée because you hate unhappy endings, you should at least remember that Chris Marker's movie is short.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Movie Review - A Prairie Home Companion

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
directed by Robert Altman
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Studio On The Square

I think Tommy Lee Jones's Axeman actually (axe-ually) imparts some balance to the backstage clutter, hammy acting, and rheumy tunes of this odd, nostalgic antique. Its saving grace is Keillor thinking laughter is a human quality, unknown to angels. A good guy, GK, but no Fitzgerald.

Movie Review - The Street With No Name

The Street With No Name (1948)
directed by William Keighley
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from As Seen On TV

The card-carrying ACLU part of me cringes at late nineteen-forties recruitment films for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - the G-Man's erection for upholding the law - and there's something unfair in watching the fun-loving criminal underworld pay for their pleasures with death or arrest. Give me Widmark at the apartment piano instead, yelling to his ditzy girlfriend to answer the goddamn door. For a minute you think it might work out for Jefty, but I guess it never does.

Movie Review - Three On A Match

Three On A Match (1932)
directed by Mervyn LeRoy
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from As Seen On TV

For an hour and change, you get Bette Davis' youthful shimmy, two decades' worth of Roaring Twenties, and Humphrey Bogart grinning loopy at a coke-addled mom. Add to that the cynicism and slapstick pace of pre-code Depression-era melodrama - plus that crazy Goldberg kid - and you get it all.

Movie Review - Cockfighter

Cockfighter (1974)
directed by Monte Hellman
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from As Seen On TV

"Cockfighter" could be a documentary on PBS, shot by Néstor Almendros and starring Warren Oates. I'm not much for chickens, except in songs and dinners, so I'm glad I don't fight them for pay.

TV Review - Justice League

Justice League (1974)
Ep. 8 - "Injustice for All (1)," directed by Butch Lukic
Ep. 9 - "Injustice for All (2)," directed by Butch Lukic
Ep. 10 - "Paradise Lost (1)," directed by Dan Riba
Ep. 11 - "Paradise Lost (2)," directed by Dan Riba
Ep. 12 - "War World (1)," directed by Butch Lukic
Ep. 12 - "War World (2)," directed by Butch Lukic
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

My reason for watching "Justice League" is a crash-course education in the superheroes I don't know very much about. Wonder Woman is one of those, someone imagined by me as essentially kind of goofy - the girl with the lasso and "power bracelets," the only woman capable of bearing Superman's child.

So it was nice to see her almost trapped in the Pit of Lost Souls for the duration of her eternal life by way of a mom getting too involved with Hades in mythic years past - just the sort of complex back story I like to be surprised by.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Movie Review - Pretty As A Picture: The Art of David Lynch

Pretty As A Picture: The Art of David Lynch (1997)
directed by Toby Keeler
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from As Seen On TV

Between David Lynch and one-time producer Deepak Nayar, it's hard to imagine who had more fun on the set of Lost Highway. Laughing, telling stories, showing off their funny haircuts. "Pretty As A Picture" is just casual enough to suggest, in an off-hand way, how a great director works at and thinks about his art. And when Lynch isn't filling his paintings with raw meat, trying to lure bugs, I really admire him.

Movie Review - Switchblade Sisters

Switchblade Sisters (1975)
directed by Jack Hill
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Black Lodge Video

When the weekend was said and done, I remembered Robbie Lee in "Switchblade Sisters" the best. And whatever I wasn't convinced of in Quentin Tarantino's intro/outro enthusiasm or Maggie's rape scene, on Monday morning - waiting at the dealership with a broken-down truck, trying to think happy thoughts - Lee's Lacy sold me, smiling and sobbing and proud of her Dagger Debs.

Movie Review - Over the Edge

Over the Edge (1979)
directed by Jonathan Kaplan
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from Black Lodge Video

"Now, Doinel, go get some water and erase those insanities, or I'll make you lick the wall, my friend."

Les Quatre cents coups (1959)

Friday, June 23, 2006

Movie Review - The Proposition

The Proposition (2005)
directed by John Hillcoat
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Studio On The Square

Entertainment can be had many ways at the movies, but when it's at the expense of a cast covered in sugar water and flies, it doesn't matter how good the acting is, or how pretty the Australian sunsets. Bad is bad, funny or no, and blood just isn't shocking anymore.

Thanks to B. Sweet for the necktie party.

TV Review - Veronica Mars

Veronica Mars (2004, 2005)
Ep. 10 - "An Echolls Family Christmas," directed by Nick Marck
Ep. 11 - "Silence of the Lamb," directed by John T. Kretchmer
Ep. 12 - "Clash of the Tritons," directed by David Barrett
Ep. 13 - "Lord of the Bling," directed by Steve Gomer
Ep. 14 - "Mars vs. Mars," directed by Marcos Siega
Ep. 15 - "Ruskie Business," directed by Guy Norman Bee
Ep. 16 - "Betty and Veronica," directed by Michael Fields
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from a monkey

Three because I finally got through an episode without wincing at the preciousness and hurt of teenage life. In "An Echolls Family Christmas," the detective story is front and center. At the margins - discreet, well-written corners - we learn things we don't already know about most of the major characters. A few laughs, some fun, Jumanji.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Movie Review - Ashes of Time

Dung che sai duk (1994)
directed by Kar-Wai Wong
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Black Lodge Video

Like the difference in fees between a shoeless swordsman and one with shoes, there's more to water than shots of the sea.

Movie Review - Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point (1971)
directed by Richard C. Sarafian
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Black Lodge Video

In "Vanishing Point," the road is king, and the West is an end, not a starting over. It's a seventies movie, full of indignation, but we see too much along the way - open range, pretty girls - to really believe it.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Movie Review - Where The Sidewalk Ends

Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950)
directed by Otto Preminger
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

The son of a criminal becomes a detective. Tough on suspects, he eventually kills one. The father of the woman he loves gets blamed.

That's about as simple a storyline as you can invent, and Ben Hecht writes it all the way to the bank. The credits are written on sidewalks in chalk - the sort of thing a kid might do. Nothing young about it, though.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Movie Review - Barfly

Barfly (1987)
directed by Barbet Schroeder
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from As Seen On TV

Maybe it's gentleness that's a part of every movie romance I love: how Leslie Cheung pops a bottle cap in "Days of Being Wild," the sweet way Joseph Cotten tries for the cat's attention in "The Third Man." There's so little gravity in Mickey Rourke's performance - just lightness of step, of phrasing, in the hues of his rooms and the bars - and so much reach; a hundred reasons all around him.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Movie Review - The Red Queen Kills 7 Times

La Dama rossa uccide sette volte (1972)
directed by Emilio Miraglia
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

Moodier than "Evelyn," less of a peep show, and from an atmospheric perspective ("the only perspective that matters"), just creepy enough. Especially when the Red Queen laughs, or shows her Michael Meyers mask, or drifts into or out of the light. This one's more of a crime movie, too, with a cop assigned to the case and an inspector's eye for clues. Clues like, where are that woman's clothes? They're on the floor!

Movie Review - The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave

La Notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba (1971)
directed by Emilio Miraglia
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

While the "Giallo" genre can sometimes embrace the supernatural, here ghosts (zombies?) are just an excuse for erotic psychological brinskmanship. A crazy aristocrat likes killing prostitutes until he settles down with a scheming blonde and emerges as the movie's hero. When he breaks for a few minutes to change his crushed velvet suits, the crew takes off for a stripclub and looks in on busty Italian red-heads blowing out candles from a coffin. Treats, not tricks.

TV Review - Justice League

Justice League (2001)
Ep. 1 - "Secret Origins (1)," dir. by Butch Lukic and Dan Riba
Ep. 2 - "Secret Origins (2)," dir. by Butch Lukic and Dan Riba
Ep. 3 - "Secret Origins (3)," dir. by Butch Lukic and Dan Riba
Ep. 4 - "In Blackest Night (1)," directed by Butch Lukic
Ep. 5 - "In Blackest Night (2)," directed by Butch Lukic
Ep. 6 - "The Enemy Below (1)," directed by Dan Riba
Ep. 7 - "The Enemy Below (2)," directed by Dan Riba
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

The attraction of, say, Grant Morrison writing a Superman story is essentially how far a writer can take the possibilities implicit in limitless power.

Green Lantern's green ring works the same way - anything the wearer can think - and together with the other DC kings, the heroes tilt at gods. They are gods, more or less. Flag-waving, crime-fighting immortals.

In "Justice League - The Animated Series," Green Lantern mostly imagines breatheable bubbles and concave shields. He's also short-tempered. At least it's fun.

Movie Review - Kiss of Death

Kiss of Death (1947)
directed by Henry Hathaway
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Mature beds the babysitter, Widmark pushes a wheelchair-bound old lady down the stairs, and we men of tomorrow get to see how a phonebook looked and worked in 1947. Classic.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Movie Review - Kings and Queen

Rois et reine (2004)
directed by Arnaud Desplechin
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Two-and-a-half hours of anything needs something different to keep me interested: sand, maybe, or long-winded interior monologues. But irresponsible rich people? Self-involved musicians and the suicidal teenage girls they charm in the psychiatric ward? Long-winded speeches trying to justify selfish actions to badly-written "kid" characters?

Desplechin says he kept a maxim of Truffaut's taped inside his head during filming: every minute, four ideas. Working backwards, "Kings and Queen" would be thirty seconds long, I'd have had time last night for Kiss of Death, and a pretty June morning would be spared the wrath of me waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Movie Review - Platinum Blonde

Platinum Blonde (1931)
directed by Frank Capra
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

"Platinum Blonde" is as great a Capra movie as you could hope for, like "The Philadelphia Story" stripped of its uncomfortable but inevitable reverence for the upper class. In that movie, Dex gets to be hero - the instigator and redeemer - and it's Tracy who changes Macaulay's mind about their marriage.

In "Platinum Blonde," Stew makes his mistake, marries the socialite, then falls in love (or back in love) with the woman he should have married in the first place. He makes it right, too, with her help. Gallagher's essentially Liz Imbrie's character, but more elegant a working girl - truer, I think, like Ozu's women - a little sadder, and also Liz's near ten-year precedent.

"The most ordinary guy in the world, me," and that's why Capra's a genius.

It's been awhile, so pick of the week.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Movie Review - The Man Who Wasn't There

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
directed by Joel Coen
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Blockbuster

Too dour to be any fun, so all that pretty camera work just crowds the essential sadness of Billy Bob's unloved and sympathetic main man. Birdie's a great nickname for his ingenue Scout, but the Coen Bros.'s disappointment in her worldly cynicism misses completely the point of the movies they're aping. Is To The White Sea really to blame?

Movie Review - The 40 Year Old Virgin

The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
directed by Judd Apatow
rating: 3 out of 5 jalapeños
on DVD from Blockbuster

Like "Wedding Crashers," sweet, romantic, and funny. Also, like "Wedding Crashers," I don't have much to say. I was late watching both of these, and the rest of the nation has already moved on - they're probably dreaming about You, Me and Dupree right now.