Friday's Wednesday's Old Fashioned: Night of the Comet

In “28 Days Later” (2002) when zombie apocalypse has broken out, Cillian Murphy awakes in an empty hospital. In “Night of the Comet” (1984) when zombie apocalypse has broken out, Catherine Mary Stewart awakes in a movie theater. That’s a crucial difference. The former yearns to take things seriously. The latter yearns to take things blithely. Neither approach is right or wrong, both movies are highly enjoyable, yet wildly different even if they possess a few notable similarities.

Earth is on the verge of passing through a comet’s tail. Narration tells us the last time this occurred was 65 million years ago – you know, when the dinosaurs up and went extinct. This seems like a harrowing coincidence but no one appears concerned. Perhaps because this is 1984! And Reagan has just laid the smack to Mondale! It’s Morning Again In America! Passing through a tail of a comet?! Ha! What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!

Most everything, as it turns out. As the comet passes everyone that has taken to the streets to watch is literally scattered to dust – red dust, that is. Everyone else exposed to the comet from cozy confines elsewhere eventually mutates into a zombie. The lucky few spared only were on account of being shielded by steel, it seems, people like Reggie (Stewart) who spent the night enclosed in a bunker-esque projection room at the local theater “making it” with her boyfriend (Michael Bowen). And when he exits the theater door (bearing a poster for the 1934 Gable/Harlow film……wait for it……“Red Dust”) he learns it is morning of the living dead and goes down for the count.

Reggie manages to high-tail it outta harm’s way and tracks down her sixteen year old cheerleader sister Sam (Kelli Maroney) who evaded mutation on account – in my favorite lines in the whole film – deciding to run away from home only to realize she had nowhere to go and, thus, settled on spending the night out back in the family’s shed. Armed with legwarmers and uzis (their dad taught them to use firearms) and a ghetto blaster, they eventually cross paths with Hector Gomez (Robert Beltran) who claims to be a truck driver but who we really know was in town to audition for “CHiPs.”

A few insightful scientists, meanwhile, are holed up underground having deduced the comet means trouble. Unfortunately, their insight only goes so far and they fail to account for their facility’s ventilation system. Blimey! They have been exposed! On the verge of mutating into zombies themselves, they decide to concoct a counteractive serum by pilfering the blood of healthy survivors. Which is why they decide to go after the 2 Valley Girls & Ponch.

When people discuss surviving hypothetical Zombie Apocalypses, the discussion typically centers around the zombies themselves. “Night of the Comet”, much like “28 Days Later” and assorted others, goes to show that even during Zombie Apocalypse a human being’s greatest enemy remains fellow humans. This is not to suggest writer/director Thom Eberhardt’s film is an insightful analysis into the human psyche, not at all, though it is, frankly, a pretty bitchin' time. It goes to show just how much can be accomplished with a lower budget, with paying attention to mood and tone - lighting L.A. as if it were the red planet - without resorting to just banging loud chords on the soundtrack over and over and throwing buckets of blood at scripting and/or production problems.

Deaths, for instance, don't always have to be gory. I haven't seen an episode of "The Walking Dead" but I'm willing to bet it doesn't include a death that occurs in shades while smooth jazz purrs on the soundtrack.

Top 5 Favorite James Bond Theme Songs

"Skyfall", the latest entry into the ongoing saga that is James Bond, is set to drop in theaters in less than two weeks time and pop superstar Adele has recorded the traditional theme song. Did it tickle my fancy? Eh. Not entirely. Not like these five.

5.) "Die Another Day", Madonna. I may openly and staunchly side with Lady Gaga in the current Gaga/Madonna feud, but, nevertheless, I'm one of the 17 people who dug this tune.

4.) "The Living Daylights", A Ha. Am I viewing this through my neon glasses of 80's nostalgia? Probably.

3.) "Goldfinger", Shirley Bassey. "Goldfinger, he's the man with the midas touch."

2.) "You Only Live Twice", Nancy Sinatra. When you get right down to it, each person prefers a certain Bond based upon the specific style that Bond exudes. And when I think of 007, this is how he sounds.

1.) Non-Existent Kylie Minogue Bond Theme Song. Is it a cheat to name a song that doesn't even exist as #1? Perhaps, but not really. Let's be honest - whenever the Bond producers remove their ostrich-like heads from the sand and finally hand the freaking mic over to Kylie, her Bond theme will topple all the rest. (Of course, it's possible they have not asked her yet because her Bond theme will be so good it will cause the film to melt or the digital projector to just go up in flames.) Until then we must content ourselves with imagining that next time James Bond Will Return In........."Too Much Of A Good Thing."

 

Reader: "Hold it, hold it, hold it. Was this all one elaborate ruse to post a video of one of Kylie Minogue's 237 most underrated songs?" 
Cinema Romantico: "Huh? (Coughing.) That's crazy talk. It doesn't even - what in the world could that be?!" 
Reader: "What? Where? I don't see anything." (Turning back around.) "Hey! Where did you go?!"

Movie Character Road Trip

Recently I was listening to the Solid Verbal College Football podcast (stay with me!) and near the end hosts Ty Hildebrandt and Dan Rubenstein launched into a crazy-in-the-best-way-possible conversation regarding which coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference they would most like to include on a hypothetical road trip. This, as it must, got me to thinking: which movie characters would I most like to see take a hypothetical cinematic road trip?

Thus, a list was in order. A couple points. One, this road trip, in adhering to the spirit of the road trip movie Fandango which I recently watched for the first time, will be restricted to five characters. Two, no characters from actual Road Trip movies are allowed. Instead these are regular movie characters drafted for their very own Road Trip movie.

1.) Walter Stratford (Larry Miller), 10 Things I Hate About You. He is our driver, the man who initiates the road trip when he receives a panicked call from his daughter Kat at college across the country at Sarah Lawrence in New York only to have her phone battery die before she can explain her crisis. Thus, he gets behind the wheel of his old Dodge – he is spending so much on college for his daughter that he has turned into a penny-pincher and refuses to splurge for a last-second plane ticket – and sets out to rescue her from, well, whatever it is that has obviously gone wrong. I like Miller for this part because of his incessant irritability, a trait that would play well as the road trip goes further and further off the rails.

2.) Dr. Allen Pearl (Eugene Levy), Waiting For Guffman. Having left Blaine, Missouri to seek the stars, Dr. Pearl has just finished performing a song, dance & comedy show at a ski lodge in Boise only to be abandoned by his suspect manager at the Comfort Inn – the same Comfort Inn where Walter Stratford is staying. Dr. Pearl and Walter get to talking over continental breakfast and Dr. Pearl reveals he needs to make it to his upcoming shows in Cheyenne, Wyoming, DeKalb, Illinois and Parsippany, New Jersey. To help cut costs, Walter agrees to bring him along.

3.) Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), The Royal Tenenbaums. Dr. Pearl’s show in Cheyenne is less than successful, save for Eli Cash who came to Wyoming to write a novel about Jim Bridger. Instead he wound up back in rehab and now has no one to ferry him back home to NYC. Dr. Pearl attempts to mentor Eli but finds the tables turned.

4.) Ricky Roma (Al Pacino), Glengarry Glen Ross. At Dr. Pearl’s show in DeKalb, Ricky Roma is in the audience, having come out from the city to convince some sucker to buy a shabby property in southern Wisconsin. He immediately senses a few patsies and moves in to get one of the three – Dr. Pearl, Eli, or Walter – to agree to purchase a poorly half-built vacation home on a Georgia swamp. Sensing he has Dr. Pearl on the hook, he agrees to tag along to Parsippany to reel him in, all the while dispensing life advice to Eli and prompting Walter to re-evaluate his relationship with his daughters.

5.) Michael Shannon (Michael Shannon). At a diner in Parsippany, the four men run find Michael Shannon working the counter. He claims to be “researching a role” but never discloses what this “role” is. He wonders if he can bum a ride back into “the city” and upon getting a whiff of Roma’s real estate scheme tasks himself to be Dr. Pearl’s protector while also officially declaring himself to be Eli’s new sponsor.

Cinema Romantico's Week Off

Hey, loyal readers! It's that time of year again! Tomorrow I'm off to unwind, relax and recharge on the north shore of Minnesota and Lake Superior and, in turn, partake in a roughly eight day internet sabbatical.

Destination

But, of course, Cinema Romantico will not be going dark. Posts will still appear all week long, including a treatise on an 80's "classic" for Halloween, an obligatory Malin Akerman post, a list of my favorite James Bond theme songs, and a couple posts I never published for reasons I don't necessarily know. A Top 5 about a movie character road trip and an epic dissertation on the "nooooooooooo!" in the "Star Wars" Blu ray re-release.

Even if I'm out and about, the fun doesn't stop at Cinema Romantico! So keep stopping by! If you do, I promise that when I get back I'll get on Twitter.

CIFF Review: Tchoupitoulas

Often when I fall asleep and slip into a dream I realize later on that I can’t recall the dream’s beginning. More so, I can’t quite recall the thread of the dream. I can only recall fragments, bits and pieces, sporadic but nevertheless indelible images. It’s those images of our most potent dreams that remain long after waking up.

“Tchoupitoulas” is ostensibly a documentary but provokes a sensation much more akin to a dramatic film. That said, it’s not truly dramatic. There is not much in the way of a storyline. There are no grand heights for our characters to scale. It’s almost entirely imagery and atmosphere. It may not hook you instantly. By my count four people walked out early of the screening I attended. Heck, I confess it did not hook ME instantly. But that’s because “Tchoupitoulas” is a dream state. It’s all about fragments, bits and pieces, sporadic but nevertheless indelible images.

Three brothers – and their dog – in New Orleans take a ferry across the water to the heart of the Crescent City, Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. There is music, dancing, fire-eating, and more music. The kids stand back and just take it all in. Occasionally the camera even breaks from the kids and wanders off on its own. Occasionally the film cuts to a Malick-y voiceover from the youngest of the boys. This is essentially the whole deal. Yes, the boys fail to make the ferry going back and, thus, are left on their own in the big city all night, but there is never a palpable sense of danger or suspense – at least, not traditionally.

The film’s most marvelous sequence involves them sneaking aboard a decrepit riverboat and prowling through its corridors. Even here, though, the sensation is less “What’s around that corner?” and more that upon crossing the gangplank they have mystically entered old world New Orleans. When they stand below an illuminated chandelier standing out amidst the grave darkness, it’s as convincing a portrait of time travel as “Looper.”

To grapple for its meaning is to grasp at straws. At the end the youngest boy, in the morning light, after being awake all night, makes mention of finally getting to go to sleep. No doubt when he awakes it will all feel like a dream.

CIFF Review: King Curling

Curling, the infamous game of brooms and stones, is a game of patience and precision, two qualities that could either bring about a man’s inner peace or a drive man to insanity. Truls Paulsen (Atle Antonsen, suggesting a less manic Nordic Jack Black), curler extraordinaire, is the so-called Master of the Millimeter, so consumed with the delicate precision of his beloved sport that he suffers an on-ice breakdown and is carted away to the loony bin.

10 years pass. Truls is released into the care of his wife Sigrid (Linn Skaber), a controlling woman with a penchant for a reality TV. It is her mission to keep Truls on his meds and away from the broom. But Truls’ old curling pal Arne (Harald Eia) turns up to explain their mentor is in the hospital and in dire need of a lung transplant. The Curling Nationals are in but a week’s time and a Norwegian lottery winner has just pledged his earnings to the victorious team in an effort to showcase curling as more than a (groan) niche sport. A conflicted Truls will eventually, as he must, forgo his meds to pick up the rock because, as they say, all curlers are born with rocks in their hands (they don’t really say that) in order to win that cash to get that lung.

The film does not take the time to revel in the finer points of the sport and does not spend all that much time at the ice rink aside from the climactic third act. No, “King Curling” is a comedy, a broad comedy, but also a knowing one, providing every character his or her own trait and packing the film with pratfalls and berserk imagery and sexual innuendo that quite honestly would not have been out of place in “Bad Santa” and an artsy gal pal (Ane Dahl Torp) of Truls who gets too little screen time and, of course, a dog. It hits, it misses, different for every viewer, much like any movie of this sort, and so it goes.

What it is also is, though, is a sly send-up of sports movies, much more so than, say, “Dodgeball”, which bears a resemblance to “King Curling” but relied less on content and more on celebrity cameos. It never really explicitly says so but it’s fairly apparent that Truls is willing to risk his sanity for the glory of curling. It’s an obsession, not unlike, say, “Any Given Sunday’s” Shark willingly walking right back into harm’s way.

Perhaps the film’s finest sequence involves Arne tracking down and speaking with his estranged father, a Rod Stewart impersonator (don’t ask). His father tells him a story to explain his side of the story. He concludes: “Follow your dream.” Arne laughs, long and loud. He exclaims: "Follow your dream?! What a crock of shit!"

CIFF Review: Sister

The opening moments of “Sister” are comprised almost entirely of close-ups of our 12 year old protagonist, Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein), in plain disguise in snow pants and a ski mask, as he goes about fleecing the guests at a luxurious ski resort in the Swiss alps. He gathers up skis out in the open and lumbers off with them. He nabs gloves, swipes goggles, pinches coats, digs through backpacks to abscond with food and change. He’s Gaspar LeMarc by way of Ralphie’s brother in “A Christmas Story.” Later we see why director Ursula Meier has chosen to frame the first few images this way – in wide shots Simon becomes lost amidst the setting, the snow and the skiers, as if he’s always below radar cover. No wonder it’s so easy for him to repeatedly pull this ruse.

Simon lives in the shadow of the mountain, in a grimy apartment in a grimy tower in a grimy town with his sister, Louise (Lea Seydoux), a few years older yet decidedly more irresponsible than her kid brother, taking and occasionally demanding the money he earns as a chalet thief to fund a fairly unglamorous life of going off with random guys for days at a time. At one point she returns home with a black eye. No mention is made of it. Perhaps this happens regularly.

We learn from Simon’s brief alliance with a sympathetic cook (Martin Compston) at a resort kitchen that his and Louise’s parents are out of the picture, possibly long since dead. He steals not to afford extravagances but to afford food and rent and toilet paper. People cheer for Robin Hood because he stole from the rich to give to the poor and, essentially, that is what Simon is doing. He is poor. Thus, he is stealing from the rich to give to himself. And to his sister. Does this excuse his actions? It does not, and the film does not attempt to excuse them. But for sure matters of class loom above all in “Sister” and repeated visuals of Simon taking a cable car up to the resort and back down to the valley evoke a mountainside “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

“Sister” significantly relies on a twist. The presentation of the twist is as jarring as the twist itself. No bells and whistles, it’s just suddenly……there. Can you “see it coming”? Perhaps. I didn’t “see it coming”. But I never see any twists coming. I live movies frame to frame. It doesn’t matter much either way because the twist is not as much about Shock Value as it is about a re-valuing of the movie’s priorities.

Sometimes the most un-humane decisions can be wrong morally but right financially. Sometimes the most humane decisions can be right morally but wrong financially. It's an exacting portrait of an eternal dilemma.

In Memoriam: Russell Means

When Ray Bolger died in 1987 to become the final member of the principal cast of "The Wizard of Oz" to pass away, I remember my mom telling me that this was a seminal moment, a momentous marker of the passing of time. I rember asking her if the principal cast of "Star Wars" would be considered in the same sort of reverent light as the years caught up to them and their time on Earth came to an end. She said that undoubtedly they would, specifically in the way that when one of them goes we think about all of them together. It's always stayed with me and I thought of it again yesterday when Russell Means passed away at the age of 72. To a great many he was an incendiary activist for Native American rights. To me he was and always will be Chingachgook, "Last of the Mohicans", and he is the first of the principal cast of My All Time Favorite Movie to die. I would be a liar if I said it didn't make me feel a strange pang of something I can't quite describe.

For as volatile as his real life was (and it was really volatile) I always found that it made his introspective, nearly silent performance that much more incredibly powerful. He has the first lines in the film in which he honors the body of the deer he and his two sons – Uncas and the adopted Hawkeye – have just tracked and killed. He has the last lines of the film in which he honors his deceased son, Uncas, by giving him a brief benediction. Between these passages, he has, maybe, three lines.

This fact does not merely underscore how he is a man of few words but how when he speaks it COUNTS for something. Most of the film Means is always there, always, on the edges of frames, one part of the Mohican trio that goes everywhere as one, observing, internalizing. Upon escorting the Munro daughters – Cora & Alice – safely to Fort William Henry and then attempting to the advise the commanding officer (Maurice Roeves), Cora & Alice’s father, of the enemy war party they encountered on the way which would be cause to release the colonial soldiers from duty to protect their farms and families, their pleas are dismissed. Hawkeye argues. Uncas argues. Later in the film even Cora argues. Chingachgook does not argue. Never says a thing. Why would he? Their arguments are useless, unheeded, a waste of precious breath. If his words won’t matter, why offer them?

During the film’s majestic third act, when Cora is allowed to leave the clutches of the bloodthirsty Huron Village and Duncan is left there to burn at the stake, Chingachgook tosses the musket to Hawkeye so that Hawkeye can ease Duncan’s pain by taking his life. Again, Chingachgook says nothing. He just grabs the musket and tosses to his adopted son and they both know exactly what this signifies.

When he rushes to confront Magua in the wake of Uncas’s death, his face betrays all the pain and madness a father would feel. It is riveting. And when he sizes Magua up in that moment before the final blow, there is no disguising his pure disgust with the worthlessness of revenge.

In the Director’s Cut Michael Mann chose to add several lines to Means’ movie-closing monologue. In it he says: “The frontier moves with the sun and pushes the Red Man of these wilderness forests in front of it until one day there will be nowhere left. Then our race will be no more, or be not us.” This addition was unnecessary, and not just because the lines are extremely on the nose.

It was unnecessary because Means’ performance had already expressed this sentiment perfectly.

CIFF Review: Off White Lies

As a thirteen year old of divorce, leaving your mother to permanently live with your father is a choice, I imagine, of great agony. But imagine if you were not simply moving across town. Imagine if you were moving from California all the way back to your birth land of Israel. That would mean even greater agony, right? But that’s not all. Imagine if upon arrival in Israel your dad packs you up in the car and says you’re taking a trip north. And that this car isn’t really his car – he’s just borrowing the car – because he can’t afford a car. And that you’re taking a trip up north because he’s “between homes” because he can’t really afford a home. That’s, like, a double decker of agony. But that’s still not all. Imagine if on this trip you’re taking up north the Hezbollah decide to launch an attack and so you spend your first night in your new “home” in a bomb shelter.

The thirteen year old is Libi (Elya Inbar). She is withdrawn, partially because of this life upheaval but partially, it seems, because this is her personality. Her father Shaul (Ger Bentwich), however, is demonstrative almost to a fault, fancying himself an “inventor.” His latest invention involves a device that sucks up cigarette smoke thereby allowing you to get your fix indoors. We can’t assume it will make a splash since all his other “inventions” have left him with just enough money to be “between homes.” So he decides to invent something else.

Seeing a news report detailing Israeli homes opening up to refugees from the north where the attacks are concentrated, Shaul convinces his daughter that the two of them will pose as refugees. Reluctantly, she agrees to this scheme. How long Shaul expects this ruse to last is never made clear specifically because he appears incapable of thinking that far ahead. The home in which they make their pretend refugee residence belongs to Gideon (Tzahi Grad) and Helit (Salit Achi-Miriam) who we learn have chosen an open marriage quite likely on account of that marriage’s staleness. They have a teenage son, a few years older than Libi, and this tiny subplot will factor into the story in an unfortunately expected way.

The story developments of this family feel trucked in from a more plot-heavy movie and get in the way of the more touching and behavior-driven main story of Libi and Shaul. That said, one of the most significant predicaments in these sorts of Masquerading As Someone Else stories is the inevitable outing of the masquerade, and in lesser (most) movies the outing occurs via some sort of ridiculous happenstance. “Off White Lies”, however, only APPEARS to be taking us down that road (literally) before reversing itself at the last second and nobly refusing to take the decision out of the character’s (read: Libi’s) hands.

And really, when it’s all said and done, it is Libi’s film. How can you come into your own when you’re living a lie? She acts out in her own quiet way not to demand attention but to demand that someone, anyone, just once, for the love of God, tell her the truth.

CIFF Review: Gimme the Loot

Footage of a painfully 80’s cable access show advises the holy hope of all New York City graffiti artists is to “bomb the apple” – this being the apple that rises in the outfield of Shea Stadium (since re-built and re-christened as, ugh, Citifield) after a homerun. Nobody has actually managed this feat. In present day NYC, however, two teens, Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofie (Tashiana Washington), wake one morning to find their loving piece of graffiti ruined by a few rivals who have sprayed over it an image of the Shea Apple. Thus, Malcolm and Sofie determine to gain revenge by tagging the Shea Apple itself.

Malcolm knows a guy who can get them to the Apple in the dead of the night……for $500. They don’t have $500. So writer/director Adam Leon’s film follows them from street level through the course of 48 hours, neighborhood to neighborhood, as Malcolm and Sofie scheme and hustle, talking trash and dreaming big, encountering disparate characters that range from an overly-tattooed thief, Champion (Meeko), who robs retirement homes to feed his family to an over-privileged layabout stoner, Ginnie (Zoe Lescaze).

Swiftly paced and packed with scenes that outwardly seem like simple vignettes only to quietly hang together, “Gimme the Loot” is foul-mouthed and – in that spirit – funny as fuck but also sweet and, believe it or not, old-fashioned. Leon chooses to fill the soundtrack with bygone jazz and soul numbers, delightfully evoking a setting that in spite of its smartphones and other modern trappings feels timeless. It possesses rapid-fire omnipresent dialogue, true, except the film is so carefully observed and subtly visual – and not overbearing with its hand-held images which are more of necessity, I suspect, than auteur-ism – that it could have been done as a silent film and still convinced. One of the better single sequences in any movie this year involves a two-on-one faceoff on a rooftop where nary a word is spoken.

The acting of the two leads gets by mostly on attitude and it is only in a few of the more restrained moments which truly requires them to hit specific lines that their presumable lack of experience shows, but this is just fine, a non-fatal issue. And as the hours pass and their failures, comedically, pile up, leaving her without her bike and him without his shoes amongst other inepitudes, the more we recognize the less the film is about “bombing the apple” than Malcolm and Sofie recognizing just why they are so willing to go to such crazy lengths for one another.

Did “Gimme the Loot” remind this unabashed romantic of another movie featuring a guy and girl rushing about scenic New York? Of course, it did. What was it John Cusack said to Jeremy Piven in “Serendipity”? Ah yes. “Maybe all this is just a maze designed to lead me directly back to where I started.”

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Birds (1963)

So Alfred Hitchcock wanted to make a movie about birds wreaking havoc and/or seeking vengeance on a California coastal town. Now according to the modern day rules of filmmaking (by which I mean studio dictum) a movie about birds wreaking havoc and/or seeking vengeance would need to open with a sequence of birds ACTUALLY wreaking havoc and/or seeking vengeance. This would be called "foreshadowing", though in this case foreshadowing would actually mean "attention grabbing" for fear that an audience promised a movie of birds wreaking havoc and/or seeking vengeance that fails to immediately receive birds wreaking havoc and/or seeking vengeance will become confused and/or enraged.

However, as stated, this is Hitchcock, and Hitchcock really does foreshadow which is why "The Birds" opens in a bird shop where Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), socialite, the Kim Kardashian of 1963, meets kinda cute with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) who is pretending to want to buy a pair of lovebirds for his kid sister. Melanie pretends to be an employee at the shop. But Mitch knows she is pretending because he has met her previously and was just pretending to want to buy lovebirds to talk to her, and not necessarily for the best of reasons.

So Melanie, troublemaker, buys the lovebirds and decides to track down Mitch at his weekend home up the coast highway in Bodega Bay. Upon her arrival she learns he lives on the other side of the bay and, rather than take the road around the water to his home, decides to cross the water via motorboat to sneak up on him. Thus, we find the movie's most masterful sequence.

The following, it must be noted, is all done without music, subtly heightening the mood and tension. As Melanie's motorboat approaches Mitch's home she sees him step into the barn off to the side of the house. So she zips into the dock, ties up the boat, dashes across the grass, through the open door and drops off the birds with a note. She dashes back out the door and down the grass and across the dock and into the boat and shoves off and paddles away. From her point-of-view we see Mitch exit the barn, enter the house, exit the house, and, obviously having found the lovebirds, scan the area, confused.

Then he spies Melanie on the bay. He recognizes her. She revs up the motor and speeds away. He hops in his car and races around the water to reach the dock on the other side. Hedren's facial expression changes back and forth. Is she happy he is going to intercept her? Or is she worried? We don't know. She doesn't know. Then, suddenly, a seagull swoops in, bonks Melanie in the head, wounding her, and swoops away.

At this I yelled at no one since no one was with me: "Alfred Hitchcock is a MADMAN!"

What he achieves here is to get us so invested in whether or not Melanie is going to be caught and then whether or not Melanie wanted to be caught that we get completely forget this is a film centered around a coming bird attack......until the bird attacks. Which knocks us for an exalting loop. The quote eternally associated with Hitchcock is when he said "I enjoy playing the audience like a piano." Boy, did he. That sequence is "Appassionata."

From that point Hitchcock ups the ante by having the birds, just endless waves of squawking birds, launch into an attack, then fly away and re-gather again and then go for another attack. This affords the movie a sound structure of Tension and Release, Tension and Release, again and again. Eventually it builds to Melanie locking herself in with Mitch and his family, clearly inspiration for M. Night Shymalan's "Signs" and the Hess family locking itself in, and that, of course, is when the master of suspense decides to take all his apparent life frustrations out on poor Tippi Hedren.

Whether there is a larger meaning to "The Birds" is debatable, and perhaps would reveal itself on further viewings. Or perhaps there is no larger meaning. The radio report Mitch manages to briefly hear indicates no one from the outside world understands the birds choosing to attack and re-group, why they sometimes sit in a foreboding flock and let the same people whose eyes they were so intent on pecking out a bit earlier just walk on by. Maybe this is merely code for the fact that nature likes to screw with us.

Not unlike how Hitchcock liked to screw with us, particularly in that sequence of Melanie & The Motorboat. Which is what I'll remember most about "The Birds."

Why "Turn Me On, Dammit!" Is Like "The Hobbit"

Reader: "Run! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!! SAVE YOURSELVES!!! HE'S TALKING ABOUT THAT DAMN NORWEGIAN MOVIE AGAIN!!!!!!" 

Oh, just calm down, the lot of ya. I could point out "Turn Me On, Dammit!" was released to American DVD & Blu-ray just this past Tuesday (it was) and re-point out for the 74th time how freaking awesome this movie is (it is) and how empty and meaningless your lives are if you haven't seen it or specifically choose not to see it even when having easy access to it (they are)......but what good would it do to say those things? So I won't say them. And I'll tell you why.

Every time someone has told me they don't want to see "Turn Me On, Dammit!" because it doesn't look like "my kind of movie", my gut reaction is to become enraged. And this makes me a hypocrite. And it makes me a hypocrite because every single time someone starts blathering about the "The Hobbit", I tell them I don't want to see it and after arguing back and forth about this for a bit I inevitably explain that "The Hobbit" simply is not "my kind of movie." Lord Almighty, just thinking about slogging my way through "The Hobbit" after the mind-numbing drudgery that was "Return of the King" ("Just take the stupid ring off your stupid finger and throw it into the stupid fire and END THIS") makes me break out in a cold sweat.

So that's the deal. You can avoid "Turn Me On, Dammit!", I'll avoid "The Hobbit", and we'll all go have some waffles instead.

Mmmmmm.....waffles.

Hotel Noir

My favorite place in all of New York City is The Algonquin Hotel, which opened the same year the first Rose Bowl was played (i.e. 1902), gathering spot for many hard-drinking writers of yore. Every time I visit I have to set aside at least one evening for at least one drink in the lobby and it totally doesn't matter if that Rusty Nail costs a cool $16 (not including tip) because it always tastes of scotch, drambuie and euphoria. Part of the reason I adore the Algonquin so is because every time you sit there amidst the wood paneling and wingback chairs, you feel as if you've flashed back to the 30's. And that maybe, just maybe, if you put down your drink and started wandering the halls of the hotel itself you would start seeing in black & white and run into gruff dudes in fedoras smoking indoors and gangster's molls talking exclusively in dry witticisms and hey! Is that Lauren Bacall whistling?!

"Hotel Noir", a simultaneous On Demand/Theatrical release from writer/director Sebastain Gutierrez, however, feels less like its characters slipped through a portal into the real Los Angeles of 1958, then a more shadowy "Tony n' Tina's Wedding", modern day environmental theater done in black and white.

Opening with a superfluous passage involving part-time narrator Eugene (Danny DeVito), plumber, turning up to, ahem, fix Mandy Moore's shower (it's not as cool and/or lavisicious as it sounds), it segues into the meet-up of two complementary characters, Carla Gugino's crooner and Rufus Sewell's gumshoe (sigh...what a wonderful word...gumshoe), who indulge in a few after-hours cocktails and exchange their tales of woe. Hers involves a rageful ex doubling as a thief (Kevin Connolly) and his involves The Dream Girl Who Got Away (Malin Akerman, who at one point is glimpsed drinking scotch and smoking a cigarette, although - and I'm being complete honest here - she just doesn't know how to drink scotch and smoke simultaneously like Sienna Miller did) and the requisite suitcase of money and the bad guys who want it.

It would be easy to argue that "Hotel Noir" doesn't know "what it wants to be", except I think Gutierrez knows exactly what he wants his film to be. I think he wants it to be parody and homage at once, and that's highly difficult. As a parody it lacks the irreverent wit that, say, a Dan Harmon-produced episode of "Community" (can you imagine?) would bring to the table and as an homage it isn't dark or mean enough. Hell, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" was tougher.

The most distinct trait of the best film noirs is that ol' girl Fate, the fact that the guys and dolls always seemed convinced the whole ugly world was out to get them and that even when they decided to go all in on the inevitable Big Score that it was only a matter of time before they got called into Fate's office and received a pink slip. "Hotel Noir" is just too cutesy to be the real thing and too determined to be real to be really funny.

If Mitchum had checked into this hotel, he would have checked right back out.

CIFF Review: Flowerbuds

A signal operator at a train station in a wintry Czech industrial town, Jarda (Vladimir Javorsky), tends to his ship in a glass bottle. But then a van, driven by Jarda’s Vietnamese neighbor, becomes stuck in the rail-line at the same moment a train, as it must, bears down on him. In a moment without even a whiff of melodrama, Jarda swoops in for the rescue. He pushes the van out with nary a second to spare. As he does, the camera returns to the ship in the glass bottle as it rolls off the table and breaks apart on the floor. Real life intrudes and, as it does, our dreams are shattered.

This dramatic debut from writer/director Zdenek Jirasky brought to mind a more eastern European flavored Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu whose films are famous for their multiple characters and intertwining storylines. But while Inarritu’s films always seem to suggest lives intertwining is part of a grander meaning, “Flower Buds” seems to suggest that if you live in a tiny town people’s lives are bound to bump up against others.

Ground Zero is Jarda’s household. His wife Kamila (Malgorzata Pikus) scrubs toilets and mops floors by day and is a Flower Bud – a slightly less whimsical version of a Calendar Girl – by night. His teenage daughter Agata (Marika Soposka) is pregnant, though she doesn’t seem to know who the father is (there are two possibilities) and she doesn’t seem to know if she wants to keep it. His teenage son Honza (Miroslav Panek) falls in love with a stripper who performs for the hardscrabble locals. Meanwhile Jarda himself constructs his ships in his bottles, harboring a dream of taking his family and leaving this mundane existence behind. Ah, but dreams aren’t funded on emotion, and so Jarda wiles away dreary nights at the dreary pub by taking out loans he can’t afford to play the slots. Gambling never looked so unromantic.

Director Jirasky spoke very briefly through an interpreter before the screening and said he had made a movie that was “a little depressing” but that was also injected with humor. And Jirasky, not surprisingly, knows his own film pretty well. It is a little depressing but it is injected with humor. The humor, however, is not necessarily used by the characters as an attempt to shield them from their misery. Rather the humor shines through the misery.

Oh, the characters try to shake free from their misery in their own ways, though whether they will get there is not truly determined. There are no real resolutions to the various story lines. Instead they just kind of trail off into the snowy Czech air and leave us with the sensation that if we don't get with the program and choose the course of our own lives, life chooses for us.

CIFF Review: Black Pond

A therapist, broadly played by Simon Amstell, explains to his emotionally fractured patient that if you were to take all the colors of the universe and blend them you would merely be left with a kind of arid grey. "Black Pond", co-directed by Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, is a film of evocative colors haphazardly blended together that wishes to reach a genuinely poignant moment in spite of the ceaseless quirkiness and occasional filmmaking tricks. It doesn't quite get there. In the end, "Black Pond" is just sort of an arid grey.

Tom (Chris Langham), the not entirely respected head of the Thompson household, has lost the three-legged family dog, blandly named Boy, on a walk when he meets Blake (Colin Hurley), the sort whose bushy beard seems to exist solely to distract you from his crazy eyes. They chat and despite Blake's apparent mental unbalance, Tom invites him back home for tea. Blake accepts. Tea turns into dinner with Tom's wife Sophie (Amanda Hadingue) and dinner turns into Blake spending the night.

And when misfortune involving Boy strikes, more misfortune will occur and The Thompson family finds itself being branded murderers of their unique houseguest. This is not a spoiler. This is revealed immediately, primarily because "Black Pond" is filmed in a mockumentary format with talking head confessionals sprinkled throughout. The very nature of this device suggests we are seeing the story through the lens of each respective character, which could potentially account for its wildly shifting tones, except the family seems unified on just what happened.

Rather "Black Pond" comes across like the work of new filmmakers with specific scenes and bits and moments and music in mind but not necessarily the roadmap to reach a cathartic and satisfying conclusion.

The best thing in the film is the performance of Chris Langham, an actor with whom I am not familiar but who I learned afterwards has been out of work for several years on account of, shall we say, personal trauma. We will excise that from this movie-only discussion, however, and instead say that Langham cultivates a character who has drifted into a listless life and seems to believe that doing one good deed, however untraditional and odd to the general public, could offer at least a momentary sense of redemption.

It's a great germ of an idea that is just isn't satisfactorily translated for a full 90 minutes.

Argo

In "Miracle" (2004), recounting the true story of the United States Olympic hockey team’s improbable defeat of the unbeatable Soviet Union, there is an early scene when coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) is seated at a conference table with a bunch of stodgy know-it-alls pitching old fashioned, lamebrain ideas to topple the hammer and sickle before Brooks calls them on the carpet, explains their ideas won’t work and that his ideas will.

In "Argo", recounting the true story of the clandestine operation to rescue six trapped Americans during the Iran Hostage Crisis, there is an early scene when CIA operative Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) is seated at a conference table with a bunch of stodgy know-it-alls pitching old fashioned, lamebrain ideas to rescue the six hostages before Mendez calls them on the carpet, explains their ideas won’t work and that his ideas will.

That was the moment it hit me – "Argo" is structured like a sports movie. Now I do not mean to suggest that a hockey game – however important and unforgettable it was within its own context – is as critical as the Iran Hostage Crisis and real life lives on the line. But we are discussing the making of a movie, and in movie terminology the framework of "Argo" eerily parallels a sports movie, right down to the barely seen spouse and child on the home front. And this is, in fact, mostlya good thing.

Mendez, dourly played by Affleck in such as way as to almost resist the stereotypical heroism of the role, is summoned to CIA headquarters by his superior (Bryan Cranston, quietly hilarious) after the crackerjack opening in which Affleck, as director, swiftly, flawlessly re-stages the Iranians storming the American embassy in November 1979 and the six Americans who make it out and into the street before taking shelter, unbeknownst even to most Americans at the time, at the Canadian Ambassador’s home, played here by Victor Garber who effortlessly conveys noble humanity in minor screen time.

Once Mendez calls out the stodgy know-it-alls he goes about formulating his own rescue mission – that is, a fake Hollywood movie production, a space opera called "Argo", put into mostly real production by crusty, foul-mouthed producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) and makeup man John Chambers (John Goodman). Mendez will pose as “the money”, a Canadian producer flying into Tehran with six other Canadian crew-members to scout locations. Then he will gather up the six hostages posing as his six crew-members, walk into the Iranian airport with them and fly right on out. It is equal parts bold and ridiculous. “It’s the best bad idea we have, sir. By far,” says Cranston.

You know the rest of the story, right down to the very end, and yet, to their immense credit, Affleck and his screenwriter Chris Terrio manage to still render a riveting drama. They do this partly by elucidating mounds of complex information in a crisp manner. They do this partly by not only playing up the inflammatory political climate of the time but by painting it as something universal, such as in a masterful montage (of which, thankfully, there are but a precious few) where they contrast the table reading of "Argo" with bad actors (Adrienne Barbeau?) in absurd costumes with Iranian revolutionaries listing demands.

They do this partly by wringing every single conceivable drop of drama from the already dramatic proceedings, cramming so many Near Misses – you know, the rescue is a split second away from crumbling, falling apart, going up in smoke…until IT ISN’T!!! – into the third act that, quite frankly, it nearly becomes comedic. And you walk away with a smile on your face, maybe even a tear in your eye, supremely satisfied, highly entertained, yearning to applaud, which is due in no small part to the fact that "Argo" is brilliantly crafted to elicit the same sort of reaction one might have had in the waning moments of the U.S./Soviet hockey game when we all realized that, yes, we do believe in miracles.

Writing for NPR in 2006, longtime sportswriter Frank Deford went about creating his own sports movie with a “one-size-fits-all sports movie script.” See if his four act structure sounds familiar. Act I: The Introduction Of Hopelessness. Act II: Hope Arrives In A Surprise Package. Act III: Unusual Strategy. Act IV: The Climactic Contest. I suspect so many of us are worn out with sports movies because of their well worn formula, but "Argo" takes the formula and injects it with different details and a political allegory. It is Hollywood at its finest. Borrow and tweak. Lester Siegel would be proud.

Chicago Film Festival Mixtape

Big weekend. "Argo" opens and "The Other Dream Team" opens (two of my most anticipated fall/winter films!). "Seven Psychopaths" opens. The race to Best Actor begins with Kevin James and "Here Comes The Boom." (Ha ha! Kidding!) "Hotel Noir" and my Official Cinematic Crush hits On Demand. And, of course, the Chicago Film Festival makes first contact.

The Chicago Film Festival, however, will take precedence. I love CIFF so much because, while there are a few heavy hitters, it is, at it always is, mostly focused on more obscure offerings, the sorts of films difficult to track down on an everyday basis. In that spirit...

My CIFF Mixtape 2012

Black Pond. An English mockumentary centered around a family accused of murder.

Flowerbuds. Life in a small Czech town. Reeled in four Czech Lions.

Gimme the Loot. Two young graffiti writers on the mean streets of NYC.

Sister. A Swiss twelve year old complicates his sister in his schemes to rip off tourists at a luxury ski resort.

Tchoupitoulas. Ryan McNeil of The Matinee wrote glowingly of this documentary when he saw it at Hot Docs and I immediately made a mental note of it. Lucky me it came to CIFF!

King Curling. Cinema Romantico's #1 Must See Film At The 2012 Chicago Film Festival! A curling movie. Yes. A curling movie. If you didn't know, curling is my 2nd Favorite Sport (after college football). Will yet another Norwegian film steal at my heart?

Friday's Old Fashioned: Test Pilot (1938)

Jim Lane (Clark Gable), the test pilot of the title, a more effusive Chuck Yeager, is flying a brand new spankin’ Drake Bullet coast to coast when the motor sputters and he is forced to make an emergency landing in a Kansas cornfield. He is greeted by vixenish sunflower Ann Barton (Myrna Loy), The Farmer’s Daughter, who immediately initiates romantic rapid-fire repartee. Jim phones his crew back home, including his loyal, skilled and generally silent mechanic Gunner (Spencer Tracy), to fly and meet him and repair the plane so he can re-achieve liftoff, but in the few hours it take that to happen he finds time to change into a spiffy suit, take Ann out on the town and fall in love with her despite her pesky fiancé.

But never mind the pesky fiancé. Once the plane is back up and running, Jim lights back out for NYC, doubles back, re-lands, Ann hops aboard, and off they go to scenic Indianapolis to be married. Woo hoo! Corny as, well, Kansas, brilliantly old fashioned, the first half hour of Victor Fleming’s “Test Pilot” evokes an old Peanuts comic strip with Snoopy making as the World War I flying ace and meeting cute with a French mademoiselle behind enemy lines. Ah, but “Test Pilot” turns out to be a bit tougher than this set-up suggests. It’s still rousing, it’s still sentimental, as a film from MGM in 1938 would be, but there is solemn substance in the mixing bowl and, while Gable is good, Loy and especially Tracy are flat-out spectacular.

It feels as if Tracy is in every scene with Gable, even though that clearly isn’t true, and he spends most of his time off to the side or in the background, chewing gum, always chewing gum, quiet, often disbelieving, always observing. Not that he needs to observe because what Tracy, magnificently, subtly, with few lines, with few facial expressions, conveys a man who has been down and each and every road with Jim Lane before. He knows every decision, every declaration of bravado, every bit of irresponsibility to come and could probably pinpoint it to the second on a stopwatch if he had the inclination. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he got married in Indianapolis and divorced in Toledo.” He reminded me a bit of Jack Haley. No, no, no, not that Jack Haley. The other Jack Haley, the unknown soldier NBA teams always signed ALONG with Dennis Rodman, specifically because he was Dennis Rodman’s personal protector and negotiator, the one who got The Worm to games on time after staying out all night and acted as liaison to the coach and the suits when they had understandable issues with their star.

But that is not the only analogy to be made. Have you ever wondered what Chewbacca was always saying to Han Solo in the (real) “Star Wars” trilogy? Like, say, in “Empire Strikes Back” when Han decides to leave to pay off the bounty to Jabba the Hut? Do you think Chewie was chewing out Han? “You’ve got a Princess here – a Princess! – who is, like, ALL over you, dude. And you want to go to pay off Jabba because you’ve got a death mark? You’re IN the rebel alliance now! You HAVE a death mark! That’s TWO death marks! You want to pay off one and then come back and deal with the other one when instead you could be gettin’ all cozy with a PRINCESS?!”

This is to say that as “Test Pilot” goes along the more fed up Gunner becomes with Jim’s idiocy. It's not that he isn't fed up with his idiocy from the get-go, because he certainly is, but that through the course of the film he gradually shifts from wordless indifference to wordless disbelief to wordless disgust. So too do his feelings for Ann take a different shape. At first, she's nothing more than another kinda floozy - wedding ring or not - but then he finds himself warming up to her and to the possibility she brings to Jim's life. He simply cannot fathom why his pal would be so focused on death-daring derring-do when he has the chance to make a life with this once in a life lady.

Ann, meanwhile, easily could have been reduced to caricature, the woman whose sole role is to stand beside her man, but Loy injects her with a vigor that matches Jim's and is what Jim sees in her that sets her apart. (Also, let's be honest, Ann is more displaced Manhattanite than Kansas farm girl but no worries. Nothing to see here. Please disperse.) And it is Loy who most ably gets across the movie's main moral - she respects Jim's love of flying so much that she does not attempt to change who he is to better comfort her nerves. Yet, at the same time, despite wanting to leave him for the agony he puts her through every time he enters a plane, she loves him so much she is willing to endure.

It goes to show that once upon a time Hollywood could make a movie with a big budget and star power and stunts and special effects and not just infuse it with heart but with depth. Sure, "Test Pilot" goes on a bit too long and certain scenes are a bit too lengthy and the conclusion is wrapped up nicely in a ribbon and a bow but with all that has come before this conclusion is genuinely earned.

That makes all the difference.

9.79*

“I don’t remember that race at all.” This is what Carl Lewis, nine time Olympic gold medalist in Track & Field, says of the notorious 100 meter showdown he lost to infamous Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson when asked about it on camera in Daniel Gordon’s documentary "9.79*." Except less than 60 seconds later he recounts approaching Johnson immediately after the race to shake the victor’s hand and Johnson rebuffing him. Of this Lewis says: “I’ll never forget it.”

Wait, wait, wait, you just told me you don’t remember the race at all. Now you’re telling you’ll never forget it? Which is it, Carl? Huh? Which is it?! This, I suspect, is a keen insight into the mentality of the sprinter in the P.E.D. (Performance Enhancing Drug) Era. Recall only what you need to recall. Choose your words cautiously and say only as much as you need to say. Deny the rest.

The 100 meter race at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea has since that day colloquially come to be known as The Dirtiest Race In History. Six of the eight finalists, all of whom are interviewed on camera, a fine achievement by Gordon to re-gather them, would, at one time or another, be linked to banned substances. The only one caught in the aftermath of that actual contest, however, was the victor, Johnson, who blazed to the finish line in world record and then unheard of time of 9.79. Lewis finished second. Great Britain’s Linford Christie finished third. The United States’ Calvin Smith – one of the two men never to be linked to drugs – finished fourth and would earn a belated bronze medal when Johnson was disqualified.

As Gordon’s doc demonstrates, the Canadian track program was fast and outta control. The late Charlie Francis was the “coach”, sure, but the late Dr. Jamie Astasphan was the real man in charge, distributing steroids to runners to bulk them up and maximize their speed. And, in fact, the second Canadian in the race, Desai Williams, also confessed to taking them in the aftermath of Johnson’s bust. Ah, but don’t presume “9.79*” is jingoistic and anti-Maple Leaf. Far from it. Don Catlin, director at an L.A. drug lab, reveals that in the run-up to the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles he and others were ordered to administer comprehensive drug tests to American athletes in what was deemed an "educational program." Anyone who tested positive faced no consequences. As Catlin states, the program existed solely "to allow the athletes to figure out when they could take their drugs and how long it would take to clear the drugs from their bodies." Catlin also states actual positive results for banned substances AT the Olympics were, sans explanation, lost. LOST!!! How? No one knows, but I bet you have a theory. Remember, kids, it’s only illegal if you get caught.

The Canadian sprinters on camera in “9.79*” fessed up long ago and, thus, on camera here are honest and remorseful. Well, Johnson is honest. It’s difficult to speculate on his level of remorse. He took drugs, yeah, and then lied and said he didn’t immediately after being disqualified but that was only because his “lawyer” advised him to deny it. He and the others took drugs because, like, you know, everyone was doing it, man, pitifully trying to recast the Olympic Stadium as a 1st Grade Playground. At another point Johnson laments "The people coming to meets, they want to be entertained, they want to see fast times. They don't care how you get there.”

Of course. When caught, blame the public. And perhaps the public – which is generally left out of the doc – is partially to blame. Many sportswriters, such as the endlessly irritated Charles Pierce, would argue it is self-righteousness on our part. We yearn to see fast times, are thrilled when we see them, however they are achieved, and only become infuriated at the fraudulent achievement afterwards. Then again, as Gordon’s film shows, Johnson filled his bank account with endorsement money on account of his success, his success which was earned by gaming the system. Is that different than a Wall Street fat cat gaming the system to fill his/her bank account?

Gordon does not pretend to have answers to this ethical quandry. In fact, he and his narrator do not even address this ethical quandry themselves. Rather they let the athletes speak and attempt to work it out on their own and that is where “9.79*” settles into a gray area. After all, what is modern day Track & Field but one oval-shaped gray area? The aforementioned Linford Christie, eventual Silver Medalist in ’88 and 100 meter Gold Medalist in ’92, tested positive in Seoul for traces of pseudoephedrine but was cleared only to test positive in 1999 for the banned substance nandrolone at which time he was suspended for two years from competition. In “9.79*” Christie states it was “something I did not do.” He states, for the record, that whatever people think of the suspension, he doesn’t “give a s***.” He states the film’s most telling line: “Enemies don’t believe you. Friends don’t need an explanation.” 

It’s always someone else with these sprinters. When the doors are closed and the shades are drawn, when enemies are busy and friends have plans, when they’re not trying to spin the story to suit their needs, you have to wonder what Linford and the rest REALLY think.

That's Going To Be A Problem

This is how my most recent Netflix DVD arrived in the mail. The Chicago Post Office, ladies and gentleman, at your service.

Johnny Depp's Misunderstood Performance In The Tourist

"The Tourist", the spy romance of 2010 starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, was due south of less than well received. It is currently pulling down a cool 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. And of the many flaws noted by critics, the performance of Johnny Depp was right near the top of the list, as evidenced by a recent article at Grantland that accused him of "sleepwalking" through the role.

Slate's Dana Stevens felt Depp was "blinking his way through the movie with an expression of blank-faced puzzlement that recalls Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate."

The esteemed Roger Ebert also did not care for the performance and wrote that Depp "plays his math teacher seriously and with a touch of the morose."

I cannot deny these accusations but here's the thing - and, well, to discuss that thing we need to discuss the movie's most crucial twist and so while I could and should issue an official Spoiler Alert (!), I will not. And I will not because the movie was released 2 years ago and so you have either already seen it or have no genuine desire to see it. So here goes.

Scotland Yard is hot on the trail of master thief Alexander Pearce and, thus, are hot on the trail of Pearce's old lover - played by Angelina - who they hope will lead them to Pearce. Instead Pearce instructs Elise to track down someone resembling Pearce on a train bound for Venice in order to fool Scotland Yard into thinking the decoy is Pearce. She picks Johnny Depp's Frank Tupelo, a math teacher from Wisconsin.

Even people who haven't seen the film will say, I just don't buy Johnny Depp as a math teacher. Except, as it turns out, Depp isn't really playing Frank Tupelo. He's playing Alexander Pearce. Tupelo is Pearce! That's the twist! He's merely altered his face! (Don't ask.) So what this means is that Alexander Pearce is playing the part of a math teacher.

How do we generally (unfairly?) think of math teachers? Perhaps as people who blink their way through class with an expression of blank-faced puzzlement that recalls Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate? Or perhaps as serious people with a touch of the morose? I think of my Algebra II teacher who was drab, monotone and often appeared to be, ahem, sleepwalking through class. So that's how Pearce chooses to play the part of the math teacher! As someone who is drab and monotone and appears to be sleepwalking!

By playing the part uninterestingly, Johnny Depp is, in fact, playing the part perfectly. Which is sort of what makes the movie unwatchable.

It's a riddle that might just do a math teacher proud.

Butter

Late last year in anticipation of the Iowa caucuses, University of Iowa Professor Stephen Bloom wrote a lightning rod of an article for The Atlantic. It caused much consternation among the natives – of which, full disclosure, I am one – and, indeed, it was rife with harsh potshots and ridiculous generalizations. However, it did get a few things quite right. Iowa isn’t flat as a pancake and it is “a place of bizarre contrasts.” That’s what I love most about the place – its bizarre contrasts. And perhaps in that spirit (but probably not), Jim Field Smith’s "Butter" is a film with bizarrely contrasting tones.

"Butter" turns on Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner), a tightly wound trophy wife who, to quote Charlton Heston in "Any Given Sunday", "I honestly believe...would eat her young", and Destiny (Yara Shahidi), an 11 year old black orphan who has been shuttled back and forth between foster homes and who has settled in with her most recent set of adoptive parents in Johnson County, Iowa.

Laura's husband Bob (Ty Burrell) has been the Iowa State Butter Carving Champion 15 years running - "You're the Elvis of butter" - but has become so dominant they ask him to step aside this time around and give someone else a chance. Like hell they will, says Laura, who immediately decides to take up the Pickler flag and carve some butter herself. She will stop at nothing, which she merely proves by ramming her husband's minivan when she catches him in the midst of fornication of with a brooding tattooed BMX-riding stripper, Brooke (Olivia Wilde), for whom he's pitifully fallen and whom he’s promised $600 for her rent. Brooke wants that cash, even if it means sculpting a little dairy product or feigning interest in the Pickler's wannabe rebel daughter.

Destiny, however, is the wild card, a butter carving novice turned prodigy and her first set of kindly adoptive parents Ethan and Jill Emmet (Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone) encourage her to enter the local county contest that will determine entry into the statewide contest. It is meant as nothing beyond a boost of self-esteem but turns into much more once the ladies throw down in their respective "cooling rooms."

Written by Jason Micallef, his script is meant to make a mockery of the political process as much as the absurdity of any self-serious state fair competition. How low can you go to achieve a sense of superiority? Laura Pickler will go pretty low and Garner, speaking in an accent that makes no sense for where she lives and from where she hails, does a half-decent job evoking less a villainous mastermind than an imposing sort of woman who strong-arms you into buying cobbler you didn't want at the church bake sale. Her husband’s infidelity isn’t what upsets her as much as the possible soiling of the Pickler brand.

The problem is that while all that dark comedy is going on in the Pickler household, a sweeter and much more straight faced after school special is going on in the Emmet household, one that throws the balance of the film out of whack. Rather than locating a nimble balance of satire and empathy throughout it just lurches back and forth scene to scene, softening every single punch the film tries to land, severely compromising a coulda-been sardonic exposé and leaving Hugh Jackman (miscast) reading instructions off notecards hidden in his ten gallon hat in a sketchy scene that even "Saturday Night Live" would have nixed. As surprising as it might sound, the one actor who knows how to play it just right is Rob Corddry.

I admit that I have never been a Corddry fan. His in your face antics often leave me worn out. But in "Butter" he ably portrays a genteel man who only loses it when pushed to the brink, and his losing it, in fact, speaks for those of us Iowans diversifying from the norm who hate the State Fair and avoid it at all costs and who carved as much butter as they detasseled corn (read: none). “Oh, and news flash! Butter’s bad for you!” Preach it like you teach it.

The Paperboy

Two reporters with The Miami Times, Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) and Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), have come to a prison in swampy, muggy Florida to meet Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), trapped on death row for the murder of a local sheriff. They plan to investigate his claim of innocence and an unexplored alibi the night of the killing. They have brought with them Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman). She has been corresponding with Van Wetter and the two of them, despite having never met face to face until this moment, have agreed to marry.

Ward and Yardley have pertinent questions for Van Wetter. Van Wetter ignores them. He is only interested in his bride to be. Alas, this is prison and, as "Arrested Development" taught us, there is “no touching” in prison and, thus, Van Wetter is denied the tangible something that he so desperately craves. But he won’t be denied. Neither will she. And so they engage in, shall we say, explicit eye-to-eye erotica. Make no mistake, it is lewd and graphic, but it also electrifying and bodacious. And it speaks to the intent of director Lee Daniels’ film, steamy Floridian trash with extra pulp.

Based on a novel by Pete Dexter, who wrote the screenplay with Daniels, "The Paperboy’s" jumping off point contains the DNA of a thousand wrongly accused crime thrillers, but this is, above all, a steamy, screwy soap opera. It has no interest in legal proceedings or “the truth”, willingly trading in the thrust of a pointed overall arc for an insistence on atmosphere and the individual moment. This causes it to suffer in the homestretch but it’s not fatal and, anyway, this is a film you look at, not a film you think about. You will be hard pressed to recall the name of the dead sheriff setting things in motion but hell be damn sure you will remember the remedy for a jellyfish sting.

Although the narrator of the story is the Jansen family’s black maid (Macy Gracy), the audience’s entry point to the whole sordid mess is Jack (Zac Efron), a college dropout working as a driver for Ward, his older brother, as he and Yardley skit about the area to snoop out the story. Jack, aimless, seems uninterested in women his own age, having eyes for Charlotte right away, questioning her engagement to a convicted killer, vowing to protect her. "The Paperboy" seems to be, in its off-kilter way, about Jack’s loss of innocence and his first true love.

Many of the characters here are not quite what they seem at first. Van Wetter is built up as being a Man Done Wrong, until we meet him at which point we realize it hardly matters whether or not he did the wrong of which he was convicted (though we suspect he probably did). He is a creepy, grimy, sinister man, and anyone with pure motives would likely leave him to rot. Ah, but the two intrepid reporters, both stashing secrets, turn out to be less intrepid than self-interested, knowing full well a story this highly charged could be lucrative for their careers. Only Jack and Charlotte seem to refrain from hiding twists up their sleeves.

Charlotte, with the whacked-out wig, enormous eyelashes and skintight attire, may look fake on the outside, like a plastic Barbie Doll, but the always impeccable, ever fearless Kidman magnetically outfits this Barbie Doll with a beating heart – even if that heartbeat distinctly sounds of massive emotional instability and a taste for the furthest reaches of the edge. In this case the clothes don’t make the woman. The woman wears those clothes because that’s who the woman is. She doesn’t even try to downplay or deny her desire to sleep around because, hey, that’s just human nature. This is what alternately angers and attracts Jack and sets him on the path as her self-appointed savior.

Whether anyone in this heinous southern outpost is worth saving is debatable. These characters conjured thoughts of a man dangling his foot over a swamp, taunting the gators lurking in the murk below. You get what you ask for.

Anticipating "Taken 6: Re-Taking What Was Already Taken & Will Be Taken Again"

"Taken" involved Liam Neeson's daughter (Maggie Grace) being taken.

The just released "Taken 2" involves Liam Neeson's ex-wife (Famke Janssen) being taken.

So, what will the inevitable "Taken 6: Re-Taking What Was Already Taken & Will Be Taken Again" involve?

My guess is that it will involve the taking of Liam Neeson's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.

Dark Helmet vs. Bryan Mills, winner take all, live from Caesar's Palace.

Friday's Old Fashioned: H.M. Pulham, Esq.

Benjamin Franklin once said: “The only sure thing in life in death and taxes.” This quote was almost right. In fact, the quote should have gone: “The only sure thing in life is death, taxes and lost love.” Harry Moulton (H.M.) Pulham Jr., son a wealthy Bostonian, heir to the family fortune, man of Harvard, could tell you that for sure. Because despite his impressive pedigree H.M. hightails it for NYC post WWI in an effort to be his own man, takes a job at an ad company as assistant to his friend Bill King (Van Heflin) and meets the unfortunately named but alluring Marvin Miles (Hedy Lamarr, alluring). Thus, Pulham’s tale becomes one of stasis and what could have been woe.

Told primarily in flashback, King Vidor’s film, based on a novel by John P. Marquand, catches up with H.M. in middle age, mired in a daily routine that is absolutely precise down to his rubber overshoes and having married The One His Family Wanted Him To Marry (Ruth Hussey). Maybe he didn’t love her back when, but maybe he kinda, sorta loves her now, because maybe as Bruce Springsteen once sang “You get used to anything, sooner or later it just becomes your life.” He finds himself penning the biographies of former classmates when a loudmouth fellow Harvard alum asks (forces) him to for a forthcoming reunion and as he does he fields a phone call from……Marvin. She's in town. She wants to get together. Thus, H.M. finds himself re-examining his whole existence, from his days as a little boy to his potentially life-altering relationship with Marvin.

(Parenthetical Digression: I recorded the film off TMC and Ben Mankiewicz provided the pre-film introduction and in it he referred to the character of Marvin being an ex-Iowa farmgirl. But in the film, in an effort to explain away Lamarr's Austrian accent, she explains her family left Europe to settle in......Illinois. Therefore I have to reason believe Mr. Mankiewicz has not actually seen this film.)

They fall in love and discuss marriage after roughly one date (ah, 1941). They sip champagne. They dance in front of wondrously make-believe Manhattan backdrops. He brings her flowers. She packs his suitcase. And she packs his suitcase because he’s off to visit his sick mother in Boston and she admits her fear that he will not return. And so the crisis (crises) emerges.

Class. He comes from money and she doesn’t. Responsibility. He has a sick mother to attend to and, eventually, a sick father and, thus, the sick father's finances. And finally, crucially, Independence. Marvin Miles is, in fact, a woman ahead of her time. She left behind her Iowa - er, Illinois farm - to make it big in the big city......on her own. And in the pre-"Mad Men" era, by God, she did exactly that at an advertising agency. She doesn't want to simply give up her achievement, her ideals, and when she takes a visit to Boston to see H.M. and meet his family she feels herself suffocating. This isn't a life she can lead, a doting wife in a ready-made home where you have to sneak around to have a highball.

Of course, H.M. has a bit of the independent spirit in himself. That's why he initially turned down a place running the family business at his father's side to head off to the big(ger) city to prove he could make on it his own. And so when push comes to shove, H.M. and Marvin realize they are not going to budge on their respective positions.

Lamarr apparently said this was a favorite role and unlike "Boomtown", which I reviewed last year, in which the ever-seductive Hedy seemed to float on invisible (but attractive) clouds above all the swirling antics, her work in "H.M. Pulham, Esq." is certainly based more in reality without being one note. She is strong and free-thinking but also insecure and afraid every step of the way that H.M. will leave NYC and her behind. Young, meanwhile, is less a lothario than, well, a nice guy. His love for Marvin is selfless. He wants her to be happy. Yet, at the same time, he knows what he needs to do in order to make himself content. Can two rights make a wrong?

Time passes. They meet again. The spark remains, but their lives have taken them to different places. Commitments must be honored. In reading a few pieces on the film afterwards I see comparisons to "Romeo & Juliet" tossed about but that's not totally accurate. Romeo & Juliet were full-blood, nutcase romantics. H.M. & Marvin are more like a pragmatic "Romeo & Juliet."

Wait. I think that's actually more tragic.