Best of Enemies

In 1968, a desperate ABC network, unable to compete with the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democrat and Republican national conventions—and let us pause for a moment to consider how a network (back when there were only three networks dominating 90% of the American population) needed to beef up its political cred to increase its revenue—came up with an idea to have a conservative, William F. Buckley, and a degenerate, Gore Vidal, act as proxies for the Rs and the Ds respectively.

Seriously, I was pleased that the documentary identified Vidal as a liberal. But, really, he was a degenerate. He may or may not have said that you should never say "No" to only two things, sex and appearing on television, but the movie makes clear that his goal in going on TV was not to debate the issues, but to destroy Buckley personally.

Which got boffo ratings and destroyed TV debate forever—and if we're being honest, didn't do any favors for debate in general. Vidal, of course, wasn't the only one to do this—it is a hallmark of the Left, at least since Marx, if not going back to the French Revolution.

Never once does the documentary suggest that there's anything wrong with this. In fact, I'm sort of guessing that the makers of this film figure that Vidal was right to do so, and his gotcha moment against Buckley vindicated his tactics. To me, it looked like the moment damaged both of them.

But, hey, what do I know? It's not nice to call someone a "queer"—and they had John McWhorter to tell us how, in modern times, that might even be considered "hate speech"—but I'm not sure why it's less hateful to call a former WWII infantryman a "crypto Nazi".

That's as bizarre to me as the tendency of the Left—on extreme display here—to demonize their opponents by smearing them as closeted homosexuals.

Anyway, it's entertaining, though there are four topics here, and they're all given rather short-shrift: The character of political debate in our society, the changing role of television and television news, the actual debates, and the impact of the debates on two men. On the three point documentary scale:

1. Topic. Reasonably important and certainly interesting, I think the movie might have been better served if they'd kept it entirely personal, though that might have been difficult to pull off.

2. Presentation. The movie is competent, technically, but The Boy thought that the supporting talking heads didn't really add anything—i.e., that they were all fluff. I mention this because The Boy didn't know any of them or their political leanings.

3. Bias. This is is the sort of film that the Left says is unbiased and the Right says, "you say it's unbiased because, like a fish swimming in water: that bias surrounds you at all times, so you don't see it."

Am I exaggerating? Well, I'll give the film some credit: When Vidal caricatured Buckley on the Jack Paar show (with Paar mugging along), they allowed that Buckley disarmed Paar by going on his show and not being the ridiculous joke that Gore made him out to be (echoed in our modern, feeble fashion with Jon Stewart's lazy failure to nail John Yoo.) But it never points out the degeneracy and destructiveness of this whole "Left creates a caricature of Right and claims victory when it can plant that caricature in people's mind, true or not."

You could argue that it wasn't the film's job to point that out, that it should be left to the good wit of the audience, except that the only conservative voice they could find was Buckley's brother, and he's bought into the notion of America as an Empire—straight out of Noam Chomsky, whom they also had on to opine.

Who else did they have? Brooke "liberals in the media are TOO fair" Gladstone of NPR; Ginia "TV's gotten so conservative since the '70s!" Bellafante of the New York Times; Sam Tanenhaus, who wrote "The Death of Conservatism" and refers to conservatism as an "insurgency", and whose understanding of conservatism is so profound, he regards George W Bush as an extreme conservative ideologue; Dick "Sure, why not?" Cavett; Andrew "That's Not Palin's Baby" Sullivan; Frank "Dan Rather did nothing Wrong" Rich; Todd "President of Students for a Democratic Society" Gitlin; and on and on.

The late, lamented Chris Hitchens is here, with little to say, except "Yes, they hated each other for real." While he has a soft place in a lot of right wingers' hearts, he was a liberal who simply recognized the threat of Islam.

They had on Buckley's caretaker, I think she was.

You know who they didn't have on? A single person from National Review, the magazine Buckley founded. Buckley takes exception early on—foreshadowing!—to Gore and the Left's (ultimately successful) attempt to make National Socialism into a right wing phenomenon. These guys couldn't be bothered to have on, say, Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism, to give a rebuttal.

Swimming in it. They spend time on the grotesque flop that was Myra Breckinridge and the presumably less grotesque but even more forgotten The Best Man. We learn about Vidal's history as an author, beginning with Williwaw, through his '80s books on American History. It spends no time at all on God and Man At Yale, and little on any of Buckley's '60s books.

Swimming. In. It. The only narrative about Vietnam is the media created one about America having lost in Vietnam, and the only greater tragedy being that it might have won.

I have mentioned it was an enjoyable film, right? It was. If you don't agree with the Conventional Wisdom,  you are used, I'm sure, to seeing the bias, so this stuff doesn't bother you so much as it is just business-as-usual.

I haven't seen Robert Gordon's previous work, but Morgan Neville won for the entertaining (if overrated) 20 Feet From Stardom which also suffered from the desire to create a narrative the audience is already well familiar with.

So, yeah. Gird your loins, because this is one of those movies that needs a rebuttal, but go ahead and see it anyway.

(See, even as I publish this, I keep thinking of rebuttals. Vidal attacks Buckley on the topic of, yes, income inequality, which has resurfaced yet again in the past years. Buckley notes that Vidal is a great beneficiary of income inequality, which they-who-make-the-argument always seem to be, don't they?)

Ant-Man

It's interesting to note that DC's Atom first appeared in October 1961, and Marvel's Ant-Man January of 1962, which shows, I think, that much like movie studios, comic book companies are more about the "me-too" than being original. I always liked The Atom, while Ant-Man would be the sort of thing that (as a kid) I would point to as dumb.

The two are virtually interchangeable in terms of powers, except Ant-Man can command the mighty power of ants. Which is especially dumb, but in that classic comic way of "Gentlemen, we've conquered the problem of ant communication and control and, oh, by-the-way also figured out how to decrease the size and alter the density of arbitrary objects."

No connection between the two, but the same scientist is always good at doing All The Things.

Where the concept is not dumb is that shrinking things down and seeing ordinary items at a ginormous scale is cool for bored comic book artists. This sort of thing is usually disastrous in cinema, resulting in the bulk of Bert I. Gordon's (Beginning of the End, Village of the Giants) oeuvre.

It's so dodgy cinematically, because of composition issues completely destroying the suspension of disbelief, that it can induce eye rolling in a good film, and stand out as a particularly bad element of a bad film—like the little French dudes in Willow. (Remember them?)

Add to this the fact that the mastermind behind this as a movie project was no less than Edgar Wright (the Cornetto trilogy), and he dropped out mid-production due to "creative differences", mixed in with unencouraging trailers—well, we were very cool on the prospect of seeing it.

And yet! It's good! And it's kind of nice that, even though the world is at risk (because it has to be, right?), the movie by-and-large has an intimate feel. It is, essentially, a caper flick—something the villain actually notes toward the end.

And departure or no, the film is still full of Wright-goodness, such as Ant-Man's gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight pals, especially Michael Peña's can't-get-to-the-point gunsel.

But really, this movie was going to rise and fall—however good the script—on how the shrinking was done. Done poorly, even the best script wouldn't have survived. This movie uses a mix of macro photography (like Microcosmos) on the one hand, but on the other does a lot of gags where our hero shrinks down and immediately grows back. (This is his primary fighting style, in fact.)

In essence, they normalize it. Almost every other shrink/grow film I can think of spends inordinate time on the gee-whiz factor of it all. "Look how small/big I am!" This hurts because, typically, the effects are cheesy to begin with: Back in the day, Universal Studios had a giant hand (and maybe pencil) so you could have your picture taken "tiny sized", and that wasn't much worse than what they used in their movies. But it also hurts because nothing happens while you're gazing around in wonder. (And you can't really do much without ruining the shot, at least pre-CGI.)

Here, the small stuff is all done in montage, and in action scenes. It was a wise choice. As was switching from Ant-Man's perspective to a more normal one, for comedic value.

Fine cast. Paul Rudd handles it easily. Bobby Cannavale plays new boyfriend to ex-wife Judy Greer. Some amazing CGI done to make Michael Douglas look 30 years younger. Evangeline Lily is the new love interest. I particularly liked Corey Stoll as the villain. It's kind of a hack role—the apprentice to Douglas' mad scientist who turns evil—but he really nails it, brings some nuance, and gets that love-to-hate thing that makes for a good baddie.

The Boy, who was particularly reticent to see it, liked it a lot, commenting on the modest scale. (The shortest of all Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies, they tell me, it's just short of 2 hours.)

I still might seek out the original script to see what Wright had in mind, but Peyton Reed (Yes Man) did not fumble here.

A Borrowed Identity

Where Palestinian films tend to be of one sort—here's a story about how the Jews are to blame for everything and that makes it okay to blow up buses and cafés—Israeli films are much broader, and when they address the issue of the conflict with Palestinian arabs, you really don't know what side they're going to come down on.

Waltz with Bashir, for example, struck me as very anti-Israeli. It's not about yet another arab aggression but about how some Israelis suffered ethical lapses during, you know, war. (An astute observer might note that, well, duh, and that individual lapses, or even organizational lapses don't invalidate the larger issues in the war. For example, FDR interning Japanese-looking Americans doesn't suddenly make the Nazis and Japs good guys.) Then there was Walk on Water, The Gatekeepers, Cannon Fodder (which is floating around streaming services as Battle of the Undead).

I think it's safe to say that Israel has a healthy leftist coalition dedicated to its destruction.

Point is, when you go to an Israeli movie about Palestine/Israeli relations, you don't really know what you're going to get, which makes a movie like A Borrowed Identity a genuine pleasure.

Our protagonist is Eyad, a Palestinian boy living in Israel in the mid-'80s whose father is a fruit-picker/activist/possible terrorist. When confronted, Eyad's father tells him "terrorist" is a word made-up by Israelis for "warriors"—though when asked, he denies being any such thing. High-schooler Eyad (early '90s) is naturally appalled at the notion of going to the Best School in Israel since, of course, it's predominately Jewish.

Here we get a little racism—though, more accurately, it's tribalism—as Eyad is subject to a variety of outsider treatment, including abuse from Jewish Jocks (a category that hardly exists here in the USA). He finds a friend in Yonatan, a boy he hangs out with as part of a community service program (requirement for school), and as one would expect, falls in love with a girl, Nomi, though they must keep their relationship on the down-low.

The tribalism ebbs and flows, on the one hand, with Eyad and Yonatan trading barbs as good friends can, and on the other, while on the other, Eyad can't get a job above dishwasher as an arab. The borrowed identity in question is Yonatan's, which opens the lofty door of waiter to the young man.

You can probably see the big issues that must be dealt with: How does Eyad go back to his arab neighborhood? And if he does, how does he get a job worthy of the considerable cost to his parents? What does he do with a Jewish girlfriend? What about her parents? What happens when Yonatan and/or his mother find out he's stolen his identity?

It takes a sensitive touch, and director Eran Riklis is up to the task, which would not have been apparent to me from the last film of his we say, Zaytoun. Don't get me wrong—we really enjoyed Zaytoun (The Boy may even have preferred it), but it was a much less sophisticated take on a similar topic. Screenwriter Sayed Kashua doubtless deserves considerable credit, too.

The kids are mostly newcomers (to us, anyway) with Razi Gabareen and Tawfeek Barhom as young and old Eyad, respectively, Michael Moshonov as Yonatan, and the lovely Daniel Kitsis as Nomi. (I believe "Daniel" is correct, not "Danielle" or "Daniela".) They provide a strong core dynamic, and wrestle with much bigger problems than you'll find in your average teen movie, and while relatively mature, not overly so.

The resemblance between Barhom and Moshonov is an important part of the story, what with the whole borrowed identity thing, but I thought it was interesting that Yonatan's mother, played by Yaël Abecassis (Live and Become) and French Lebanese actress Laëtitia Eïdo also look somewhat similar—and both took a strong maternal interest in Eyad. Surely not a coincidence.

Ali Suliman (Lone Survivor, Zaytoun) rounds out the major adult roles as Eyad's oddly quixotic father. If the film has a weakness, it's that the story raises a huge question about Eyad's relationship with his parents, especially with Salah (Suliman), which is never addressed.

The Boy really liked this as well, though he was appalled at the Israeli arabs cheering Palestinian rocket attacks during Desert Storm.

Testament of Youth

I had sort of relegated Testament of Youth to "last ditch" territory. You know, where you're hard up for a film to see, and you've seen everything else (or ruled everything else out). It's not that the feature debut of seasoned TV director James Kent ("EastEnders", "Marchlands") was poorly received, it's that it was received with a polite clap, and words like "competent".

For a period piece about World War I England, that filtered through to me as "boring".

But it's not boring at all. It is deeply sad, as World War I movies tend to be. But neither ineffectively nor cheaply so, and both The Boy and I were quite pleasantly surprised at how good it was, and how it managed to create suspense out of foregone conclusions (it's WWI, which has a death rate that gives George R. R. Martin the shakes), and likable characters from not necessarily likable templates.

Indeed, the story it tells is, from the outset, not one that appeals to me. Our heroine is the real life Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina, A Royal Affair) who observes the fate of her brother, her fianceé, her rebuked-but-oh-so-English-dignified suitor as they are rerouted from their privileged lives at Oxford to decidedly less privileged environs in trenches.

The real-life Brittain (understandably) became a pacifist after her experiences, but the understandability of that doesn't really deflect from the whole obsession with pacifism that led to the disastrous consequences of World War II.

However, Kent and screenwriter Towhidi (Calendar Girls) stay out of the political, except at the very end, where we can completely understand and empathize with Brittain's motives, because they've given us a chance to experience her story.

Anyway, when we first meet Brittain, she's a spoiled little brat, in that Upper Middle Class white woman way that seems to produce the majority of feminist leaders. Her angst stems from not being allowed to go to Oxford (or Somerville, which is the female version of Oxford but on the same campus, I think).

Her father allows her to sit for the test, which requires an essay written in Latin, for which she is unprepared. (The implication is that she's an auto-didact, but perhaps only in Latin.)

She gets in anyway, of course, but her plans are derailed a bit when a minor Archduke is assassinated far, far away.

The first thing she does is bully her parents (Emily Watson, The Book Thief, Anna Karenina) and especially her father (Dominic West, 300, John Carter) into letting her brother (Taron Egerton, Kingsman) go. Dad's reluctant, not really believing all this "the war will be over in a few months" talk.

Her tune changes, of course, when talking about her beau (Kit Harrington, who actually looks more the age he's playing here than he does on "Game of Thrones" because he's so clean-shaven) who also insists on going to war.

What salvages this story is that Brittain herself goes to war, in the only way she can, as a volunteer nurse. First in England, but finally on the French front. Apart from her jealousy when her beau is on leave—realizing that he has a bond with his troop mates she can never share—she becomes a realized human being at this point, and the war stops being about her, and more about the soldiers fighting it. (Though a trip back home to visit her increasingly grief-addled mother shows a characteristic lack of patience for anyone not exactly where she is in her understanding of life, the universe and everything.)

Then it kind of hits you: These people—the real people—they're all between about 18-23 during the events depicted. And despite being the sort of effete-seeming upper class that was so popular to lampoon in my youth, they had a toughness, a sense of responsibility and a maturity we don't expect today out of our 30-somethings.

And there's a whole lot of death they experienced.

It's very well done. Very human. Interesting. Moving. And overall better than the generally polite accolades it's being given.

The Connection

The Connection is about the French Connection, done from the French perspective instead of the New York perspective. And the funny thing about it is that the actual title, in French, is La French. Well, you couldn't call a movie The French here. Wouldn't mean anything. And you can't call it The French Connection because, well, you know.

So, The Connection it is. "The French" is the name of the organization providing the drugs to the New York mob and in French, everyone says their name as "The French". Not "le Français".

What we have here is a mob story, in French, which means: a) It's going to be hard to follow, because mob stories are especially hard to follow (at least for me); b) The villains are going to be Italians, all played by French guys, speaking flawless French.

OK, I can't really support (b) here: I have no idea if that's true of French mob movies, or if their French is flawless. That said, writer/director Cedric Jimenez and co-writer Audrey Diwan don't do themselves a lot of favors with the pacing of this film.

One of my oft-noted pet peeves: This movie is very loosely based on real events, at which point—when you've already tossed fidelity to the wind—I think you need to juice it up a bit. As The Boy said, it was "too real". Many outcomes seemed pre-determined and lacking suspense. (And while it's historical, certainly The Boy wasn't aware of any of the history.)

Fine acting across the board, good characterizations, big name French stars, tight editing (even if the pacing is somewhat lax), the style is spot on for the late '70s, and the music is good without being obnoxious, though at one point the mafia kingpin loses it over Kim Wilde's "Cambodia". (No idea what that was about.)

And—I guess this is the French part—at one point, our hero has a breakdown in a phone booth when his wife leaves him, and there's a big dramatic moment that, you know, you won't find in The French Connection. The odd part to me was that his family was never at risk. I've never seen that in a mob movie. That's how the mob gets you: Threatens to kill you, and if that doesn't work, threatens to kill your family.

It's so weird that this guy tools around Marseille on a scooter while pursuing the most vicious drug dealers of the day. The denouement was also weird. Almost "Crime doesn't pay. Isn't that sad?"

So, a lot of missed opportunities, we felt. It's not bad. It's just not as good as you want it to be. Jean Dujardin (The Artist) as the hero, Celine Salette (Rust and Bone) as his wife, Gilles Lelouche (Point Blank) as the drug lord, Benoit Magimel (For A Woman), Guillaume Gouix (Midnight in Paris), Moussa Maasrki (Point Blank), and Dominic Gould as John Cusack. (Really! Sorta confusing, actually.)

And, of course, I have my standard reaction to these sorts of films: "And drugs were never seen in the land again." Because the stupidity behind all this stuff is that fighting the laws of economics like fighting the laws of physics. But you know: We get some movies out of it.

5 to 7

My son, one day you'll meet the woman of your dreams. She'll be beautiful, your heart's desire, your every waking moment will be filled with thoughts of her, and how happy the two of you could be.

Of course, by that time, you'll be married.

Anyway, as I've previously outlined that there is a scale of wimpy young male actors (Cera, Eisenberg, Yelchin, Le Beouf, Gordon-Levitt) which seem to be considered for roles about, well, wimps. Gordon-Levitt has been playing, convincingly, more tough guy roles of late, so it barely makes sense to include him any more.  But another guy who has been breaking out of the mold is Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov in the Star Trek reboots, and played an action hero and romantic lead in the mysteriously buried Odd Thomas.

In 5 to 7, though, Yelchin is a full-blown romantic lead in what is the most romantic movie in recent memory, written and directed by longtime producer ("Mad About You") Victor Levin. And he must play this role across from long-necked Bond Girl Bérénice Marlohe (Skyfall).

The premise is this: While walking down the street, Brian spies Arielle smoking on the sidewalk (Yelchin and Marlohe, respectively) and decides he has to meet her. She's receptive, teasing, flirty and when she finishes smoking tells him he can find her smoking there every week at that time.

They strike up a relationship in which Marlohe (being French) casually mentions being married, and how this shouldn't be an impediment to her relationship with Yelchin. In fact, the French have a phrase for just this, "cinq à sept" (pronounced "sahnk-ah-set"), "5 to 7": In other words, those hours after work but before you're expected at home, when it is most opportune to visit one's mistress.

Of course the French have a phrase for it.

Brian balks at the notion of having a relationship with a married woman. But come on. Bérénice Marlohe?

The Least Flattering Picture of Bérénice Marlohe On The Internet

Anyway, morals are great, but with 'em, we ain't got a picture. And Brian is soon sharing a hotel room and precious bodily essences with Arielle. This is mostly done quite tastefully, thank God and Victor Levin.

Also, if everybody stuck to their morals, well, there wouldn't be the opportunity to show why said morals exist, and the harm they're meant to prevent.

The critic/audience split is rather severe here with audiences preferring the movie by a wide margin (66%/86%), and I suspect this is in part due to the earnest and straightforward nature of the story, which seems familiar. But there's also an underlying belief in doing the right thing, even when it's the hardest thing in the world to do, and a sincere and unapologetic belief in love that maybe seems unsophisticated to a worldly wise filmgoer.

The Boy was wowed by it, which sort of surprised me. I mean, I rather liked it, but he was enthusiastic. Likable characters in difficult situations is his thing.

Glenn Close and Frank Langella steal a few scenes as Brian's mother and father. (Of course, Brian's supposed to be 23 which would make him a very late in life baby to those two, indeed. But who cares? It's Frank Langella and Glenn Close!)

Mommy

A two-hour and twenty-minute French-Canadian film about a trashy single mom and her violent son filmed in a sort of squeeze box that looks like an iPhone video? Sign us up!

Heh.

So, yeah, there was a certain trepidation in seeing 24-year-old writer/director Xavier Dolan's intimate film of struggle and drama, but when we walked out The Boy—The Boy!—pronounced it in his Top 5 for 2014. (Said list was previously at Top 4, so hard-pressed was he to recall truly outstanding films from last year.)

Yeah, it's good. It's not for everyone for a variety of reasons, but all-in-all, it's an amazing achievement.

The setup is simple: Widowed mom Die ("dee") Després gets called down to juvie to pick up her son, who has set the cafeteria on fire and injured a kid, and the institution will no longer care for him. She loses her job as a result (at least partly, there's more going on there), and must simultaneously figure out how to get money and homeschool her wild child.

Going on welfare is straight out, interestingly, just as it was in 2 Days, 1 Night. It's almost as if some people—even in socialist paradises!—inherently realize how destructive it is to the soul to not work for one's own keep.

Anyway, Steve is no run-of-the-mill wild child, what with his penchant for setting things on fire, smashing things, groping inappropriately, and so on. Fortunately, Die's neighbor Kyla is a teacher on sabbatical who is amenable to helping her and Steve out.

Kyla has her own issues, which she never actually discusses in the film, but which can be deduced fairly easily. There's a distinct tension between her and her emotionless husband, and she's distant from her young daughter.

The free-spirited (and even chaotic) Després clan is a sort of remedy for the buttoned-down Kyla, who seems fragile but who is actually fairly broad-minded. Steve and Die trade shocking foul-mouthed barbs over the dinner table and escalate their emotions pretty quickly, and de-escalate them almost as quickly.

So, right off the bat, one of my first worries about Mommy—that it would be boring—never comes to pass. All three main characters are interesting in their own ways, and where Steve and Die's vulgarity could be tiring, there is genuine affection and good character underneath. Die's apparent trashiness belies an interesting backstory, and she's actually both acutely aware of her age (the actress herself is 54) and (at least it seemed to me) still mourning her husband, even though her philosophy doesn't really allow for moping.

One of the movie's other great achievements is making Steve likable. In the first few minutes, he's described as having committed a horrible crime, one for which his mom reflexively defends him—not by proclaiming his innocence but by blaming the victim. I mean, you don't want to say Steve is a monster, but the movie doesn't soft-pedal the severity of his problems.

It's so much the case that you have a sense of doom from the start, which the movie more-or-less encourages.

Dolan rather impressively uses his 1:1 screen ratio (they call it 1:1, but that should be a square, and this was very clearly a "portrait mode" rectangle) to create a claustrophobic, intimate feeling and at two points in the film to create huge emotional moments. And I mean, moments of real joy and heartache, which is rare enough at any aspect ratio.

The first time, he literally shows you what he's doing, as if it were Steve himself breaking free. The second time takes place in Die's head, and is one of the most heartbreaking montages I've ever seen, and it had passed before I realized what he had done. Very adept, but perhaps something he's been mulling since he filmed I Killed My Mother, his autobiographical debut film five years ago.

Yeah, I'm impressed.

The only thing that seemed gratuitous to me is that this is a semi-futuristic film: The idea is that the health law has been amended such that a parent has the legal and moral right to commit a troubled child to an institution, with no third party confirmation. (I didn't know that wasn't already possible.)

Anyway, the acting was tremendous: Anne Dorval is utterly convincing as Die, and Suzanne Clemént is moving as Kyla. Their ease together may be due to the fact that they were both also in I Killed My Mother. But, whatever, along with Antoine Olivier-Pilon, and the portrait shot, it often feels more like we're eavesdropping/spying than watching a movie.

I did not recognize Patrick Huard, Starbuck himself, as Paul, so humorless was he.

Obviously, this isn't a film for everyone, because, you know, there's a big old dysfunction right in the middle of proceedings. Despite that, there's a lot of hopefulness here, a lot of fun, a lot of melodrama amongst the actual drama and, like I said before, The Boy puts it in his top 5 for 2014, which is a pretty respectable recommendation for any such drama.

2 Days, 1 Night

Marion Cotillard has a bad case of ennui. Real bad. So bad that she had to spend four months in the funny farm getting semi-un-ennui-ed (constructions like this is why robots will never speak English) only to find on the eve of returning to work, that her co-workers have opted to have her position eliminated rather than lose their year-end bonus.

She has 2 Days, 1 Night (or Deux jour, une nuit in the original, apparently inaccessible French) to reverse that vote!

Usually, when I say "I know, right? French!" in these reviews. I'm referring to some sort of sexual deviance that has been normalized by our frisky Gallic pals, but in this case, let us ponder the situation of a heroine who has been collecting a paycheck for doing nothing for four months, but for whom we are supposed to root, as she goes to inflict hardship on each of her co-workers, both emotionally and financially, after a four month period where her absence was already presumably a problem.

I know, right? French! Or more accurately, Belgian, but French Belgian, not the cool Flemish Belgian.

It's a testament to the Dardenne brothers (The Kid With A Bike) that this works at all.

@uncommentari once mentioned, in reference to some of the more difficult movies The Boy and I see, some puzzlement over the fact that we seem to enjoy these experiences, many of which cannot be considered pleasant. Well, sometimes we do and sometimes we don't, depending on the skill of the participants, the purpose of the unpleasantness, and the attitude of the execution.

For example, some horror movies are just unpleasant because it's easier to be unpleasant than scary and they don't really know the difference. I don't want to go see Haneke (The White Ribbon, Amour) movies because his goal seems to be punishing the audience. (Not enlighten or cause to empathize, but just punish.)

This is not the most unpleasant of film experiences but, let me tell you, you will feel all 90 minutes of it, as Sandra (Cotillard) drags herself across the countryside from family to family, humiliated and depressed the whole way.

It works, though, because Sandra isn't looking for pity. Ultimately she's just asking her co-workers to fire her to her face, which is something you should be able to do, if you're going to be voting to fire people. It's hard, but it has a heroic character to it as, let's face it, she hasn't really shaken her ennui, popping Xanax like Tic-Tacs.

But she has a character arc, Hollywood-ized up a bit, and you do end up liking her. (Cotillard has an extra barrier to deal with in my case, since people have been gushing about her since La Vie En Rose, which was really unpleasant.) I wondered if perhaps the Dardennes had actually told everyone else to dial back the acting, since this is the Marion Show, and even though her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione, The Kid on a Bike) is constantly around, he's just very low key.

I could understand "keeping it together", of course, but he never seems to look like he's suppressing any emotion, just that he's—well, he comes off sort of dumb, somehow. Your mileage may vary.

The other actors are fine and the ending is satisfying (though perhaps not with the same resonance to an American), and I ultimately walked away from this pondering the socialist/Cotillard balance of our critic class. 'cause ultimately, they love this film, even though it's a pretty damning indictment of socialism.

Sure, you could say the evil capitalist (a solar panel manufacturer) forced his employees to make an inhuman choice, but it's actually pretty clear by the end that it was necessary to cut costs, and Sandra's four month paid vacation made it clear that 16 people could do the job as well as 17.

Which, duh.

But a running theme throughout the movie is that people don't want to be on the dole. It's shameful. It's degrading. The big threat for Sandra and Manu is that they'll have to move back to whatever the Belgian equivalent of The Projects is.

And these are all skilled laborers. Welding is mentioned at one point, though I'm not sure it's what they all do. But these skilled laborers are agonizing over 1,000€, which means they're all torturing themselves over the equivalent of $300-$600 (after taxes, which are obscene in Belgium).

Meanwhile, a bunch of them do stuff "on the black", presumably working illegally, doing things like repairing cars or stocking shelves or whatever. The Dardennes may think they're being critical of capitalism, but they're honest enough to just tell the story and let you think and feel what you want.

My initial thought was that management that forces workers to choose between co-workers and bonuses (a real thing) are terrible management (and the movie paints considerable ambiguity on the who-did-what-to-whom plot points) but then I thought, well, why not force workers to make the hard choices that have to be made?

Especially in socialist countries where "management" is painted as the enemy of "labor" (as if they were different), I can see a certain value in forcing childish we-should-all-be-hired-forever-with-pay-raises-and-ponies to make the hard calls.

Fortunately, all that is incidental to the real story, which is about Sandra. And which is good.

But not easy to watch.

Nightcrawler

Dan Gilroy's first directorial effort is a Michael-Mann-ish looking film called Nightcrawler. Hungry Jake Gyllenhaal ends up shooting video footage for the ambitious Rene Russo and becomes increasingly obsessed with getting amazing shots, even if he has to fake them. Ultimately this drags him into a murder plot.

I haven't seen this film yet. This is the sort of film I'd probably not go to see if not for the glowing ratings. As I mentioned, it looks very Mann-ish, and I am not a Mann man. Also, it's big claim to fame is that it's a thriller. And we are probably having worse luck with so-called "thrillers" than with horror movies.

I think they use "thriller" to sell any drama, no matter how plodding, if any aspect of the resolution is in doubt.

But Gilroy wrote Tarsem's The Fall, which is his best film by a long shot, in no small part because of the story the effects could be hung on. He also wrote The Bourne Legacy, among other things. But in all his previous work as just-a-writer, he probably didn't have much clout. But this baby is his.

And it's being showered with awards. So it's gotta be good, right?

Right?

[later...]

Actually, yeah, it's really good. And the trailers are both weirdly spoiler-y and completely misleading in ways that I can't describe without spoiling it. My summary, above, based on the trailer grossly misrepresents the actual shape of things. Heh.

Gyllenhaal is just great. The supporting crew is very good: Riz Ahmed as the sidekick, Bill Paxton in a smaller, sweet role as a competitor and Rene Russo. Rene Russo is especially good as an aging news director seeing her salvation in Gyllenhaal. Also, given that I praise French women for looking their age, I'm should praise Russo as well: She looks her age, and if she's had work done, I don't see it—but she looks good. Which is all the more remarkable given her character is one who's a little desperate, cynical and bitter.

But ultimately, Gyllenhaal has to power the movie and he does.

So, will you like it? Well, it's dark, darkly comic, cynical, a directly scathing indictment of news media and by extension an indirectly scathing indictment of society, tense, suspenseful and horrifying.

Once I got a handle on the kind of story it was, I had a strong idea how it was going to end—and I could list some similar films, but that could spoil it, and a lot of people will be surprised by how it turns out.

It was a lot of fun. But remember, I have odd ideas about what's "fun". The Flower also really enjoyed it—but her sense of humor is a lot like mine. The Boy was a little cooler toward it, though he definitely liked it, and very much appreciated the suspense. He nitpicked the climax a bit; he felt it was a little unrealistic, that I can't tell you without a spoiler.

I thought maybe it was unrealistic for a different reason, that I can tell you about without spoiling: The police are called to Western Avenue and 3rd Street, which is about 3 miles from the Rampart Station—a big LAPD station in LA. I used to live in that area and when I called the cops, they would be there in seconds.

So I thought the movie showed them taking too long to get there, and it looked like they weren't even the ones who had been called. In other words, they maybe just moseyed in on accident. Minor point, at best. But the sort of thing that you could expect from me watching a movie taking place in L.A. (which adds to the fun for me, of course).

The Flower and I would probably put it in our top 10, while The Boy said it was more a top 20—which I think is more a statement on where he felt it belonged rather than being able to name 19 better other movies.

It's been an odd year: There've been very many good, even very good movies, but not so many great ones. I suspect our assessment for the Best of 2014 will be very documentary heavy.

Still, this was a good film to close the year out on.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

There's some old-fashioned sleight-of-hand huckstering going on with this new Iranian flick A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. What I saw in various places was "the first Iranian vampire movie". But in other places I'm seeing "the first Iranian vampire western." Big diff.

Although I see nothing of the Western in here.

There is boatloads of style in this beautifully shot black-and-white tale of a hapless guy who ends up on the wrong side of a loan shark/drug dealer's attempt to collect a debt his heroin-addict father incurred, and then ends up the lucky recipient of said dealer's wealth when a hungry girl vampire kills him.

This isn't one of those vampire movies where the vampire only kills bad guys, though. We puzzled over it afterward and the only commonality between her victims were that they were all male.

Of course, as I've noted for other movies, some ideas that are popular in American culture have a lot more force in others. Whatever the state of women in America, for example, Persian women could tell them a thing or two about oppression. The problem being an American can't always relate to the emotional impact they're meant to have.

You know, so maybe it's nothing in particular that she only kills men. And threatens boys. I dunno.

Anyway, it's a sort of love story between our living hero and our undead heroine, though one quite obviously fraught with certain issues (that are never addressed). In the end, the hero comes to realize that she's a murderer, but never that she's a vampire. Or does he? I don't know how he could have, really.

In the end, the three of us were split. The Boy did not care for it. It was too static and the characterization was weak. I can't really argue with that, but I kind of liked it anyway. I felt there was enough characterization and motion in the plot to make it worthwhile, though no where at the level of, say, Let The Right One In.

The Flower? She loved it. She's developed a strong sense of aesthetics and really enjoyed it on that level. Also, vampires are cool, and chick vampires doubly so, I'm sure.

The Girl is played by Sheila Vand (Argo, "State of Affairs") sort of like a French noir heroine. The Boy is played by Arash Marandi. The Boy's father is played by Marshall Manesh, whom The Flower recognized as playing a cab driver on "How I Met Your Mother" and who was also the doctor in The Big Lebowski, and who's one of those guys in a ton of things. He gets to stretch his acting chops.

Mozhan Marno (The Stoning of Soraya M, "House of Cards") plays a prostitute, while Dominic Rains ("General Hospital") plays the thug. Rains and Manesh were in the short version of this film, made a few years ago with the future star of Shirin In Love.

You may notice that all these actors are in a lot of American shows and movies. Punchline: it's not really an Iranian film. It's an American film starring a bunch of Persians. Shot in California. Heh.

Which is cool. Especially because I kept thinking, "Man, Iran looks a lot like California."

The King and the Mockingbird

Back in post-war France, a crazy Frenchman by the name of Paul Grimault decided to make the first French animated feature, and started work on a wild tale called Le roi et l'oiseau, literally, "The King and the Bird". Then something bad happened. Funding got cut, people fought over the rights, the unfinished film got released, and for the next two decades Grimault and writer Jacques Prévert struggled to get control of it.

Eventually, they won their battle and the film was completed and given a limited release in 1979. And now, finally, it's gotten a home video release, fully restored, and viewable in all its insane glory.

Hayao Miyazaki and Iwao Takahata cite this movie as a primary influence on the creation of Studio Ghibli, and that is so very apparent within a few minutes of this film. Certain techniques used remind me of Ralph Bakshi, and I wouldn't be surprised if he'd seen this at an impressionable age.

Then, in the second act, The Iron Giant shows up. I mean, if you read about this movie, you'll see "influenced" or "prefigured", but it's so recalls the robot in Brad Bird's classic film, that it's almost inconceivable he didn't see this movie.

The story is rather scattered at first: An incompetent but all-powerful king (a mix of Hitler and one or two of the Kings Louis) earns himself an enemy in the form of a big-mouthed bird (I would've guessed cormorant rather than mockingbird), who acts as a foil in his plan to marry a beautiful shepherdess.

Actually, I guess his main foil is the portrait of himself that comes to life and does away with him, but subsequently acts exactly like him. The shepherdess, also a painting, is in love with a chimney sweep—also a painting. None of this matters particularly, as once they come to life, they're just as real as anyone else.

Anyway, the king tries to capture the two lovers, who are kept one step ahead with the help of the bird. At least for a while. 

All the action takes place in the king's palace which is a marvel of insane (and impossible) opulence. The King's tower is on the 299th floor. There's a sub-cellar that's a city unto itself, where the king keeps those who aren't part of his bootlicking coterie for slave labor ("Work makes free!"). This section is very reminiscent of Metropolis and Modern Times.

Also, the product of this underground factory seems to be nothing but images of the king. Which seemed sort of Biblical to me.

You might wonder when this movie takes place. I did and finally came to the conclusion that it was 1948 France. Just a different one from the France portrayed in history books. (That's something I always note in Studio Ghibli films, like Kiki's Delivery Service, which seems to take place ca. 1900 in some unspecified part of Europe with a lot of zeppelins.)

Getting around in this arcology used frequently and hilariously as a gag set-up, as people use stairs and elevators, sure, but also things like paddle-boats and bumper-cars.

The Boy enjoyed it a lot, though he felt the movie's narrative looseness early on robbed it of some of its power. The Flower loved it, as she was spotting all the Ghibli-isms, and she is a big fan of Studio Ghibli. I also loved it for that, while recognizing The Boy's point.

There's just not a lot to dislike here, and if you have any interest in animation, it's a must-see. It's really quite a joy.

Force Majeure

Every year around this time, a lot of my so-called "friends" in the Midwest and North perpetuate this hoax called "snow". They post pictures of it on treetops, in their driveways, even make "snowmen".

But I've been on set: I know it's just soap.

Still I can play along, and nobody plays the joke better than the Swedes. And nobody's ever played it better than in Force Majeure.

Force Majeure takes place in a resort deep in the French Alps, where a Swedish family has come on vacation. We can tell, right away, from the awkwardness with which the wife speaks, that the family's in a fragile state, with her feeling neglected. The husband feels it as well, but is better at ignoring it and pretending everything's fine.

As part of making the resort viable, there are periodical explosions in the mountains to control avalanches. And our story really kicks into gear when one of these avalanches heads out of control toward the family. This ensuing events end up stressing the family to the breaking point.

It probably says something about Sweden that this is listed, at least in part, as a comedy.

Well, I laughed.

Some call it black comedy but it's not the wholesome sort of black comedy where people die. Instead, it's people's illusions that die, which is far, far worse. At the same time, there's an oddly upbeat end to it all, as if our illusions could be as easily built as they are destroyed.

Although the director has joked that he was trying to drive up divorce rates in Sweden, this doesn't stand so much as an argument against marriage as it is a testament toward behaving better. At least I took it that way: Significant attention was spent on the kids in the family who are aware of the tenuousness of their parents' relationship and live in fear of them breaking up.

These kinds of dysfunctional family films are not for everyone (I find them very hit and miss) and they tend to have a strained, tense feeling throughout. Force Majeure doubles down on this by introducing an air of contagion to the proceedings, as our main couple's problems spread to their friends and even acquaintances.

And then it triples down by filming this exotic resort in a positively alien manner. Sometimes, it's just a couple people surrounded by pure white. Often there's a fog settled over the whole valley. Just to screw with us, at one point the kids fly a drone in the night sky, and it looks more realistic than the hotel. The whole thing is ridiculously beautiful.

The only actor we recognized was the guy who plays Tormund Giantsbane on "Game of Thrones", as the friend of the family. The actress playing the wife is apparently his "medspillerske" in real life, which is a word I cannot find a translation for. I thought the lead was Peter Sarsgaard. I'm still not convinced they're different people.

But the acting is good, in that Swedish way, which apparently means really low-key right up until it's not.

Anyway, I can see why critics would like it more than audiences, but if you're open to this kind of drama/comedy, it's entertaining and oddly thought provoking.

Diplomacy

As the Allies were beating back Jerry on the European front, the Nutzis hatched a plan to delay the inevitable invasion of Germany by blowing up, super-villain style, Paris when the Allies tried to retake it.

And it really was a supervillain thing: The strategic value of destroying Paris (and killing over a million people) was actually pretty minimal, and the motivation seems to have been sheer Hitlerian insane rage, at least as portrayed here.

The actual history is rather murky. We know that some sort of plan was in the works, from all the explosives found wired to monuments and structures all over the city. And we know that General Choltitz didn't blow up Paris because, hey, it's still there. But why this mass murderer changed his mind is a mystery.

In Cyril Gely's play "Diplomatie", he boils the situation down into a single long night when the Swedish consul Nordlinger sneaks into Choltitz' hotel-based office (via a secret passage designed for a French noble's dalliances) to convince him not to push the plunger.

I knew about 15 minutes in that this almost had to have been based on a play, confined as it was to two guys in one room, talking, and this is the sort of thing I really enjoy when it's done well, so I have a bias here. But The Boy also liked it.

It works because there's an arc here: Nordlinger is clearly motivated, and willing to push whatever buttons he can find on Choltitz, while Choltitz appears to have no buttons to be pressed. But, as they do their little dance, you get tensions, resolution, and even character development, all based around a high stakes situation—really, all you need for good drama.

Some nice twists and turns, too. All in under 90 minutes!

Perennially evil dude Niels Arestrup (You Will Be My Son, War Horse) plays the evil German dude well, even as he evolves into a maybe slightly less evil German dude. Andre Dussollier (A Very Long Engagement, Tell No One) plays the Swedish consul/voice of reason with a deceptive sentimentality, under which lies determination, desperation, a hardness that suggests a level of threat. You can sense that he'd kill Choltitz if doing so wouldn't seal Paris' fate.

Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum, The Handmaid's Tale) directs and keeps it from feeling confined by its theatrical roots.

Worth checking out.

The Blue Room (La chambre bleue)

The main mistake I made in going to see La chambre bleue (The Blue Room) is forgetting that The Boy cannot follow mystery/thrillers when they're in a foreign language. Early on, I figured this was just a reading skill issue. The subtitles go by fast and thick, usually, when there's a lot of plotting involved. (They just vanish to me after about 30 seconds so I usually can't even remember if a film had subtitles a week after seeing it.)

Yeah, he had no clue what was going on. Which is okay, I guess. It's not great. It's not bad, either. Critics are piling on the love with a 90% RT while audiences—keeping in mind that we're talking people who'd go see a subtitled French mystery in the first place—give it a more modest 68%. I'd incline more toward the audience score, I think.

It's a brooding little film that takes place in flashbacks as Our Hero relates to the police the details of an affair he had with a Strange Woman Who Was Most Certainly Not His Wife. When we start, we just know that Something Has Transpired that is worthy of police attention; the details don't come out until later.

Needless to say, it all ends in tears.

The points of interest revolve around the fact that Julien (Our Hero) is lying to the police in small, visible ways that are understandable but that also might conceal a larger part in the crimes committed, and that we are left to our own devices to suss out the motivations and feelings of the characters.

This, I believe, is what makes the critics like it, and audiences react less warmly.

Meanwhile, the movie resolves absolutely nothing. The events play out mostly in flashback, then there's a trial, a verdict, and absolutely no indication of whether justice is reached, or what's going on with the characters internally.

This, I believe, is also what makes the critics like it, and alienates the audience.

I don't know. It's a thing. To leave up the story resolution to the viewer. It's arty. I kind of came out thinking that justice had not been done, but in fact, the guilty party had been allowed to skate free. I can't really back it up, though. I see means, motive and opportunity for the true (in my mind) criminal but truth be told, there are many possible stories that may have happened here.

I didn't find this particularly satisfying. I'm not a big fan of movies that are all denouement, as this one is, in the final analysis. But I didn't hate it either. I did find it engaging. The acting is subtle but not pretentious.

Lotta Gallic noses and genitals.

Directed by and starring Matthew Amalric (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Rabbi's Cat), and starring newcomer Stéphanie Cléau as The Lover and Léa Drucker as The Wife.

Tusk

There is only one way a movie about a man who turns another man into a walrus (against his will) can go wrong, and that's by being boring. As such, Kevin Smith's new movie Tusk, is a success. But even more, this is an entertaining flick that straddles the line between horror and comedy in a way few movies do successfully.

The story concerns Wallace (oh, yeah, Wal-Lace), a podcaster whose gimmick is that he travels the continent in search of interesting stories that he describes to his partner Teddy, who is agoraphobic or doesn't like to travel or something. They call their show the Not-See Party. (Smith understands the podcast world pretty well, I'd judge.)

Wallace has journeyed to Canada to interview a handicapped kid he's been making fun of, but when he shows up, the kid has selfishly committed suicide, leaving Wallace without a story. A chance sighting of a flyer leads him to the home of Howard Howe, who may possibly be The Most Interesting Man in the World.

But behind Howe's oddly affable exterior lurks a sinister desire to turn a man into a walrus.

This is not just preposterous, it virtually dares you to take it seriously. And Smith never loses his sense of humor about the proceedings; but he also dares you to not take it seriously. Wallace is a real person—a jerk, to be sure, given to cheating on his girlfriend Ally, but in no way deserving of his fate. Ally and Teddy aren't exactly great, either, but their concern is genuine when they go to look for the missing Wallace, and down to the final scene which is both hilarious and touching.

Dark comedy, obviously. It reminds of many other movies, of course: It could almost stand as a parody of Silence of the Lambs, and it recalls The Human Centipede (without the gratuitous grossness). But the movie it most feels like to me is Motel Hell, which similarly straddles the line between sincere, campy and satirical.

The most instructive comparison is probably between this and Centipede. Both are body-horror type films, and as I've noted with regard to The Human Centipede, it used to be that this sort of mad scientist revolved around said mad scientist never accomplishing the desired goal. That's important because the dread is way more potent than the actualization, which is gross, unpleasant and (in the case of Centipede) frankly goofy.

Smith does an excellent job of creating the dread, as well as a few moments of genuine horror, which is perhaps a bit surprising coming from the guy famous for things like Clerks (although Dogma has its startling moments). There seems to be a consensus (insofar as these things go) that this part of the film is well done.

When confronted with the reality of the, uh, werewalrus, though, about half the audience bails (critics and commoners alike). I kind of think people are taking themselves too seriously, though. "I couldn't possibly enjoy a movie about a man turned into a walrus!"

Again, the only sin is to be boring, which is actually really easy to do: If you disrespect your characters, if you go for too many goofy jokes (rather than just letting the absurdity/horror of the situation speak for itself), if you just go too long—these are the landmines of the, uh, human-walrus hybrid film.

Smith steers through the minefield in his own idiosyncratic way, keeping his movie in the 90-100 minute range, and balancing the absurdity and horror with the human elements.

He does have one weakness: The long monologue (or sometimes dialogue) with a tight shot of the speaker(s), straight on looking at the camera. He does this effectively a couple of times here, and then a couple of other times less so, as with the Quebecois detective Guy Lapointe describing his encounter with Howe, and then again later with a long dialogue between Lapointe and Howe (pretending not to be Howe).

These word-storms actually manage the horror/comedy thing well at first (sort of like Gremlins Phoebe Cates' hilarious/horrifying monologue about why her family doesn't celebrate Christmas), then they go long, then they get absurd again, but then they go too long.

In a movie about a guy turned into a walrus, this is a pretty minor complaint.

Michael Parks ("Twin Peaks", We Are What We Are, Planet Terror/Deathproof) does an excellent job as Howe, as does Justin Long as Wallace. Genesis Rodriguez (Identity Theft, Big Hero 6) and Haley Joel Osmont (really!) play the concerned girlfriend and friend, respectively. Johnny Depp plays the French-Canadian detective (the kids did not recognize him). Smith's daughter Harley Quinn, and Depp's kid Lily-Rose Melody have cute roles as Canadian convenience store clerks. Even Mrs. Smith (Jennifer Schwalbach) has a short role as a waitress.

A lot of Canadian/American humor. We all liked it. Even weeks later we find ourselves chuckling over parts of it. There are a couple of really nice shots in here, too, which is always nice to see from the guy who revived "set the camera down and talk" as an art form.

This film does demand that you suspend your belief, of course, and you probably know if you're up for that. Weeks later, we still find ourselves chuckling over it, and The Flower has taken to using it as a new barometer. ("Gone Girl was pretty good, but you know what would've made it better? A walrus.")

EXTENDED SPECIAL BLOGGER'S CUT MATERIAL:

I'm going to add some insider stuff and some personal stuff, so if you want to geek out a bit with me here, read on.

You know, I always like Kevin Smith movies, even as I disagree (often vehemently) with whatever the underlying message is. Like, is a guy really supposed to roll with it when he finds out his girl has lied about her (as it turns out) extensive sex life (Clerks, Chasing Amy)? Is God's main message to Man really just not to believe very much in anything (Dogma)?

I can forgive Jersey Girl's "Make this one big gesture to prove you love me or all is lost" thing because that's a standard Hollywood trope.

But they're fun, funny, and distinctive (an important thing). They're also short and not boring. I feel like I could comfortably say, "Well, they're entertaining, but not masterpieces" but then I think back to all the movies in that category from the '90s that get watched and re-watched and emerge as new classics.

The Big Lebowski, for example, had a meager $17M box office when it was released. And Groundhog Day, now a beloved classic, was received with the critical warmth of a golf clap, and finished somewhere between Free Willy and Demolition Man at the box office.

Re-watchability is a big deal.

Anyway, Tusk came about as a result of a podcast where Smith and hetero-life-partner Scott Mosier, wherein they came across an actual ad by a man who wanted to exchange rent in his house for someone willing to dress up as a walrus for about 2 hours a day. You can hear them actually map out the plot, almost as filmed, here. And here them talk about the box office failure here.

Though, as noted on the second podcast, with a $3M budget, there was no chance of losing money. Smith's attitude is instructive; he wishes it did better, but he has a laundry list of how it was great for him.

It will still make a lot more at the box office than Life of Crime, unless that gets a much bigger release somehow, but it won't make as much as Motel Hell, even without adjusting for inflation.

But I can't see how this doesn't get a place in the cult horror pantheon next to that film.

Rifftrax Presents: Godzilla

I did not go see the 1998 Emmerich/Devlin Godzilla in the theaters. And when I put it on the cable many years later, I got immediately distracted, and only looked at it glancingly to think, "Well, now, this isn't very good at all."

I never put my finger on why. The idea didn't seem too bad. Make Godzilla nimbler and more reptilian in movement, and don't scale it up so that it's crushing model buildings under foot, rather have it dodging in between New York's skyscrapers. Have Godzilla be (SPOILER!!!!) pregnant, for example. None of these are bad ideas, per se.

Having now sat through the entire feature in a theater, I can sum it up in three words:

Oh. My. God.

This movie is so bad, it was hard to watch even with the Rifftrax guys (Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy's always lovable baritone) letting the jokes fly fast and furious.

It's not that the ideas, as I mentioned, were bad: It's that they're mishandled at every turn. For example, making Matthew Broderick your "action hero" could work, because it's not like anyone's going to be punching out Godzilla, or pulling out a minigun to take him one-on-one.

But making Matthew Broderick your hero when he's doing the exact same mugging he does in Ferris Beuller? That's catastrophic.

Unleashing the possibility of dozens of Godzillas? Kinda cool. Using that to rehash scenes out of Jurassic Park? Oh, so lame. Especially after the 6th or 7th time someone tries to stop these little velocizillas by bolting a door, having witnessed all previous attempts not even slow them down.

Feisty love-interest for Broderick? Good. Sociopathic love-interest with virtually no redeeming qualities? Not so good. Even if he did end up marrying Sarah Jessica Parker in real life.

Hank Azaria and Mary Pitillo presage "Jersey Shore" with their, ahem, broadly drawn characters. Harry Shearer practically reprising his Simpsons character, Kent Brockman.

The parade of French clichés that is Jean Reno.

The CGI was state of the art for 1998, and it's unbearably bad now. I mean, the old '50s movies with the rubber suits holds up better. (I think one of the reasons Jurassic Park still largely works is the practical effects.) So even the effects don't help save this thing, even with the kind of cool ideas about how Godzilla should move and act. (Also, he's ridiculously nimble: Dodging missiles right and left.)

Honestly, you have to go back to Coleman Francis or Manos: The Hands of Fate (or maybe The Doomsday Machine) to find a film as unwatchable as this. Sometimes I think watching these things is like having a baby: Incredibly painful but when it's all over, you had a lot of laughs (and a sore abdomen), so you forget until the next time.

I should talk more about the riffing, but it's always hard to encapsulate these things. This is really, really funny. Really, really, really funny. The main problem with MST3K is that there would be lulls: There would be long stretches of rapid fire humor, and then things would slow down a bit, and sometimes too much.

There are a few breathing points here. But not a lot. Not all the jokes land but maybe 90% or more do, which is damn good. Well, the Boy may have missed a few more, since he knows nothing of the '90s, doesn't know who Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane or Sarah Jessica Parker is, and so on.

It's fun to watch in a theater, too, because the audience roars.

The next Rifftrax "live" show is Anaconda, which is a truly terrible film, but I think I actually managed to watch that on TV after it came out. It's kind of a compelling bad as I recall, with a good part of the time you going, "What the hell is Jon Voight doing with his voice?"

Anyway, the 1998 Godzilla needs Rifftrax to survive. NEEDS IT! Otherwise, it only has the distinction of not being the worst film Devlin/Emmerich ever made.

Mood Indigo

Michel Gondry is one of the most idiosyncratic directors working today, with a style as unmistakable (even moreso perhaps) than Wes Anderson or Tim Burton. The first film of his that I saw was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I did not like much. His subsequent films (Science of Sleep, Be Kind, Rewind, The Green Hornet), which I liked more, have largely not been as well received.

I get this: There is an uncanny polish to ESotSM, a clear message, clearly delivered. It is, by all measures, a better film than the others. But it's not so much Gondry's message, in my opinion, as writer/producer Charlie Kaufman's, whose fingerprints can be found on the grotesque Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation. (which I did not see after realizing it was by the same guys who did BJM and ESotSM).

This is important in understanding my take on Gondry's latest film, Mood Indigo, because I prefer Gondry's characteristic imperfections over what are generally considered better movies. You know, you don't come to me looking for sympathetic opinions on Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese films, whatever their technical merits. (Hell, I don't think I've ever spelled Scorsese's name right up until now.)

Meanwhile, there's a sort of childish romanticism to Gondry that appeals to me, and Mood Indigo is chock full of it. Not that it's all happy. Oh, no, not at all: The source material is a French (?) novel from the '40s (?) called Froth on the Daydream. (Yeah, you can look it up if you want to know for sure. What am I? Google?)

The basic outline is simple enough: Wealthy and creative Colin meets quirky and beautiful Chloe and the two hit it off in their quirky, creative and wealthily beautiful way. But their happily-ever-after is clouded by Chloe contracting a disease (a water-lily on the lung) for which the only treatment is to be surrounded by flowers.

Their happy-go-lucky existence is slowly destroyed by the disease and, since this is Gondry, the beautifully creative ways their happiness expressed itself in their actual physical existence become equally dark and oppressive as their situation worsens.

With the exception of The Green Hornet, which is more-or-less bound by genre conventions, one never really knows how Gondry's films will end. The Boy and I were both taken aback by the ending here which is...well, it's just not what we expected. I suspect it will turn many people off.

Great characters: Besides Colin and Chloe, there is Colin's pal Chick, who is obsessed (to the point of financial ruin) with the writings (and other artifacts) of one Jean-Sol Partre. (It's somehow reassuring to realize that Marxist Existentialism was being roundly mocked even at its height.) Chick's obsession is so thorough that he squanders his opportunities to marry the beautiful Alise.

The other main character is Colin's man-servant, who is more a chef/major-domo as well as a sidekick (except when Colin is being his sidekick). The faithful Nicolas must be thrown out by a well-meaning Colin, so dedicated is he to his friend's well-being.

Everyone focuses on Gondry's whimsy but as you, Dear Reader, may know, I consider all art to be artifice, so to me the whimsy is as natural as a superhero movie or a romantic-comedy or any straight-up drama, even when they try so hard to be "realistic" they remove all dramatic interest. The main thing is that the characters are "real", and so we care what happens to them. If they seem "extreme" or if the physics of their world don't seem to match ours doesn't really matter. (At least not to me. Some folks can't relate, or don't care to.)

The Boy and I really liked it. We might have even loved it, though it is in some (narrative) ways a difficult film to say you "loved".

Romain Durais, who's kind of the French actor of the year for us (Chinese Puzzle, Populaire) plays Colin. Perennial Casa 'strom favorite Audrey Tatou (Chinese Puzzle, Priceless) is Chloe. Gad Elmaleh (Priceless, The Valet) is Chick. Omar Sy (The Intouchables, and a small part in X-Men: Days of Future Past) is Nicolas.

If you're a Gondry fan, you'll probably like this. If you're not, you probably won't. Either way, you won't forget it.

A Summer's Tale

Finally! After nearly twenty years! A chance to see Eric Rohmer's A Summer's Tale on the big screen!

Wait, who? What? Why do we care? Erich Rohmer was a French filmmaker (who passed in 2010), part of the La Nouvelle Vague of the '50s and '60s who, well, has his fans, but also a great many detractors even among those whom you might consider likely supporters.

Basically, he's a guy who directs talky, non-plot-driven films, and this one was part of a four film series of "seasons", that may be thematically connected but not by characters or stories (I think).

So, why do we care? Well, it's the middle of the week in a rather uninspired summer, in a year that's generally been hard to find obvious movie choices.

The first thing I noticed about it was that the title card was off. I can't remember what it said ("Summer Tale"?) but it was something not very idiomatic English. The next thing that became very apparent was that Messr. Rohmer has a distinct type.

The story is about young Gaspard (Melville Poupaud, The Broken) who's moping cluelessly around Brittany (I believe; it's somewhere on the beach in the north of France) while his not-girlfriend is tooling around Spain with her sister and his boyfriend, and maybe some other guys. He's about to start a boring engineering job in a few weeks, so this is his last vacation before he joins the real world, or at least as close as France gets to the real world.

He meets perky waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet, Pauline at the Beach, another Rohmer film from a time when it wasn't considered creepy to ogle 15-year-olds in skimpy bikinis), a doctor of some squishy social science, who is waiting on her boyfriend to come back from wherever he is. The two strike up a friendship that is decidedly sexual (without actually involving sex).

Margot doesn't think much of Gaspard's non-girlfriend, so she fixes him up with Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon) and the two hit it off. Solene's deal, though, is that if they're going to have a relationship, they're going to have a relationship, with clear boundaries and no half-in/half-out nonsense.

Gaspard's okay with is, which mysteriously pisses Margot off. She claims to be disappointed he's so easily swayed by Solene's crude aggression—and when I say "crude", here, I just mean "non-crazy"—or maybe just pissed off that he's less interested in her. I think they may even make out at this point, I can't really recall.

Just when it looks like Gaspard's going to get something going, his non-girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin) shows up and throws a monkey wrench into his plans.

So sort of like a French "Three's Company".

Anyway, if Margot is coquettish, Lena is just outright nuts. Presumably dramatically more attractive than the other two (I can't really see it but I think that's the implication), she's barely interested in Gaspard. Well, at first. Then she's super-into him. Then she's pissed off at him for thinking she's into him, and dumps him. Then she's back, screwing with his plans again.

This is basically your movie, then. The hopelessly beta Gaspard being buffeted around by women.

It's not unpleasant. I mean, if it's not your sort of thing—long walks through the countryside and boat rdies off northern France—this isn't going to change your mind about talky movies. (Like My Dinner With Andre might, for example.) But the characters are likable, really, even if you want to slap Gaspard around a little bit.

Young people are kind of clueless, especially about romance. That's why we used to marry 'em off at 13.

But the point is, Gaspard is clueless in exactly the way young men tend to be clueless. He's attracted to Margot, but she's taken (despite the mixed signals). He's attracted to, but somewhat intimidated by Solene. And he idealizes, to an absurd degree, Lina. To the extent where he'll let her mess up his life with her capriciousness. I can't really fault the accuracy here.

Still, it's not the sort of thing that's going to ignite your toes. Unless, perhaps, you share Rohmer's taste in women: elfin, small-breasted women with good child-bearing hips. You know how, about 5 minutes into a Russ Meyer film, an alert viewer will think, "Good heavens, I believe the director has a taste for inordinately large mammary glands?" Well, by the time Solene shows up, I began to suspect a similar preference (if not exactly fetish). In fact, I did a little research after seeing this movie, to confirm this and, yes, this was the sort of body type Mr. Rohmer preferred, I feel confident in saying.

Nothing wrong with it. Just amusing. Dream-girl Lina has slightly larger breasts (though still not large) than the other two, and I wasn't sure if that was a coincidence or meant to be a marker of her greater beauty.

You know, the most remarkable thing about this film may be that Rohmer was in his mid-to-late 70s when he made it, and yet he had a keen memory (or eye) for the behavior of people 50 years his junior.

The Boy liked it. And I think we both liked that it wasn't depressing or nihilistic, unlike what we commonly associated with French New Wave. Just don't expect a lot of fireworks.

Le Chef

If you've been following along with the reviews, you may have noticed that one of my pastimes is observing the discrepancies between critic and audience reactions, courtesy of the Rotten Tomatoes website. A severe audience/critic split where the audience approves and the critics do not usually indicates Christian or patriotic themes, or possibly a Transformers movie.

We don't always side with the audience over the critics. One of the effects of going to see a ton of movies is acquiring a taste for some of the more esoteric aspects of the art. We don't have anything much invested in any particular film, so we might appreciate something that might actually piss us off if it were our one chance to see a movie for a few months. (And I always try to note the difference here between "interesting" and "good".)

Sometimes, though, we just come out of films thinking What the hell is wrong with people?

Which brings us to Le Chef. We'd seen the trailers with interest: It looked like a silly French farce based around cooking. Fun, not serious—not even as serious as the relatively light-hearted Chef.

Then it comes out and the RT score is brutal 47% critics, 59% audiences. Well, hell. Who wants to go see something like that. But on a recommendation from a friend, and given a lack of other appealing options, we decided to roll the dice. And you know what?

Le Chef is a silly French farce, based around cooking. Fun, not serious and just exactly what it said on the tin.

The plot is sort of Ratatouille meets Chef, with once great chef Alexandre LaGarde (Jean Reno) having lost his mojo, and waking up in a world where he's in danger of losing one of his stars, doesn't understand molecular cuisine, has a terrible relationship with his All-But-Dissertation daughter, and sleeps alone, so consumed is he with running his restaurant and doing his TV show.

Meanwhile Jacky (Michaël Youn) is bursting with energy, opinion and talent, and a devotee of LaGarde who can't hold a job down because he's so opinionated about food. But pregnant wife Beatrice (Raphaëlle Agogué) insists he do something to prepare for their coming child, so he ends up painting and cleaning windows at an old folks home.

Jacky being Jacky, he finds himself correcting the kitchen in the home, and soon becomes popular there, but it doesn't last. LaGarde loses all his support staff as his weaselly boss prepares to fire him (from his own restaurant named LaGarde, even) and wants him to okay icky chemicals in his name-brand frozen foods. When LaGarde comes to taste Jacky's cooking while visiting the home, and recognizes the recipe as his own (from 1997!), he lures Jacky to his place (at no pay, of course).

It's frothy light, barely ever in danger of crashing into serious feelings, and it's (of course) rather predictable, because there are only a few ways to end a story like this and keep it the lighthearted comedy it always intended to be.

So why be hatin'? I'm actually not sure. Critics attacked the American Chef for being well-worn and predictable as well, but I would bet money we won't see another quality family-friendly comedy/drama like it for the rest of the year. Similarly, critics attack this Le Chef for being predictable and its obvious farce, but it's funny and I can't recall the last French farce I saw like it.

Girl on a Bicycle maybe. It was fun and (intriguingly) hated even more by critics than this—though also dramatically better liked by audiences. In The House was very dark. Populaire was fun and frothy at first, but turned heavier and more sexual as it went on. So, I guess if you went back to Paris-Manhattan, that would be about right.

Maybe if all these films were frothy confections it would be tiring, but like Chef, I bet we see exactly zero French films for the rest of the year that have no greater ambition than to make you laugh and tell a pleasant enough story so you don't feel scummy for laughing.

Some of the humor is broad in the extreme. At one point, Jacky and LaGarde go under cover as a Japanese husband and wife to check out molecular cuisine at their competitor's place. And the Spanish molecular cuisine specialist is a goof.

But I'm really working hard to try to understand the animosity. Maybe French film fans are just too snobby to laugh at silly stuff. If so, that's a shame: The audience that would like this most—general film audiences, not "French film fans"—will never go see it.

Snowpiercer

The problem, of late, has been the sheer lack of agreement between critics and audiences about what's worth seeing. As mentioned previously, the Swedish WWII film (The Last Sentence) was beloved by critics but not so much audiences. But the alternative (at our local) was a French WWII film also beloved by critics, but not so much audiences. We could trek down to the backup theater to see Radio Free Albemuth, which was based on a Philip K. Dick story, utterly despised by critics, with audiences favorable to it, but just barely. (And also without any of the usual signals, like "Christian", to suggest why critics would hate it.)

Both the kids had seen and disliked the movie poster for Snowpiercer, generic as it was, but audiences were okay with it and critics were gaga so I just dragged The Boy to see it.

And he loved it!

I...also liked it, though not as much as he did. There was a discrepancy in our brain-disengagement process that accounts for the difference. Let me explain the premise:

In an attempt to fight Global Warming (I know, I know), the countries of the world inject a chemical into the atmosphere, but they screw it up and actually end up freezing the world and killing everyone.

Ha!

However, there's a train. Yes, a train. And it travels around the world. Once circuit a year. It's a super-fast self-contained ecosystem containing all the world's remaining life. When the movie starts, we're in the back of the train where the poor people live on something suspiciously Soylent Green-ish, oppressed by Nazi-esque soldiers and mob enforcers and Tilda Swinton, with Chris Evans and the kid from Billy Elliot (grown now, sorta) plot with John Hurt to invade the front part of the train where Ed Harris rules all.

So, it's Elysium-on-a-train. And I'm pretty sure that's why the critics liked it. Because it's an allegory of the evil 1% oppressing the rest of the world.

I found this incredibly amusing because the train is a terrible allegory for a free market economy—there's no movement or trade at all to speak of—and a perfect allegory for a centrally controlled "sustainable" society. The train is a perfect Progressive paradise: the upper class go to nice schools, live drugged/sexed-up adolescence, then go on to fulfill their various roles in the society.

And yet, pursuing any allegorical angle very far is the road to madness. Joon-ho Bong (The Host (2006), Mother (2009)) is operating on a different level. It's, like, a Korean thing, reminding me after a fashion of Ki-Duk Kim (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring, 3 Iron) in the sense that you'll go wrong if you're being too literal. The narrative is a kind of poetry.

And this works in some not entirely explicable fashion. Perhaps because the narrative is strongly constructed from a dramatic standpoint, with real plot points and (perhaps somewhat clichéd) characters and foreshadowing and so on. That's what The Boy enthused about. Lately, he says, there have been a lot of what he considers "fake" movies, where they look like movies and have a lot of explosions and happening things, but they don't really hang together well.

So, there's a poetic logic to the proceedings that make it entertaining and engaging.

But that's the only kind of logic there is in this film. For example, the whole tension of the film comes from the people in the back of the train wanting to escape to the more forward cars of the train, but there's literally no reason for there to be any poor people on the train in the first place. I mean, I got to the point where I half-expected to see them get to the engine room where burly men would be shoveling heaps of babies into the burner. (There is a very, very tenuous contrivance for having created this lower class, but it's fever-dream conspiracy level stuff.)

Then there are the various horrors they encounter which, frankly, are kind of silly, since the alternative was death. And there are battle scenes. I mean, big confrontations. In train cars.

Bong has brought along two of his repertory players, Kang-Ho Song and Ah-Sung Ko (who played feuding brother and sister in The Host), who are drug-addicted lovers/psychics/engineers (well, he's the engineer, she's the psychic), who help the band of adventurers get through the doors on their way to the front of the train.

And they speak Korean. Kang-Ho Song speaks it all the time. Ah-Sung Ko speaks English sometimes. And they have a translating machine. Which they use sometimes. Other times, the characters appear to be reading the subtitles.

So, look, if you can't get past the sheer nonsense of it, you're not going to enjoy it.

The ending is...well, very final. Happy? Unhappy? Beats me. It didn't seem to matter much. It was just the ending. Don't judge.

There's really no distilling this down. As a straight adventure film, it's kind of a fun '70s-style dystopia with that unique Korean flavor. But don't go looking for science, engineering, logic...or anything like that.