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Hate to say I told you so

Nice of you to join us, Tony.

Like John Cassavetes, whose influence is apparent here, Mr. Bujalski is an acute and intelligent dramatist who uses the appearance of chaos as a means of emotional exploration. I would bet that the ragged, swerving scenes in his film are much more tightly scripted and carefully rehearsed than they sometimes seem, which was almost always the case with Cassavetes. The main difference is that while Cassavetes's characters are often at the mercy of their feelings and pushed to the point of eruption, Mr. Bujalski's are cut off from theirs, and able to communicate only by painful, semi-ironic indirection.

Intervention

The silly stops here.

That's right. After noting two "silly"s in as many grafs in Manohla Dargis's review today of the admittedly silly-seeming XXX sequel, the cinetrix's spidey sense started tingling. Is it just me, or has she been growing a little too fond of that saccharine epithet?

So I counted,* without the aid of Lexis/Nexus, no less. And over the course of 81 reviews for the NYT, seven other films have rated a single "silly": Almost Peaceful, It's All About Love, A Lot Like Love, Meet the Fockers, Ocean's Twelve, White Noise, and, well, there's another one. Don't make me search through 'em again.

If I had the graph-building powers of Krucoff, you'd see a spike in December, and then another in April. What does it all mean? Got me.

But if someone knows whether "wildly silly" is better than "deeply silly," speak up. Because the 10-minute opening sequence of the first XXX was transcendently silly: car chases, parachutes, JetSkis, motorcycles, an indoor half-pike... and ninjas!

*Those of you who know what I should be doing with my time are well within your rights to chastize me for my new heights of procrastination. It's a sickness.

A girl in trouble is a serious thing

Have you seen Saved yet? Oh, you should. It's a clever little movie, but not too clever. Not clever-clever, if you know what I mean. It has a sense of humor about evangelical Christianity, which the world could use more of, but it's not disrespectful.*

Mary (the adorable Jena Malone) is a senior at American Eagle Christian Academy. She has an athlete boyfriend, the most popular girl as her best friend, and Jesus Christ as her personal savior. She also has a problem. That athlete boyfriend? He's a figure skater, and he's gay. The popular girl is a vindictive zealot. And Mary is pregnant, having slept with her boyfriend over the summer in an attempt to "cure" him.

This is a set-up that could fall apart with the wrong cast. Fortunately, keeping Miss Mary company is an inspired Mandy Moore [I know!] as the popular girl; Macaulay Culkin as her sly wheelchair-bound brother, Roland; Sarandon-spawn Eva Amurri as the rebel;  Heather Matarazzo as an aspiring popular girl; dreamy Patrick Fugit as the new boy; Mary-Louise Parker (pre-pregnancy bosom) as Mary's mom; and the one and only Martin Donovan as hip-hop Pastor Skip, principal of American Eagle. Together, they keep everything aloft. [And funny--Roland shows up for Halloween wearing a black shirt with white laces down its front. He's a rollerskate.] You'll laugh, you'll hiss, you'll tear up a little. Yes, you, you cynic. You especially.

Now, Donovan has been a cinetrix fave dating back to Trust, and his turn in Saved got me to thinking. I realized this is his third role opposite a surly pregnant teen girl. He's gone from boyfriend in Trust, to gay older half-brother in the scabrous The Opposite of Sex, all the way to a man of the cloth and a parent. The refreshing thing is that in none of these films is the pregnancy a tragedy. A problem, yes, but not an insurmountable one. If only, huh?

*One quibble. As a former wearer of a school uniform, the cinetrix noted a few, er, continuity issues regarding the girls' skirts. It seems that Moore got a two-box-pleat in the front, two in the back skirt, whereas Mary got the single, centered box-pleat model [before she switches to pants to hide her pregnancy] and their friend was wearing a straight skirt. I call bullshit. Schools with uniforms never allow enough style options for anyone to look good in that garb. It's kinda the point. But try telling that to the costumer designer [or, more likely, Moore's retinue.]

One-two punch

Fresh on the heels of the Independent Film Festival of Boston screening of his second feature, Mutual Appreciation, director Andrew Bujalski will see his first, 2002's Funny Ha Ha, return to New York's Cinema Village and Boston's Coolidge Corner this Friday, April 29, in a brand-spanking-new 35mm print [blown up from the original 16mm]. Go see it. Go see it. Go see it again.

Film Comment's Amy Taubin described the film's strange, slow momentum last year:

In the two years of its "non-release," Funny Ha Ha has accumulated a dedicated fan base and a set of reviews (from critics of all ages) that most first-time filmmakers would die for. It was named one of the best undistributed films of 2003 by Film Comment, indieWIRE and The Village Voice; Bujalski was the winner of the IFP's 2004  "Someone to Watch" Spirit Award and Filmmaker magazine selected him as one of the "New Faces of Indie Film."

The cinetrix was fortunate enough to see Funny Ha Ha a few months ago. Shot in Boston, it's a lovely film about being in your midtwenties, feeling stuck in a shitty office job, and crushing out on someone who keeps toying with your heart. Oh, yes, and drinking your way into courage and catastrophe. Bujalski gets so many grace notes right about that ephemeral time in one's life that watching the film at, er, a more advanced age was almost unbearable. [That's good, in case you were wondering.]

Mutual Appreciation has been picking up buzz, too. Keep an eye out for it, Funny Ha Ha, and whatever Andrew does next. He's the genuine article. And a great guy to drink beer with, too.

UPDATE: Dennis Lim raves in the Voice. Also, an interview with Andrew.

Enron: It's electric

Now, this is interesting. The Landmark theater chain this week sent out a note to its Film Club members from Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room director Alec Gibney. It's weird. You'd think that self-selecting cinemaphiles wouldn't need personal-touch persuasion to come out for this doc. Perhaps they are meant to be the early adopters, generating buzz and groundswell and whatnot.

Well, bzzzz bzzzz bzzzz. Here's his note. The cinetrix is usually not such a shill, but see his movie. It opens Friday.

Dear Film Club,

Even though the story of Enron is a great human tragedy, I hope it makes you laugh.

The fact is that, from a distant perspective, the events are funny. An executive addicted to strippers, accountants making up the numbers, our most prestigious banks handing out deals to criminals that they would never consider giving to honest working people, a body-builder taking charge of California - the world's 7th largest economy - because his political allies shut the lights off all over the state.  There are skits - skits! - by Enron execs about the scams they pulled. And while the company is going down the tubes, the CEO stresses over fabric swatches for the G5 jet.

Yet, as the music makes clear, this is a black comedy, where every laugh has an undertow of moral outrage.  As Tom Waits sings in the final song: "Who are the ones we kept in charge? Killers, thieves and lawyers. God's away...God's away...God's away... on business!"

At the end of the day, I hope that watching the film makes you as angry as it made me when I was making it. This is the cinema vérité version of the Titanic: a few people sailed off in gilt-edged lifeboats while everyone else drowned.  (Again, Tom Waits - and his co-writer Kathleen Brennan: "There's a leak, there's a leak in the boiler room...") But unlike the Titanic, the fault for Enron's collapse is not limited to a few executives. As the film shows, our major investment banks, our accounting firms, our lawyers - indeed the very government that is supposed to protect us - all aided and abetted Enron in doing what it did.

Enron's slogan on its surrealistic ads was "Ask Why." It was supposed to suggest that Enron was an innovative company because it questioned conventional wisdom. Looking back, I think "ask why" was one of those clues that master criminals leave for detectives. "Ask why," Enron's earnings were so good when so little cash was coming in the door.  But now, way beyond that, we should all "ask why" such a thing could have happened.

I hope you enjoy the film. I hope you laugh and I hope it makes you mad as hell.

Alex Gibney

Fake out

Orson Welles's F for Fake comes out on DVD today. No fooling. Thanks, Criterion.

*NB: Our favorite former resident of 02138 also makes her DVD debut tomorrow today. Bon appetit!

This be the verse

The good people over at the Michigan Quarterly Review have compiled a vast filmography that purports to track poetry in film.  It makes for some good reading and offers the fixings for winning bar bets. Of course, Shakespeare leads the list, and Bible verses and films about poets are considered their own separate thing. But did you catch "Dover Beach" in The Anniversary Party? Me, neither, but it's in there. And the otherwise excrable Autumn in New York is apparently rife with poesy. Who knew?

Wild man William Blake wins the prize for popping up in the widest array of decades and genres.

"The Tyger"
The End of the Affair, 1955
The Horse's Mouth, 1958
Blade Runner, 1982
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, 2002

"America: A Prophecy"
"The Fly"
Blade Runner, 1982

"Jerusalem" ["And did those feet in ancient time"]
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, 1962
Privilege, 1967
Chariots of Fire, 1981

"The Sick Rose"
Educating Rita, 1983

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Bull Durham, 1988

"The Everlasting Gospel" ["The vision of Christ that thou dost see . . ."]
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Dead Man, 1995

"Auguries of Innocence"
Dead Man, 1995
In the Bedroom, 2001

"The Little Black Boy"
The Horse's Mouth, 1958

"To See the World in a Grain of Sand"
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, 2001

What's your favorite instance of versifyin' on film?

R.I.P. John Mills

This is sad news:

Oscar-winning actor Sir John Mills, star of more than 100 films including ''Great Expectations,'' ''War and Peace'' and ''Ryan's Daughter,'' died Saturday after a short illness, the trustees of his estate said. He was 97.

The cinetrix knows Mills had a long and distinguished career on stage and screen, but her personal and highly sentimental favorite Mills performance is his turn as Maitland the caretaker opposite his daughter Hayley, who plays the mean-spirited little liar brought to heel by Deborah Kerr's governess in the 1964 film adaptation of Enid Blyton's play The Chalk Garden.

If all you know of Haley Mills are her Disney-darling films--which are great, don't get me wrong--her work in The Chalk Garden will come as a revelation. She sets things on fire. Literally.

[For a perverse double bill, watch it with Bonjour Tristesse.]

Ace in the Hole

Dave Edelstein gets a little slap-happy over at Slate and imagines how he'd sell out. [Apparently, reviewing Nic's Botoxed brow will do that to a guy. See also "she's once again upstaged by those locks of hair that hang artfully in her face."]

Now imagine how I'd pitch everyone's favorite whipping boy, Gigli:

Me: Gigli explores the nature of human sexuality as no American movie has before. It moves the boundary posts. It will leave you astonished at what movies are capable of.

TV Host: Critics are saying it stinks.

Me: Have you ever been in a room full of critics?* Do you think critics have experienced the full range of human sexuality?** Do you trust critics to report accurately on the fleshy intimacies of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck?

TV Host: So, you're saying they're wrong about Gigli?

Me: I'm saying that truth is subjective and conditional. Gigli should not be seen alone, but with someone to whom you may cling. Then you must explore your mutual feelings, perhaps at Applebee's over juicy steak tips*** or luscious frozen margaritas in exciting new fruit flavors. [NB: I can do product placement tailored to your movie's demographic.]

But my favorite part of his cycle through mania is the suggestion that brewski-swilling A.O. Scott is his bitch:

Now think about awards time, and here I do have an inside track.

Me: That Natalie Portman has a potent sexuality, doesn't she? And she can act, too, boy.

A.O. Scott: Do you think so? I thought her Queen Amidala was embarrassingly wooden.

Me: See, that was the teasing ambiguity of the performance. By concealing her passion under a Kabuki-esque veneer of formality, she gave one of the most complex depictions of the struggle between the private and the public persona that I've ever seen.

A.O. Scott: Gee, I hadn't thought of it that way. Yes, I do believe you're right. I think I'll give her a rave review in the New York Times.

Aw, you two!

*Yes.
**Hell no.
***Mmmmm...steak.

Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark

The cinetrix is busy thinking about films noir today.  It happens.

While I'm otherwise occupied, check out this little discursis on the seductive power of smokes in these films. Back tomorrow.