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Natural histories

This week, Ed Koch makes with the caveats while singing the (qualified) praises of Noah Baumbach's latest.

The Squid and the Whale

This film about the Berkman family takes place in 1986 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The father, Bernard (Jeff Daniels), is self-important and insensitive in his relationships with his wife, Joan (Laura Linney), and their two sons: 16-year old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 10-year-old Frank (Owen Klein). The parents’ marriage is on the rocks, and the family is about to separate into two households with father and mother maintaining joint custody and the boys splitting part of their week at each parent’s home. To the consternation of their sons, Bernard and Joan both take lovers, which results in unusual behavior on the part of the boys. Walt engages in plagiarism and falsely claims to have written a song, while Frank defaces library books with body fluids.

Although this film has an interesting, provocative plot and excellent acting, I am squeamish about recommending it, because it lacks anything by way of happiness or, perhaps more significant, meaning to our lives, at least to mine. Nevertheless, it has been nominated for an Academy Award, and it would be unfair for me to give it a minus rating simply because it was painful to watch. (I've already made one mistake this year by giving an unfavorable rating to "Walk the Line," nominated for five Academy Awards. I can't find anyone who agrees with my review of it in which I said, "It is a bomb and a waste of your time." In retrospect, I admit that I was wrong in that review, although I still maintain that I sing better in the shower than Joaquin Phoenix (although he undoubtedly looks better.)

You will have to decide for yourself whether or not "The Squid and the Whale" is a film that you would like to see. Remember, while there isn't much out there to choose from and what you see in this movie may be painful,  particularly if you were unlucky and grew up in a family where combat was the order of every day, it may strike a responsive chord in you.

Les yeux qui fascinent

The cinetrix just got a gander at the fancy Criterion Collection of Marcel Carné's Quai des Brumes last week, and Gabin-Schmabin, can we talk about the otherworldly beauty of actress Michèle Morgan for a second? Her eyes are amazing.

The film, sometimes referred to as the French Casablanca, was also quite good, but Morgan's yeux...

Are any of her Hollywood films worth watching?

War

Watching Decasia last week reminded me that I've been meaning to mention Jake Mahaffy's film War for, oh, forever now.

The cinetrix was fortunate enough to see this handcranked black-and-white feature last fall. It still lingers in dark corners of my brain like a fever dream of the past, or the future, or both. [trailer]

The film begins. A child's voice intones, "This is all that's left. Acre by acre; fence by fence: the war was lost. This is the world after the end of a world." Ah, but what war? What world?

Mahaffy shot War over five years in abandoned stretches of rural western Pennsylvania. Nearly all of the structures that served as his "sets"--barns and farmhouses ravaged by fire and decay--have simply collapsed since then. Is it an economic war against a dying way of life or something more traditionally apocalyptic? A plague? We never learn.

Instead, we follow four figures through a blasted, beautiful landscape that is equal parts Soviet science fiction and WPA documentary. The aforementioned boy. A portly pastor squeezed behind the wheel of a too-small Citroen. A taciturn farmer who rehearses his shotgun suicide in the barn every day. A crazed handyman charged with maintaining an infernal machine. Over time, their strange diurnal rituals create a jerky rhythm [aided by the uneven framerate of the images], although to call it narrative suggests something too conventional. Still, the film ultimately builds to a visual and sonic crescendo that as shattering and ecstatically religious in the way that Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo is.

Because of the lo-fi nature of the shoot--I did say that it was handcranked--all of the sound was done in post, and it's a gorgeous design of church bells, birds, rebar, strafing aircraft, a staticky AM religious radio broadcasts that may have been bouncing off the stars for centuries already.

In a Q&A after the screening, Mahaffy, who learned Russian so he could attend Moscow's State Institute of Cinematography, wryly observed that "If you don't have the money, then you can't buy out reality." But you can document its otherwise unseen facets. With War, Mahaffy has shaped a virtuoso film out of the overlooked mud and debris of reality. Its spare images are simultaneously lush and rich, all glimmering silvers and resonant half-tones, and the sonic design murmurs like a shared subconscious. Both film and filmmaker strenuously resist easy meaning in favor of something still more rare: revelation.

You can see clips of Mahaffy and his film here.

Decasia

Here's a little glimpse of the home life of the cinetrix. The other night, the 'Fesser wanders into the room in which I am finally watching Bill Morrison's Decasia, pauses a moment, then asks plaintively, "Why would you want to watch someone else's nightmare?"

After sitting for a bit, he announces, "This is the scariest movie ever." Perhaps, I conceded. But what if there were no [admittedly eerie] music? Nope, still right up there. I then pointed out that part of the film's dreamlike power stemmed from Morrison's deliberate slowing of the frame rate, so that figures float with sinister intent amid the craters and mold threatening the image. But even a technical explanation did nothing to push it from its perch. So there you have it: Decasia, scariest movie ever. [I thought it was beautiful.]

A kid in class, where I also shared a few minutes of the fun as an example of rhythmic editing, asked simply, "Why would you do that?"

"Questions for...

Manohla Dargis" makes its return to the pages of the Times this week in the Oscarriffic Red Carpet section. [The cinetrix is skipping the Julianne Moore joke for now.] Huzzah!

I have two of my own questions for Manohla Dargis of The New York Times:

Why must NYT house style render your voice so anemic in reviews? In a less-mediated format such as Questions for..., the prose is especially personable--tart and witty:

• the Oscars are reliably irritating and often just plain stupid – and boring and silly and wrong
• isn’t it time Dame Judi started working for a living?
• I sound like a broken record, a broken record, a broken record…but American movies are now, overwhelmingly, made by men for men, which means that they are also primarily vehicles for male acting talent.
• [Reese Witherspoon is] beautiful, talented, has paid her dues (and I don’t mean by marrying Ryan Phillippe)
• there is only one possible explanation for why Terrence Malick’s glorious film... was overlooked by the Academy: with the exception of my few dear friends in that august body, they are idiots.

And when will you quit banging the drum for Curtis Hanson or, barring that, at least fess up to a slight conflict of interest as the author of the bfi Modern Classic volume on L.A. Confidential? I mean, I let the In Your Shoes review slide at the time, but this is getting to be a bit much:

[S]ometimes [the Oscars] draw attention to worthy films and give a boost to equally worthy filmmakers, like the 1997 multiple-nominee Curtis Hanson. (I also like the dresses.)

Speaking of confidential, a note to the copy editors at W. 43rd. Do not make the cinetrix come over there. First it was misspelling mise-en-scène [since corrected], and now this?

I also think it helped the film’s cause that its distributor sent out more than 130,000 DVD's to the industry, insuring easy viewing.

You mean to say they took out a policy, Phyllis Dietrichson stizz?

Easy E

This week, menchy ex-mayor Ed Koch gives The Tollbooth an E-Z Pass, while HS steps in as the bad cop.

The Tollbooth
Very few recently released films have received good reviews from the critics. Not having time to waste, I rarely see movies that have not been favorably reviewed. Often movies receiving good reviews are terrible, but it rarely works the other way. There being so little to choose from, I decided to see "The Tollbooth," after reading Jeannette Catsoulis' description of the film in The New York Times. She wrote:

In The Tollbooth, a 22-year-old Sarabeth Cohen (Marla Sokoloff), a self-described "feminist artist," talks us through the travails of her Jewish-American family and her own coming of age. The youngest of three daughters, Sarabeth chafes against a mother (the reliable Tovah Feldshuh) defined by her commitment to separating meat from milk and a father (Ronald Guttman) preoccupied with Holocaust memories.

The film is playing at The Quad in the Village near where I live, and when I arrived at the theater, it was packed. Several people introduced themselves to me as the parents and siblings of an actor in the movie. When names appeared on the screen at the beginning of the film to thunderous applause, it was clear to me that the audience was primarily made up of relatives and friends of people involved in making the film. The theater rocked when the name of an actor, writer, producer or camera person was shown. A number of people acknowledged my presence. As I left the theater, Ronald Guttman who was in the audience said, "Thank you for coming, Mayor." I knew that many of them would be unhappy with me if I did not give the movie a good review, but what else does a critic have if not his integrity?

The parents have three daughers: Raquel (Idina Menzel) who is married to a schlemiel, Becky (Liz Stauber) a medical student at Columbia, who in the midst of the film comes out as a lesbian, and Sarabeth (Marla Sokoloff) the fine arts painter in love with an attractive Catholic boy, Simon (Rob McElhenney). Tovah Feldshuh and Ronald Guttman are totally professional in their roles as the beleaguered parents. Menzel, Stauber and Sokoloff give excellent performances, and McElhenney gives the best performance of all. Stefan Forbes does a beautiful job of photographing New York City at night. The script by Debra Kirschner had great possibility but lacked intensity and sufficient involvement, and I doubt that I will remember this film tomorrow.

I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie; nevertheless, it was a good attempt by all involved. It will undoubtedly stretch them and hopefully their next production will be far better. I hope all involved have enough family members and friends to pack the theater for the next three weeks.

HS saw the movie with me. He said, "I saw the movie at the same time and found it a Jewish soap opera, cramming all manner of family disasters into one film. I cannot write the Yiddish words for the three boyfriends without going off the deep end of political correctness, but the words are there. Why should we Jews be so much tougher on films made by Jews, especially those who manage to retain their faith in the modern world? It is a charming home movie, with good actors, illustrating family dilemmas and the resulting discord. Gone With The Wind it is not, but I found it appealing, perhaps because I was so pleased that my parents were not like those in the film.

Monkey man*

Last week the kiddies watched Goodfellas as part of our discussion of the long take and the mobile frame. I was sure to show the Swingers homage, too, although sadly I was thwarted by university firewalls from sharing the one-take wonder that is the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" video [imagining the choreography and corralling that must have taken place to pull off that one makes my head hurt].

The conversation went OK. We talked about why Scorsese chose to shoot the Copa sequence as a fancy tracking shot, rather than with a series of edits. Was he just showing off? What do we learn about Henry as a character that we wouldn't otherwise? And what qualities might Vince Vaughn's Trent share with him? There were some nice observations about how the smoothness of the shot reflected the ease with which Henry navigates this world. [Please note, the cinetrix was very good and did not mention the wall of sound song selection and its over-the-top similarities to the framing choices, and instead merely pointed out how the chorus gives us a clue that this sequence actually represents Karen's p.o.v.]

For contrast, we looked at the scene where Karen is at the women's party with the other Mob wives, which offers a little of everything--reframing, tracking, pans, close-ups, jump cuts--while it tells us more about this strange new society she's being inducted into. We also tried to figure out what was up with all the freeze frames. Are they memories? Narrative pivot points? Why are they attached to Henry while voice over is something that's also available to Karen at times? One kid brightly invoked the scene where Henry realizes that Jimmy plans to kill him, which features not one but two. Good eye.

And the "Monkey Man" sequence toward the end provided a perfect example in today's class of how continuity editing can be used to compress time--18 hours in 6 minutes. So Goodfellas just keeps on giving. Plus, I forgot it features a very early appearance by Kevin Corrigan as wheelchair-bound Michael "Stir the sauce" Hill, too. Is that how he ended up getting cast by Vinnie "Henry's 70's crew" Gallo in Buffalo '66?

*Little do the budding cineastes realize the Stones are fast becoming one of the course's unintentional leitmotifs. I talked a little about the silly halftime show today, but I am really looking forward to how the students will parse Gimme Shelter in a couple weeks when right now they know Keith Richards primarily as the Captain Jack Sparrow-looking old dude. After seeing Shelter, they'll be yearning for Chinatown's downer ending.

Answered prayers

Ever wondered what an AO Scott-free Movies Section would look like? Wonder no longer--today is your lucky day.

[Perversely, we are already looking forward to seeing a tanned, rested, and ready Tony in next week's Movie Minutes.]

Back and to the left

Sorry about the delay in posting here, but ever since footage from December's Meet the Film Bloggers indieWire event hit the Interwebs, the cinetrix has been engaging in Zapruder-style obsessive analysis. I am happy to report that my frame-by-frame examination of the clip confirms that the cinetrix was not--indeed, can not--be captured on camera. Ah, but Looker, Cinephiliac, and La D can...and The Face Knife is allegedly there, too. See for yourself.

Dammit Janet

This is what happens when the cinetrix plays with technology....