The Netflix Funnies

I’m becoming addicted to Netflix - not watching the movies, just reading the “members reviews.” Really. They’re better than Bill Maher. Just give them a really bad movie to chew on and they spit out vitriol that would make Don Rickles envious.

Here’s some examples for an awful movie called “Sweet November” from 2000, starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. I would summarize the plot but these reviews tell you all you need to know. I hope I’m not violating some law by re-printing these member reviews but it is sorta the same as getting it in a forwarded e-mail, isn’t it?

“Man, I don't know where to start. Saw this one on a plane to Chicago. And to make things worse I was sitting between two very large mammals who were knocked out possibly from some sort of tranquilizers. Anyway, in this movie Charlize Theron is a free spirited soul and she is dying. So what does she do? She spends her last days with Mr. Keanu "Whoa" Reeves. Did this movie make me cry? Yes it did, I cried because I didn't have a razor blade handy.”

“Worst movie ever. Free-spirited girl brings happiness to all-business guy. Dogs & cartwheels on the beach. Gay next door neighbor. Dying of cancer. Cancer patient wears a rag on her head, even though she's not undergoing chemotherapy. Boy without a dad finds companionship. Yup, this movie has all of them.”

“How does that Keanu guy continue to get work? This is the single worst performance is the history of Hollywood. This movie is terrible. Predictable, contrived...a tear jerking formula-film directed by a hack. Everyone involved in this production should be lined up and kneed in the privates. In fact, I should be kneed somewhere in the groin region for renting it.”

“Won't somebody shoot Kneau Reeves so we don't have to watch another one of his terrible acting jobs. This had to be his worst, please don't tell us it isn't.”

“The movie would have been much better had Charlize Theron's character simply killed herself at the beginning, Keanu Reeves following by suicide ten minutes later, thus reducing a 2 hour tragedy to a somewhat gratifying fifteen minute tragedy.”

“My wife and I watched what some have billed a date movie. If I took her to see this during our courtship, who knows, maybe we wouldn't [have been] married for 25 years...”

“I don't think words can describe how bad this movie is. I think Keanu Reeves may even be a worse actor than Ben Affleck. If that's possible. This movie isn't worth the disk it's burned on.”

“terrible movie - the story is completely implausible, the dialogue is completely phony, Keanu gives a typically flat, wooden performance, and there is not one genuine emotion in the whole film. Your average X-Files episode is more believable than this movie.”

“Just an awful movie, with a sickly sweet premise and an ending that's sappy enough to make any decent person sick to their stomachs. If anybody in your life behaved this way, you'd kick them -- November or not.”

“Saw this on TV- was advertised as the Kleenex tearjerker movie of the week. And I DID need the hankies- I busted a gut laughing at this stupid movie! Just when you think Keanu can't act any worse than he has in ALL of his other movies, he does! It's a gift or something I guess. And just think- he makes a bazillion dollars doing it too!”

“Keanu Reeves (who struggles so hard to deliver a good performance that sweat glistens on his forehead) finds himself in an odd relationship with an enigmatic free spirit (Charlize Theron). The movie thinks it is making some strange statement about the meaning of love. What I got was that self-absorbed will never find true happiness (duh) and I utterly loathed Theron's character, who is so odiously manipulative, self-centered and vain ("I don't want anybody to see me sick! Remember me as healthy and beautiful and really good in bed.") that I wanted to snap the disc in half and save anyone else from watching this movie!...”

BAH!

Christmastime by definition is ripe for sentimental humbuggery.

The sentimental mood evoked during this most maudlin of times is abetted by midwinter depression, fueled by fuzzy memories of cozy childhood wishes. It is no coincidence that commerce unburies this treasure every year - with sales pitches and movies that pander to an audience so needy for psychic warmth that the inevitability of bitter hangover will be ignored.

Millions of families religiously flock to their TV screens to watch movies that reinforce their mythology about the season - that happiness resides in familial love, fellowship, and generosity.

Of all the hymns that are part of the ceremony, Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” embodies the story arc that comes closest to the heart of the season. It stands as the template for an idea that is so compelling - yet so ephemeral because of the harsh reality of life - that it needs infinite repetition and variation. It is a clever sermon, a parable comparable to Biblical stories in its universal appeal. It presents us with an ugly picture of life as it exists and replaces it with life as it could — and preaches — should be.

In 1946, Frank Capra - the poor man’s De Mille - made the “Christmas Carol” variant, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which later - due to TV exposure - joined and even surpassed the English classic in American hearts. Others have tried to re-mix the formula since and I want to point up two recent ones, “The Family Man” (2000) and “Click” (2006), to see whether it still can work. The comparison reveals some about whether our values and choices have changed over 50 years.

Right after the tragedy of World War II, Capra and James Stewart combined the sentimental and dark sides of their personalities for a troubling image of American life as we both wish and fear it to be — a sad memory of the possibilities of our nation’s and our individual innocence.

Watching it again at my advanced age, I now feel more deeply George Bailey’s plaint of painful forced abandoning of his youthful dreams of world conquering for the obligations imposed by love, family, and community, a theme which was probably not intended in the film’s final form and which is certainly not what makes it a sentimental family flick.

As with many Hollywood morality tales, the dark middle before the sentimental ending rings more true to life as we know it, but the feel-good ending is tolerable because so shamelessly and classily contrived and performed. The moral, that no man is a failure who has friends, is ridiculous on its face; but the true moral is the religious one: the benefits of generosity and goodness.

Fifty years later, “The Family Man” tried to revive the theme.

Nicolas Cage has made a career exploiting his eyebrows. He has made a series of films in which his “acting” consists mostly of looking sensitive the way a basset hound looks sad: by a quirk of his appearance. Nic is the kind of man/puppy certain women seem to like. He looks to be in pain, thus in need of cuddling, but not so much that he requires too much attention. His voice is whiney, but not as much as if he was Jewish, and he has a better physique than the Woody Allen / Ben Stiller type of urban kvetch.

“The Family Man” plays as another of the chick flick formulas that are meant to prove that man is incomplete without The Right Woman. The situation thus contrived assumes that financier Jack Campbell (Cage) has everything a man’s man thinks he wants: power, wealth, involvementless sex, Ferrari, hot penthouse apartment, racks of clothes, gorgeous models to wake up with; and at work, toadies who follow his orders and cower. Gee, how can men be so shallow?! (Actually, this is also what every “Sex In The City” woman wants — sub in Manolo for Ferrari - but more on that later.)

After the intro of Jack as lone wolf, he gets a phone message from an old girlfriend, whose memory he has submerged, a girl who he almost married 13 years ago but abandoned. Now he will be transported to the life he would have had if he had not chosen this lonely perfect life.

The fantasy replaces that vacuous man’s life with a woman’s supposed dream life — marriage, home, children, friends, domestic routine - the life George Bailey regrets in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

The tension in George’s dilemma is that he thinks he has wasted his life — because he had dreams of travel, conquest, greatness — all purportedly dreams of men. Mary is the one who has gotten her wish: she got her good responsible family man, her home, children, friends, domestic bliss. In the end, through the nightmare of Clarence’s images of what might have been if George had not existed, he is persuaded that the life Mary chose for him was not so bad after all.

But the trick is that George is never shown what would have happened had he – at any one of the several turning points in his life – been able to seek his own dream.

Should it be assumed that his innate goodness would have been perverted by this track? Mightn’t the world have been a better place if this good and decent man had become an architect, become wealthy, achieved power? If he had traveled, gone to college, chased his muse, and then come back to marry Mary, wouldn’t he have been a happier man?

“The Family Man” upends the fantasy. Jack was leaving his college girlfriend, Kate (Tèa Leoni), for an internship in London to study finance. Kate was going to law school to be a pro bono lawyer. At the airport, she tried to persuade him to stay, fearing that if he went, he would never return. He vowed his love, and left. Thirteen years later, we see that she had been right. Jack is now a “Gordon Gecko,” lonely at the top but blithely unaware of his loss.

It is Christmas Eve and Jack is about to enter the “Twilight Zone.” He meets his Clarence, this time played by Don Cheadle as a seemingly scary psycho robber who Jack tries naively to help out. Jack makes the mistake of saying he has everything he wants and needs; Cheadle will now show him a glimpse of the alternate life, the one he would have had with Kate.

Jack awakes in bed with Kate in their little home in Teaneck, New Jersey. His two kids hop in bed for Christmas morning. Jack manages his father-in-law’s tire store, bowls with friends, daydreams an affair with a friend’s blowsy wife, and is mired in a numbing routine of home, suburban chores — driving kids to school, walking the dog, scrimping, enduring the bitter winter.

Of course, Jack comes to appreciate the life, and especially Kate / Tèa, who steals the film. She really is sexy, desirable, smart, fun.

But when Jack sees the chance to have both, he tries to convince Kate they can have the wealth and the family. She clucks— he just doesn’t get it! He does have it all. Her dream is to live in their home and grow old together while she gardens and he repairs the deck.

Later, she relents— okay, she will make the big sacrifice: drag the kids away from their schools and friends and move back to The City (and even enrol them in posh private schools, if absolutely necessary) if it will make Jack happy. “I choose us,” she reminds him.

Jack, now hopelessly the warm and cuddly Nic, wants to stay with Tèa and his family, but he wakes in his bachelor bed, his Gecko life now too transparently shallow. Then he remembers the phone message his old girlfriend, Kate had left. He looks her up, finds her now a self-assured partner in a law firm about to move to Paris.

Interesting, because deprived of his love, she too has abandoned altruism for greed! This is the modern woman’s answer to what happened to Mary Bailey in George’s 1946 nightmare — remember, without George she became a spinster librarian.

Kate has found a box of Jack’s’s stuff which she needs to get rid of. Why she has saved this box but never talked to him in all these years until now is never explored – the scenes are played as if she has moved on and has no regrets about the turn their lives took; only Nic is in pain (as shown by his eyebrows) and conscious of what might have been.

Jack leaves her, then thinks better of it. More to supply a heart racing ending than for any other logical purpose, he drives frantically to the airport, finds her in a crowd, is rejected by her, turns away, then tries again, by reciting to her the fantasy alternate life they “had” in Teaneck.

The scene is painful in its illogic, since she has no memory of the “other life” but Nic’s speech assumes that she has. One suspects that in an abandoned and forgotten script draft, we learn that she has had the same “fantasy.”

Instead, she listens to his argument: ... I left you and regretted it; now please don’t leave me. “I choose us,” he whines. That catchphrase must have been one the writer fantasized would be whispered by tearful couples leaving the theater after watching the film on date night, but it is not exactly, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

It ends with a silhouette of the couple drinking airport coffee under the credits. The ending is satisfying in a twerpy way: now Jack and Kate are both independently rich and have explored their career dreams; they can wed and live happily ever after together. Hopefully not in Teaneck.

“Click” is the most recent entry in the “Wonderful Life” line of pictures. Adam Sandler is Mike Newman, a harried husband, father, and aspiring architect, unable to balance his family’s demands with his ambition to be rich.

Mike’s Clarence is named Morty (a funnier name, I admit) played by Christopher Walken. Adam’s wife (named Donna, in homage) is played by Kate Beckinsale, who is given less to do and therefore makes less impact than Donna Reed or Tèa Leoni, at least until a couple of scenes late in the picture.

Adam must learn the lesson of family values through a modern fantasy, a “universal” remote that makes his life a DVD he can fast forward through chapters, stop action, and rewind. The metaphor is a decent one for a high concept picture sell: a man who fast forwards through the awkward but meaningful moments of his family life, thinking only of his work, is a fool.

“Click” relies on some fancy special effects to show the video type menus of the remote and fat suits, prosthetics, make-up, and facial masks that the cast must have had fun with.

Sandler could not resist the kind of jokes that clicked with his audience in all his movies: farts, fat, kicks in the groin, old people — the usual things pre-adolescents find irresistible. There are a few amusing gags and situations that effectively explore the possibilities of the remote idea, but overall, the picture literally falls flat due to its own heaviness. The life lesson endures way too long, carrying Sandler into a nightmarish old age and death before finally returning us to the present and giving him the obligatory second chance.

As in the previous incarnations, I must admit that the version of life meant to be seen as the wrong path seems more real to me. People are as venal and selfish as in the day before George Bailey’s plunge into fantasy and his nightmare town is more like our cities have become. Jack Campbell was better off rich and alone than struggling in regretful mediocrity and Mike’s unversal remote seems like a pretty good idea.

Also, I find it notable that in all three of these films, made over a span of fifty years, the roles of the wives remain the same: they are the keepers of the family flame. One wonders what feminists make of these films. They are clearly pre- and post-feminist works, with assumptions that women want domestic bliss rather than their own careers to achieve self-fulfillment. How about a remake of “Wonderful Life” with a woman at its center?

Netflix allows for mini-reviews of movies in 300 words or less, and here are some of mine over the past year:

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
One of the best comedies of the last few years, far better than US products that re-cycle SNL skits. This film works on so many levels that the word "ambitious" is (British) understatement. Mockumentary a la "This Is Spinal Tap," with homages to "Adaptation" as a movie about an unfilmable book. It is also a send-up of the British classic lit / movie industry. An ongoing joke is that no one has actually read the 18th century book, except one PA /AD, who is also the only one on set who spouts "cinema" art concerns. Steve Coogan plays himself as the "star" as we always suspected - vain, self-deceiving, pretentious, neurotic. Slowed only slightly by a few lazily edited improvised scenes, over all it is out loud laughs almost all the way.

Lucky Number Slevin A stew made of body parts from other films: plot tropes from "The Big Lebowski," "North By Northwest," "Pulp Fiction," plus Hwd's favorite persona, the Hitman, today's gunslinger. Smarten up stylized dialogue. Toss in a snippet of screwballish romance subplot, check your brain at the door and just let it wash over you.

Lower City
The love triangle in an exotic or desperate setting is the oldest of movie forms. As in depression era films, the struggle of the buddies for survival is threatened by the girl, whose passion offers temptation and redemptive love at the same time. The world of Brazil's slum life echoes ours in violence and impending tragedy, and also in its vibrant pulse of life. That love can survive in such a world may be a sentimental notion, but here it is convincingly portrayed and remains a gripping universal theme. Alice Braga is a star in the making, playing the prostitute who may have a heart after all.

Stay Re-title as "The 6th Non-sense." All style and no substance, a disappointing waste of starry talents. A jigsaw puzzle with all the best pieces chewed up by a dog. A "thriller" with no thrills, just arbitrary visual and editing gimmickry, an exercise in ego driven drivel.

Bitter Moon Polanski's life and films, like Woody Allen's, can't be separated easily. Like Picasso, their art and life interact. Polanski's current wife, Seignier, becomes a sex toy and an avenger in this opera buffo soft core fantasy about risky emotions released. The movie is an indulgent mess, but so is the artist's life and fantasies.

Mini's First Time "Wild Things" was a trash smash hit, capitalizing on the allure of sexy teen femme fatales in training. "Mini's" tries for the same tone, but fails miserably after Act I. The plot twists are tired rehashes of old noir bites, Baldwin's stepdad / lover patsy becomes drearily foolish and whiny. Luke Wilson is wasted, allowed no ironic dark humor that is his meat. Nikki Reed lacks the extra star presence needed to keep our interest and credibility past Act 2.

Casanova A period satire that flops on Saturday and every other night. It aspires to "Shakespeare In Love" bred with "Tom Jones" and lacks the wit, originality, passion and smart anachronistic edginess that those classics had in spades. Ledger is tepid, Lena Olin's fire is wasted, Sienna Miller has nothing much. Even foils Jeremy Irons & Oliver Platt, both comic talents are adrift in stylistic fog - not enough sex or laughs.

Freedomland Proof that good ideas dont insure a good movie. I like the theme - good intentions are not enough to dent the insoluble mess our society is in. So polarized are we that every "event" re-affirms our prejudices, no matter The Truth. A grim assessment, but insightful. "Communities" are islands of turmoil, ready to explode. Compassion and human scale emotions are left behind in such a world. Like "Crash," and "Syriana" these dramas are bleak, not entertaining, but contain more than a few glimpses of sad truth.

Everybody Wins Could have been "Blue Velvet" or "Twin Peaks" in hands of Lynch. Subject is ripe for noir - detective (Nick Nolte) with a past falls for a sexy hooker (Debra Winger) with a past to solve the crime. The corrupt town, the wrong man, the suspects. With irony, the world is not to be changed. Everybody's happy with a half truth. Okay, what's wrong? The director has no style, no pace, no tenstion, no consistent mood. Nolte & Winger are lost in character, with no help. Will Patton chews scenery. Pity.

The Libertine How to hook J. Depp onto your project - tempt with any or all of the following: disfiguring make-up to conceal his good looks and force him to rely on skill rather than star presence; require an accent, preferably English; permit him to mine a character we can love and despise at the same time; include the theme of the thrill of playacting; give him some well-written dialogue to poeticize; surround him with challenging actors like Malkovich, Samantha Morton, Rosamund Pike. Then give him the screen for as long as he wants and stand back.

The Proposition To Aussies, this film must be a shocking revelation, exploding myths about their history as our "adult" westerns did to Americans bred on our white hat / black hat myths. Frontier "justice" down under is shown as brutal. Few punches pulled as a lawman tries to civilize. Emily Watson, as the decent woman shocked by crime, demanding vengeance, learns that "right" is not so clear. Flawed by pacing issues but overall a needed twist on the Western genre, which seems to have run its course in American films, with rare exceptions.

Inside Man Act 1 is a standard bank takeover thriller, with some nice Spike Lee-isms, his insights to NY characters and racial irony. Act 3 is a fairly satisfying resolution - tho not in the class of "The Usual Suspects" as a surprise. The problem is mostly with Act 2, which drags with little credible action, contrived tension, and less than gripping characters. The exposition gives away the game, the true motives of the robbers, making the resolution less than satisfying. For better takes, rent "Suspects" or "The Hot Rock."

The Great New Wonderful The new urban angst of 9/11 memories is the subject of this ensemble film that tracks a few days in the lives of disconnected New Yorkers approaching the 1st anniversary of the event. Used to many reasons for insecurity in the city - crime, crowds, the rat race - this latest trauma has them stumped. Each in his / her own way is sleepwalking around the elephant in the room. The cinematic problem is that most of them are not all that interesting as individuals. Their dilemmas and their treatment of them are so "normal" that taking 9/11 ptsd out of the equation changes nothing. This perpective itself is a bit unnerving. If anything did change, it was only an edging up of the urban angst a few more unbearable notches.

Don't Come Knocking "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way," was Jessica Rabbit's famous apology for embarassing us. "Howard Spence," Sam Shepard's alter ego here is another self-conscious star, who is embarassd by his own extravagent outrages - tired of being a phony "hero." Now burnt out, he seeks redemption, finding a son and daughter he never knew he had, accepting the reality of fatherhood which is less than heroic, but with more possibilities for a kind of acceptance if not happy endings.

The Night and the Moment 18th Century Paris must have been a hoot. Crebillon wrote scandalous novels, of which this was one, followed by Leclos, who wrote "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," upped later by a bloke named De Sade. This 1995 effort followed the best of the many versions of "Dangerous Liaisons" (1989). Lena Olin is gorgeous and sexy, Miranda Richardson acts as if in "Tom Jones" but Willem Dafoe is sadly miscast as the upper class rogue in lust with Lena. Mostly "oral sex" i.e, a lot of suggestive talk about licentiousness, and a few titillating scenes, which fail to arouse much interest.

The Rules of the Game
In common with my favorite great film, Citizen Kane, Rules Of The Game is not only a great and profound film, it is also endlessly entertaining and involving, actually fun to watch, not just once but over again as many times as you wish. Both work on many levels, do not pound you over the head with "Art." Renoir, as Welles, loved to perform, do shtick, burlesque, as well as to comment subtly on their times. And both films were under appreciated in their time - as were their creators. DVD comes with a 2nd disc that contains great historical stuff.

The Matador A variant of the hitman-meets-nerd theme so often overused as dark comedy ("The Whole Nine Yards"), Brosnan & Kinnear make a quirky buddy movie with a clever twist into a relative morality parable. Intermittently entertaining, sometimes irksome, both actors seem to be having fun. The oddity of Hope Davis's character, grieving for her dead son, finding laughs and excitement in her hubby's new pal never goes the way we think it will - ie the cliche attraction - so there are some surprises and that's a nice change in a hitman movie (don't see "Collateral" if you want any originality).

A Real Young Girl
Breillat's work is aggressively feminist. This early effort is raw, influenced by surrealists. But touches on true & deep forbidden subjects - repression, sexual fantasies about fathers & mothers, curiousity about her body & sense of the power of her sexuality and its dangers.

Searching for Debra Winger
Rosanna Arquette + a sisterhood of whining women decry their dilemma: they cant have it all - career, motherhood, creativity, love, fame, privacy - i.e., perfect fulfillment. Uh, too bad, ladies. Welcome to the real world. Oddly, only Debra Winger seems to get it, though she also seems just a bit sad about her choice. Where are the men? And the children? The truth is that actors are pretend people, not like us at all.

Yellow Flower
Experimental and cerebral, Ji-sang Lee strips everything but what he deems the essence of symbolism of New Wave mood. Godard & Bertolucci are the icons he worships. Scenes with packed emotions are all he gives us. Sex, violence, crime, rebellion are casual but treated as the only "real" events worth living.

L'Atalante
In these days when movies are loud and coarse, this simple ancient little film reminds you of the power of a tiny story about people. Dita Parlo's face reveals all: her sweetness, naivete, yearnings for excitement. Today, this urge would have led to a "Fatal Attraction" or "Unfaithful," an erotic fanstasy thriller with her destruction. But in Jean Vigo's human vision, nothing so dramatic will occur. She will not take the fatal step, fate will be kind, her young husband will realize what he lost.

Basic Instinct 2
The trash classic "Basic Instinct" intro'd one of film's most rivetting femmes fatales, Catherine Trammell. She is a great villain: sexy, smart, sexy, devious, sexy, evil and oh yes, sexy. Sure its a parody, over the top with contrived plots dependent on stupid males easily manipulated, but so is "Dracula." Sharon Stone at 50 is amazing to look at and even more alluringly wicked. Check your brain at the door and have fun.

The White Countess
Merchant & Ivory specialize in tasteful English dramas. Passions are so restrained that you want sometimes to smack the characters to life. They like to put their English in passionate places: Italy, India, or here, in Shanghai on the brink of WWII. Ralph Fiennes plays an American, Natasha Richardson, her mom and aunt (the Redgrave sisters) Russians, but they act like they are English. When Fiennes and Richardson are on the brink of passion a spark lights, but the film is too polite to let it explode. Maybe that would not have been subtle enough. M&I are always subtle. Instead, the plot swerves to make its political point, which is not subtle. In the end, we are left not feeling enough about any of it.

La Belle Noiseuse
Though the film is certainly about the artistic process and can be infuriatingly and excrutiatingly detailed, I found another theme that is more interesting. Beart, as the "model," begins as bored and offended, but eventually finds complex emotions, self-realization, power in her role as the artist's muse, his object. She strips herself to the bone, giving herself but in the end proving to be more than her parts.

The Weather Man
As gripping as watching snow melt. Snow gets most screen time as director Verbinski underscores every transitional scene with lingering shots of nasty Chicago weather. We get it the first time — this is the winter of discontent for “Dave Spritz,” the lightweight TV weather man, his soul chilled and numbed by his failed life, yada yada. This is a pretentious and offensive Hollywood pseduo-intellectual view of American life. Condescending Hollywood movie people preaching values. What an oxymoron. See "LA Story" for sharp satire re weatherman; see "Quiz Show" for touching drama re son disappointing smart dad by silly TV fame. See Caine in ALFIE for better take on jerk-heroes.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
This is Sarah's vanity project / audition for stardom. She has her own niche in stand-up, a "J.A.P." for the Gen X / Y / Z er's. Not Rita Rudner, more Lenny Bruce's illigitimate grandneice. Targets are PC no-no's: 9/11, AIDS, Race stereotypes. And her very one Nana, who belonged to that most laughable minority: old, dying people. She's a hoot, hot, wise and should get some acting parts as a result.

Friends with Money
A film in a long tradition - the Hen Flick. From the 30's, "The Women," to "Waiting To Exhale" & "First Wives Club," & even "Sex & The City." As a man, I am fascinated by the depiction of male characters: all clueless, insensitive louts. Feminism & post-feminism seems to leave couples in limbo hell according to these films. Empowered women still unfulfilled. What next?

16 Blocks
Willis lets Mos Def riff and steal the scenes while Bruce walks thru a character we know too well to surprise us - a burnt out corrupt cop. They lost me with the nonsensical plot from the jump - I'm a lawyer and can only laugh at the silly premise: DA entrusts snitch wit to cops to transport - the bus scene & escape is a riot. The alternate ending is better, but should have also included an alternate plot.

White
Could be subtitled, "Revenge Of The Shnook." Karol Karol, our "hero," seems victim of a scheming "femme fatale." He seems like a bad "Polish joke," a loser. Just when we're ready to give up on him, tho, he finds backbone, a reason to live: to get back and get back AT his love. Will it be satisfying? The end teases, but leaves us wondering. Also incudes Julie Delpy. 'nuf said.

Fool for Love
Shepard, Basinger, Altman, Stanton. Whoa! Nope, never been much fer th' neo-western trailer trashy motel honky tonk school a' actin' & writn'. But I gotta admit that this group rilly gits yer attenshun. 'Spechully Kim - that gal's jest about the prettiest heifer. Shep's kinda Gary Cooper's illegitimate son, I guess an' the two of 'em make great lovers and siblings, too, jes' like back home in the hills. Yep.

My Life to Live
Filmmakers will always be fascinated with prostitutes. See "Klute" for one of the best. "Belle Du Jour" for another. Godard's social conscience and dramatist's sensibility watches a woman, the radiant star, Anna Karina, as she struggles to take control over her life, no matter the risk and outcome.

Miss Julie
Saffron Burrows is a former runway model who can think and act. She is very very serious about her acting chops. Has given herself to Figgis in at least 3 of his experimental movies ("Hotel" & "Loss of Sexual Innocence"). Waiting for a vehicle that makes her the star she deserves to be. See her in "Enigma," a better film actually than this dated exam of class sexual warfare between upstairs lady and downstairs footman. Who is exploiting who is the question and the answer is not very gripping as we learn how hard it is to be a poor servant with no hope of upward mobility. Really? Saffron tries to show how hard it is to be beautiful, rich, and lonely. Not buying it.

Memoirs of a Geisha
Subtitle: Gone With The Geisha. Scarlet (Chiyo) chases Ashley Wilkes (Chairman) through ante-bellum South (Japan) & post war ruin. Mixed with Oliver Twisty child abuse plot. Bad English accents by actors (Zhang Ziyi / Gong Li - who are great & beautiful Chinese stars) and others whose dialogue sounds phoenetically learned. Ersatz history.

See, instead:

The World of Geisha
A Japanese film that was banned there for years beause of the explicit sex. The sex is not pornographic - it is a power struggle stylishly and tastefully filmed to put you inside the heart of this woman. Geishas here are not the glamorous, timid entertainers of wealthy men. They are desperate to move on up by the only route they have - the love of a "client" tho all the rules, social, professional and emotional - warn them against it, and it is a low probability of success and high chance of pain.

Mrs. Henderson Presents
While we Yanks market only our present culture to the world, the British dwell, as The Beatles, sang, in "Yesterday." And they have so many of them. British law must mandate annual films of Shakespeare, Austen, and Elizabeth I. And their "Finest Hour:" The Blitz. Dame Judy and Hoskins have great fun with class clash and dry English witticisms. Stephen Frears lends his skill and Chris Guest is super. Sure, it's sappy, but stiff upper lip, chaps.

Dodsworth
Proof (as if it was needed) that the 1930's was THE Golden Age of filmmaking. Willy Wyler's genius direction of Walter Huston in Sinclair Lewis' famous novel. (Do high schoolers still read Lewis? "Arrowsmith," "Main Street"? Do they still read?) Huston was a "naturalistic" actor long before Brando co-opted the term. The story's values are worthy of argument & comparison to how it would be handled today (See, e.g., "Unfaithful").

Rumor Has It
It's time to admit that Jennifer Aniston doesn't have big screen star appeal. She's tried several matchups - Ed Burns, Kevin Bacon, Jake Gyllenhaal, not Mark Ruffalo & Keving Costner. None work - its her fault. She's not Meg Ryan for the new century - certainly no Jean Arthur or any of the golden age career girl / stars. Time to find another sitcom, Jen.

The Lake House
All romances demand a suspension of disbelief and an arc that ends in an inevitable happy ending. The problem here is that there are so few surprises once the time bending issue is established. I found neither lead character very compelling. Sandra Bullock was far more appealing in "Two Weeks Notice" opposite Hugh Grant and Keanu Reeves remains uni-dimensional at most. The contrivance of letter / conversation with voice overs becomes boring quickly and the plot turn leading to the ending is predictable from miles away. A film that relies heavily on a dog for smiles is in trouble.

The Family Stone
Not a romantic dramedy, but embarrassment humor, the kind that sets up a contrived sitcom family and dumps a stranger in it to quirm and be gallingly skewered. Not that Meredith (Sarah) doesn't rate it - she's hard to sympathize with. Mix in mushy contrived sentiment - mom has a terminal illness, a stable of cardboard "issues," a clumsy stab at screwball wit, and an ending wrapped in the chintziest fuzzy ribbon. Anyone who cried or laughed at this mess is too easy to please.

The Awful Truth
The template for the Screwball remarriage comedy that dominated the 1930's.
The movie that established "Cary Grant Type." Leo McCarey directed him opposite Irene Dunne. Look for the classic scene involving two derbies. Cary gets his laughs, and still looks like Cary Grant while doing it. He repeated this act in "My Favorite Wife" again with Irene Dunne, and in "Holiday" and "Bringing Up Baby" opposite Hepburn, and in "His Girl Friday," stretched it to its limits in "Arsenic And Old Lace" and and practiced a calmer version as late as "Charade." Dunne, the surprise of the movie, matches Cary for sophistication and screwiness. He dignified class was perfectly matched by a lowdown sexy playfulness. Arguably better than Hepburn was in "Bringing Up Baby."


Waking Life
Linklater is a unique artist. Independent, original, literate, philosophical, postmodern, but tapped into pop culture at its roots. This form - rotoscope animation of live performance - using various very talented graphic artists enlivens the talk, permits flights of fancy and subjective imaginative dreamlike atmosphere perfect for the musings of teen student Wiggins. The visual language of graphic novels is a perfect metaphor for pop-postmod life.


Just Like Heaven
Revives a tired formula for weepy romances. The moral is always to live life to the fullest each day. Okay! The new wrinkle is the ghost isn't quite dead, so a happy ending is guaranteed. Oh year, the rom/com conceit that there is a soulmate out there that chance / fate will attach at the fade out. But I kept wondering, what about Ruffalo's dead previous soulmate?

The Notorious Bettie Page
A film that works on 3 levels. 1st, it documents an era we can barely imagine today, when sex was a dirty secret. 2nd, it comments on a postfeminist acceptance of sexuality, women now ok with "objectifying" their beauty. Bettie's innocence now can be seen as her right to choose. 3rd, as an entertainment, it is charmingly naive, straightforward, allowing the irony to flow naturally from the story. Gretchen Mol is perfectly cast, with her angelic face and figure, she foreshadows the Playboy conceit of the all-American girl next door as desireable sex goddess. She also remains an enigma to us - e.g.: given the suggestion of incest, her later free attitude about nudity seems contrary to modern conventional psycho-wisdom.

Syriana
Like most political films, your vote depends on your bias. The message: dependency on oil corrupts. The remedy: drive a Prius(?) Is this really the problem and the answer? The ensemble multi-thread narrative form deprives screen time for the more gripping story lines. Clooney's burnt out spy (a la "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold") is under-written as is Matt Damon / Amanda Peet issue. Matt preaches. Other characters are bare caricatures.

The Sentinel
If you haven't "solved" the mystery by the middle of Act 2, you've never seen this genre before. Douglas joins Eastwood, Willis, Ford, as an aging action hero unconvincingly huffing & puffing his way to the end. Recycled action thriller with virtually nothing new or interesting to offer.

Don't Move
The joy in this film is watching Penelope Cruz stretch. Like Kidman, Streep, Theron, Hayek, she revels in the make-up & costuming that conceals her stunning beauty and exposes her inner actress. She overcomes the material and direction which focuses on the less interesting story of her lover. She still waits for a vehicle that will be worthy of her talent and presence.

Arms and the Man
If you want to know where many of the beats of romantic comedy conventions arose, read (or better yet watch) one by Shakespeare, Wilde, or Shaw. While the English recycle their lit often - Austen, Bronte, Dickens, etc, Shaw has been overlooked recently. But they are ripe for updates, being smartly anti war, upper class twits, hypocrites, sexual prudes, bureaucrats, parents - and is irreverent, even shocking - for its time, while being very, very funny with brilliant dialogue for the situations. Would love to see this one updated to a modern war or placed in our civil war, with the servants being slaves - that would be cool.

Strayed
Reminds me of Sophia Loren's "Two Women" in theme - survival of mother and child in war, but far more subtle. Beart endures by clinging to her faith in civilized values, while yielding to base passions exposed by need to survive. Delicate handling of mother and son's attraction to the "manly" wild boy.

Asylum
This genre is an opera with one recurring theme with infinite variations: Life can be so dull and unbearably secure that the need for passion and drama overcomes all reason, inexorably leading to destruction and disaster for all that one loves or cares about or knows is right. Even if you can foresee the end result, you can’t help yourself from continuing down the corridor; you need to feel something, anything — to prove you’re alive, even if it leads to pain and tragedy. Like and opera: (Bass) the boring, overbearing hubby; (soparano) the bored, lonely, sex starved woman; (baritone) the sweaty hunk with danger in his eyes.

Proof
This film is a sure flop: (1) it is full of words, without a single shot fired; (2) it demands concentration for more than a sound bite; (3) it helps if you have experienced some of life's risks: mental illness, creative doubts, grief, children, parents. Paltrow's father died a few years ago and she brings that to her performance along with all the depth her stage work in this piece formed. If you needed it, here's "proof" she can act.

Double Indemnity
Something few note about the noir genre which is the key to this movie's greatness. Walter Neff is not a dupe of a femme fatale. He's a dope, sure, but a more than willing one. He's the guy who is bored with convention, needs risk even tho he knows its fatal. He knows the blonde is absurdly cheap and bad, but he acts from a deeper urge: the thrill of danger - the jerk wants to be cool. That's why Fred is genius casting.

The Woman Next Door
A character says: "they could neither be togethe nor apart." And another says, "every love story has a beginning, a middle and and end." The French call it: "l'amour fou" (mad love) and it is inevitably tragic - you can't avoid the bad end - fate controls.

Shadows in the Sun
What is about Hollywood people and Tuscany? There was Diane Lane's vanity project, "Under The Tuscan Sun," with cute eccentric Italians and other foreigners welcoming the American lady to their - or her bosom. Now, Keitel & teen throbber Josh Jackson play out a trite play about a blocked writer father figure and his eccentric cute Italian friends teaching LIFE to a blocked American guy - only saver is watching CLAIRE FORLANI - but even her subplot romance with Josh is silly & contrived.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Ebert is on target, comparing to Huston-like subjects. Jones puts his heart and soul on the line - his South Texas roots and passion for the country are evident. Maybe too personal - things he prizes and lingers on may not be shared by many. There are nice picaresque touches - Levon Helm's cameo is super. A very personal story of honor, friendship, values.

10th District Court
[A French documentary showing a day's cases in a courtroom.] I was a public defender for many years and lived in France for a year. I was amused by the familiar echoes as well as the dischordant notes. US Misdemeanor courts are often treated with the same speed, despite pride in our perceived superior recognition of individual rights. Defendants and lawyers for both sides showed the same traits I saw in our courts: the amusing unawareness of the lameness of their arguments, the ease with which excuses are answered, the self-righteous pomposity of prosecutors. French cultural quirks evidenced: precise language, facial gestures, notions of gender character, resort to fatalism, class awareness.

Gentleman's Agreement
A historical document of film culture. Part of Hollywood's liberal guilty conscience in the post war about our failings: racism (see "Home Of The Brave"), etc. Ironic fact: Elia Kazan won Oscar, then later trashed the film for being too "weak" - yet he soon named names to HUAC's "leftist" cleansing (a term that inferred more than a little anti-semitism) that destroyed careers, including his film's co-star and close friend, John Garfield.

The Story of Qiu Ju
Like a fable, a shaggy dog story, or a gag about "fighting City Hall," Zhang Yimou and Gong Li entertain us with amusing characters and educate us about Chinese culture. This is the essence of "story telling," a Chinese Preston Sturges movie about country folk meeting complexities of modern life.

Design for Living
All contemporary romance comedy filmmakers should be forced to memorize every beat of this movie and then forced to make their movie sans gross gags & sex scenes as a test before being given any financing. Like a good book, like a radio play, like a silent film, Lubitsch proves imagination makes the best sex scenes. Hopkins languidly sprawled on a divan, breaking the menage's "gentleman's agreement" of no sex, sighing, "Unfortunately, I'm no gentleman," followed by slow fade out is as good as you're gonna get it.

Edmond
No original thoughts coming from Mamet's stylish pen here. His everyman coping with moral ambiguity, personified by perfectly cast Bill Macy, is severed from his middle class mediocrity for no good reason and has no center to keep him sane. He acts like a naif thrown into hell, completely ignorant of the rules, trying to apply "decency" to harsh reality. When he is victimized, he crumbles into insane violence. The whole voyage is unpleasant to watch and leaves you with no feelings for him - he squandered our sympathy with his foolish rants, nonsensical conclusions, and his predicament is wholly his own fault - or rather, Mamet's, who fails to convince us that this is a tragedy.

Viridiana
For those who think of Bunuel as obscure, dark, "arty," this film is a pleasant surprise. (Not unlike "Smiles Of A Summer Night" for Ingmar Bergman phobes.) It has less in common with the high ideas of Dali and Karl Marx than with the low comedy and satire of Mel Brooks and The Marx Brothers. Bunuel makes fun of dogmatic religion, do-gooders, every class, self-sacrifice, altruism, sexual desire in all its forms, the presumed nobility of the poor. The dining room scene with the revels of the poor, trashing their benefactress's table, parodying The Last Supper, is as funny and gross as any Coen Brothers film.

Gloomy Sunday
A wonderful surprise. Holden, critic of "NY Times," misses the point entirely when he ridicules the "suicide song" idea. It is not the song that kills, but the mood of hopelessness it evokes in people who have every real reason for desperation - they are about to be plunged into hell, and they see clearly how their peculiar arrangement for love will be destroyed. The love story of Ilona, Andras & Lazlo is heartbreaking, portrayed in human scale and much insight and compassion. Even the Nazi Weick possesses human traits. This is a story that might have happened.

Lie with Me
Bold & brave try for new look at sex & love for our times. Works on many levels. Dilemma of kids freed from past sex taboos now are emotional children despite their sophisticated sex attitude. Also thematic is effect of all this on post-feminist girls, empowered, but like children with explosive toys. For director, a bold try to avoid porn while being raw and explicit in a traditional romance form, modeled on "Last Tango In Paris." It works, more than titillation here, evokes real feelings for the characters. Last scene, not a cop out, but credible possibility of hope.

Firewall
Things I have seen too many times in a thriller: the endangered child who needs medication; the sadistic but intelligent mastermind; the criminal computer nerd; the crime team member with a heart; the crime team member who leers at the captive hot teen daughter; the hot teen daughter; the spunky wife; the 60 yr old hero dad who acts like a one man SWAT team, killing the much younger & supposedly deadly psycho kidnappers. This one will appeal to computer geeks who never saw any of the 50 prior movies exactly like this.

"The Cotton Club" (1984) - Forgotten Coppola Classic

Another movie that is as famous for the back story surrounding its making and another movie that tanked commercially and critically at its release but which has gained in reputation over time. It may not yet be considered a “classic,” but it is gaining momentum on cable re-runs.

Robert Evans, who as head of Paramount, had been credited with producing and overseeing THE GODFATHER I & II and CHINATOWN, the best films of the 1970's, had gone independent and this was his big package deal. Script problems and financing woes overwhelmed him at a time when he was trembling on the high wire of the Hollywood power structure. Evans became a poster boy for the excesses of the late 70's and early 80's, involving inflated egos and cocaine budgets that marked the fall of many wunderkind of the 1970's Hollywood renaissance.

As time dragged on during the long pre-production troubles of this mammoth project, Evans allegedly played footsie with some Florida pharmaceutical “importers” who wanted to use their ill-gotten fortune to buy into Hollywood glamour. An attractive dame, Lainie Greenberger, and a complex cast of low-lifes, who could have served as the basis for Elmore Leonard’s GET SHORTY, circled the project and murder ensued. The scandal and subsequent trial, in which Evans played a tangential role, was like those that threatened the Hollywood of an earlier era of excess, the 1920's.

That the movie involved the relationships of gangsters and show business in the 20's and 30's was an irony that has added to the film’s legend over the years.

Eventually Francis Ford Coppola accepted the challenge of cobbling a script and directing, and it is his vision (along with co-writer Mario Puzo) that is all over the final result. It is a fair addition to the Godfather genre (certainly better than his later made-for-dough GODFATHER III), matching scenes of violence with alternating and intercut musical numbers which comment on the action much as "The Godfather" had done with violent counterpoint to family issues.

Unlike The Godfather and more like APOCALYPSE, NOW, COTTON CLUB tries for too much irony, spins too many plates in the air at the same time. It evokes the Cotton Club era, when colorful gangsters ran the posh and trendy jazz club smack in the middle of Harlem, catering to a whites only audience with “colored” talent. The talent included some of the best musical artists this country has ever produced: Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Bill Robinson, Ethel Waters and many others. Coppola wanted to show it all: the gangsters, the Black / White issue, talent in the grasp of evil patrons.

And it is very much a musical, recreating the popular jazz of the era with production numbers — singing and dancing in top hats, taps, costumes, big bands. By 1984, when the movie was released, the audience had lost its taste for musical movies, especially those full of American standards rather than rock. ALL THAT JAZZ (1979), Bob Fosse’s brilliant but difficult autobiographical film, had flopped. Only ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975), SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977), and GREASE (1978), had clicked with the younger demographic in the 70's.

As in "The Godfather," the characters are a mesh of real people and some that are based loosely on real people or composites. The Lena Horne type, called “Lila Rose Oliver,” a light skinned chanteuse, is played by the beautiful Lonette McKee. Richard Gere plays “Dixie Dwyer,” a musician who becomes a movie gangster, a la George Raft. Diane Lane (then only 18), plays “Vera Cicero,” a gangster’s moll who wants to own a night club, like Texas Guinan. Nicolas Cage plays Dixie’s kid brother, “Vincent,” a gangster wannabe, who gets to be known as “Mad Dog” after a “hit” takes out some children as collateral damage. The real “Mad Dog,” Vincent Coll, made headlines in the early 1930's for similar activities.

Bob Hoskins plays Owen “Owney” Madden, the mobster who owned The Cotton Club (which had previously been owned by Black boxer, Jack Johnson). Madden was in fact English born, and was associated with Dutch Schultz, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, and Charley “Lucky” Luciano.

The movie depicts a true event. Desperate for money, Coll and his cronies kidnapped George Jean “Big Frenchy” DeMange (Fred Gwynne), an intimate of Owney Madden, who paid $35,000 for the safe release of his friend and then patiently plotted his revenge. Coll was lured to a drugstore phone booth to talk “peace” with Madden, and while on hold, he was aerated with a tommy gun.

James Remar makes a convincing psychopath as Dutch Schultz, (born Arthur Fleigenheimer) the Jewish gangster (though he converted to Catholicism in time to get the Last Rites). Schultz ran the Harlem rackets (credited as perfecting the “numbers” game) until he threatened to assassinate Thomas Dewey, the “special prosecutor” who had been assigned to get him. Dewey later succeeded as a prosecutor, became governor of New York, and in 1944 and ‘48 ran for president and lost. Dewey, a small neat man with a thin mustache, was famously ridiculed by Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter: “He looks like the man on the wedding cake.”

The newly consolidated syndicate, headed by Meyer Lansky and Luciano, had Schultz eliminated, and this event is fairly accurately depicted in the film (although it happened a few years later, 1935). It is one of Coppola’s inspired editing jobs, a climactic scene intercutting a dazzling solo dance by Gregory Hines on the Cotton Club stage with the shooting in a New Jersey restaurant. The hired killers were contracted by Luciano and Lansky from Murder, Inc., the business run by Louis “Lepke” Buchhalter, and included, among others, Ben “Bugsy” Siegel, Charley “The Bug” Workman, and other notable Jewish and Italian psychos who became famous in gangster movies and tabloid photos of their bodies in pools of blood.

Another sub-plot involves African American gangsters trying to keep their share of the Harlem rackets from the incursions of white mobsters. Laurence Fishburne plays real-life mobster “Bumpy” Johnson (here called Rhodes) as if he is a pioneering civil rights activist, integrating The Cotton Club, and proving he can be as ruthless as the white mobsters.

The history is not much different. Johnson was viewed by Harlemites as symbol of “Black Power” against the white Mob. He and Madame “Queenie” St. Clair had fought for their share of the numbers swag against the more politically connected, better armed and more ruthless white gangsters of the era.

In a touching sub-plot which tracks a common historical issue, Hines and McKee fall in love. Conflict over her wish to pass as a “white” star, and their ironic problem getting a hotel room because they appear to be a mixed couple, are highlighted. At another point, Hines is excluded from a night club where she is performing. They do get together for a happy ending.

Coppola also gives more than lip service to the heritage of great tap dancing that the era represented. “Honi” Coles and other tap legends do a bit with Hines, and Greg and his brother Maurice have fine moments on stage. Gwen Verdon, the legendary Broadway dancer ("Lola" in DAMN YANKEES) and wife and partner of Bob Fosse, plays Dixie’s mother, but gets to do only a couple of steps. The Cotton Club chorus of beautiful light skinned Black dancers (including a young chorus boy, Mario Van Peebles) do lively numbers to several of the jazz age’s best numbers, including “Diga-diga-do.”

Ellington’s great lyrical melodies are the underscoring for violent action. There are several effectively erotic sex scenes between Gere, then the big star, and newly adult Lane, in her first big chance. After this flop and a few others, it looked like Diane Lane would never make it big. She and Gere were matched again 20 years later, and Lane would steal the movie from Gere, attain “instant” stardom and an Oscar, in UNFAITHFUL (2002).


A footnote. George Raft, the actor who was the model for Gere’s role in COTTON CLUB, is a fascinating character. He was born in one of New York’s worst slums, Hell’s Kitchen, but resembled Rudolf Vaentino and learned to dance like the silent film matinee idol. That assured Raft a raft of female followers, including Texas Guinan, who kept him around her night club to “perform.”

In 1932, he made it in Hollywood with a supporting role in Howard Hawks’ SCARFACE, with a trademark coin tossing bit. He was typecast in gangster roles partly because his lifelong pals included Owney Madden and Ben Siegel. The Raft part in BUGSY was played by Joe Mantegna.

James Cagney claimed in his autobiography that when he was president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, the Mob wanted to kill him for opposing their involvement in movie unions. He credited Raft in interceding with his friends to cancel the hit.

Under contract to Warner Brothers, Raft is most famous for turning down the leads in — no kidding: HIGH SIERRA (1941), THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), CASABLANCA (1942) and DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944). He can therefore be credited with insuring the success of those classics, and making the careers of Huston, Bogart, Wilder and MacMurray.

He must not have been all dumb. He supposedly said: “I must have gone through $10 million during my career. Part went for gambling, part for horses and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly.”

Late in his life, he played a parody of his own image as “Spats Colombo” in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959).

(Sources include Wikipedia, IMBD, various contemporary critics)

BRICK (2006)

MEMO TO MDB FROM MPB RE: YOUR SCREENPLAY

Just ran dvd of BRICK and it should inspire you. On the commentary, Rian Johnson relates how he wrote the script in 1997, 1 year out of film school, then shopped it for 6 (!) years before he decided to get family members to bankroll him - he's from San Clemente, so I'm guessing the family had some $$ - he says his budget was 1/2 million. [Of course, you'll have to get a new family, but ...]

It was a Sundance prize winner for originality and got enough of an audience and critical approval for the writer/diretor to get more work.

He also says (interestingly to me - and probably to me only) how he got the idea. He started with MILLER'S CROSSING, which he memorized, then got into MALTESE FALCON and CHINATOWN.

Then (he says) he was told about the "source material" the books of Hammett, Chandler and Cain, which he then read and found the dialogue, settings and descriptions that inspired him to strip the location cliches and put it in settings he knew about, coming up with his own high school where he actually filmed it.

Of course, the result isn't entirely successful, as I see it. He's a bit shaky on the tightrope, almost falling into parody, too playfully self-conscious in stylized dialogue. Some critics compare it to BUGGSY MALONE a bizarre almost pedophilic movie in which little kids in 1930's costumes and makeup played gangsters and molls. Jodie Foster, at 11, was a femme fatale! Others liken it to CRUEL INTENTIONS as the high school version of DANGEROUS LIAISONS, more credible because it plugged into the "mean girls" paradigm.

Johnson remarks that producers shied away from the script, knowing that the filming was all important, and that if the tone was not perfect, it would crash and burn. It almost does. Judging by Netflix user comments, it seems that many didn't "get it" at all. Not surprising. You really do have to dig the genre and accept the conventions - the overly complex plot, the mandatory characters, the needed exposition. It is true that making a high school student act like Bogart - smart, tough, sadistic - is a stretch and some of the acting - most in fact, is way too self-conscious and mechanical to permit real involvement.

But those defects are inevitable when engrafting a genre that was credible in the hard bitten Depression to the self-indulgent suburbs of SoCal teen life. Yet, it does fit nicely into my thesis about the pervasive influence of the Noir ethic and style on pop culture.

ASK THE DUST

L.A.: Where Dreams Come To Die

ASK THE DUST (2005) was not a box office hit. A period movie about L.A. in The Great Depression, with a less than subtle theme about prejudice against Mexicans was doomed even though it involves a love story between stars Colin Farrell and Salma Hayak (including some hot nude sex scenes), and the project was affectionately nurtured, written and directed by Robert Towne, a long time Hollywood heavyweight (SHAMPOO, TEQUILA SUNRISE, CHINATOWN).

ASK THE DUST is a certain failure for modern audiences, not only because they can’t “get” period movies, but because the plot is hopelessly dated. A writer is inspired by the tragic death of the love he didn’t appreciate until it is too late. The doomed beauty dies of Camille’s illness, the cough that appears just as happiness is in sight, in order to provide a tragedy.

Colin Farrell plays “Arturo Bandini,” an aspiring idealistic writer embittered by the prejudice he has been subjected to as an Italian in Colorado, who comes to LA with dreams of becoming a famous and important writer. He has one published short story, but now has nothing to write about and the samples we are shown are trash and he knows it. He lives in Bunker Hill, in a shabby hotel, meets some strange LA characters - a grizzled old alcoholic (Donald Sutherland) and a scarred, lonelyhearted girl (Idena Menzel), who he beds out of pity after which she conveniently dies in the Long Beach earthquake.

Down to nickels, he demeans “Camilla Perez,”a Mexican waitress (Salma Hayek) because she is illiterate, until she seduces him. Camilla wants to marry an Anglo (she toys with a bartender named “White”) so she can get a green card and live the American dream, and at first sees the poor Italian writer as not much of an improvement on her own lot. But there are sparks — the old fashioned kind of romantic chemistry, where they bitch at each other until they fall into bed. But when he refuses to marry her because she is a Mexican, she leaves him. When he realizes what he has lost, he finds her – as she dies in his arms - and now that he has suffered, he can write that great American novel. This is a period plot that stopped boiling around 1939.

Towne’s respect for the author in this case probably overwhelmed his judgment with dire results. Reportedly, he was unlucky. He wrote the screenplay in 1990 and, after unsuccessfully shopping it for years, had Johnny Depp interested in the lead. Salma Hayek turned it down 8 years ago because she was avoiding Mexican roles as a threat to her career. Several studios backed it and then backed away - until Colin Farrell signed on. Unfortunately, Farrell’s eyebrows are his only feature that can act and he is unconvincing and unmoving as a starving Italian from Colorado.

Towne, an LA native, had discovered the novel while researching CHINATOWN in the 1970's. It had been written by John Fante, a onetime screenwriter (A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962)) in the 1930's. Fante’s series of semi-autobiographical books about “Arturo Bandini,” had temporarily been compared with other Depression era novels exposing the limits of the American myth of “the pursuit of happiness.” Fante’s work was later rediscovered by the LA poet, Charles Bukowski, who told his own cult followers of Fante’s “genius” and allegedly copied his style.

In the midst of The Great Depression, LA was a hot magnet for desperate hopes. If you were going to be homeless, it might as well be in the sunshine. You might be hungry but at least you could eat oranges, avocados and walnuts from the trees. The rumors and realities of boom drew immigrants like locusts. Hollywood’s Dream Factory had been churning by that time for twenty years. Every pretty young thing and her mother had visions of Shirley Temple or Lana Turner dancing in their heads. At the same time, any New Yorker who could scribble a short story, play, or novel, was recruited to script dialogue for the Talkies.

While they all came for the money and fame, the writers, being a self-absorbed depressed lot by nature, hated themselves for selling out. They morosely drank their booze, not in speakeasies and cafés, but around swimming pools and night clubs, carping about their servitude to The Studio moguls who kept them like expensive whores.

Out of this alcoholic haze of self-hatred came the literary and cinematic form we now call “L.A. Noir.” Raymond Chandler is the icon of the genre, but he is just one of the many who mined the underside of the golden glitz of lotus land. CHINATOWN drew heavily from Chandler’s stories and aura of corrupt cops, sex, drugs, dirty secrets behind the facades of Pasadena mansions.

Nathaniel West wrote “The Day Of The Locust” (1939) about the losers at the fringes of Hollywood in the 1930's. The book which climaxes in a riot at a premiere, was rediscovered in the 60's by a generation that was living through similar cataclysmic times. While he wrote, West worked as a clerk in cheap hotels owned by his relatives and provided often free lodging to a number of aspiring writers, including James T. Farrell and Erskine Caldwell. According to Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett wrote "The Thin Man" there. West died in car accident after hearing of the death of his close friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was once the most famous novelist in America before becoming a mediocre screenwriter.

Billy Wilder is the epitome of the wise guy intellectual writer who flayed the Hollywood that fed him. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1946) (which he co-wrote with Raymond Chandler from James M. Cain’s novel) and SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)(co-written with Charles Brackett, who had once been one of The New Yorker’s many theater critics who went west - like Herman Mankiewicz and Dorothy Parker) are products of this sensibility.

The genre continues into the modern era of novels and films.

TRUE CONFESSIONS (1981) starred Robert De Niro as a Priest and Robert Duvall as his police detective brother. From a novel by John Gregory Dunne and screenplay by Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, and directed by Ulu Grosbard, the movie follows the issues of the genre, corruption, sex, the seedy fringes of movie business as part of LA’s heritage.

Jack Nicholson (starring and directing) and Towne had failed to duplicate the success of CHINATOWN with its sequel, THE TWO JAKES (1990), although it deserves a second look without the unfair comparison with Polanski’s original work. Where CHINATOWN explored the corruption surrounding water and land development, THE TWO JAKES deals with oil and gas rights during the Post WW II San Fernando Valley building boom.

In 1995, Denzel Washington brought Walter Mosley’s sometime detective, Easy Rollins, to life in DEVIL WITH THE BLUE DRESS. Mosley’s Easy Rollins series of novels portrays LA’s African American heritage in the post war years, when a thriving Black middle class strove for the American Dream — before the freeways cut the life out of their community.

GET SHORTY (1995) written by Scott Frank from Elmore Leonard’s novel, and directed by Barry Sonenfeld has become a cult classic. “Chili Palmer” as played by John Travolta, became an instant icon, the east coast mobster who easily outtoughs the LA wannabes around the movie industry and drug traffic. Although the sequel, BE COOL, tried to recapture the Chili Palmer mystique, the wit was sadly strained.

MULHOLLAND FALLS (1996) also failed with critics and box office. The story was based on “The Hat Squad,” a group of LAPD officers who, in the 1950's, were assigned by reform chief Parker to dispose of mobsters. These corrupt cops (Nick Nolte, Chazz Palmentieri, Michael Madsen and Chris Penn) meet a hooker (Jennifer Connolly) who dies from radiation at a secret Army A-Bomb test site while servicing the head of the AEC (John Malkovich).

In recent years, the most successful movie of the genre was LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997). Although set in post war LA, the essential elements of LA noir — crooked cops, the seedy fringes of the movie business, racial prejudice — were there in James Ellroy’s novel. Ellroy, a self-proclaimed keeper of the flame of LA noir (his own mother was murdered when he was a child, a life altering event which sparked his continuing fascination with crime). Curtis Hansen directed the brilliant script by Brian Helgeland.

The film was a coming out party for emerging stars - Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce - provided an Oscar winning role for Kim Basinger as a burnt out call girl with a heart of gold and terrific parts for James Cromwell, David Strathairn, and Danny DeVito.

Following the formula of weaving fictional characters with reality, the movie convincingly depicted a turning point in LA crime when the LAPD began to reform itself under Chief Parker.

GAME 6 - "This could be it."

Just when you think you’re free from sentimental baseball parables about The Meaning of LIFE, they suck you back into the vortex of sappy metaphors for loss and hope.

Of course, it is easy for me to get sucked in because I’m the lead sucker for this sort of hoke. Trapped in Brooklyn in the 1950's, I was baptized into the Dodger religion too early to know better. I suffered through a decade of almost beating the hated Yankees with all the imagined metaphors of good and evil spinning in my tousled head.

Then, they finally became winners when I was 12 years old - and my childhood was over, cut short in its prime by cruel capitalism and the stinging reality of inexorable change. The lesson was bitterly learned. Nothing (good) ever lasts. My childhood was stolen by the crime of the century when the devil O’Malley abused my faith, robbed me of my innocent belief in games.

Baseball movies try to capture the symbolism of these memories - when hope for perfection still lived. They trade on our naive wishes for heroism, justice, love, loyalty. But they often lose their balance. Melodrama overtakes, chokes away true feelings. They reach too far for the outside pitch of metaphor and whiff.

Bernard Malamud’s THE NATURAL is one of those pretentiously symbolic legend reaches. BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY is another.

FIELD OF DREAMS is probably the most blatant, trying to tie the game up with America’s stolen pre-1968 supposed innocence. I cried like every other sap when Ray choked out “Wanna play catch, dad?” But on reflection, I knew that the rebellion that had led the teenage Ray to reject his father’s stifling dreams for him had been a truer impulse.

At least BULL DURHAM swung at a faster pitch - equating baseball with sex - and hit it over the fence.

The lack of credible athleticism has always been problematic for actors in this genre. De Niro looked better as a boxer in RAGING BULL than he did as a catcher in BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY. Cooper was famously inept in PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, as was Anthony Perkins (FEAR STRIKES OUT).

Costner looks like he can play better than he can act and so, is credible as a fading pitcher (FOR LOVE OF THE GAME) and an ex-player (in the otherwise awful THE UPSIDE OF ANGER). Dennis Quaid (THE ROOKIE), and Charlie Sheen (MAJOR LEAGUE) have the same talent.

My own Dodger demons prevent me from sympathizing with the lore surrounding the Boston Red Sox. Although many northeast intellectuals have waxed poetic about the tragedy of rooting for this team which broke hearts for 70 years, I never could get worked up about them.

For one thing, I viewed the Sox as unworthy of devotion by comparison to my team. On the level of social symbolism, the Dodgers stood for integration (Jackie, Campy, Newk), while the Sox were for Whites Only - the last major league team to integrate. Their owner, Tom Yawkey, was overtly racist, and their fan base was almost exclusively White. Their fans booed Ted Williams - the last true American Hero, because he refused to love them back. And they booed Jim Rice, their only African-American star.

In 2005, FEVER PITCH played with Red Sox fanaticism in a romantic sitcom, matching Drew Barrymore with SNL's Jimmy Fallon. Adapted by Nick Hornby - from his own novel which was about Brit soccer nuts - and directed by the Farrelly Brothers, the movie was a success, giving hope to nerdy boys that a Drew might overlook their kiddy obsessions and find them "cute and charming" enough to fall for them.

GAME 6, a far better movie, sunk almost without notice the same season. Novelist Don DeLillo wrote the script. Michael Keaton is a playwright and Sox fan on the day of game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when the Sox, on the verge of winning their first Series since 1918, are destined to blow a two run lead with 2 out in the ninth and lose again, denying redemption for Keaton's character.

It is also opening night of Keaton’s play and the game becomes an imagined turning point, testing his faith in life. Robert Downey, Jr. is a scathing critic who Keaton seeks out to destroy after the game. An uplifting ending sugar coats an otherwise effective noir fable.

Both of these films have lost some impact because of the improbable coincidence of the Sox Series win in 2004. When my Dodgers finally overcame destiny and beat the Yankees in 1955, everything after that was anti-climax.

The world did change, but victory was hollow. They lost again the next year to the Yankees and then O’Malley crushed the rest of the illusions of youth, cruelly trading Jackie to the Giants and courting L.A.

O'Malley proved that THE GODFATHER had a better handle on the truth: "It's not personal - it's just business."

The sentiment of my childhood dissolved and I searched for something else to love, now wary of giving my heart to anything or anyone else.

MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

If you think you and your group of friends are expert at incestuous intrigue, clever put-downs, and collaborations that can produce some insights, next time you get together with your crowd rent this movie.

In the New York ‘20's, a group of young men and women, mostly aspiring writers who toiled at newspapers and magazines, began to meet for long lunches, gossip, what we would now call “networking.”

In 1994, Alan Rudolph directed this movie, a bio of Dorothy Parker and the other brutally witty members of an informal club who frequented the Algonquin Hotel dining room daily and became known as the Round Table. These liberated men and women became as famous as their expatriate counterparts in Paris - Stein, Toklas, Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Murphy, etc. - and had an arguably greater cumulative impact on popular culture of their period. They remain relevant today.

The movie shows the competitive and convivial atmosphere that spurred the group to eventually create some of the best literature, plays, and movies of the 20th Century. Their voices - urbane, sophisticated, witty to the point of cruelty - became the voice of some of the most memorable Broadway and Hollywood product of the 1930's and 1940's.

Dorothy Parker was more immediately famous for what she said than what she wrote. She coined many of the most notorious barbs of The Table: Reviewing Katherine Hepburn’s Broadway performance: “She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.” About a notorious society trollop: “That woman speaks 18 languages and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.” Did she enjoy the cocktail party? “One more drink and I’d have been under the host.” And my favorite: “You may lead a whore-to-culture, but you can’t make her think.” When someone commented that a particular actress was her own worst enemy, Dot winked: “Not while I’m alive.”

But she wrote some of the best short stories of the time and poetry which she derided as doggerel but when read today still bites. She became an icon for women of the era, who pioneered feminism, dove into a liberated life and nearly drowned in tears, alcohol, and eventual misery. She led an unhappy but very productive life.

In Hollywood with her husband Alan Campbell, she wrote A STAR IS BORN, and the original screenplay for Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR, added scenes and dialogue for her friend Lillian Hellman’s THE LITTLE FOXES.

The role is a tour de force for Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose performance includes a difficult to take nasal delivery that approximates Parker’s alcohol induced speech. Rudolph is a disciple of Robert Altman, who produced and influenced the style of ensemble acting and camera work, eavesdropping on the overlapping dialogue.

The cast includes Campbell Scott as Robert Benchley, Parker’s soulmate, Matthew Broderick as her lover, Charlie MacArthur, Andrew McCarthy as Eddie Parker, her morphine addicted and abusive husband. Stanley Tucci, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Beals, Stephen Baldwin, and Heather Graham have small roles.

The Round Table included the following characters with their eventual work:


George S. Kaufman (played by David Thornton). Playwright, often collaborating with other Round Table friends - Moss Hart, Marc Connelly, Ring Lardner, Edna Ferber, or Morrie Ryskind, among others).

Films adapted by others from his plays include the Marx Brothers’ plays/movies: THE COCOANUTS (1929) and ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930), and DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), STAGE DOOR (1937) and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938), and THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1941), which included a character based on Alexander Woollcott, the critic and member of the Round Table, whose famous quote was “Everything I like is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

Kauffman hated Hollywood and co-wrote only one script - with Morrie Ryskind, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935), the best and funniest of the Marx Brothers films. He returned in 1947 to direct THE SENATOR WAS INDISCREET (1947), a very funny political satire starring William Powell.

Charles MacArthur was a Chicago newspaperman who teamed up with Ben Hecht to write several Broadway hits, including THE FRONT PAGE (1928) better known in its Howard Hawks adaptation (HIS GIRL FRIDAY) and TWENTIETH CENTURY (1932), a classic movie starring Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. With Hecht, he wrote the script for WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939). MacArthur married actress Helen Hayes in 1928 and their adopted son is actor James MacArthur.

Moss Hart wrote the screenplays for GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT, HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, PRINCE OF PLAYERS.

Robert Benchley. He was managing editor of Vanity Fair, then a columnist for the New York World, later drama editor of Life and ltheater critic for The New Yorker. He became famous doing stand up routines that satirized middle class values, including short films in the form of lectures: THE SEX LIFE OF THE POLYP, THE TROUBLE WITH HUSBANDS, and HOW TO TAKE A VACATION, HOW TO SLEEP. His son, Peter Benchley, wrote JAWS.

Robert E. Sherwood (Nick Cassavettes). In the 1920's, he was movie critic for Life Magazine and the New York Herald. In the 1930's, he wrote plays which became famous films: WATERLOO BRIDGE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST, TOVARICH.

In Hollywood, he adapted his own plays: IDIOT'S DELIGHT, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS and wrote or co-wrote original screenplays: THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, REBECCA, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE BISHOP'S WIFE.

Ben Hecht was an occasional member of the club. He was probably the most successful screenwriter of the crowd, though later in his life he demeaned his career as a waste of his talent. The story for SCARFACE, scripts for DESIGN FOR LIVING, TWENTIETH CENTURY, VIVA VILLA, NOTHING SACRED, GUNGA DIN, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, SPELLBOUND, NOTORIOUS, KISS OF DEATH, MONKEY BUSINESS.

Other members of The Circle include Edna Ferber (played by Lili Taylor) - wrote the novels GIANT and SHOW BOAT, the plays STAGE DOOR and DINNER AT EIGHT with Kaufman); Harpo Marx, Will Rodgers (Keith Carradine); Broadway critic and wit Alexander Woollcott (whose personality was the basis of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” and the Clifton Webb character in LAURA); Harold Ross (Sam Robards), founder of The New Yorker for whom Parker and many others of The Circle contributed stories and reviews; Franklin P. Adams (Chip Zein), wit and columnist; James Thurber (THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY), New Yorker cartoonist and writer; Ring Lardner and Heywood Broun, sports columnists and writers.

Occasional diners included Elmer Rice (Jon Favreau) playwright and screenwriter STREET SCENE; Marc Connelly (Matt Malloy) who wrote CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS; and Donald Ogden Stewart (David Gow) screenplays for Phillip Barry’s plays HOLIDAY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, and LOVE AFFAIR (remade twice) AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, Lubitsch’s THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING, and the Tracy - Hepburn WITHOUT LOVE. He was also script doctor on many films, including DINNER AT EIGHT, with his fellow lunchers.

After you and your friends watch the movie, get sober and start writing.