Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #3: Adaptation

2002 orchid movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Charlie Kaufman, straight from the critical success of Being John Malkovich, attempts to adapt best-selling novel The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. He struggles with the material while at the same time struggling with life in general. Meanwhile, his brother Donald decides to also become a screenwriter and is having no problems with his serial killer murder mystery The Three. This puts Charlie in a bad mood. He tries everything--a meeting with the original author, the same writer's workshop that Donald attended, even getting his brother's feedback--as he tries to meet deadlines and get the script finished.

A special treat for Nicolas Cage fans for a few reasons. 1) He's kind of fat in this one, so there's actually more Nicolas Cage on the screen than in any other movie. 2) He plays twins, Charlie and Donald, so at times, you get two kind-of-fat Nicolas Cages on the screen simultaneously. It's almost an overdose of Nicolas Cage. 3) For my money, it's his finest acting performance. If you've got any doubt at all about the talents of Nicolas Cage, probably because you've seen his new Drive Angry or The Wicker Man or Ghost Rider, this is probably the one that'll convince you that you've been wrong about the guy. And really, all you need to do is hear him say "Banana Nut--that's a good muffin" in order to be convinced. I'd imagine that playing twins, especially if they share a lot of screen time and actually interact with each other, would be difficult. If Hayley Mills would ever answer my creepy letters, I'd know for sure. Cage is terrific here as a set of twins, so good with body language, voice modulation, and barely perceivable nuances that you know right away which character is which. I think a lot of the credit for Cage's performance has to be given to Spike Jonze, and Cage has even said that he did what the director told him instead of going with his natural instincts. I wonder if Meryl Streep as author Susan Orlean and Chris Cooper as the titular orchid thief John Laroches did the same thing because they're just as terrific. And when you have three acting performances that are this good in a movie? Hold on to your hat! All three were nominated, and Cooper won for best supporting actor. Jonze's direction is solid, too; I was most impressed with the way the intersecting parts of this story are edited in a way that, although it makes you a little uncomfortable because it is jarring, manages to hold all these massively complex parts together. But the real star of this show is the screenplay by the Kaufman "brothers," a multifaceted rare jewel of a script that will bounce around your noggin for days after you've seen this. The story is so layered, so self-referential, so meta-clever, and so thematically complex that it's like an action movie for intellectuals, the type of movie that'll make really smart people pump their fists and grunt. Kaufman's script bounces off itself in some really cool ways, and the more you think about it, the more surprising ways it makes connections. Adaptation is really the anti-Con Air, a movie that you really have to put some work into in order to fully enjoy. It's either the type of movie that you have to watch a few times to have a grasp (not a complete grasp, mind you) or the type of movie that proves I'm not as smart as most people. I do enjoy movies about the creative process (i.e. Barton Fink, Naked Lunch, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, even Black Swan I guess) though. There's just so much here, and I really wish I would have waited until next month to make this the Oprah Movie Club selection for July. This is a unique film and a good muffin of a movie.

And Hayley Mills--if you happen to Google your own name and find this, please write me back and send those pictures I've requested.

The Illusionist

2010 French cartoon

Rating: 18/20

Plot: The titular magician's getting old, and with the emerging popularity of rock 'n' roll musicians, so is his act involving a squirrely rabbit and various objects stuffed up his sleeve. He travels to Scotland where he befriends a young maid named Alice. She travels with him to England where he struggles with his art and uses his meager funds to buy her shoes and dresses.

Ventriloquist, by the way, is a "belly talker" as ventri means belly and loqu means talk. Latin roots. Engastrimyth is from the Greek and means "stomach talker." I figured you'd find that interesting.

I love Tati, I love French whimsy, I loved Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville, and I was pretty sure I would love this movie. I might not be right about a lot of things, but I was about that. There's a wonderful texture to Chomet's 2D animation. A scene near the end with a shadow makes me tear up just thinking about it, but there are all kinds of tiny details that I just loved in this--the radiance of a jukebox, shadows over golden grasslands, a twist of a coat in front of a mirror, window reflections, the clown nose of the downtrodden. The style and the settings make me nostalgic, and I'm not even sure why. I've never been to Scotland, France, or England. But there's just something about the way the places and backgrounds are drawn. I loved the way this film looked. And like Triplets, I love the way Chomet has his characters move. Again, he exaggerates the grotesqueness of human beings, putting the needle on the old quirk-meter well into red. The hup-hup-hupping acrobats. The melancholy clown (a scene where he listens to calliope music alone in his room is just beautiful). The little fellows who run the hotel. The ventriloquist and his dummy (loved that first appearance of the dummy!). The way the rock band sashays off the stage. They all interact in a nearly dialogue-free little world because words just aren't that necessary. All you need to do is watch a handful of silent films to find that out. This has that silent film funk but with a slightly more complex range of human emotions. Inferences need to be made, and there's definitely some wiggle room here, allowing for a variety of hunches about what's going on with these characters. I'm definitely the type of movie watcher who's moved more by imagery than words, and it's great how Chomet tells so much story without having to explain things with any superfluous language. And then you've got the Tati influence. It's Tati's story, personal and heartbreaking, and this medium is perfect for capturing the Hulot mannerisms, the Tati-type sight gags, and the overall flavor. Chomet does capture Tati's movements very well, from the way he chases after his rabbit to his careful maneuvering over an extension cord. It felt good seeing Tati again even if it was just an animated version of him. Maybe that's where the feelings of nostalgia come from. This might have a little more sentimentality than Tati's live action films, but it's that sentimentality of the aforementioned silents and therefore feels very comfortable to me. Comfortable is a good word for this maybe. The French have this way of making movies that you inhale instead of just watch. They're movies that are like old shoes, and this is a real old shoe of a movie, one that feels like it's just always been there, more beautiful because of its dust and scratches and the fact that it smells just like my old foot.

Kind Hearts and Coronets

1949 black English comedy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Young Louis Mazzini feels cheated by his D'Ascoyne heirs who he feels robbed his mother of her family rights after she married out of love rather than because of social reasons. When his mother passes on, they won't even let her be buried with the family. That's the last straw for Louis who, already in a bad mood when childhood sweetheart Sibella decides to marry their childhood peer instead of him, decides to get his revenge by killing the eight members of the family standing in his way of becoming the Duke of D'Ascoyne. May the Force be with the D'Ascoyne family.

That "May the Force by with you" joke covers a lot of movie nerd ground. Alec Guinness isn't given a lot to do with any of the individual parts, but he does get to play all eight members of the D'Ascoyne family, including Lady Agatha the suffragette, who Mazzini either kills or who just die before he can get to him. This movie's actually in the Alec Guinness Book of World Records for having the most Alec Guinnesses in it. That's a fact, and you can look it up. Dennis Price as the emotionless, calculating killer is about perfect, too. It's a fine line of a character, and if stretched too thin or chewed on too much, it just wouldn't have worked. But Price, like the irony-soaked script, is perfectly suave. He delivers these wonderfully ironic lines (My favorites might be the one about how his principles wouldn't allow him to hunt and how it's difficult to kill people when you are not on friendly terms...oh, and the one about why he decides to kill the priest next...oh, and...nevermind. Just watch the movie yourself.) and you almost expect him to give you one of those big exaggerated winks afterwards. You almost have to root for a villain who's this funny and who recites poetry after he strikes. Kind Hearts and Coronets is one of those films where you don't really feel like you've watched a movie after you're finished. It's so literary and the script is so clever and well written that it feels like you've read a book instead. And I appreciate any movie that makes me feel smarter after I've watched it. I don't laugh very much at all when I watch Kind Hearts and Coronets, but I'd still call it one of my favorite black comedies.

Another thing for those of you who have had the pleasure of watching this one: I read that they had to change the ending slightly in America to fit with The Code. What the heck? How stupid did they think the average American was in 1949?

Finding Nemo

2003 Pixar movie

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20; Sophie: ?/20)

Plot: The entire world finds out that a clownfish is called a clownfish as Marlin, a clownfish who lost his wife and all but one of his babies after a shark attack, takes a watery road trip to Sydney in search of his missing son, Nemo. Along the way, he meets Dory, a blue fish with no short-term memory, and they encounter sharks, bioluminescent fish with gnarled fangs, stinging jellyfish, surf-happy turtles, a giant whale, seagulls, and a dentist. Can they reach Nemo before the little guy is given to a notorious fish killer with braces?

I was so amazed with the animation when this came out. Pixar's always so good with character, and the animation of the ocean critters along with the good voice talent (love Ellen as Dory) makes even the most minor characters in this memorable. This is a good adventure story, a buddies-on-the-road movie, and although it's episodic, it never seems choppy because it alternates between the dual stories of the father's adventures as he tries to find Sydney and the attempts by Nemo and his new aquarium friends to escape the dentist's office. Finding Nemo's got a great story and that typical Pixar heart, and right from the get-go, with a pretty intense shark attack scene, you know you've got a story that isn't just for children. The adventures are exciting, but there's some great comedy as well, including what I think was Pixar's funniest moment until Potato Head was given a tortilla--the scene with the dentist waiting room occupants watching and listening to the great escape. But as I said, it's really the animation that steals the show. There's an artistic realism to the underwater scenes, and it's hard not to be pleased with the splashes of color across the screen. Nearly eight years later, it's still hard to imagine that animation can ever look better than some of the imagery in Finding Nemo. Just compare this one to its under-the-sea contemporary Shark Tale, and you'll see that the Pixar folks were Buzz Lightyears ahead of their competition. And that's even without a Fresh Prince!

Sophie's started watching movies. Well, to be completely accurate, she's started watching parts of movies. She gets the dvd cabinet open and reaches for either this or Monsters, Inc. usually. Actually, she handed me Kill Bill Volume 2 this evening, but Jen told me that wasn't appropriate for a one-year old.

With this, I believe I've got all the Pixar movies on the blog finally. Now I can just wait patiently for Cars 2 to come out!

Werkmeister Harmonies

2000 whale movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A frigid Hungarian town changes after the arrival of a traveling show boasting a gigantic stuffed whale and a mysterious dude known as The Prince. They arrive ominously, and the inhabitants of the town start to get violent. That's about all that happens.

At 145 minutes or so, this one will be a chore for most people. Not a lot happens during those 145 minutes, and what does happen happens more slowly than people in their right minds are willing to wait. There are only 39 shots in the entire film, and the average shot length (according to the Cinemetrics database) is 219.4 seconds. Compare that to my favorite movie (The Big Lebowski) which has an average shot length of 6.4 seconds. So it's slow-going, and to make matters worse, there's not even anything happening during these extended shots. See the poster up there with the guy walking? If you want to see that guy walking for five minutes at a time through desolate, absolutely empty Hungarian streets, this is the movie for you. Out of those 145 minutes, you could probably cut out 125 minutes and not lose anything that would mess up the plot. However, those 145 minutes add up to an intoxicating, mega-bleak experience. I'm a sucker for long takes anyway, so when you've got a film made up of long take after long take, I'm going to take notice. And the camera movements and character choreography is virtuosic and poetic and perfectly show this little town as a place constantly in limbo, waiting for something (probably dark) to happen. The opening scene at closing time in a bar in which the main character directs some drunkards in an illustration of how the solar system and eclipses work sets everything up. It's quietly chaotic, kinda humorous, and so impressive with the way the camera catches it all. And the scene just kept going and going, and I knew early on that I was in for a treat. The next great scene is the arrival of the whale in a beast of a trailer pulled by a tractor. Like the rest of the movie, it's almost in slow motion, and the dark shape approaches ominously before the headlights semi-illuminate the street and the trailer passes by. But the greatest of these long shots is during a lengthy riot scene, a deliriously fervent scene that begins with several minutes of a shot of a marching mob approaching a backward-moving camera, includes a long unbroken attack on the inhabitants of a hospital, and ends with a really haunting image bathed in white. It's a really amazing climax for a really amazing film. And there's a giant freakin' whale in it! This feels allegorical although director Bela Tarr says it isn't. I have rudimentary guesses on what this movie is about, but it probably doesn't matter much. It's a haunting experience that I think will stick with me for a long time, maybe even almost as long as one of the shots in the movie.

Did you see this one yet, Larst? We should have simul-watched it although I did have to watch in two installments.

The Cremator

1968 Cesky film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Kopfrkingl rfealtly lipkes hits jozb as the tituvglar spalovac mrtvol. He freqcuenjtly reacds the Tibeztlan Boozk of the Dxead and usces it to supplrort his idzea that crenmatzion is the most comcfortwable way to go. It's the 1930s, and when Gezrzmzany rovlls in, they make him an offqer that he has problkems renfushing in this hiltariousc comegdy from cheehry Czechoslovakia.

At least I think it's a horror/comedy. If it is, it's one of the most disturbing comedies ever made. If not, I might be disturbed myself. But the hijinks of a recurring married couple, lines like "We take a break in the afternoon, and you can breathe fresh air in the cemetery," and a cheery song some characters sing about the death of children are too funny not to be in a comedy. It's nothing I laughed out loud at. Well, that's not true. I think I laughed at a scene where the titular cremator is training a new employee and asks him to look into a little hole in the furnace before annoucing, "There's nothing to see--we must wait for a nice cremation." I really liked The Cremator, from the opening title sequence with some cut-out animation stuff that reminded me of fellow Czech Svankmajer to the startling conclusion. Speaking of Svankmajer, there are also some rapidly juxtaposing shots of cat facial features and pictures of women's breasts that looked straight out of one of the animator's shorts. That must have been the thing to do in Czech movies from the late 60s until whenever. This dark movie is a great depiction of a man losing touch with reality. The lead, a guy with too many consonants in his name, is subdued, doing very little to help the reader know that he's going insane. Instead, director Juraj Herz lets that be shown through the cinematography with some flashy editing, the use of the always odd wide-angle lens, and some other nifty camera tricks. I also like how Herz transitions from one scene to another. Close-ups of a wrinkled animal at a zoo bleeds into the next scene with a close-up of the wrinkles on a guy's forehead. A character's lines fit with the context of one scene when you suddenly realize you've actually been taken to a brand new situation. It's really a neat trick the first few times you notice it, but for the movie to so consistently move from scene to scene like that is really impressive. I also liked a scene at a very strange wax museum, one that featured both puppets and a little person, and the ingenious way a boxing match was filmed. And the music--haunting minimalist clicks with operatic ghosts--fit very well. If you're a sucker for guys-losing-their-minds movies like I am, The Cremator is for you! I've also decided I need to see more Czech movies. Awesome stuff!

Naked

1993 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: There isn't really much of one. A not-so-great-guy named Johnny flees Manchester after sort-of sexually assaulting a woman. He arrives in London at the flat of his ex-girlfriend Louise, and when she's not home, he charms the pants off her roommate. Literally. He gets bored with that, leaves, and stalks the darkness of London's fringes, meeting and verbally abusing lost souls along the way.

David Thewlis's performance in Naked is unforgettable, an anti-hero lost in a dark purgatory. He's witty, hilarious, and irritably likable despite being about the most dishonorable fellow you could ever meet on celluloid. You almost want to taste every single word he spits at the other characters in this movie, and when he's not on the screen, you miss him. In a way, he's like a tour guide, taking your hand and leading you on a trip through the blackest despair and this sort of pre-apocalyptic malaise. He smells bad, and you know deep down that he doesn't really know what the heck he's talking about. He's as lost as the lost souls he's pointing out and mocking on the tour. You decide that if this was real life, if Johnny lived in your neighborhood, you wouldn't associate with him at all. You'd feel sorry for him in a way, but you wouldn't really like his rawness, his honesty, or his mustache. Naked is about the blackest movie I've ever seen. It's comedic, blackly. Most of the scenes are at night, and the cinematographer stuffs the screen with the blackest kind of darkness. The souls of the characters are scorched, their blackened edges rustling in a laughing nocturnal breeze. It's a brooding sort of movie with scenes that harden in you, stuff you can't shake even while new scenes unfold. Love the performances (the lone exception maybe being Greg Cruttwell as a foil to Johnny), love the score (mostly harp), love the atmosphere, and love the bleakness. But really, this movie's all about Thewlis's performance, easily one of my favorite of all time. Naked's got a lot of ridges, and although it might not be easy to fully grasp initially, it's impossible not to come away with a little something. It definitely says whatever the hell it's saying very powerfully and lingers far after the last quiverings of those harp strings.

Shane-movies trivia: I watched this movie fully clothed.

Out of the Past

1947 noir classic

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Detective-for-hire Jeff Bailey's attempting to live a quiet life in a do-nothing town, working at a gas station and dating a nice girl. A mysterious man from his past pops up and yanks Bailey back into his less-prosaic days. While driving with his girlfriend to meet Whit Sterling, he fills her in on his backstory, telling about the time he was hired by Whit Sterling to find estranged girlfriend Kathie Moffat, a woman who shot him a couple times in the abdomen before her departure. He finds her, and although she seems like the type of gal who could shoot him in the abdomen a couple times and then depart, he starts nailing her. Sexually, I mean. And since Robert Mitchum is in the movie, things don't work out so well after that.

Speaking of sex, this movie has a great 1940's sex scene. Mitchum and seductive Greer flee a rainstorm on a beach (interestingly [and symbolically], backdropped with all these nets) and go back to her place. He kisses her on the neck, the lights go out, the camera pans to the right, and the blustery night pushes the door wide open. Damn! Is that hot or what? Mitchum's great as usual as the doomed protagonist, a guy who, no matter how good he is at his job, is going to wind up dead by the end of the movie. He's one of the few actors who can have this layer of machismatic confidence not quite hiding a layer of doomed resignation. His performance fools the viewer into thinking the guy's in control of a situation that he just has no control over. What a face that Mitchum has. Greer's perfect as the femme fatale. From the moment she appears on the screen (a great shot with a great line, a line paralleled a few scenes later, that goes with it), you no that she's no good. And there's Kirk Douglas again, his character a nice contrast to what Mitchum's got going on. Director Jacques Tourneur, a Frenchman, uses light and dark and shadows and symbols to tell this story, one that grows more and more complex as it goes until it's so muddy that you have to pause and give your mind time to catch up a bit. This is nearly noir perfection, from the first appearance of Sterling's darkly-dressed thug at the beginning to the expression of the deaf kid at the end.

Shane-movies trivia [Spoiler Alert!]: I think it would hurt to get shot in the groin.

Ace in the Hole (The Big Carnival)

1951 movie with one too many titles

Rating: 18/2o

Plot: Newspaper man Chuck Tatum's career is in the toilet, mostly the result of extracurricular activities that have gotten him fired from big-city publications. He attempts to get a fresh start with a dumpy paper in Arizona where he hopes for a big story to put him back on the map. On his way to cover a frog-jumping competition (or something), he stumbles upon a guy trapped in a mine. He quickly realizes that engineers can get him out quickly, but Tatum, along with the man's wife and the sheriff looking to be re-elected have reasons to keep him in there longer. The nothing-Arizona town turns into a circus.

Kirk Douglas overacts in this. Actors who read their lines while sparks come out of their eyes usually are. Douglas chews up the scenery, chomping down on the Arizona desert and gnawing on the newspaper office. He's at the center of nearly every scene in the movie, so that could have been a problem. Instead, his performance is so full of energy and he gets such great lines to say ("I could do wonders with your dismembered limbs"; "If there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog") that you not only get used to it, but you actually start to like him as this really despicable figure. I like how you can tell that Douglas, even when he's just standing there or moving from point A to point B, has got his mind running. You can see the conspiratorial gears grinding in his mind right through his eyes when he's talking to Jan Sterling's character or Ray Teal as the sheriff. Billy Wilder gives us a ton of great shots in this film, and one great one has all three of those characters' faces on screen while they're listening to talk about a drill. They all have that gears-a-runnin' look in their eyes. I also like a shot near the end where Tatum's shadow covers the character who happens to be speaking--Jimmy Olson. It almost looks like a mistake, but it perfectly symbolizes the completion of Tatum's corruption of Jimmy Olson. Fur on a rocking rocking chair, and a final shot of the trapped guy's dad after everybody clears out are also terrific. Ace in the Hole, or whatever the hell you want to call it, is a darkly humorous, well-paced, cynical, and ultimately tragic story with an eerily contemporary message. It's ahead of its time and is right up there with Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, and Stalag 17. Man, what a director.

Ace in the Hole trivia, courtesy of imdb.com: Chuck Tatum has a line where he mentions Yogi Berra. Yogi Berra was a baseball player for the New York Yankees. I probably didn't need to tell you that, but if Kirk Douglas was one of my five-and-a-half blog readers, he wouldn't have. In a letter about the line he wrote to Billy Wilder, Douglas asked, "What the hell is a Yogi Berra?"

Bonus Shane trivia: I liked a line in this about a guy wearing both a belt and suspenders so much that I stole the idea for a writing project I'm working on with my own conspirator. I did this unapologetically because that's the type of cat that I am.

My Neighbor Totoro

1988 animated feature

Rating: 18/20 (Emma: 14/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: A professor and his two daughters move into an old country house to be close to the hospital where the matriarch of the family is convalescing after a long illness. A neighbor boy warns that the house is haunted, and the girls do spot some creepy dust mite-ish spirits before they quickly scurry away. Once the girls feel more at home, they aren't seen anymore. They also meet a big fluffy bunny thing named Totoro, their neighbor, and a bus/cat hybrid. The girls try to adapt to a house without a mother in it.

Delightful! This has got to be one of the most accurate depictions of children's feelings that I've ever seen. Or maybe it's an accurate look at difficult moments from the point of view of children. My favorite thing about this is how it doesn't focus on the negative stuff that's going on, but on the details that take the characters away from that negative stuff. The titular Totoro is simple but iconic, and I can't imagine anybody watching this movie without wanting to go for a ride in the cat-bus. The animation is beautiful, and the story, although honestly there's not much of a story here, drifts along so softly that you just want to cuddle up with it. There's the best adjective I can use to describe My Neighbor Totoro actually--cuddly. I love everything about this movie, including the songs used for the credits. Cuddly and delightful!

Sweet Smell of Success

1957 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Sleasy weasel Sidney Falco's hit the big time, the sort of big time where you get your name taped on the door of your office/bedroom. He's a press agent, successful because of bigwig newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker, a shady but powerful man who can make or break a career with a few typewriter taps. Hunsecker wants a favor in exchange for helping Falco reach the top--the break-up of his sister Susie and her jazz guitarist boyfriend Steve. Falco shoves any existing morals aside in order to please J.J., but he may find out that success doesn't smell quite as sweet as he thought it would.

The dialogue, as crisp and cutting as you'll find, is nearly perfect in Sweet Smell of Success. It dates our story, sure, but it dates it in the same way that Shakespeare's plays date his stories. This is endlessly quotable, and the words that Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster's characters get to say add paint to the already colorful black and white urban setting and to these nocturnal creatures. I'm as cynical as the tone of this movie and therefore have my doubts that anybody has ever talked like the characters in this movie, but who cares? The words are funny and haunting, at times simultaneously, and the script shades the circumstances like the shadows and smoke in your typical film noir. This doesn't exactly fit in with that genre, but it's got similar ideals with almost every scene taking place at night and a hopeless hopeful character fumbling in this web of his own invention. 50's black and white cinematography doesn't look better than this, and I loved how the camera moves in this movie, simply but elegantly focusing on those characters but doing it without ignoring their surroundings. Lancaster's performance as Hunsecker has the perfect amounts of sinister and confident, and Curtis's Falco, a guy you just know isn't going to win in the end despite his unscrupulous craftiness, has this terrific loser frenzy. They could have almost added foaming at the mouth and made it seem appropriate. I liked the fringe characters, too, except Steve was pretty uninspiring. Most people named Steve are though. This is the type of movie that just feels completely right, and it's about perfect.

Speaking of terrific loser frenzy, Cory recommended this one, his way of saying thanks for my recommendation of Eraserhead.

Manon of the Spring

1986 sequel

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Picks up ten years after the sad denouement of Jean de Florette with the hunchback's daughter, now a shepherdess who hunts and sells birds, getting her revenge on everybody who had a hand in her father's breakdown and ultimate demise.

Whereas Florette was all about breathtaking beauty, character, and tone, this one's more about the story and character. I wasn't as impressed with the cinematography here, but I was enamored with Emmanuelle Beart. She's lovely and replaces the beautiful images of the lush countryside. Or maybe the imagery was the same, and I was just distracted by Emmanuelle Beart. She gives her character this innocent rage that is just perfect. And I know I dug that harmonica solo. Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil, are terrific in both of these movies, the latter despite having too many vowels in his name. I loved them as despicable villains in the first movie, and I loved them as villains you almost feel sorry for while they get what they deserve in this one. I really liked what happened with the characters here, and there are some twists that I just didn't see coming. In fact, I thought the movie was over and started to go into my winding down process (putting my pants back on, bracing myself to help stop the internal vibration, a few deep-knee bends) before realizing that there were a few more surprises left. This isn't quite as good as Jean de Florette, but it's a great completion of that film's story. And together, they make a wonderful and moving experience.

Cory, a delightful guy, tried recommending this during my "man" streak, the most impressive achievement in human history, but that would have been cheating.

Jean de Florette

1986 moving painting

Rating: 18/20

Plot: The Soubeyran family once prospered, but times are tough in the French hills where Cesar and his nephew Ugolin struggle to keep their heads above water. Speaking of water, that's exactly what they really need. Ugolin's got an idea to grow roses and make a fortune, and the pair come up with an idea to buy the land adjacent to theirs and take advantage of a spring. A lot of things happen that will be more interesting to you if I don't tell you about them before a hunchback moves onto the adjacent land with his wife and daughter and ambitious dreams about raising bunnies and crops on soil that everybody else assumes is cursed. Cesar and Ugolin stop up the spring and work with nature against the titular hunchback.

I love that this movie gave me the chance to type the words titular hunchback. And I really loved every minute of this movie, the type of movie that has the ability to make a person breath better. Not to sound too pretentious, but most movies you get to see and hear. I'd almost swear my other senses were involved with Jean de Florette somehow. It's a film that absorbs the viewer from the opening shot and doesn't spit him back out until the closing credits. I doubt I'll ever see a movie where every single shot is perfect, but Jean de Florette comes awfully close. The lush French hills provide a setting where it might have been impossible to position a camera and not capture something gorgeous, a shot where it almost looks like my television oozes colorful foliage. But the cinematography is stunning from an opening shot with a moving car that has a weird orange glow to a whole bunch of "How the hell did they get this on film?" shots. Pause this movie at any point, and you've got a shot that was obviously meticulously constructed, artistic enough to almost get in the way of the storytelling. And there's a focus on the minute that really helps you connect to every fine detail of the story. Narratively and visually, It reminded me a lot of Days of Heaven, except in Jean de Florette, there's a lot more dialogue. The dialogue's good, too ("I don't shave anyone who is horizontal."), and the characters could almost be mistaken for comic ones if what was going on with them wasn't so dark or tragic. Take an early murder scene, for example. There's a goofy argument and an ensuing fight scene that is almost cartoonish. Jean de Florette definitely explores the lighter side of evil greed and tragic circumstance. Breathtakingly beautiful (one of my favorite scenes: a duet with harmonica and vocals) and overwhelmingly sad, this one is movie poetry and one of the best movies I've seen all year. That's despite an embarrassing hunchback.

Cory recommended this one, probably because parts of it could be described as delightful.

The Lavender Hill Mob

1951 comedy classic

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Mild-mannered and completely harmless Henry Holland has faithfully worked with a bank, overseeing the transfer of gold bars from Point A to Point B for many years. Secretly, he dreams of stealing it all and smuggling it out of the country. Unfortunately for him, there's no way to accomplish that. Until he befriends neighbor Alfred Pendlebury that is! Together, they formulate a plan, assemble a crew, and attempt the heist.

This movie is politely hilarious, an orgy of ironies. It's a literary comedy, one that might not make you bust a gut but still manages to be a million times funnier than most comedies you get. Twists and turns abound as the men's plans go horribly wrong, fall apart even more, start to come together, and threaten to completely unravel. Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway are fantastic and very funny, and the minor players--the other half of their gang, their landlady--are also really good. This is the type of movie you can easily watch again a few days later, and it's nearly impossible to pick a favorite scene. There's just so much packed into a tidy little eighty minutes. The delirious police chase, the scene at the Eiffel Tower, the scene where Guinness's character in the warehouse after the heist, the scene where they try to find some criminals to help him. It all manages to feel manic, like something threatening to burst the seams and make a mess all over the place, yet completely laid-back and nonchalant at the same time. Good, good stuff. I still probably prefer Kind Hearts and Coronets, probably because the ending is better, but this is, as Alec Guinness would have said, pretty bitchin'.

Another Cory recommendation. He knows what he's doing most of the time.

Little Big Man

1970 big little epic

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A 120 year old bag of wrinkles shares his life story--raised by Indians, lived with a preacher and the sultry Faye Dunaway, worked with a snake oil peddler, drank with Wild Bill, became a gunslinger, married an immigrant, lost his wife, married an Indian, became a hero, became a drunkard, and was the lone white survivor at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But he might be fabricating a bit.

You know, it just occurred to me when I typed the above that the climactic moment takes place at Little Bighorn and Dustin Hoffman's character is Little Big Man. I love this epic Western funk despite some flaws. Every time I see this, I laugh the first time Hoffman's character speaks in the flashback. His deep, nasally voice just doesn't seem to fit his appearance. I'm not sold on his old man voice either exactly, but even kind of pulling off playing the same character as a teenager and a 120 year old is impressive. One could accuse Little Big Man of being too episodic or a little jumpy, but the narrative structure works as it lends credence to the idea that Jack Crabb could be making the whole thing up. Plus, there are plenty of parallel episodes to pull it all together by the end. Little Big Man is often very funny and often very poignant and sometimes both simultaneously which really makes the movie special. As much as I love what Hoffman is doing here, it's Chief Dan George who really steals the show as the wise and goofy grandfatherly Cherokee chief. It seems like every single line he has in this movie is either hilarious or beautiful, delivered with perfect timing and cadence and hitting you just right. I loved his reference to "the black white man," his inquiry about whether Hoffman's white wife shows "pleasant enthusiasm when [he] mounts her," and his explanation of why he calls his snake wife Doesn't Like Horses. But my favorite line in this (and maybe any movie) is when Chief Dan George says, "There is an endless supply of white men, but there have always been a limited number of human beings." Beautiful. Oh, I also like how General Custer pronounces the word gonads, but that's just because I'm immature.

I gave this movie a gonads bonus.

Odd Man Out

1947 thriller

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Following a prison escape that takes place before the movie begins, Johnny McQueen, a member of an underground Irish organization, helps plan a robbery with the other members of his group. Apparently, the group needs money to buy matching hats and belt buckles. The robbery doesn't go exactly as planned, and Johnny is injured and abandoned by his friends. He wanders the streets of the hopeless city searching for help and trying to evade the police.

I doubt this is the "most exciting motion picture ever made!" like the above poster claims. Johnny McQueen doesn't turn into a Hulk-like creature either like the above poster might suggest. Here's a movie poster you just can't trust. Regardless, this is still one hell of a movie. It's a case where there aren't really any stand-out scenes that blow you away, but everything adds up to something that will. Carol Reed is a maestro, and this is a story shot by a wizard. I love the look of the city, similar to the look of some of The Third Man's settings, where the streets look oily and shadows loom. Poor McQueen (you've got to love movies that force you to root for or sympathize with bad people) doesn't exactly move through the city--he spirals. You've also got all these shots with insignificant action going on in the background, but it adds to the texture of the locale. Reed uses some camera trickery to show the dizzy perspective of our protagonist on the way to the robbery and later when bubbles from a spilled beverage start talking to him. I also like other minor details--some graffiti that reads "Skibbo is here" behind McQueen, a sign that prohibits Jitterbugging, a scene where a bartender maneuvers through an excited crowd by spinning thrice. The acting is terrific universally, but I especially like W.G. Fay, Robert Newton, and whoever played Kathleen's mother as the priest, the painter, and Kathleen's mother respectively. Most of the characters, a lot of them quirky, aren't in the movie for very long, but they leave an impression and help nail down the themes about selfishness and alienation in a crowded and hopeless world. On the surface, you've got a man-on-the-run suspense thriller, but it's what's below that surface that makes Odd Man Out so great.

Cory recommended this one.

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl

1919 depressing movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: The yellow man loves Buddha, and after watching some visiting sailors engage in fisticuffs on the streets, he becomes further convinced to travel east and share that fat dude's teachings. He arrives in London, has no luck getting the message out (probably because he's yellow), and ends up running a shop that sells things nobody would want. One day, boxer's daughter Lucy wanders past. She's got a hard life because her father's abusive. The yellow man falls for her and gets a chance to get close to her later in the movie.

What a beautiful little movie this is. Silent drama doesn't always connect with me. A lot of times, they're boring, brutally boring. And although this suffers a bit from the limitations and tendencies of typical films from this period, there's a lot here that seems years ahead of its time. Aside from all the technical stuff and the interracial romance, this is the earliest movie I've seen that's leaned so far over into tragedy and has an ending like this. The performances range from hammy and unnatural (see: Donald Crisp as Lucy's daddy) to controlled and touching and haunting (see: Gish). In between would be the yellow man played by Richard Barthelmess, a white man. The story Griffith is telling here is nothing new. It's simple, poetic and emotionally walloping but simple. There are way too many title cards used to push the story, a lot of them, even though have a literary quality, completely unnecessary. This works best when Griffith tells the story and creates the moods with images alone. This just jumped over one or two other movies to become my favorite film of the nineteen-teens.

The Man Who Would Be King

1975 adventure

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, two big-balled former British soldiers dicking around in India, decide to cross dangerous Afganistan (where the Taliban hide in caves) to reach Kafiristan, a heathen land where they plan on becoming kings. They teach villagers to use some guns they brought along, and after Daniel is struck with an arrow during battle but does not bleed, the Kafiritanians decide that he is the son of Alexander the Great.

God's holy trousers, what a fantastic film this is! Connery and Caine have great chemistry in what's essentially a buddy/road movie. The dialogue's fresh and witty and enriches the adventure yarn. This isn't exactly a comedy, but there are a lot of times where you get a whiff of a controlled Monty Python with the two leads like a mature Abbott and Costello type comedy team. The greatness with The Man Who Would Be King is that it spits in the eyes of tradition, genre-crossing like a She-Devil in plaid pants, unhinged and groovy and barely holding together with absurd poetics and half-assed histories. Snake charmers, dudes with insects on their faces, dope smokers, holy men, and filthy beggars line streets pre-credits, splashes of brown and more brown and crazy ethnic musics and an antsy camera helping them shiver on the screen. It paints an exotic picture right off the bat. John Huston found some nice places for this story to sit, and the shots of snow-covered mountains, desert battlefields, bottomless chasms, and towering temples help give it all a unique personality. And so many extras! There are very few times when the screen isn't stuffed corner to corner with stuff to look at. The Man Who Would Be King grabs your ears and eyes, tickles the pickle, mesmerizes. This is the type of movie you want to consume entirely, absorb. Costume design, a great score, cinematography. Yeah, you can chew and chew on this one. It's a lot of fun, but there's a poignancy just below the surface of the action and humor. Great stuff.

Note: Reportedly, this is Ass Masterson's second favorite movie. (Wikipedia)

Dead Man

1995 metaphysical Western masterpiece

Rating: 18/20

Plot: William Blake arrives via Crispin Glover-driven train to the Wild West town of Machine where he's been promised a job as an accountant. He's too late, and the job's been given to somebody else. His life is threatened. He meets a woman, and because he looks just like Johnny Depp, she sleeps with him. Unfortunately, her fiance strolls in after the deed is done and shoots them both. Blake kills the man, steals a horse, and flees into the wilderness. An Indian named Nobody, thinking he's the reincarnation of English Romantic poet William Blake, guides him on his journey as a trio of bounty hunters--the vile Cole Wilson, the verbose Conway Twill, and young Johnny "The Kid" Pickett--sent by his victim's father track him down.

On certain days, usually Thursdays when the sun's hitting me just right and I've added just the right amount of sugar to my tea, my answer to the question "What is your favorite Western featuring Iggy Pop wearing a dress?" would probably be this peyote-induced nightmare of a travelogue, Dead Man. Man, does Jim Jarmusch know how to start a movie or does Jim Jarmusch know how to start a movie? Following a quote about how it's preferable to not travel with a dead man, you get the incoherent ramblings of Crispin Glover and the senseless shooting of buffalo from a train. Then, Depp's character enters Machine. William Blake walks the dusty street, passes a coffin shop a la Hang 'Em High, a bunch of animal skulls fastened to a wall, a wagon filled with antlers, a urinating horse, a grunting hog in the middle of the road, Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes on the receiving end of a blow job, and a creepy-looking fellow with troll ears and a troll nose, all with Neil Young's plaintive guitar. They're visuals that let you know what's what in Machine, reminiscent of one of my favorite film images--Kurosawa's dog with a human hand in its mouth at the beginning of Yojimbo. The tone is set, and then you get a ceaselessly surprising man-on-the-run Western with more great Neil Young, lovely shots of great American Western landscapes shot in crisp black and white, an odd assortment of characters and cameos, faux-philosophies, and the best comedy this side of Dante's Inferno. This might be the funniest movie I've seen all year, and it's definitely the funniest Western ever made. Sorry, Mel Brooks. At the center of that is William Farmer's Nobody, the embodiment of a stereotype, spouting Native American-ish riddles and non sequiturs. My favorite scene might be where Nobody tries on William Blake's hat. No, my favorite scene is probably where Nobody and Blake are watching three mysterious men, one being Iggy Pop as "Sally" and another being Billy Bob Thornton, and barely being able to hear snippets of Iggy's retelling of the "Three Little Bears" story. Or maybe my favorite scenes are the ones with Robert Mitchum. No, wait, Crispin Glover's in the movie, so my favorite scene probably has him in it. Or maybe they're all my favorite scenes. It's definitely unique, a riddle of a film that grows every time you watch it and one of those movies you almost want to watch again as soon as it's over. It might be an acquired taste. It's dreamy Johnny Depp as a straight man in an askew Wild West philosophical comedy, mysteriously poetic and absurdly fascinating, and if you've got a high tolerance for the offbeat, this just might be your cup of poisoned tea.

Now, do you have any tobacco?

Ugetsu

1953 Japanese ghost story

Rating: 18/20

Plot: There's a civil war going down, but this doesn't affect a pair of peasant couples as they dream of riches and heroic deeds. Genjuro travels to the big city to make his fortunes selling pottery while neighbor Tobei longs to be a samurai despite his lack of sword and armor. Their greed and delusions of grandeur threaten to mess everything up.

A very-Japanese movie all about dichotomies. I think. Male and female. War and peace. Self and the selfless. The living and the dead. Delicately spiritual, this breezes along yet manages to make every minute detail seem like it's the most important detail that's ever appeared on film. The camera work is masterful, swirling this way and that way and back to this way, flowing and stumbling through a black and white world right along with the lost characters. The supernatural elements in here are almost fragile and help give the entire film this hypnotic, dreamlike quality. There's depth here but it's a liquidy depth that you might drown in if you don't wear a life preserver while watching. This says stuff, not obviously or in a preachy way, and is a very rewarding experience. I was really tired after watching this movie, and I'm not sure if it's because the movie drained me or I'm just really tired.