Alfie (1966) -

A callow comedy about a London ladies' man hitting his limit. Michael Caine, in a deservedly legendary performance, lives "every man's fantasy" -- flirting with every woman he sees, often finding his way into bed them, while refusing any meaningful attachments. Women -- or "birds" as he more frequently refers to them -- are not people to Caine's Alfie, but objects or toys or things. Alfie routinely refers to this or that woman he's bedded as "it" -- a bit of verbal trickery that cues the deeper arc of the character. The story, in 12 step parlance, depicts a sex addict hitting bottom...twice, actually. And Alfie is a fascinating character, on some levels. The film starts by celebrating Alfie's awesome prowess, demonstrating his incredible skill in seducing all kinds of women. But while he begins as a playboy, Alfie soon becomes a cad before he's finally revealed to be an emotional infant. The most interesting thread in the film is the peril of pregnancy, situating this film upon a fascinating cusp in sexual history. The "pill" -- invented at the beginning of the decade and just entering widespread prescriptive circulation in the US as this film was being made -- would have totally changed this narrative. Basically, Alfie has it easy -- he never has to deal with the consequences of his promiscuity. Sure, he keeps track of his partner's menstrual cycles and routinely frets about the possibility of pregnancy, but he maintains a careful distance from it. The women bear the burden of pregnancy in this film, and Alfie shows himself -- repeatedly -- to be utterly incapable of shouldering his share. Yet his brushes with parenthood are what change him, whether through an adored son who he refuses to claim legally as his own (but whose adoption by another man causes Alfie to spiral into a nervous depression) or a devastating encounter with an aborted fetus. Alfie assiduously resists acknowledging these incidents (referring to at least two children he fathered as "a kid I used to know"). All of this combines to establish Alfie as a basically conservative narrative about the immaturity of sexual promiscuity. Alfie needs to grow up, commit to one woman, and shoulder his responsibilities -- and because he doesn't, he becomes prone to emotional crackups over lost women and unknown children. The women in the film are fascinating and fun (especially Shelley Winters as an American party dame, Millicent Martin as a wife with a wild streak, and Vivien Merchant whose life is devastated by one tryst with Alfie). The art direction is often a hoot. I adored the interiors of Shelley Winters' pad; there's a painting and a stuffed thing that I just need to have. An interesting, self-consciously hip, twisty narrative about erotic excess that turns in on itself to become something of a screed about the imperatives of masculine responsibility. Could easily work as a promotional film for the Promise Keepers in the ways it details the spiritual hollowness of masculine promiscuity. (Plus the one sneering reference to shrieking, cowardly queens would likely prove delightful for just such an audience.) One thing I certainly didn't expect to see was how much Sex and the City, either consciously or unconsciously, owes to this film. Between the crazy high style interiors and the intermittent direct address moments and the at times neverending parade of conquests: it all felt conspicuously like SATC, which I didn't expect at all. It's an interesting film, intelligent and stylish and surprising, while also containing one of Michael Caine's most efficiently remarkable performances. Yet for all that there is to recommend the film, it's hard for me to get too excited about a neo-conservative, generally misogynist, morality fable addressing the perils of overexerting straight male privilege. It's tough to be white, straight, male and sexually irresistible -- just ask Alfie.

A Man for All Seasons (1966) -

Even more turgid, tedious and intellectual than I remembered it being -- which, quite frankly, I didn't think possible. Paul Scofield works wonders in a role of incredible intellectual depth and emotional vacuity. The script requires Thomas More to do things like express his loving devotion to his wife and daughter by offering them lessons in the finer points of law. And, somehow, Scofield makes it work, underscoring this man's defining sense of principle as part and parcel of his emotional life. The film captures the essential simplicity of this extraordinarily internecine piece, condensing it (if you can believe it) and enlivening it (if you can believe it) with aptly chosen exterior moments. All told, Fred Zinneman's film is an efficient adaptation of a grueling piece of theatre, which remains perhaps the best example of a certain mode of 1960s/70s Anglo-American dramaturgical sensibility/aesthetic. John Hurt is wonderful as the mercenary Richard Rich and the requisite young lovers (Susannah York and Corin Redgrave) provide the necessary jolt of attractive energy. (Best though is a luminous Vanessa Redgrave in a wordless cameo as the ill-fated Anne Boleyn.) The main supporting players, especially Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell, Robert Shaw as Henry8, and the usually delicious Wendy Hiller as Lady Alice More, are all fairly insufferable, snorting and braying their way through their roles with a garish lack of nuance. They're all really good at doing exactly what they're doing, but what they're doing is most frequently obnoxious and annoying. Sigh. Tragically, I know this piece way too well -- having seen it staged more times than I care to note and even having appeared in a workshop production when I was a kid (I played the obnoxious servant I think). But golly. A vaguely accurate intellectual history lesson played as a morality tale of the spiritual triumph of principled reason? Sounds like FUN. And it is, exactly as much fun as it sounds...

A Certain Kind of Death (2003) -

A straightforward documentary about the complex social service apparatus that attends to the deaths of individuals who die alone and with no known next of kin. A subject that caught my imagination due to an exceptional treatment of it in a This American Life episode from last winter ("Home Alone"), this documentary suffered in comparison. (In the TAL episode, they basically hit most/all of the same notes, crediting this documentary I think, but the material feels different visually than it did aurally. First off, and as someone who lets the tv dial rest on variants of CSI a LOT, the video documentary makes the whole image of decomposing bodies -- and, yes, they show them -- real on a whole 'nother level. Plus, I found that I was less concerned with what the civil servants might be missing when I listened on the radio, as the TAL ended up taking the workers who do this work much more seriously as subjects. This film is less interested in the human dimensions of either the decedents (a word I did not know prior to this pair of documentaries) or the public employees charged with making sense of and discharging their remains in as humane, cost-effective, and expedient manner possible. Instead, this film seems mostly interested in documenting the process itself, noting each stage of the internecine process. I, of course, find the people part the more fascinating. Moreover, in the film, one of the decedents is a 60something gay man of modest means, who the investigators read as a single person for a very long time (when the apartment and fragmented personal details are so obviously those of a gay man). There's one moment -- when the folks who are paid to remove his stuff from his apartment, separating the stuff with resale/auction potential from simple trash -- when a cache of programs and mementos from a independent gay film festival in 1970 are unearthed, along with pages from his scrapbooks. Trash. Interesting queerish art. Sold a pittance at auction. The archivist in me was shrieking, and the moment is such a poignant one from the perspective of how the "ephemera" (ie materials not connected to blood relatives) of gay history is so easily and so often just tossed as trash. But as a whole, the film -- while fascinating on some levels, because of all the death tasks that are required, tasks normally accomplished by surviving family members, here have to be executed by unknown public employees -- but as a whole the film avoids the emotional dimensions of the scenario in hewing its attention to the mechanics of the process. An interesting but curiously disappointing documentary treatment of a complex, startling subject.

Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) +

A surprisingly enthralling bit of cinematic history/criticism/theory in which Thom Andersen, an artist/scholar who's been teaching film theory to filmmakers forever, offers his interpretive history of how Los Angeles -- arguably "the most photographed city in the world" -- has been depicted in film. At 169-minutes, the film feels like a semester-long seminar of lectures, screenings and readings compressed into a brooding but somehow exhilarating cinematic frame. The film works as an uneasy blend of two distinct texts, an essay read in effectively uninflected voiceover by Andersen's friend and former student, Encke King, in juxtaposition with a visual montage of images, sequences and scenes from more than 100 movies in which city of Los Angeles "plays" some kind of role. These two dense and fascinating texts are overlain atop one another. The text does not simply describe or explain the images, just as the images do not merely illustrate the points being made in the voiceover. This is not to say that the images/voiceover are discordant or incongruous, but rather that in its loose intelligence the juxtaposition maintains an almost dialectic space for the viewer. The spectator, in a way, is obliged to reconcile the Andersen's artfully assembled images with his forcefully argued text. It's a fascinating experience, this film about ideas and images. As Andersen's text wanders through three "titled" sections -- The City as Backdrop, The City as Character, The City as Subject -- Los Angeles Plays Itself opens myriad additional routes of inquiry, highlighting intriguing aspects of canonical films in fascinating juxtaposition with the trashiest of trasy exploitation films and fairy obscure independent/art cinema, all while making inserting provocative claims about the history of cinema, Los Angeles, and the practice of commercial filmmaking. In the first section ("The City as Backdrop"), Andersen presents an often amusing account of how filmmakers have used and misused Los Angeles as a location. Andersen presents a diachronic survey of how specific buildings have been used (the demonstration of the different ways the skylit, staircase laden Bradbury Building is entrancing), how films toy with Los Angeles geography, and how filmmakers have inadvertently created an aggregate diachronic portrait of certain neighborhoods and how they have changed over time. The second and third parts (The City as Character and The City as Subject) are a little less distinct, with the "character" section deals more explicitly with Los Angeles as an actual place with an actual history and how cinema has made claims about Los Angeles. The final section (City as Subject) deals most provocatively with filmmakers who have endeavored to deal with Los Angeles as both a topic and also as a state of mind, a state of consciousness. (The film concludes with Andersen's contemplation of the neo-realist African and African American filmmakers of the 1970s and it's in this concluding section that Andersen's polemic is at its most exhilarating.) All told, the film is something of a mindblower, a movie about a city, sure, but also a movie about how movies shape consciousness and even history. His quickie readings are at times thrilling (in his treatment of Rebel without a Cause, which Andersen calls "the first teen film noir," Andersen praises Nicholas Ray's decision to film it in the style of a studio musical) and compelling (I can see why this film proved so instrumental in the rediscovery and subsequent restoration/release of The Exiles; having The Exiles, the first movie to be added to my "watch this movie" list is Bush Mama). Andersen's treatment of themes -- the necessity of a car; the obsession with the LAPD; the way that even the most cynical cinematic treatments of Los Angeles history pretty things up -- is witty, smart and haunting. The gaps are big. No shopping malls, few high schools, a fairly black/white conception of race. And it's so too bad that this film was completed before it could really take on a 2003's Crash. (Indeed, if I were ever to have the appropriate opportunity to teach a film & history course, I would really want to pair this film and Crash to see what happens.) All told, a fascinating "movie about the movies" that opens onto no end of fascinating rabbit holes. Los Angeles Plays Itself will likely never have a home video or other commercial release but, as yet, there have been no "cease & desist" actions. So, if it comes to an arthouse or classroom or private dvd collection near you, hustle to see this film and see what you think. Because, even if it puts you to sleep, you won't be able to avoid thinking some deep thoughts before you drift off.

This post is cross-listed in GoatDog's "Movies About Movies Blogathon."
Click here to peruse the many fascinating Blogathon submissions.
Click here to learn more about StinkyLulu.
And thanks to Oh, Well, Just This Once... for hooking me up with this film.

Hawaii (1966) -

A turgid epic detailing the devastations wrought upon native Hawaii by the simultaneous scourges of colonial racism and religious zealotry (aka the beginnings of Manifest Destiny). The stiff spine of the story is provided by impetuous evangelical prig Abner Hale (Max Von Sydow in a curiously stunted performance, existential braying unmoored from any sense of the character's spiritual integrity) who journeys to Hawaii to bring the heathens to the lord. Von Sydow's Hale trundles a new wife (Julie Andrews doing a startlingly hollow version of her, by 1966, plainspeaking propriety shtik). Hale and Jerusha journey to a Hawaiian island where Jerusha is befriended by the island's queen, Malama (acting novice Jocelyne LaGarde, offering a fascinating conundrum of a performance) and the couple quickly finds themselves at the center of cultural life on the island. Of course, Jerusha's generous Christian spirit finds affinity with the natives, while Abner's gruesomely Calvinist style makes him few friends. (There's an additional backstory involving some licentious whaler who Jerusha nearly married, who -- of course -- crosses paths with the couple in the islands, but the film does so little with this subplot or Richard Harris in the role that I can barely recall the substance of the romantic triangulation.) LaGarde's Malama is a savvy leader, insisting that Jerusha teach her to write so that she can pen a plea to the US President. Malama also consents to convert to Christianity, mostly out of political expediency to set a solid example for her people of how best to withstand the haoli onslaught. (There's an additional subplot involving Malama's son Keoki, a Western-educated young man whose plea inspired Hale to come to the island but whose potential for religious leadership is dismissed by Hale as too corrupted by his heathen origins and predispositions.) Ultimately, things go badly. Malama dies, but not before issuing a decree that all her people follow the Christian ways, and the vacuum of spiritual leadership created by her death causes all kinds of awful things to happen. (The film implies that Hale's vengeful destruction of the traditional icons and talismans, coupled with his begging his Calvinist deity to visit wrath upon the heathens, instigates the devastation.) Soon enough, Jerusha dieas as well, but not before renouncing Abner's fundamentalism and offering her own more generous view of Christianity. The devastation wrought upon the native Hawaiians, coupled with the deaths of Malama and Jerusha, lead Abner toward a new form of Christian leadership, one prioritizing native sovereignty. And the film concludes with Abner encountering the glimmer of his true religious calling - ethical empathy. Blah blah blah. This overwrought epic, beautiful locations elaborately utilized, is turgid, brittle and utterly boring. The ideas are actually pretty fascinating -- the film (with screenplay by Dalton Trumbo from the James Michener source material) makes a surprisingly forceful case for the notion that the arrival of the white man was the worst thing to befall native Hawaiian culture. The film takes seriously what might be considered a "post-colonial" position, with the figure of Keoki emerging as a radically subaltern position and Ruth Malama enacting a complex hybridity, for explicitly strategic purposes. The film's aesthetic is strange, creating easy polarities between the drab New Englanders and the colorful natives. (The visual treatment of the native women is totally colonial soft-porn, National Geographic-style.) Conveniently enough for my purposes, the only actually interesting part of the film was Jocelyne LaGarde's performance as Ruth Malama. Not a great acting job -- she did learn the bilingual role phonetically -- but she's a formidable presence, and her character infuses some of the only genuine complications (as opposed to easy conflicts) in the entire narrative. (Her performance, though, feels a little like a cross between Hope Emerson and Yul Brynner, making up for what she lacked in spontaneity with formidable charisma.) The film, in some ways, anticipates Dances with Wolves, another story about a 19th century white man's spiritual crisis answered by the lessons learned from the natives. Unfortunately, the film does little to illuminate (or, dare I say, take seriously) Hale's religious identity; his is a blithely resolute faith and Von Sydow stiffens all Hale's internal conflict with repressed reserve. This may or may not be historically/culturally accurate for a 19th century Calvinist. The problem is that it makes for an exhaustingly turgid love story, with little genuine complication or tension. Indeed, by playing Hale so literally, the production is enervate, losing access to what seems to be the character's core conflict: a genuinely religious man encountering the limits of his faith. I don't know that a different interpretation of Hale would have made this adaptation of Michener's extraordinarily influential novel work. However, making Abner Hale a human being, rather than a priggish religious automaton prone to braying pronouncements, might have served the film's emotional architecture more substantially. But that didn't seem to be the point for Trumbo or director George Roy Hill, who seem to be using this narrative to tap into a palpable anger toward the cultural arrogance of Western expansion. An exhausting movie, loaded with things to think about, but with little to enjoy.

The Exiles (1961) +

A beautiful narrative "documentary" -- haunting in its enigmatic, stylized directness -- about the lives of young urban Indians in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. Filmmaker Kent Mackenzie intersperses voiceover interviews, reenactments, and neo-ethnographic footage to weave a startling story depicting 12 hours -- from dusk to dawn -- in the lives of a group of 20something native folk living in the "lost" neighborhood of Los Angeles's Bunker Hill. The folks featured in the film "play" themselves, reenacting scenes from their own lives while also improvising dramatic scenarios in a variety of "real" locations. Mackenzie's technique both hearkens back to early classics of indigenous documentary (like Nanook of the North while also providing a startling premonition for contemporary "candid reality" treatments of youth subcultures in the US (like MTV's The Hills and BET's The Hill). The film opens with a critical prelapsarian view of the ostensible decline of native culture and hegemony in the Western US by the end of the nineteenth century. Sepia-toned Edward Curtis photographs of wizened elders appear in proto-KenBurnsian montage while a generic (ostensibly white) male voice intones homilies about Western expansion and the challenges to the "old ways" etcetera etcetera. This now-familiar mode of critique (Western expansion as destructive force for native cultures and communities) foregrounds what is still today an unfamiliar cinematic narrative: a realistic, empathetic and serious account of the lives of young native people as they maneuver mainstream US culture and maintain (or not) their connections to their traditional/tribal origins. It's a stark, possibly bleak portrait too -- shocking in its frankness regarding alcohol consumption, intimate partner violence, sexuality, poverty, illicit economies, etc. Yet, as bleak as the scenarios often are, Mackenzie somehow maintains an integrity within the project, one which transfers to -- or emerges from -- the subjects. The folks in this film emerge as utterly flawed and yet utterly human. It's curiously thrilling to see all these native folk wearing late 50s fashions, utterly contemporary to their historical moment (mostly shocking for how infrequently I have EVER seen 10-20 distinct US Indian characters on a screen at one time, let alone the rarity of seeing so many such characters inhabit a US cultural moment contemporary to the making of the film). It's a Native-centric film, narrative in its style but documentary in its tone; Mackenzie offers little editorializing, beyond his simple (though importantly critical circa 1961) introductory montage. It's sad, depressing, bleak stuff and, I suspect, had the film been accessible through the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s it would have come in for much criticism (a la Paris Is Burning) for the devastating portrait it provides and/or its "white" gaze and/or its curious formal experimentation. Yet, arriving to critical attention now, nearly 50 years after its production, the film benefits from its nearly archeological aura, easing -- for me at least -- a more empathetic approach to routinely bleak subject matter. I found myself marveling -- "Who knew there was a native nightclub scene in LA in the late 1950s?" -- then correcting myself, "Of course there was, why wouldn't there be?" -- before moving on to marvel again -- "And look at how many folks were living, drinking, laughing and despairing." It's a cinematic treasure of cultural documentation, but it's also a captivating, challenging film. A few things really enthralled me. One, the central female presence in the film, Yvonne (played by Yvonne Williams), is a character unlike any I think I've ever seen on film. A stoic dreamer, hoping that her dreams will be realized but recognizing the odds. Her experience -- just beyond the carousing that absorbs much of the film -- contributes an emotional mooring that's hard to get a handle on, but one that I found absolutely captivating. Second, I loved the way casual details of Indian life -- references to boarding schools, jokes about being photographed by tourists, watching "Injun"-hating Westerns on tv -- just waft through the voiceovers. Again, a rarity. Third, I was truly impressed how Mackenzie incorporated a brief sequence in which another central character, Homer, imagines what his parents and siblings might be doing. The scene provides an unexpected continuity, in which Homer's fondness for his family and his home did not translate into nostalgia (thinks look pretty bleak and everyone's broke back on the rez too) but instead as a point of critical continuity in which the "horizons" for contemporary Indians weren't looking too good on the rez or in the city, but that native community -- as imperfect as it might be -- was the truly sustaining force for Homer in both locales. Fourth, the queer scene -- in which a white queen/faggot/fairy causes a mild stir while dancing (along with several other gays, mostly men of color) at the 2nd, divier bar Homer and Rico hit? The scene is an astonishing cinematic portrait of the swirl of mixed masculinities, sexualities and ethnicities in urban centers at midcentury, the sort of things I've only read about but never seen. Finally, the climax -- if there is one -- of the film comes just after the bars close and everyone heads up to the Hollywood hills somewhere, overlooking the lights of Los Angeles, and a spontaneous inter-tribal powwow party happens, right there encircled by the headlights. This scene is one of the most poignant, profound depictions of how traditions travel and are reinvented I know. It's not cloying, it's not noble, it's not especially spiritual -- but there's something deeply moving about the interplay between tradition and contemporary culture that happens in this sequence. I can't say I loved the film. It's slow; it's full of uncomfortable moments; the inexpert sound-synchronization troubles easy acceptance of the blurred line between verite and artifice (in ways, I suspect, are ultimately quite brilliant). And I also have no idea how the film might "read" to an audience with little exposure to US Indian cultural life and history. Yet I was consistently amazed by this film, as both a film and as a cultural document. It's visually stunning, emotionally challenging, historically important, and cinematically adventurous...obviously, I can't stop thinking about it.

Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) +

A cosmopolitan comedy of manners that feels like a refreshing gust of romantic whimsy. Woody Allen -- formerly the master of the "romcom for New Yorker readers" subgenre -- offers his first genuinely entertaining feature in more than a decade. The film is hyperintelligent (but not baroque), featuring absurdly wealthy/privileged people undertaking absurd adventures. However, unlike the almost great Match Point (where Allen treated British class structures with the fascinated but soulless fetishism of a crabby taxidermist) and the basically awful Anything Else (where Allen seemed intent on reinventing himself with tepid surrogates 60 years his junior), in the Spanish setting of Vicky Christina Barcelona, Allen has rediscovered two of the essential elements that made his best "mature" work so effervescent: the wonderment of an outsider just allowed into an inner circle and a genuine sense of joy. The scenario is classic Allen. Two privileged white women from NY, 20something best friends from childhood, travel to Barcelona for two months of relaxation. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is about to get married to a trader, while Christina (Scarlett Johanssen) is, as she says, "at liberty." Two are elemental opposites -- Vicky knows exactly what she wants, Christina understands precisely what she doesn't want. When a charismatic Spanish painter named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) approaches them both, inviting them both to his bed -- the appeal of the invitation tosses both women into the swirl of overlapping erotic love triangles which create the nominal plot of this basically simple but totally complicated little love poem. The film meditates on a familiar Allen theme: the neurotic terror inspired by the encounter with genuine, profound emotion. The film really starts to make sense when Penelope Cruz arrives on the scene, as Juan Antonio's epic lover, about halfway through the film. Like so many instrumental actresses at the edges of the Allen ouevre (think especially of Maureen Stapleton in Interiors or Hazelle Goodman in Deconstructing Harry), the boldness of Cruz's Maria Elena puts the rest of the familiar scenario into a thrilling bold relief. As MrStinky noted, the film doesn't really make sense until she shows up. And that's sort of the point, I think of the film -- life doesn't always make sense, mostly a series of diversions to keep things amusing or busy, until that one person comes into it that helps it all make sense...and, more existentially, seem actually real. It's a familiar Allen saga, yet one amplified and clarified by Javier Bardem's formidably masculine erotic appeal in the lead role, as well as Penelope Cruz's hilarious, inspiring and heartbreaking verve. Scarlett Johanssen and Rebecca Hall are entirely adequate, though I found myself longing for someone like Maggie Gyllenhaal (or even Gwyneth) in the role of Vicky, someone more American in her angst. Patty Clarkson is gorgeous though a little underutilized as the expatriate "matron" who longs for the opportunities that Vicky has even as she sees Vicky making the same choices she did. The threesome -- the notion that Juan Antonio and Maria Elena's epic love needs a third to temper (or "tint") its perfection -- is a fascinating new wrinkle in Allen's long struggle with the imperative of fidelity, but -- amazingly enough given just how noxious and creepy it could have been given Allen's recent predisposition to terrifying, gross inappropriateness on screen and off -- somehow the whole threesome thing actually makes sense in this film. Vicky Christina Barcelona doesn't quite rank with Allen's best "mature" comedies of romantic manners, but it's truly a delight to see those familiar credits and hear that acute curatorial ear for music and then watch a narrative set in some wealthy fantasy land that is basically fascinating, funny, poignant and delightful. As one who fell in love with the Allen ouevre through Hannah and Her Sisters and Radio Days, it's a refreshing return to grace for one of the greater auteurs of our era.

The Wackness (2008) +

A stealthy comedy about the intimate terror of depression that somehow manages to be brutal in its incisive wit yet absolutely tender in its quiet vulnerability. At its core, the film is about the unlikely friendship forged between a teenager and his therapist. What twists this scenario into surprising shapes is that the teen is a hip-hop obsessed Jewish kid from the upper East side of NYC who makes a good living as a pot dealer and the therapist is one of his most devoted clients (they barter dime bags for therapy time). The other twist? Both men are on the terrifying edge of an identity crisis (coming of age for the teen, mid-life for the shrink) in which they find themselves terribly alone. Josh Peck (late of the Nickelodeon kidcom Nick and Josh) is powerfully brilliant in the teen role of Luke Shapiro. Rarely does a film capture a really good young actor at the moment when he can play both boy and man so convincingly. Peck permits Luke to be a kid and an adult, as appropriate and necessary to the moment, while also refining an emotional core to the person who seems, at times, to be growing before our eyes. In what is one of the most over-rehearsed cinematic genres (the coming of age story), Peck's performance is a glorious rarity -- believably true on both sides of the transformation. Ben Kingsley, as the loopy therapist, is a trip, riffing this way and that as a man who has no idea who he is anymore. Kingsley is, of course, fabulous -- completely strange yet totally real. But it's really Peck who holds this film together -- totally a young actor to watch. (And with the promise of a genuinely beefy beauty that will likely be quite delicious in a couple years, it will be a delight to keep an eye on him.) Olivia Thirlby is great doing her "smarter than she looks" indie girlness; I hope she soon gets a role that asks more of her than being the glorious witness to an easily unappreciated wonder (what she does here as well as in Snow Angels and Juno). Cameos by Mary-Kate Olsen, Jane Adams and Famke Janssen are solid and fun (though I'm dying to see Janssen in a role that gives her something to do). Yet the real breakout star of this film, aside from Josh Peck, is the filmmaker Jonathan Levine. I'm easily bored by films in which the experiential effects of marijuana proves an essential narrative element, but Levine does something really smart here. He uses the incredible amount of pot smokage as a metaphor for depression, for an overwhelming emotional numbness, with pot as a device to blur out what might otherwise be an overwhelming sense of despair (what the film calls "wackness"). But as Peck's Luke begins to truly feel his own emotions the centrality of pot as a feature of who he is begins to shift. This can be seen most literally in the way the film utilizes a hazy color scheme in the first half and slightly warms/brightens as Luke awakens to his own emotions. The film also demonstrates a sublime sense of structure, with a low key narrative style (again the pot vibe) that is amplified by some real jolts of visual verve. (The retro graffiti marking the passage of summer time is a great stylistic choice which would have been pretty fabulous just on its own as a sequencing signpost, but Levine amps it up in August when it signals a hilariously stylized yet absolutely vivid quick passage of time.) All told, it's an artful, unpretentious, witty, humane and stylish coming of age picture, featuring a great soundtrack and a revelatory central performance by Josh Peck.

God Told Me To (1976) +

A completely whackadoo bit of paranormal mystery that somehow manages to spin all those 1970s thriller tropes into one pot of B-movie madness. We've got a renegade cop & paranormally inclined catholics & arbitrary gun violence in the streets & satanic entities & mysterious elite cabals & drug dealing pimps in the ghetto & alien abductions & gender panic...all in a single nonsensical hoot of a movie. The basic premise is this: a sudden wave of seemingly arbitrary killings confounds all of NYC, save the one cop who has serendipitously heard several of the killers offer as explanation, "God told me to." This cop (a prime slab of sideburned 70s studness, Tony Lo Bianco) feels a calling to pursue the mysterious coincidences that might connect these seemingly arbitrary killings. As he begins to piece the puzzle together, he also begins to make sense of his own life. The extraordinary conceit of the film is (SPOILER) that the entity who has compelled the killings is the intersexed progeny of a virgin birth, a birth that may or may not have been the result of an alien abduction. The kicker? The cop might actually be a similar entity. It's whackadoo, really. The entity was born intersex, as the deliverying doctor notes, and bears a set of genitals that seem to be part sphincter, part vagina, part distended clitoris, possessed of what appears to be formidable suction power. Whackadoo. The story makes sense, but in no real compelling way. What elevates this film is how lucidly the whackadoo narrative unfolds, with just enough mystery and suspense to maintain one's interest and just enough clarity so that the whole thing doesn't spin into nonsenseville. It's all ridiculous but it all sorta makes sense by the end. But what really elevates this film is the collection of vivid performances. In the lead role, Tony Lo Bianco is absolutely right on -- hot, masculine, emotionally open, competent, vulnerable. A solid performance and presence. (Plus the scene where you can see the shadow of his bikini briefs through his thin cotton pajama pants -- strangely hot.) The film also features several vivid cameos: Sylvia Sidney as an elderly woman who's lived her entire life holding a secret that Lo Bianco inadvertently elicits; Sandy Dennis as Lo Bianco's estranged wife, patient yet unflinching in her clarity about what's going on; Sammy Williams (the original Paul from the stage A Chorus Line in his single film role), vivid and interesting as the first sniper. (Andy Kaufman has a tiny part as a patrol cop compelled to open fire at the St. Patrick's day parade.) Deborah Raffin is very Deborah Raffin as Lo Bianco's girlfriend. These performances are generally strong and, along with the whackadoo plot twists, helped to keep my interest in this crazy paranormal procedural. It's not a great movie by any means but it's just competent enough AND whackadoo enough to be a an amusing/confounding diversion.

You're A Big Boy Now (1966) -

An at times fascinating comedy detailing the exploits of a nerdy momma's boy as he endeavors to come of sexual age in New York City in the moment just prior to the sexual revolution. Bernard is the coddled son of a overbearing mother (Geraldine Page, deploying her arsenal of neurotic tics in her portrayal of a prissy middle class matron intent on infantilising her nearly adult son, possibly forever) and an absent-minded father (Rip Torn, a prim hoot as a mildly lecherous librarian). Bernard (a vaguely constipated Peter Kastner) is trying to grow up but, between his overbearing parents and his own idiosyncracies, seems unable to bloom. He moves into an apartment building maintained by a 42-year-old virgin, Miss Thing (Julie Harris, incongruously cast in a role better suited for Elsa Lanchester...or Divine). Add two pretty girls to the mix ("introducing" Karen Black as a girl from the neighborhood and Elizabeth Hartman as the obnoxious dream girl) and you've got the makings of a very strange little sex farce. This film -- Francis Ford Coppola's MFA thesis film -- is perhaps mostly interesting for the location shots of NYC in the mid60s; the film is a thrilling visual time capsule of NYC street life circa 1965. My absolute favorite part of the film comes early when Bernard goes on a late night stroll through Times Square, a mildly lurid travelogue of the bookstores and peepshows and novelty shops that were among a man's illicit options. It's an enthralling little glimpse of a NYC that no longer exists. Throughout the film, Coppola captures fascinating scenes, faces and sequences. The film, however, is less fascinating. The story -- clearly a nerdboy's wish fulfillment fantasy -- is less than developed, with all four principal women representing the basic archetypes of femininity (overbearing mother; neurotic spinster/virgin; the girl you wanna marry; the girl you wanna...). These are not women, but "ideas" of women; each each is either the dream, the dream's obstacle, or both. The men don't fare much better -- each an idiot in thrall to the "power" of femininity, to the detriment of their careers, self-respect or basic humanity. It's self-consciously "now" romp about the difficulty of coming to maturity from the playpen of middle class comfort (and, as Mark Harris notes, you can see the influence of this film upon the soon forthcoming The Graduate). It might have been a poignant coming of age sex comedy but lapses to the profound (and/or "the quirk") when it probably should be just funny. Not especially good, not especially bad -- just a strange (and strangely unsatisfying) little picture about sex and the single boy.

The Dark Knight (2008) -

A pompous parable ostensibly examining the elemental/existential battle between good and evil which ends up being a paean to the vicious pleasures of violence. A crowded roster of characters (all A-listeres including Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Gary Oldman) assembles around Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale, doing an astute job of registering the curious somnolence that often attends great privilege). Each of these characters shares Wayne's "secret" double life as Batman and each does their noble part in enabling his charade. (Bale's less effective as Batman largely because his generally finely calibrated line readings are distorted by a Darth Vader voice box effect that nearly obscures whatever the actor's doing.) This assemblage of powerful actors/presences mostly holds the perimeter of the film, maintaining the mythos of the franchise so that this particular adventure might unfold. The real stars of the film are Aaron Eckhart as the right-fighting ADA Harvey Dent and Heath Ledger as the Joker. Both actors are nearly brilliant in the roles, with the effectiveness Ledger's devastating wit as the showstopping Joker slightly outpacing the Eckhart's quiet intensity in the more abstract moralism of Dent's character arc. Whatever I enjoyed about the film, on an emotional level at least, derived from Eckhart and Ledger's generosity in developing these roles. (Though Ledger also gets the prize because his mortifying humor provided the only levity -- albeit pitch black comedy -- the only glimmer of glee in the entirety of this film.) On the level of spectacle, this film is glorious -- wondrous locations, thrilling set pieces (flipping the semi -- a hoot), and often breathtaking digital effects (the Hong Kong abduction -- a thrill). But, on some levels, I take extraordinary effects and action sequences for granted in a film like this. That stuff was great, granted, but -- for me -- that stuff needs to connect to central narrative, an emotional journey, that provides ballast enough so that each action sequence matters to me on an emotional level. And this film failed, miserably, for me in maintaining my emotional and/or empathetic investment. The story, as best as I can tell, examines how violence is almost druglike, something that (when used "appropriately") can have laudatory effects but (when used solely for the thrill or for its own sake) creates an emanating circle of havoc in innocent lives. (And in this moral configuration, The Joker has gone wet-brain, become an abject violence junkie incapable of any moral/sympathetic reasoning except, of course, as a means to amplify his next "fix.") So, for me, it was like the film was saying, "Oxycontin is a horribly powerful narcotic, now let's look at all the ways that Oxycontin is a dangerous drug, even when used by prescription." I get it. I got it. I don't need to appreciate the nuances of when and why to use Oxycontin when I'm already inclined to abstain. (Indeed, I had a feeling throughout this film that was not unlike the queasiness I get whenever I catch a patch of A&E's Intervention, a series that is always only about the gruesomely spectacular collateral wreckage wrought by the addict's single-minded pursuit of a fix. And, here, the three main characters -- Batman, Dent, Joker -- are all maneuvering the thrilling dangers of the same drug of choice -- righteous violence -- with the residents of Gotham caught in the devastating maelstrom.) So, basically, I don't buy the main conceit of the film: that there actually is an invisible line separating good violence from bad violence. I just don't buy it (or the lame-o terrorism shout-outs that help to anchor this moral vacuity). But the tipping point for me was not the fact that The Dark Knight is about violence junkies battling each other for control of the detonator. Nor was it the tedious way in which women don't even register as people in this narrative universe. Nor was it the overlong, overcomplicated story which required 29 different endings. No, the real tipping point into my "violent" loathing of this film came from its reliance on a lazy racial shorthand. Acknowledging that Morgan Freeman's role in this film is important, but also importantly distinct, I was appalled by the film's lazy cynicism in its use of race as a character detail. To begin, the characterization of the black warlord -- impetuous, irrational, clueless -- stands in stark contrast to that of the Italian and the Russian, with the black mob boss's death being much more about the spectacle of his humiliation than any other. Likewise, we are introduced to a Latina judge and a black Police Chief, only to see them killed. Then, the Latino mayor is the target. All the while, allegations of corruption are levied against a Latina detective (whose surname and sick mother become the defining features of her characterization). In the space of this 20 or so minute sequence early on in the film, we are introduced to an array of people of color occupying positions of power and authority, none of whom are demonstrated to be effective leaders. Their killing or near killing instead clears the way for white men to take over to lead the city and/or save the day. The cherry on the cake of this racial nonsense comes nearer the film's conclusion, in one of the 29 or so climactic sequences, when two separate ferries (one loaded with nice middle class people, the other loaded with vicious criminals, each boat a multiracial microcosm) are delivered a Faustian challenge. On the criminal ship, the film takes great fascinated pleasure in perusing the giant, tattooed body of one black inmate as the barometer of that ship's basest instinct. That the film ultimately plays this easy visual joke for the obverse matters little; the whole point of the sequence is that this character is big, scary, black and male and that a mere glance at him can amplify the tension. It's lazy storytelling, drawing upon easy but not uncomplicated racial shorthand -- and emblematic of how the film approaches race throughout. And, while my "racial" critique of the film might strike some as off-point, the casual racialism that imbued the construction of these secondary characters convinced me that this film wasn't the sophisticated ethical meditation that its accumulation of overwrought moral monologues might suggest. No, this was just another story about how black and brown folk can't be trusted to lead the cities, about how the Chinese can't be trusted with all the cash, about how women don't really matter, about how narratives of colonialist domination really do hold the answers to our current crises, and about how little white boys are, in the end, the most precious human resource. All of which, in the logic of this telling, makes the burden of white male privilege even heavier. And I'm expected to feel sorry for the poor, poor Batman? Didn't happen. Not at all. Something did make me sad, though: That such an amazingly crafted action thriller was perched so stubbornly atop a narrative of such corrosive cynicism. That is very sad, very very sad.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) +

By turns unbearable and entrancing, Mike Nichols's adaptation of the Albee play is brilliant in its visual elaborations of the script's play between lightness and darkness, the sharp turns between gruesome intimacies and garish displays. I remain impressed at just how much these people drink, as well as how organic the elliptical abstractions in the dialogue actually are. This time through I was impressed at how simple the dramaturgy of the piece is -- it's a simple reversal of fortune drama, in which we watch as the characters "on top" at the beginning of the narrative slowly lose control to the seemingly "lesser" figures in the piece. The geometry is palpable: a slowly shifting trapezoid. The marvel of this piece comes from the casting. It's an extraordinary chamber piece between these four actors. Though I guess Albee really loves Burton in the role, I can't help but feel he's a little too ballsy; I never believe him as both victim and victimizer (which I do Taylor) but he's great. Taylor and Sandy Dennis are elemental in the roles; I'm not always convinced by them but they make fireworks happen. Only George Segal -- who holds himself well -- seems really wrong (Beatty or Redford would have made much more sense). Segal, for me, doesn't convey the uncomplicated sense of entitlement that I think Nick carries. Indeed, this time through I was impressed at how much the character of Nick is absolutely essential to this piece. He's the one who begins the evening with the clearest sense of himself and how he plans to get exactly what he wants from everyone he sees. By the end of the evening, Nick's begun to catch a glimpse of how everything's much more vicious and nasty than he assumed. This is not a revelation to anyone other than Nick, which makes his contribution to the piece really important. This time through I was also impressed at how savvy/instinctual Honey is in her apprehension of the games being played. She "gets it" long before Nick does and it's a fascinating layer to the piece. (The way that Honey allies with George after Nick's betrayal -- so immediate, so efficient, so adept -- is perhaps the most interesting human facet of the piece.) About Nichols's work, I love how he uses the camera to replicate the unease of violations of personal space. This is about the only film I can think of in which anxieties of "conversational distance" are so dynamically manipulated by the camera. He pulls back when it's time for the spectacle and zooms in when the intimacy needs to be overwhelming. It's smart, amazing, intense work from a first time film director. And that it maintains such a dynamic, chiaroscuro visual sensibility -- as things, people, ideas fade into and out of the darkness -- is all the more impressive. Haskell Wexler's work in this film is astonishing. All that said, I don't love the film. I admire it a lot, sure, but there's something emotionally off about the piece (I blame it on Burton, somehow -- always holding something back). Indeed, I found myself meditating on alternate/contemporary castings. (I really wanted to set one at an HBC, maybe with Fishburne and S. Epatha, opposite Anika Noni Rose and some excellent young black actor in his late 20s.) But it's a deservedly "great" film, one that's emotionally and aesthetically compelling every time I see it.

Calamity Jane (1953) -

A silly little musical that is somehow both a riff on the legend of Calamity Jane and a vehicle for Doris Day. Day, never much known for her ability as a character actress, goes all out in the title role, twitching and snarling and "mispronunciating" words and speechifyin' like a polecat with a toothache. Or something like that. The narrative scenario is fairly simple: The saloon in Deadwood needs a female headliner and Day's Calamity jaunts to Chicago to retrieve a pretty actress. Katie, the girl she returns to Deadwood, however, is an actress's maid, with great dreams of a life on the stage but little talent. Calamity defends Katie's right to dream and the two end up sharing Calamity's run down shack, which they "prettify" with "A Woman's Touch." Some run-of-the-mill romantic intrigue manifests once Calamity gets pretty and it seems that the course of true love threatens to ruin Calamity and Katie's friendship. Ultimately, the right girl matches with the right boy, Katie and Calamity reestablish their friendship, and the whole thing ends in a double-wedding. The end. The whole thing is a nearly negligible mid50s musical diversion but for two things: 1) Doris Day's formidable charm and 2) the undeniably queer relationship between Calamity and Katie. Calamity's the butch and Katie's the femme and the narrative depends upon their mutual connection, despite the heterosexualizing alibis of the male paramours (Howard Keel's Buffalo Bill and Philip Cary's Lieutenant). Allyn McLerie (known previously to me mostly as Mr Carlson's devoted wife Carmen on WKRP in Cincinnati) makes it clear that she prioritizes her relationship with Calamity above all others. Their first scene -- in which Day's Calamity stares and comments upon Katie's/McLerie's exposed flesh with unapologetic fascination and awe, in which McLerie's Katie mistakes Day/Calamity for a man and relaxes with flirtatious fascination once she discovers that Calamity's a woman -- is perhaps the most delightful distillation of lesbian pleasure I know in a musical from this era. The potential for queer readings are run throughout this film, from the dolled up dame who flirts with Calamity on the streets of Chicago to the dandyish Lieutenant to the drag/travesty number by the mildly effeminate performer who first takes the stage in Deadwood. Yet the most powerful evocation of the narrative's queerness comes in the musical's final number when Doris Day sings the Oscar-winning song, "Secret Love" -- one of the most poignant and palpably queer ballads I know. Yeah yeah, the ladies get married off to the men in the end -- but note how the moment of true reconciliation and emotional actualization comes when Calamity stops Katie's stagecoach from leaving Deadwood. The romantic, emotional and erotic core of this silly little musical is invested in the Katie/Calamity relationship and the pleasures of it are delightful. (A butch/femme romance complete with a shared musical interlude in which the two women revel in each other's company, titled -- of all things -- "A Woman's Touch". The lyrics of the song may be an ode to conventional feminine domesticity but the notion of the number: two women setting up a household together while singing to one another about the pleasures of "A Woman's Touch" --- delicious oblique lesbian pleasures if you ask me.) It's not a remarkable film, but the lesbian possibilities implicit in its narrative scenario remain a curious delight.

The Car (1977) -

A driverless car terrorizes a small Southwestern town, killing those who piss it off. The premise of this 70s goof horror pic is the terror of aggressive drivers, the sort who use their vehicles as a tool for bullying. Of course, the bully here is the devil, an invisible entity who takes the wheel of a lowriding tank of a vehicle. For no particular reason, the car nears a small southwestern town (apparently on, or adjacent to, the Navajo nation) and begins a killing spree. The car seems, at first, to target those simple symbols of mid1970s cultural change: giddy young adults riding bikes (instead of driving cars), disrespectful hitchhikers (playing strange instruments), and mouthy broads. (Indeed, the only mature white men killed by the car are authority figures who might impede the car's killing spree; the other victims -- symbols of youth culture or sexually active, "liberated" women -- are killed it seems for sport.) James Brolin & his formidable porn 'stache bring the sexy as Brolin portrays the small-town, single-dad sheriff's deputy who suddenly finds himself with a several-ton serial killer on his hands. Brolin's great at uncomplicated b-movie masculine charisma and his presence somehow both elevates the film and keeps it right where it's s'posed to be. (Ronny Cox does less well as another deputy, an emotionally fragile man with 2-years sobriety who relapses when the car comes to town and whose inaction contributes to one of the film's main set pieces: the car's assault on a school parade rehearsal.) Kathleen Lloyd is fine as the female lead (and her death-by-car is perhaps the most dramatic/hilarious of the film). The film is entirely adequate to its purposes, though the mystery of who's actually driving the car is fairly oblique, with little in the way of direct payoff; a giant fiery explosion in the film's climactic sequence provides our only view of the evil (in the form of a flaming face with a long tongue). The film does an entirely ok job delivering on the anxious fear of the premise. (The filmmakers seem to have a great time with the 2-beat car horn, reminiscent of a semi-truck's horn, as this film's little contribution to making something very "everyday" into something that instigates abject terror.) The cast is game. It's fun to see Melody Scott Thomas, best known as Nikki from tv's The Young and the Restless (a role she has played for most of the 30 years since this film was made), as the car's first fatality (not to mention Kim Richards -- aka Tia of Escape from Witch Mountain -- as one of the Brolin daughters.) The car -- a combo of old school gangster and contemporary low rider -- is scary; I found the big fat tires totally freaky for some reason. Cute, entertaining and strange little fright flick.