Carrie (1976) +

What to say about this movie...this movie that is a component part of me. Two things come to mind. First: Every time I watch this I'm reminded how much I adore Sissy Spacek's performance...funny, sweet, real, terrifying. There are some imperfections along the way but jeepers. She's good. Second: This film may well be one of the foundational films for my obsession with supporting actressness. There are just so many excellent actresses at the edges...I could likely devote a profile to each of them. Piper Laurie and Betty Buckley and Amy Irving, of course. (Each time I watch this I realize, as something of a surprise, just how good Amy Irving is. The film would simply not work without the emotional clarity established by her work in the role.) But in addition to the obvious contenders, I also adore Nancy Allen as the awful Chris, not to mention the astonishing inclusion of Edie McClurg as Helen. For reasons I don't at all understand, I also just thrill at Priscilla Pointer's Mrs. Snell in this. (Indeed, the only female performance I don't like is P.J. Soles.) What's more is that, this time through, I was captivated by a performance I had barely noticed before, that of the girl who sorta takes Carrie under her wing at the prom. Really simple, really effective throughout. I haven't yet taken the time to discern the character/actor name yet. But it sorta proves my point that this film really hollers to my fetish for actresses at the edges. It's just loaded with interesting women and the boys just are nowhere near as (a) important or as (b) interesting. I also totally connect to this film as a parable of queerness, in much the same ways that I connect to X-Men 2. I just love this movie, and could watch it over and over and over again. What's nice is that I now have the 2002 made-for-tv version that I like a lot too... I love this movie.

Taxi Driver (1976) +

A grueling and frank examination of the collateral damage wrought by stunted masculinity. This ür-text of the modern crisis of masculinity hinges upon the feral, elemental performance of Robert De Niro, whose characterization of the emotionally crippled Vietnam vet Travis Bickle remains a marvel of cinematic method acting. Yet the film falls into relief for me in the relationship that's established between De Niro's Travis and Jodie Foster's Iris, the child prostitute who instigates a fundamental shift in Travis's approach to the world. Basically, my read of this film is that Iris and Travis function as gendered embodiments of the film's core indictment of 1970s society. On the one hand, we have Travis, who's an adult man with no prospects, despite having been trained to be a killing machine by the same society that has no interest or investment in his future. On the other, we have Iris, a white girl child peddling her only assets (her sexuality) on the streets. When we see these two come together, in the strangely haunting "date" in the diner, we see that the two are basically peers -- emotionally compatible adolescents who aren't bad people (despite their respective skill at perpetrating violence or sex) but that they're lost in a society that's just not paying attention. Of course, on this point, the fact that the whole film operates with a major political campaign calling for change even as the city of New York seems to be decaying before our eyes -- it helps to make the point. This time through the film, I found it really profound how Travis was a character that was so socially stunted (he actually thinks that a porn movie is an appropriate first date) even as he had access to all the (anti)social privileges attending his adult, white maleness. I loved how Iris and Travis find their way to each other through the received language of respectable dating and how both are grasping for a future. I was also struck in screening this film this time that I had entirely forgotten the coda -- the fact that neither Travis nor Iris die in the devastation of the final shootout, that the film ends with both beginning life again. I'm told that the filmmakers saw the conclusion as leaving Travis cocked, a live wire ready to explode at any moment, and I don't see that as being not true. However, among a batch of films with largely largely dystopic conclusions, I was struck that the most dystopic film among them all actually had the most optimistic ending. It's an amazing film, rife with the most vicious misogyny -- yet something about the combined efforts of Foster and DeNiro elevate this film as one worth revisiting from time to time. (If only Cybill Shepherd weren't also part of the bargain...ack.)

Zoo (2007) -

Hmm. An abstracted, ostensibly poetic documentary treatment of the sensational story of a Washington state man who died of internal injuries after his colon was ruptured while he was being anally penetrated by an Arabian stallion. The film takes a highly stylized approach to the subject, using heavily shadowed and obliquely filmed reenactments, overlaid with overlapping generally unidentified voiceovers, to sculpt a narrative portrait of both the situation and "the scene" of contemporary zoophilia. As a film, it's generally well done, and thoughtfully so. And yet I'm left wondering what the film actually accomplishes. The narrative styling shrouds the scenario in such mystery -- if I hadn't read the summary I don't know when I would have clued into what actually happened -- so that the film sorta gets off easy when the narrative (available from any newspaper account) finally falls into place: the narrative satisfaction of finally seeing the contours of the story ends up, to my mind at least, feeling more substantial than it actually is. Likewise, the voice of the horse rescue person (the single featured female voice in the film) ends up bearing a curious weight as she ponders what she describes as being "at the edge of understanding" zoophilia. The aural distinctiveness of her "normal" and female voice at the edges of this shadowy world of male perverts ends up lending a strangely substantial freight to her basically banal insight: they loved their critters and took that love farther than I would ever imagine. I find the film disappointing for the way it takes this fascinating story and boils it down to banalities. Are "zoo" folk kinksters? Or queers? Or predators? What of this subculture of kinship among erotic outcasts? How do these guys maneuver their erotic interests in relation to other more conventional sexual identities? What are the dimensions of "zoo" culture? Is it an exclusively male preserve? Are there refined distinctions between watchers and doers? (I'm especially struck by the fact that guys from the scene paid for "Coyote" to come out from West Virginia, as well as the fact that the one guy really needed MrHands to come out that night.) We get glancing glimpses of some of the dimensions of the subculture but the film's formal strategy does not oblige any real exploration. Instead, we get a ponderously pensive (and I would suggest blandly superficial) meditation on these themes, one which affords few insights. It's too bad, really. A fascinating story diminished by a skittish/squeamish documentary treatment.

Recount (2008) +

A witty docudrama narrating the internecine complexities of 2000 presidential vote in Florida. Kevin Spacey holds the center with unobtrusive aplomb, creating a just-intriguing-enough center of gravity for the scores of other characters that are efficiently and effectively established throughout the piece. Spacey holds but does not overtake that center, something I wouldn't necessarily have anticipated him to be so capable of doing. Tom Wilkinson is effective but oddly cast as James Baker; John Hurt is creepily effective as the ineffective Warren Christopher; and Laura Dern is both humane and a hoot in her characterization of Katherine Harris. (About Dern's Harris: I appreciate the humanity of Dern's approach to this loony, over-the-top gorgon of a character. I'm also impressed at how illuminating Dern's work is, especially given that she developed this characterization just prior to the emergence of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann on the national scene.) Though the film does, I think, hew to a Gore-disposition on the crisis, I still admire the measured dexterity of director Jay Roach and screenwriter Danny Strong in developing an approach to the situation which is at once thorough, equitable and funny. Somehow, amidst the myriad narrative threads and heated political rhetoric, the filmmakers are able to maintain what is, for me, a sustaining light and satiric tone. The film is somehow utterly hilarious, completely informative and mostly without meanness. The film depicts the conflict over the Florida votes as, in some ways, an inaugural moment for a new millenial style of electioneering. And Spacey and Wilkinson establish themselves easily as formidable yet worthy adversaries. I really liked the way the film folded in archival news footage, casting actors in ways that felt accurate without ever lapsing toward a lame impression. The chorus of tv news voices provided a fascinating "way in" to the story, each little interpellation or montage an efficient evocation of that particular mode in the historical story. At the same time, the news footage amplified both the suspense and the irony of the story as it was being told. It's a really effective example of how to incorporate media footage in ways beyond simple illustration; here, the footage amplifes and accelerates the narrative. (I'm realizing that this film is likely the closest thing to All the President's Men that we yet have for the BushII era.) The film is diverting, by turns hilarious and horrifying -- a fascinating piece of political filmmaking.

The Duchess (2008) -

An at times visually captivating account of thwarted female independence corseted as a bodice-ripping biopic. Keira Knightley stars as Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire, a high-spirited young woman stultified in her "successful" marriage to an emotionally stunted nobleman. This film fully establishes, at least for me, the dimensions of Knightley's appeal. She reminds me of Julia Roberts in the early 1990s: megawatt star charisma with some real gifts for conveying a particular variety of proto-feminist spunk that appeals easily to men and women. Knightley is not the most agile actress but, like Julia Roberts, she's extraordinarily skilled at winning my emotional allegiance. I may not be that interested in her character. I may not even like her character. But somehow I find that I'm always rooting for her character. It's a particular stripe of star quality and Keira Knightley is increasingly wearing it with ease. (She also wears clothes really well, her rail thin frame an apparently ideal coat-hanger for costume epics of all periods.) For some time now, MrStinky and I have been calling this film "the dirty q-tip movie" because, on first glance, Knightley reminded me of a life-sized q-tip what with those trapezoidal hair concoctions and all. Unfortunately, neither the costumes nor Knightley's charisma were able to maintain my interest in the film. Indeed, aside from one neo-lesbian moment, some glimpses of some tasty manflesh, and a truly excellent scene in which Knightley's Duchess gets really trashed, crashes into a chandelier and catches her wig on fire -- aside from such incidental pleasures, the film was exhaustively tedious. The novelistic biopic approach enervated any sense of dramatic urgency and, coming not long after Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, the neo-feminist conundrum of the drama failed to hold much in the way of discovery. Knightley's Georgiana is a privileged rich girl flummoxed when sold into a loveless marriage and burdened with the task of producing a male heir. Knightley carries the film relatively well, but the narrative doesn't permit us to do much more than root for her as she discovers the lessons of compromise chart maturity. The most interesting narrative thread in the film -- Georgiana's acceptance of her husband's long devotion to Georgiana's friend Lady Elizabeth -- remains a startling fact of the narrative and not especially well explored. (Neither Knightley nor the film are given much of an assist by Hayley Atwell who wafts wanly through the role of a lifetime. Atwell's character is the sort capable of getting me all thrilled and Atwell very nearly squanders the role.) Likewise, Charlotte Rampling as the Duchess's status obsessed mother is also completely banal. British hunk of the moment Dominic Cooper is sultry and swarthy and delectable as the Duchess true love, Charles Grey, but the young actor does little in this role that we haven't seen with more texture elsewhere. Among the principal supporting players only Ralph Fiennes (in what might be argued to be the male lead but feels more like a supporting role) delivers the genre pleasures of the piece in addition to an extraordinary and complicated performance. His awful Duke of Devonshire -- arrogant, greedy, selfish, emotionally stunted -- emerges as perhaps the most fascinating character in the piece because of Fiennes lucid and empathetic performance. Fiennes allows Devonshire to be the arrogant, selfish, elitist prick that he is without forfeiting the character's humanity. It's really great supporting actor work and, without Fiennes, the film would devolve into a cinematic version of a museum display case. It's a pretty film with some great details (and one great "wig on fire" scene) but the lack of dramatic urgency makes the whole enterprise basically tedious.

All the President's Men (1976) +

An exceedingly well-crafted cinematic treatment of a fundamentally uncinematic story. The film tells the putative historic tale of two up-and-coming investigative reporters at The Washington Post as they begin to uncover the massive campaign of corruption and deceit for which the break-in at the Watergate hotel was but the tip of the iceberg. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are basically excellent as reporters Woodward and Bernstein, with Redford's easy rumpled charm working as an apt foil for Hoffman's slightly more clueless and aggressive style. The two are surrounding by a raft of excellent supporting players -- ranging from Ned Beatty to Polly Holliday to Lindsay Crouse to Stephen Collins -- in basically bit roles. (The guys at the paper, especially Jack Warden and Sam Robards, are less dynamic, if more central to the action of the piece.) The film deploys a variety of creative visual staging techniques -- angled overhead shots of cramped interiors, radical close-ups of mundane actions, inventive use of shadow to amplify tension -- to make this really dense puzzler of a tale visually compelling. Yet, I found that I really didn't have to "watch" the film to maintain my investment in the narrative (which speaks to the dexterity of the screenplay). Perhaps the most startling thing to me about this film is how tame the misdeeds seem today. Who'da thunk Watergate would one day seem so quaint? Another thought I had was how much information this film presumed its audience to already know/understand; the film at times seemed to presume that the audience knew the bold outlines of the story and that the film's task was to provide additional texture and shading. An interesting enough treatment of an interesting political moment.

Bigger Stronger Faster* [*The Side Effects of Being American] (2008)

A radically informative -- and breathtakingly heartfelt -- documentary exploration of steroids in late 20th century (and early 21st century) American culture. Filmmaker Christopher Bell endeavors to take steroid use seriously as a moral question: is it ok to use performance enhancing chemicals to achieve your goals? His answer is somewhat surprising, although not surprising at all: In America, you've got to do whatever it takes to achieve your goals -- whatever...it...takes. The film is loaded with data that will likely forever shift my simple assumptions about steroid use (basically, it's really complicated and the data is not conclusive about the risks of steroids). The film also demonstrates that steroid use is utterly conventional in all sectors of the fitness industries. Moreover, the film makes the somewhat radical move to situate steroid use within a broader context of chemical/medical performance enhancements (Tiger Woods' lasik surgery, classical musicians use of beta blockers to alleviate performance anxiety, porn performers use of viagra, student use of adderall to enhance concentration, mandatory use of amphetamines by US fighter pilots). It's a broad reaching and incredibly informative film. Yet what makes the film so effective is Christopher Bell's startling frankness in sharing his own story, as well as that of his two brothers, and their collective journey with the pressures to succeed that steroid use seems to provide an answer to. It's in the personal stories of the three Bell brothers that the human impact of steroid use becomes most vivid. The distorted vision of success that gets layered into the level of achievement embodied by the physique. All three brothers -- entering or well in their thirties -- are encountering the first real blast of maturity -- the awareness that not all dreams can be realized. For each of them, this occasions a different kind of crisis: the eldest is still pursuing his dream of becoming a superstar professional wrestler (even at the expense of his family and his health); the youngest is finally getting off the juice to let his body rejuvenate so he can produce enough healthy sperm to father another kid; and the middle is making this movie. And the parents: sweet, devoted, religious working class parents who are devastated by their son's battles with self-esteem and recurring reliance on steroids. Christopher Bell folds his family's ongoing journey with steroid use into the texture of the film with a heartfelt frankness -- it's just heartbreaking at times. Yet, at the same time, this unflinching look at a basically normal family's struggle with this "drug" helps to really moor the more informational jaunts that the film takes along its journey (whether to congress, to the fitness industry, to Olympic doping scandals, etc). Christopher Bell also takes a really admirable approach: he's absolutely certain that there's a problem here but he's utterly suspicious of all the conventional wisdom available to address the problem. Plus he's a seemingly really nice guy with an adorably sweet babyface. So even as he cuts through the bullshit, it never feels abrasive or manipulative but almost preternaturally sincere. As such, we get a brilliantly instructive array of perspectives on the subject and Christopher emerges as a really trusty guide through the weeds of this unanticipatedly complicated contemporary phenomena. Smart, humane, generous and radically instructive. A great little film, built in the style of Farenheit 9/11 or Religulous but demonstrating a humane generosity that neither of those more acclaimed films were able to sustained. One of those thrillingly rare documentaries that fundamentally alters how I perceive a contemporary controversy.

Voyage of the Damned (1976) -

A well-intentioned treatment of a devastating historical tragedy. The film takes on one of the most morbidly cynical instances of Nazi propaganda: sending a luxury liner loaded with exiled elite and middle class Jews from Hamburg to Havana with the expectation that they would be refused entry to Cuba or U.S., and thus "make the point" that no nation wanted the Jews and so fortify the ideological/propaganda claims for the efficacy of the Nazi's "final solution." The film endeavors to demonstrate this conscious, cynical manipulation of humanity through the largely fictionalized retelling of the historical tale. A vast cast of diversely celebrated actors inhabits the 20 or so roles and the film works steadfastly to maneuver these many storylines while amplifying the dramatic tension of a narrative which most audience-members would likely know or anticipate the outcome. The results are mixed largely, I suspect, because the film becomes a strange fusion of genres. By the mid-1970s, vast casts had accomplished critical and popular success on two main fronts: disaster epics and Agatha Christie mysteries. In many ways, this film feels like The Poseidon Adventure or Murder on the Orient Express with lots of noteworthy actors essaying a broad array of distinctive characters. Yet in this film, the murder is genocidal and the disaster is in the abstract -- so the genre pleasures of a disaster flick or a murder mystery are gone, making the work of this narrative feel like work. The film feels so overwhelmed by the sense of impending doom that it's hard to know where to position oneself as an audience member. Making things worse is that the acting styles are comparably incongruent -- lots of Actor's Studio types (Lee Grant, Nehemiah Persoff, Luther Adler, Julie Harris) mixed in with folks like Malcolm McDowell, Wendy Hiller and Jonathan Pryce who are all being presided over by the Faye Dunaway, Max Von Sydow, and Oskar Werner (with Ben Gazzara, Orson Welles and Jose Ferrer tossed in the mix just for fun). The cast is vast and often fascinating but rarely brought to stylistic coherence. Instead the film becomes a curious kaleidoscope of different glimpses into different characters and, once again, it's left to the audience to piece it all together. Two things stand out to me in reflecting on the film. First, there seems to be an argument going on within the film about the psychology of victimization (perhaps most neatly embodied by the two camp escapees played by Jonathan Pryce and Aaron Pozner). The film seems to be rehearsing the tension between the options available to Jews in the face of mounting Nazism: standing up against the tyranny or trying to disappear for fear that you might be next. This tension -- respond with pride or react with fear -- are (a) both shown to be basically inadequate and (b) both teased out with more sophisticated nuance in the different approaches to the crisis embodied by the Kreislers (Dunaway and Werner) and the Rosens (Lee Grant, Sam Wanamaker, and Lynne Frederick). The film tacitly takes the side of pride (not the most precise word but it's what I have right now) but empathetically details the psychic costs of living in fear that it might be you next. Sam Wanamaker's Carl Rosen experiences a paranoid psycotic break; Frederick's Anna opts for a suicide pact; and Grant's Lili is first brittle and then broken with grief. I find this duality interesting as a first wave of pop cultural/pop psychological explanations of the emotional reaction to the historical phenomenon of Nazi fascism. Seems to twine well with psychoanalytic tropes as well as with much of the Actor's Studio basic approach to things. The second thing I found interesting is how vivid Katharine Ross was in her two scene role as a young woman working as a prostitute in Havana as a means to help her parents escape. In her two scenes, Ross delivers what so few of the other performers do: a legible characterization animated by palpable emotion. (Gazzara, McDowell and Von Sydow aren't bad either on this same front, but their characterizations are a touch less vivid.) I've been struggling to figure out why so few of the scenes in this film were able to develop the kind of emotional clarity that Ross was able to inject in her scenes. She's not the most sophisticated actress but she is emotionally present and fairly guileless as a performer; perhaps as a result, I never lost sense of what was at stake in Ross's scenes. A lot happens in both, from a plot perspective, yet those plot points are vividly alive in a way that comparably dense scenes elsewhere in the film are simply not. In some ways, it seems as if the film is relying on its historical facticity to inject empathy into the characters, as though director Stuart Rosenberg doesn't want to meddle in the crafting of performances. Unfortunately, the lack of a coherent, emotional texture among the performances makes this film unfortunately tendentious. This story might have been emotionally eviscerating; in this numbed out telling, it's a historical shockudrama with unfortunately blunted impact. A fascinating failure of a film.

Religulous (2008) +/-

A consistently fascinating, and intermittently illuminating, comparative excavation of religious dogma by über-snarkster Bill Maher. Basically, Maher & Co. endeavor to "take seriously" what religious folk in the three major western religions profess to believe by asking, with apparent sincerity, them to explain some of the logical gaps in their tradition's theology. Intellectually, Maher adopts a fairly conventional posture: the rationalist's inquiry into conundrum of faith. Cinematically/Performatively, he uses the basic shtick of Borat and/or Michael Moore: placing himself in improbable situations and asking possibly impolite questions and thus allowing the answerer to dig their own holes. The problem is, as a comedian who's built his whole persona on being a very intelligent but basically arrogant prick, Maher can't resist jumping in to snidely interrogate his subjects as they spin their answers. (Maher & Co do this on a visual level as well, interposing quick visual edits to mock the reasoning of their interviewees -- with varying comic effectiveness -- or by imposing supertitles over the action on the screen -- with similarly unpredictable effect.) My reaction to the film was decidedly mixed. The project seems utterly worthwhile. At it's core, the film is an attempt to "take the piss out of" one of the most banal certitudes of contemporary public discourse: that being religious is good, and that whatever someone believes as a part of their "faith" is off-limits from civil critique/discussion. I find myself in absolute agreement that, as religious discourse becomes an increasingly ubiquitous feature of contemporary public life, it makes no sense to place "matters of faith" off limits. This film underscores both how risky such a proposition is even as it also demonstrates how necessary it is. At the same time, Maher&Co. frame the whole project a little dishonestly. On the one hand, Maher&Co claim to seek the coherence in these disparate religious doctrines even as they target some clearly iconoclastic sources as their experts (ie. the anti-zionist Jews, the minister who as a former pop singer, a random senator, the leader of religion devoted to pot-smoking, the guy who plays Jesus at a theme park called "HolyLand"). This strategy is cheap and basically lame, though it does make for some pre-John Steward Daily Show squirminess/entertainment. The film does an entirely adequate job confirming what we already know: religious doctrine is rife with internal contradictions and doesn't always make sense. Big whoo. And it seems to me that where the film really misses an opportunity is in exploring how/why folks choose to reconcile religious doctrine in their own lives -- basically, Maher&Co skip over the whole "spirituality" piece in their own "self-fulfilling prophecy" of über-rationalism. (Indeed, I wonder if the guy studying the religious brain might have had something to contribute on this score.) Indeed, by maintaining his own über-rationalism, Maher ends up talking mostly only to folks who are trying to rationalize their religious beliefs, which just makes them look goofy while doing little else. I do appreciate Maher's basic advocacy for "I don't know" -- his preaching the gospel of "I don't know" -- in the face of religious certitude but honestly don't think that's what he spends most of his time in this film doing. A fascinating but basically unsatisfying exercise.

Strait-Jacket (1964) +

This stranger than strange little "hag horror" genre piece pitches Joan Crawford as a possibly insane former ax murderer against the perils of a new life on a farm somewhere east of Riverside. The conceit is nominally simple: Lucy (Joan Crawford, playing a character who shares her birth name of Lucille) is married to a cheating younger man, who thinks nothing of staging his drunken assignations in front of their young daughter while his wife is out of town. Crawford's Lucy arrives home one evening to discover the husband in bed with a floozy. Devastated (and possibly drunk), Lucy does the sensible thing: she takes an ax and whacks off the noggins of both hubbie and floozy, right in front of little traumatized daughter. Lucy goes to the crazyhouse; traumatized daughter Carol grows up to be a pretty girl, a talented scuptress and betrothed to the town's most eligible wealthy bachelor. Then, Lucy comes home and complications ensue. Lucy behaves erratically, especially when Carol dresses her up in improbable outfit and asks her to act as if the last 20 years had never happened. Lucy's especially loopy around sharp objects and it becomes suspicious when first a visiting doctor and then a hired hand begin to disappear. But the real question: will Lucy's insanity and possibly continuing criminality lead to the end of Carol's promising romance with the delicious John Anthony Hayes. I won't spoil it, as the tricksy resolution of the conflict remains a treat to watch unfold no matter how many times you see the film. Suffice it to say that the story is a mix of Mildred Pierce and Gaslight and Psycho, all knotted in one ugly wig. The film is loaded with cheap thrills. Red herrings and shrieking sound effects provide reliable jolts. The fetishization of (and lurid attention to) sharp objects offer additionally startling shocks. But the real pleasure of the film comes in the oddly sincere performances especially from La Crawford, Diane Baker as the daughter, and Edith Atwater as the awful mother of delicious boyfriend. (George Kennedy, too, as a ratty hired hand is a hoot, and Howard St. John is absolutely perfect at the boy's father.) The reliably bad Leif Erickson does not disappoint here. Diane Baker is great throughout, playing a perfect Sandra Dee kinda of character before things get really out of hand (and the way Baker says "insane" in the climactic sequence: buh-rilliant.) This movie is stunt-casting, stunt-horror, stunt-stunt-stunt...but my impression is that Castle hoped for this to be a bid for legitimacy and there is a sincerity and genuine artful aspiration here that makes this an enduringly odd camp classic. Indeed, any movie that culminates in dueling Joan Crawfords is an enduring gift, possibly for all time. Brilliantly bad, b-movie delight.

Burn After Reading (2008) +

A giddy, gruesome comic caper demonstrating the Coen brothers at full strength. The film gathers a pile of excellent actors, some absurdly precise characters and turns them loose in an elaborately intricate little puzzler about grandiosity and deception. Some of the actors fare better than others. John Malkovich is having a blast as a self-impressed alcoholic intelligence analyst named Osborne Cox; Frances McDormand knows exactly what she's doing as Linda Litske, the personal trainer desperate for elective cosmetic surgery; and J.K. Simmons is pitch perfect as an über-practical CIA boss. MrStinky loved Brad Pitt as the delightedly dim-witted personal trainer Chad and I was impressed at how well Brad Pitt did his impression of a B-list "Brad Pitt type." George Clooney is strangely attractive in one of his least elegant roles in years, though his comic pitch slides in and out of tune fairly conspicuously depending on the scene. Tilda Swinton inhabits her cold-hearted pediatrician role with characteristically electric verve but, for some reason, stops short of coloring beyond the lines given her. I was least impressed with David Rasche as the Malkovich's immediate CIA superior, who seemed to have little sense of tone or style despite playing most scenes opposite Simmons. And perhaps most interesting of all was Richard Jenkins, as the goodguy/sadsack guy who has it bad for McDormand's Linda. The Coens deploy Jenkins in a way that shows how smart they are at doing this kind of movie. Jenkins plays the only character to wear his heart on his sleeve, the only one whose motives we don't doubt. As such, he contributes an essential simplicity to the increasingly convoluted storyline. Moreover, his fundamental integrity, when counterposed to Linda Litske's singleminded selfish obsessions, provides a near constant reminder that we won't get an easy romcom way out of this set of amplifying messes. I don't know that I loved the film, but I really found it utterly surprising and continuously captivating. I also really enjoyed it as a meditation on the perils of grandiosity. Most of these characters are really really content being who they are and are absolutely confident that they deserve better. Nearly all are completely self-obsessed, believing that they are really really important. All of which makes for all kinds of farcical misapprehensions with increasingly devastating consequences when these characters begin to believe that they are being surveilled. An expertly crafted diversion. It might not be a great film, but it's made by great filmmakers, which makes it pretty darn good.

Network (1976) +

A prescient dystopic satire depicting the devolution of American culture as demonstrated by what's to be found in the idiot box. William Holden plays Max Schumacher, an old school television journalist, who's an executive at UBS (a fictional 4th network in the era of the big 3 which, at least as depicted here, proves a startling premonition of the FOX network) and who's utterly flummoxed by the trends directing television programming in the contemporary (ie. mid1970s) moment. The film charts Max's journey -- as an increasingly devastated everyman -- through this pop cultural wasteland via his defining relationships with the other two leads in the picture: Academy Award winners Peter Finch as a stentorian old anchordude Howard Beale who's gone of his rocker to become a kind of savant propet of contemporary dismay and Faye Dunaway as the man-eating, scene-devouring hyper-ambition proto-Yuppie female executive Diana Christensen, who's libido is directly wired to her aggressive ambition. Howard's mental breakdown proves to be a ratings breakthrough, bringing Diana into the news division and placing Max directly in her voracious path. It's a perfect storm and lo does it rage. The narrative is almost impossibly complex, ornate even, and the film has undergone a kind of renaissance of late (because, basically, it seems like a docudrama of the early 21st century television landscape even though it was made more than a quarter century earlier, well prior to vcrs, the internet or cel-phones). Among the many subplots, three I really enjoyed: one, the best supporting actress turn by Beatrice Straight, who in barely five minutes delivers a master class in characterization and emotional scoring; two, the hyperbolic and shrill fabulousness of Marlene Warfield as the faux-Black Power radical Laureen Hobbs, whose blast during contract negotiations is one of the greatest moments ever; three, Ned Beatty's cameo as a cynical industrialist who understands the situation, and Howard Beale, far better than anyone in the entertainment industry. The film is a dystopic horror show that works as a cynical comedy largely because the performers are all so respectable. (For an entirely different vibe on this same basic story see John Waters's Female Trouble [1974] and ask yourself: was Chayefsky merely tapping into the same cultural gestalt as John Waters or was he ripping him off in the best way possible?) (Likewise, run a double bill of this and Spike Lee's 2000 joint, Bamboozled, and you'll likely develop a far greater appreciation of how much Spike actually accomplished in that woefully underrated film.) All told, one of the greatest and most enduring political films of the last fifty years, one which bears especially poignancy considering our current media climate. (I love how the dvd design inserts the retro-Network into the contemporary visual vocabulary of the 21st century tube, with a newsticker etc. Pitch perfect and stealthy augmentation of the film.) In sum, a just amazing piece of filmmaking -- if only Conchata Ferrell had been given more to do...

Cabin in the Sky (1943) +

A strange, fascinating parable detailing the battle between good and evil in the heart of one backsliding man. This black cast musical from MGM and directed by Vincente Minnelli boasts an incredible cast of African American superstars (Eddie Anderson, Ethel Waters, and Lena Horne in principal roles with Rex Ingram, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Mantan Moreland and others as featured players) with a score loaded with great songs. The narrative is a deceptively simple love story. Joe (Anderson) is a weak-willed man subject to easy temptation, much to the consternation of his devoted, pious wife Petunia (Ethel Waters). Petunia wants desperately to save Joe from a life of damnation yet Joe's craving for the pleasures of a sinful life constantly cause him to stray, occasionally into the arms of Georgia Brown (Lena Horne), a beautiful, gold-digging good-time gal. When Joe is shot in a brawl, the devil's son, Lucifer Jr. (Rex Ingram in a truly compelling performance), and God's man come to conflict over Joe's eternal fate. Joe's actions should send him to Hell, but Petunia's devotion has instigated a divine pardon. Joe is sent back to life, for six months, in which time his actions will determine his everlasting fate. Joe's soul becomes, curiously, a trophy of sorts for all involved and Joe ends up being tempted into trouble and the arms of Georgia Brown. The climactic scene comes as Petunia risks her own soul by venturing to the juke joint where Joe and Georgia hang out; another brawl erupts as a tornado blows through and both Joe and Petunia are victims of the gunfire. As the loving couple mount the steps to heaven, Joe's ever more concerned that he will forever be parted from his loving wife when a final set of twists confirm his fate, his future and his love for Petunia. The interesting thing about this film is that it is a musical, even though the songs themselves have little lyrically to do with the characters or the scenario. Instead, it's Minnelli's artful direction that, sometimes very cleverly, discovers ways to make the musical sequences -- song and dance -- make tangible sense within the dramaturgy of the story. As such, what is -- in effect -- a little religious drama punctuated with soon-to-be popular songs becomes a powerful musical because Minnelli so assiduously anchors the action of the story within each song. The aspect of the film I find least effective is the casting/performance of Eddie Anderson in the lead role. Anderson has undeniable screen charisma and, on that score, he's a worthy match for the formidable Waters and Horne, both. Yet, there remains a shallowness to Anderson's characterization that might make sense within the most didactic aspects of the narrative (he is a simple doofus prone to the most human of failings) yet Anderson's performance doesn't really prepare us for the intensity of the underlying emotional journey undertaken, ultimately, by both Petunia and Georgia Brown. Anderson's devotion to Petunia is sweet, but his performance is a disaggregated assemblage of assorted bits, which don't really cohere into a compelling characterization. This isn't to say that Horne or Waters are really adept actresses in their respective roles; their performances, too, at times feel clunky and cobbled together. Yet both Waters and Horne are somehow able to craft a coherent core for each character, from which the film draws its most potent emotional wallop. I really liked Rex Ingram, though, as Lucifer Jr., a fully rounded characterization maneuvering the (often racist) comedy with deft aplomb. He holds the center of that first scene (in the Devil's Idea Office) with impressive clarity, making it one of the most complexly effective scenes in the piece (despite the freight of racial cliche the scene carries). A compelling, enduring entertainment with a genuinely effective emotional/moral throughline and plenty of thrilling WTF visual moments throughout. (My favorite was probably the collection of naked "pickaninnies" dotting the path to heaven.) Fascinating, strange, well worth watching.