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legadillo
Reviews
The Anderson Tapes (1971)
Cahooting
It wasn't a movie about a clever caper, it was a movie about a bunch of goofs with a really bad plan--rob an entire apartment building (how much time would that take, an hour? an afternoon?) when the residents are home! (What do you do with the victims as you go door to door?) Anderson is tipped off that the whole plan has been recorded, and he STILL goes ahead with it. Everybody on the team is a loser: the black guy with the barely livable apartment, the safe cracker who just pries the locks off, the uncontrollable mob guy, and Anderson is just as dumb as they are. You keep wanting to yell at him "Call it off, you idiot!!" (The movie never accords him dignity; the first thing we see him do is confess to a group of bored inmates that burglary arouses him).
It looks like a version of Ocean's 11 on the surface, but it's not about a glamorous caper. It's about the inevitability of a bunch of incompetents failing again.
Le cochon danseur (1907)
Coooool Pig!
We saw this for the first time at Alamo Drafthouse as the pre-show for The Artist. There has been no cooler pig costume made since this one in 1907, and I include Miss Piggy. The puppeteer inside it was a master. Truly freaky more than 100 years on. You can see a shortened version on YouTube.
Argh. This 10-line minimum is annoying. Don't read past the Argh. I have nothing more to say. Really. I'm not going to say another word about the movie. IMDb should make the minimum five lines. Most people write way too much anyway. They do. They really, really, really, really do.
The Artist (2011)
He looked exactly right,
she not so much. He is a heartthrob in the silent style and he can dance. She's a stiff dancer, and she's too buff. They needed to put a few pounds on her, keep her out of the gym for a few months, and retro the makeup: bee-sting her lips and mess up her teeth a tad. James Cromwell was anachronistic, too; too method-y.
The music was good. They used the theme from Vertigo at the end, and it worked beautifully. There wasn't much of the stereotypical "wah wah" horn to alert you that what you're watching takes place in the jazz age--good for them.
The story's slight, the reviewers claiming the movie is over-hyped are right, but Jean Dujardin and Asta are worth watching.
Shutter Island (2010)
A little help
It wasn't a fair movie. Teddy's reality was absolutely unambiguous until the very end. We saw him hallucinating even when he didn't: when the "doctor" wakes him up in the cave. That's cheating. If you're going to twist the end completely around, there has to be some clue. You can bury it and hope the viewers miss it, but there should be a clue that the narrator is unreliable. Like in the 6th Sense. You go back through the 6th Sense and notice that it's never inconsistent; no one but the boy ever speaks to the lead character; there's no overlap. If you're clever enough, you can guess the end. Shutter Island offers no clues and it's not consistent, so that the end comes out of left field, and that's not fair.
There is no movie rule that says thrillers must be fair and there have to be clues, but there is no viewer rule, either, that says I can't prefer them that way.
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Relentless action
Downey is charismatic, Law is handsome, the sets and costumes are fabulous. It starts at a screaming pitch and goes up from there. One fight/action blends into the next. The really fun stuff, Holmes' deductions, are tossed off in the last minute or so; too bad, too, because they were cleverly thought out. Nice that Watson's fiancé is a gamer. "The Woman in Green" is Holmes' girlfriend, which is unfortunate; and Holmes doesn't deal directly with Moriarty, which is inexplicable.
Break-neck howling action--you know like all of them nowadays. Sequel ahoy.
Blades of Glory (2007)
Hard to breathe
We saw a sparsely attended showing of this movie; there wasn't a big riotous audience; but it didn't matter, we laughed so hard we were gasping for air. The people nearest us were in stitches, too. I swear to god I'm not related to Will Ferrell. It's just one of those ridiculous movies that works. The peacock costume! The Monroe/Kennedy number! The triple ironman loop (not the real name--I forget)... did they really need all those heads for practice?? Will Ferrell's best comedy, and that's saying something.
Need two more lines to qualify for submission.. very very funny funny funny very funny oh so funny what a funny movie funny funny funny
A History of Violence (2005)
neatly made
but kind of empty. It doesn't say anything new. It asks 1) can a man redeem himself of capitally heinous crimes; 2) even redeemed, should he escape the punishment of the state; and 3) would you want to live with him? The family's descent into violence is pretty improbable: the father can still assassinate whole groups of menacing people after 15 years without practice (maybe he did tai chi behind the garage all those years just before dinner); and his deadly facility is genetic: his milquetoast son proves surprisingly adept when pushed too far by a couple of school bullies. And those after-office workouts have paid off for the wife. She lands a few direct hits on her husband's head after more than a decade of perfect peace and marital harmony.
I dunno, it was just OK. You want a really good movie about the intrusion of extreme violence into a previously idyllic life? See Straw Dogs.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Yeeha!
I liked this movie, and I didn't think I would because I hated AI. Yeah, some appliances were working after the aliens had blown out the electricity (solar?); yeah the wife's relatives were too tidy (Gene Barry was the father in law you know (see 1953 cast list); OK, Rachel screamed too much; all right, the effects were digital... I don't care! Oh, I forgot, Tom Cruise has been a jerk of late. I don't care! The pacing was good, by that I mean that the ratio of down-time to chase was right (I LOATHE action movies that start at a high screech and never let up; those are for 14-year-old boys.). The gadgetry was minimal: no over-designed high-tech junk, just humans with legs and aliens with straws. No wince-inducing heroics. It isn't Jaws, but it's a lot of fun. Much better than the standard summer blockbuster--which is faint praise, and I mean to be more complimentary than that.
Perfect Strangers (1945)
Almost Perfect
The first two thirds of this movie are perfect! The remaking of Robert and Catherine is depicted in the subtle way I wanted it done. And the mirroring of their war experiences worked very well. At the same points in the movie they were made over, they were heroes, they were attracted to other people. It was utterly predictable, but surprise wasn't the point. The point was to tease out their reunion into a deliciously excruciating wait, and that worked. I was right there for it the whole timeand then they botched the ending. Instead of taking pains with the nuances of the couple's becoming interested in each other againwhich could have been achingly romanticwe get a short cut: a dumb marital squabble that is out of character with their new war-forged maturity. Ah well. It was really close.
The Memory of Us (1974)
housewife angst in the swinging 70s
The 1957 Rogers and Hammerstein "Cinderella" was recently released on DVD and I fell in love with Jon Cypher as Prince Charming, so I bought this movie just to watch him. He's believable as the insensitive husband, Brad; his delivery is natural and you can feel his frustration with his wife's unease, which he doesn't understand. It's also fun to watch Ellen Geer, she's pretty and expressive (I never see her without thinking of Sunshine Dore), and I appreciate what she was trying to say (she wrote the script), but she expresses her dissatisfaction through internal monologues, and thirty years later they're dated--they must have sounded stilted even in 1975.
The good: watching Brad and Betty's scenes together as they sink into a bad marriage, you do get the feeling of increasing distance over time and lost opportunity; Jon Cypher (sigh); 70s bell bottoms and orange kitchen counter tops; the "swingers" subplot
The bad: stereotype of an unfulfilled housewife--an unimaginative depiction that leaves you unsympathetic; the interior monologues don't strike the right note