jim-314 Reviews

Newcastle (2008)

lots of unlikable louts

[4/10 · 1 September 2009]

I really wanted to like this movie. I generally like coming-of-age movies, and surf movies, and growing-up-gay movies. But I found the characters in this movie (with a couple of exceptions) a bunch of unlikable louts who spend much of the movie in testosterone-driven chest-butting, and I just couldn't care about them. The loutishness leads to a certain predictable amount of melodrama, and some psychologically simplistic soul-searching on the way to tying up ends. The only likable characters were the protagonist's younger brother (the gay one, who takes a lot of psychological abuse for his gayness), and the sympathetic grandfather (the only guy in the family who seems to show any affection for the younger brother). These are secondary characters. The young brother's coming to terms with his sexuality and tentative romantic exploration with one of the surfers is a minor subplot of the film. On the up side, the young guys (and gals) in the film look great, and the surfing footage is really nice, especially some of the underwater footage. But by the end of the movie, I was not sorry to leave the company of a group of characters that I mostly found unpleasant and unsympathetic.

American Playhouse: Fifth of July (1982) Season 1, Episode 9

great script, middling film

[6/10 · 29 April 2009]

"The Fifth of July" may be among the most satisfying stage scripts of the last three decades. For those of us who were young when the play's characters were young (in the Vietnam war era), it movingly touches on the idealism and disappointment of that time. It has a vein of sentimentality, but does that have to be a bad thing? Perhaps not. Even with its sentimental moments, the script is full of sharp, funny dialogue that is "theatrical" in the best sense. How well does that theatricality translate to film? With mixed success. This adaptation uses most of the original Broadway cast of the play. I saw the same cast on stage, and I remember really liking this TV film when it first came out. Now, seeing it again a couple of decades later, it strikes me as regrettably stagy. Swoozie Kurtz's flamboyant performance nabbed her a Tony on stage, but seems strident and one-dimensional on film. Likewise, Richard Thomas comes across as surprisingly mannered and overwrought for an actor who built most of his career in TV. He works too hard and ends up unconvincing. In contrast, Jeff Daniels (as Thomas's devoted but under-appreciated boyfriend) steals the movie with a subtle, natural performance. In general, the supporting players come off better than the leads, and it's fun to see a very young Cynthia Nixon. This is a competent introduction to a beautiful script, but it's still pretty much a film of a stage production. Like so many adaptations of this sort, it fails to convey the power of the live theatrical experience, and at the same time, it isn't a very good film as film. I couldn't help wondering how this would work if someone turned it into a "real" movie that emphasized cinematic values over stage values. I'd like to see someone try some day.

Good Boys (2005)

bleak, thoughtful queer cinema

[7/10 · 2 February 2009]

This film is an ultra-low budget production, shot on video. The production values are minimal, and it's not particularly good looking. The bright-light scenes are flat, and the low-light scenes are grainy. You have to make an effort to look beyond the production values to see what's good in this movie. If you can do that, and focus on the script, you'll find a provocative, intelligent drama here, that gets more and more interesting as it goes along. It doesn't take long to figure out that the writer-director, Yair Hochner, is frankly queer. Not "gay" in some inoffensive, assimilated, "Will & Grace" way, but in-your-face Queer with a capital Q. This drama of hustlers leading complicated (and often dangerous) lives, hearkens back to the aggressive low-budget queer cinema of the late eighties; that is, to movies like Van Sant's "Mala Noche" or Araki's "Living End." Hochner didn't make this movie for straight people (be warned, straight folks!). Among the best things about the film is that the director captures the way gay guys really talk to each other. He also shows the fluid boundaries in gay relationships: two guys might be lovers one day, pals another day, or sex buddies when the need and the attraction arise. They make families among themselves to replace their biological families. Sex might be a job, a romantic expression, or a bit of mindless fun... And just because a guy is gay doesn't mean he can't be a father (and a good, responsible father at that). But this is no sentimental view of golden-hearted whores. It's bleak, and often brutal. Two hustlers work together for a client one night and sense an emotional bond; circumstances, however, lead to a string of missed connections, and the hope for love unravels in a way that reminded me of one of Thomas Hardy's bleak anti-romances. Still, the end isn't entirely hopeless (and yes, the movie does come to a pretty clear end, even if it's not the conventional tying up that some viewers seem to want). One character appears destroyed by his bad luck and brutal circumstances; the other forges a new bond that just might help him prevail over his hard life. It's not a romantic ending, and there's no happily-ever-after; but it's an ending that makes sense.

Boy A (2007)

beautiful and bleak

[9/10 · 23 October 2008]

This movie hearkens back to the great working class British film dramas of the 1960s. Inspired, I believe, by an actual crime of about a decade ago, in which one child killed another child, the movie provocatively imagines the life of the killer many years afterward. At one point the protagonist is called a monster by a character who has never met him. I was reminded of the cover of a major news magazine at the time of the Columbine massacre, which featured a picture of the adolescent killers with the caption "monsters." I thought to myself that, however disturbed, these are still human beings more like than unlike the rest of us, and what does it say about the rest of us if we deny their humanity and refuse to look at the source of their disturbance? This is the very starting point of "Boy A" and the conclusions it reaches about "the rest of us" are bleak. This is a deeply, disturbingly sad movie. I found it intensely involving, and intensely moving. However, if you watch it, be prepared for a vision of humanity so dark that the most humane character in the story is a murderer.

Tan Lines (II) (2005)

smart, quirky coming-out movie

[8/10 · 8 September 2008]

If you wonder how one might find a fresh perspective on the old issues of coming-of-age and coming out, then check out this smart quirky movie, set in a small-town surfing community. The main characters are a self-questioning protagonist, and two brothers who are his surfing buddies. The older brother is a confident but alienated gay man who returns to his family after being driven away some years before following an affair with his high school teacher. The movie takes a number of surprising turns, and the relationships are complex and ambiguous (especially the relationship between the brothers, and the relationship between the older brother and his teacher). One Net-blurb inaccurately describes this movie as a "charming romp." Parts of it are quite funny, but it's a serious look at the stresses of a gay adolescence. The geeky-charming young protagonist, Midget, learns how to be callous, and to face disappointment, even as he learns about love and sex. Don't expect a romantic fade-out. The next-to-last scene has a brief, silent shot that provides a thought-provoking plot twist. The young cast were largely non-professional actors and they are fresh, fun, believable, sexy, and blessedly un-Hollywood in appearance. If you see this movie and like it, do not miss the terrific director commentary. The director is articulate, very smart about both movies and life, and funny. It's one of the best commentaries I've heard in some time.

Making Love (1982)

smart dramatization of gay issues

[6/10 · 15 May 2008]

The critical drubbing this movie received on its release is justified only in part. True, this is a blatant soap opera; and in places the dialogue goes from hokey to ham-fisted. But this movie also does many things better than some more prestigious projects. For one thing, instead of just declaring its characters "in love" it shows them finding love in a shared focus: sharing books, making music together. Because they enjoy so much in common, it's easy to see how the confused doctor and his wife could have a successful marriage of several years. The gay guys don't just have sex; they play together. They race each other in the swimming pool, they play arcade games. The movie addresses a number of issues related to being gay in the 70s which are still issues today, and addresses them in ways that are smarter than the movie generally gets credit for. These include the doctor's conflict between his sexual attraction to men, and his genuine love for his wife, in a world without models for navigating these conflicts. This is the rare movie that acknowledges the existence of gay men married (often successfully) to women. It shows the struggle of a respected professional man discovering and admitting his homosexuality in a time when the costs of doing so were very high. Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin deserve credit for "playing gay" when that was riskier for an actor than now (especially as Hamlin was being marketed as a piece of macho beefcake). Their suggestions of intimacy are more convincing than the pictures of gay intimacy in other Hollywood products (e.g., the stilted interactions of "Phildelphia"). And the gay guys get to live on about as happily as their straight counterparts; they don't die, they're not punished, they're not revealed as psychopaths. Ontkean is charming, but Hamlin and Kate Jackson turn in subtle, affecting performances. There's a remarkable cameo by a fellow named Asher Brauner, who plays one of the doctor's one-night-stands. Finally, the script isn't entirely as bad as some have made out. Hamlin has a beautiful monologue about the ways in which his childhood experience of being rejected as a little league player made him understand the loneliness he would face as a gay man. There's much in this movie that a gay man of a certain age can relate to, and much to enjoy despite the script's soap opera shortcomings.

The Bubble (2006)

intelligent, moving, romantic melodrama

[9/10 · 25 March 2008]

Here's one more beauty in the string of beautiful films directed by Eytan Fox. The movie presents the story of star-crossed lovers (one Israeli, one Palestinian)in modern Tel Aviv. The film's effectiveness comes not only from its depiction of cross-ethnic conflict, but of conflicts personal and political within ethnic groups as well. For example, there's a telling moment when one of the secondary characters, openly gay, is visited in the hospital by his boyfriend who brings him flowers and tries to kiss him in front of his visiting family, and suddenly we see a wave of awkward discomfort wash through the room. Clearly the young man is not as open as he seems, and the family not as accepting as he might want them to be, while the boyfriend is confused and rejected. A good deal of complexity is packed into a fleeting moment. As we know from Yossi & Jagger, Fox is a master at efficiently packing emotional and psychological complexity into brief sequences. The film is also effective for the even-handed way it presents the mutual brutalities that Israelies and Palestinians inflict on each other. If you're not heartless, you'll cry through the last third of the movie. Though the plot is melodramatic, it's so intelligently written and acted that it reminds us of how satisfying good melodrama can be.

Red Light Go (2002)

fast, funny, fascinating, like the messengers themselves

[7/10 · 18 February 2008]

This short, fast, funny, punchy documentary about the subculture of New York City bike messengers appears to reflect the rhythm of the messenger lifestyle, as it should, since two of the film-makers are former messengers. This could be the right movie for you if you are a sociologist, if you are a cyclist, if you believe muscle power is more beautiful than petro-power, if you believe that those who live through muscle power are more interesting than those who live through petro-power, if you like a rough Noo Yawk accent, if you love the colorful heart of NYC that beats beneath the tourist attractions. The movie is not only thought-provoking in its depiction of the messengers, but in its depiction of people's responses to the messengers, which are sometimes distressingly ignorant and racist.

Flannel Pajamas (2006)

literate New Yorker's scenes from a marriage

[9/10 · 23 August 2007]

A remarkable movie. This very New York "scenes from a marriage" traces the trajectory of a relationship from horny, starry-eyed romance to abandonment and desolation. It's funny, clever, romantic, sexually frank, emotionally raw, and painfully believable in ways that we forget movies can be (because we so seldom see movies that are). The dialogue is fast, slick, surprising, literate, and delivered with awesome skill by all the actors. Scripts like this must be what actors live for. Every performance is a gem, and the secondary characters are delineated as memorably as the leads (special kudos to Jamie Harold as the charismatic nut-case brother, and Chelsea Altman as the heroine's poisonous best friend). Scene after scene left me grinning with admiration for the writer and the performers, but if I had to pick one highlight it just might be the sparring match between the young husband Stuart (Justin Kirk), and his mother-in-law Elizabeth (Rebecca Schull) in the hospital cafeteria, about three quarters into the movie. Watch for it. If you let these characters under your skin, the movie will leave you aching in the end. The last few shots are more wrenching than any I've seen in a long while. Not to be missed, especially if you love sharp writing and great ensemble acting. I hadn't even heard of this movie until recently, and few recent movies to spin through my disk player have surprised, delighted, and moved me like this one. The movie is an extra special treat if you know NY City.

Alive and Kicking (1996)

an adult love story with snappy dialogue

[8/10 · 27 July 2007]

AIDS movies formed the core of queer cinema ten or twenty years ago, and there were many memorable ones (The Living End, Parting Glances, World and Time Enough...). This British movie came out near the end of that 90s period, just about the time new drug cocktails were beginning to change the life course of HIV sufferers. The movie is set just before that time, and its gay characters are too familiar with the dying of their community. As one of them here says when challenged by a hospital nurse during a friend's last hours, "We've done this before." I first read about this movie in a glowing NY Times review when it received its very limited American release a decade ago, and wished I could see it. Now I have, thanks to Netflix. Though the AIDS epidemic is always in the background, the center of the movie is the unlikely – but all the more believable – relationship between a handsome, sexy young dancer played by Jason Flemyng, and an overweight, alcoholic therapist played by Antony Sher. The actors and the screenwriter take care to help us understand how these two mismatched souls become mates, and in doing so, elicit sympathy for these two deeply flawed individuals. This may have been a low budget indie flick, but it features the virtuoso acting that we so often associate with British thespians, not only from Flemyng and Sher, but in a lovely turn by Dorothy Tutin as a batty old dance company manager who is sinking into dementia even as the younger members of her company are dying off. This all makes the movie sound pretty grim, but in fact it's lively and funny. The movie's chief asset, aside from its performances, is its snappy and sophisticated dialogue by Martin Sherman (who wrote Bent). This is an adult love story, though no one ever says "I love you." The two lovers are both painfully imperfect humans, like all of us, who cannot manage their interactions with anything like the smoothness that psychobabble books (or Hollywood movies) suggest they should. Even the therapist who helps other folks manage their traumas cannot manage his own with grace. The highlights of the movie are the sharply written "duets" between the two protagonists as they navigate their very rocky relationship. My chief reservation about the movie is a plot dive into some sappy melodrama as the dancer's climactic farewell performance approaches, but even so, the movie earns its sentimental wash more than most with the careful, sophisticated development of its characters. I forgave – alright, I even succumbed to – the last act sentimentality. And finally, I can't resist a brief reference to Mr. Flemyng's attractiveness. I first noticed him oozing sex appeal in Stealing Beauty, and then playing the bully villain in Hollow Reed. Alas, in recent years, he seldom seems to turn up on American screens doing anything much worth watching. Pity. He's plenty worth watching in Alive and Kicking.

Prom Queen: The Marc Hall Story (2004 TV Movie)

good script, great performances, emotionally satisfying

[8/10 · 1 June 2007]

This movie was made for Canadian television, loosely based on a real-life event. It's sappy and sentimental and manipulative... and thoroughly wonderful. Two things make it better than one might expect from a television movie: a script that's better crafted and more sophisticated than the usual TV-issue-of-the-week product, and a bunch of wonderful performances. In its character development, the script subverts a number of expectations associated with stories centered on gay rights issues. The taciturn blue-collar father unquestionably loves and supports his queer son, the gay lawyer turns out to be less generous and more self-serving than his nominally "pro-bono" work initially suggests, the main character's boyfriend has doubts and depths that keep him from being the perfect prince we want for our prom-queen hero, and the hero's high school companions aren't the homophobic doofuses commonly encountered in gay-teen stories. The movie slyly suggests that a true gay-straight alliance can work to the advantage of the straight folks as well as the gay folks. Aaron Ashmore is handsome, sexy and charismatic as the central character. Jean Pierre Bergeron as the father and Mak Fyfe as the boyfriend bring complexity and sympathy to two roles with few lines, and really stand out in a cast with all the minor roles beautifully played. (Trevor Blumas and Tamara Hope are charming as Marc's straight supporters, as are the guys who play the high school media geeks). I can't imagine any gay guy not being moved by this story, and I hope straight folks would be as well. The DVD extras contain some brief documentary footage of the real-life Marc Hall that's worth looking at. The real Mr. Hall is nearly as articulate and charismatic as his cinematic counterpart, and there are a couple of moments of press footage in which he attempts to defend his dignity and equality as a gay man that are pretty near heart-breaking.

The Young Lieutenant (2005)

rich character studies in the form of police procedural

[8/10 · 10 May 2007]

This movie starts out looking like a fairly conventional police procedural and ends up something much richer and subtler. It's full of nice little surprises that subvert our expectations of this sort of movie as we've come to know it from the Hollywood model. In fact, it's a wonderful example of how the American model can be molded into something more complicated. One example of that is the relationship between the "little lieutenant" and his attractive, middle-aged alcoholic supervisor. It's largely a filial-maternal relationship, but with subtle erotic undertones that keep us guessing at what might (or might not) develop between the two characters. In fact, little about the plot or the characters turn out the way you expect, and that's a fine thing. The movie also has a script written with exceptional skill and economy. We see only one scene between the lieutenant and his wife, and we hear a few additional comments about his marriage in other scenes, but from these brief bits we get a picture of a complex and problematic relationship that tells us as much as we need to know about the couple. While nothing about this movie is flashy, I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since I saw it earlier this week. It's thought provoking and I recommend it highly.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

More flying debris than character

[2/10 · 10 July 2006]

What a pity that the "last stand" of the once-fine x-men franchise had to be this sorry mess. The movie starts with the promising plot device of a cure for mutants, which nicely extends the metaphor of the mutants' outsider social status. The "cure" may be analogous to the "ex-gay" movement, or to ethnic cleansing. However, this theme is not developed with any kind of sophistication or complexity, and other promising plot and character points are left unexplored. Nothing is made of the mutant boy who is himself the source of the cure, nothing is made of the winged boy's relationship with his father (the developer of the cure), and nothing is made of the potentially profound conflicts within the young woman who cannot touch her boyfriend without killing him. The young woman and her boyfriend barely even talk to each other here, let alone develop their relationship. The movie devolves into a repetitive series of cgi scenes that are all about flying debris, and only barely about character. The movie is increasingly incoherent and internally inconsistent as it continues, right down to the illogical image of the last shot. Let's hope that image does NOT signal yet another sequel. The movie comes in under 2 hours, but the action is so repetitive, so dreary, and so divorced from character, that it feels much longer. This is a sorely disappointing conclusion to a series that started beautifully. Fans of the first two movies would be advised to skip this altogether.

9 Songs (2004)

rockin' love

[9/10 · 28 December 2005]

Michael Winterbottom seems incapable of making an uninteresting film. Every time I see another of his movies (Jude, The Claim, Wonderland, Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People) I am surprised and delighted by having been given a glimpse into human behavior that has made me look a little more closely and a little more sympathetically than I might have otherwise. This is as true for Nine Songs as for any other movie I've seen by him. In this case, however, one can hardly view the movie without responding as well to the critical turmoil which has surrounded it. The movie is sexually explicit. In bits and pieces, it's fully as explicit as a pornographic film. For this reason, many critics and viewers seem compelled to distance themselves from it, most often by declaring themselves bored. It's an interesting position, considering how few people are, in fact, bored by sexually explicit material, and how many fascinated by it (e.g., witness the health of the pornography industry). I'm tempted to believe that these people are either misrepresenting their interest for fear of how they might be judged, or so focused on the movie's sexual acts alone that they miss the role of those acts (and their sheer beauty) in the context of the rest of the film. In any event, the movie is a romance that, like most of the romances in most of our lives, includes a sexual component. In this respect, it's useful to view the film in comparison to deliberately pornographic films and to mainstream movie romances. Such a comparison would show that Nine Songs resembles neither genre. While it is as explicit in places as conventional pornographic films, it has nothing of the look or atmosphere of those films, and is completely different from them in type of script, character development, personal interactions, aesthetic attitude, and acting style. However, it also bears little resemblance to a conventional mainstream movie romance. There's little explicit conflict, no melodrama, and none of the usual road-blocks to a conventional boy-gets-girl fadeout. Here, boy gets girl, boy loses girl (or is it t'other way 'round?), and what comes in between describes the emotional arc of the relationship. That description of an evolving emotional relationship is more poetic (by which I mean, conveyed through images of varying degrees of trust and togetherness) than dramatic (conveyed through explicit conflicts and plot events). The movie is composed almost entirely of three types of scenes which roughly alternate through the movie: concert scenes attended by the couple, sex scenes, and domestic scenes (eating, dressing, or preparing meals). Together, the three alternating contexts chart the changing emotional weather of the relationship. In addition, the concert scenes provide a kind of aesthetic correlate to the sex scenes. By juxtaposing the concerts and the sex, Winterbottom makes even more explicit than usual the metaphor of music (especially rock and roll) for sex: a sweaty, rhythmic, consciousness-submerging sense-experience in both cases. At the same time, the lyrics of the songs provide a kind of Brechtian commentary on the state of the relationship. Both the major actors are immensely attractive and sexy, without looking like the gender parodies of porn films, nor like the pretty-bunnies of Hollywood romance. They're both beautiful, but they also seem real in a way that rarely occurs in either mainstream romances or in porn films. Perhaps because the characters seemed so believable to me, I for one found the end of the film seriously touching. Finally, I would advise readers not to believe those who say the sex is boring. The characters are believable, the actors are beautiful, and the sex is hot.

Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (1996)

For anyone who sees value where others don't

[10/10 · 10 April 2005]

This is among the most beautiful films of the last decade, in more ways than one. I was lucky enough to see the film once in the theater. I wanted to own a copy. It was a long time coming to DVD but I recently learned that it was finally available, and so I purchased a copy. The absolutely extraordinary cinematography by Rob Sweeney doesn't hit you on a TV screen with quite the same punch that it does on a full sized theater screen, but even so, first time viewers should still get a good sense of just how visually exceptional this movie is. The movie has many virtues, the greatest of which is probably its look. Even when showing us ordinary domestic details the black and white photography has a luminous, magical, dream-like quality that is magnified all the more when the camera turns to the natural spectacle of Yosemite park where most of the movie is set. Not only does the texture of the imagery make you want to bathe your soul in it, but every frame, without exception, is as beautifully composed as any produced by the great directors and cinematographers of the 30s and 40s. Additionally, the movie integrates documentary footage from the late 40s with seamless technical facility. Aside from the look of the film, the story movingly follows the obsessive dream of a young man who tries to rescue a defunct pre-World War II short-line railroad. His effort arises partly from his interest in engineering, partly from what he seems to view as a proper way to live in the world, and partly from his grandfather's experience as an early railway laborer. His story is bound to touch anyone whose obsessions (professional or aesthetic) have ever been viewed with distrust or contempt by those around him, anyone who has found value in something others reject, and anyone who does not necessarily believe that all progress is good progress. That he fails in his mission is inevitable; that the inevitability of his failure seemed clear from the start, perhaps even to him, only makes his story more moving. Other interesting elements of the movie include the relationship of the main character with a loner (Michael Stipe) that gently hints at the blurred lines between friendship, professional association, and sublimated romance. The movie's matter-of-fact presentation of late-40s bigotry directed at Asian-Americans is yet another of its uncommon background elements. If you want some sort of fast-paced action, or a plot that tells you exactly what you should think, look elsewhere. If you want an exceptional example of visual storytelling that integrates the historical and the personal and is rich in ambiguities, you can hardly do better than "The Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day."

City of Ghosts (2002)

Great grown-up entertainment

[8/10 · 2 November 2003]

This film is a wonderful surprise. Matt Dillon has long been an underrated actor, and it appears that he can now look forward, sadly, to being treated as an underrated writer-director. (Sean Penn also gets the same sorry treatment for his terrific efforts at directing). For someone who started his career as a teenage pretty-boy actor, Dillon has taken a lot of chances over the years, playing some unsympathetic characters in offbeat movies. In doing so, he's developed into an ever more subtle performer with a naturalistic screen persona, an attractive slightly gravelly voice, an understated comic sensibility, and an even more arresting handsomeness than he possessed as a young man. His first film as director is a carefully observed, quiet, almost cerebral sort of thriller. It has a complex (but easily followed) plot in the long tradition of Western wastrels caught up in Asian intrigue. The movie is gorgeously photographed in exotic locations, rich in atmosphere, fun to watch (for its odd details and its plot), and packed with top flight character actors who work side by side with Asian non-professionals to provide a host of entertaining character studies. My major criticism is that the stunningly beautiful Natascha McElhone has little to do other than look stunningly beautiful. Dillon and his fellow writer Barry Gifford blessedly resist resolving the movie with chases and explosions that a less mature sensibility might have been tempted to tack on. This is an engrossing movie that provides "adult entertainment" in the best possible sense. It's a pity the movie didn't get wider theatrical distribution, but now that it's available on video, viewers who long for some old-fashioned, well-written, grown-up viewing satisfaction in a visually stunning package should check this out. It would make a great double bill with "The Quiet American."

The Sleepy Time Gal (2001)

the poetry of unfulfilled longing

[10/10 · 16 February 2003]

Christopher Munch has written and directed only three films, not one of which ever received commercial distribution. Obviously, if you want "commercial" easy watching, his movies are not for you. A viewer can have a tough time finding his movies, but maybe that's OK, because once seen, they can haunt you for years. He makes a different sort of film than the easy to find shoot-‘em-down-and-blow-‘em-up product that, once seen, can barely be recalled a week later. When I see a film by Christopher Munch, I think (as I also do after movies by Abel Ferrara or Claire Denis), "This is what celluloid is for." Look, I love a good car chase as much as the next guy, but some types of human experience require more than machinery to chase down. Munch is a cinematic poet of unfulfilled longing, but unfulfilled longing is not a subject that lends itself to tidy reconciliations and happy endings. "The Sleepy Time Gal" is all about the lives we might wish for, but will not have. If that sounds sad, it is. But surprisingly, it's not bleak the way you might expect, because Munch also shows us characters whose lives contain riches that they do not see themselves. Munch's main character, Frances (played with aching beauty and regret by Jacqueline Bisset) is a dying woman who, as she tells her doctor, has not finished her life. Too bad for her. She only sees what she has not achieved in her life. However, her lovers – and we the viewers in the audience – see that her beauty and her lust for life have enriched those around her in ways that she cannot recognize, perhaps because the experiences have not been comparably enriching for her. In a sense, she gives what she has not received. This sounds more sentimental than it is in the movie. There is no sentimentality in this movie. For one thing, the main character is not easy to like. She's a woman with rough edges and few illusions about the joys of parenting or the permanence of love. For another, the relationships among parents and children here are all complicated. There are no simple loves, no simple hatreds, and all the connections are difficult. For just these reasons, the relationships are completely believable. The movie has what might be the most realistic deathbed scene I've ever seen in a film. The film was shot by Rob Sweeney, who also shot Munch's previous film, "The Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day," one of the most beautifully photographed films I've seen in the last decade. This movie too contains frame after frame of richly textured compositions that never devolve into prettiness. Munch is not a linear storyteller. The complicated relationships in the movie unfold indirectly through scenes that seem initially unrelated. The varied visual textures in the cinematography help differentiate the different times and places in which we see the characters. I've only seen Nick Stahl in a few things, but the more I see of him, the more I'm impressed with his versatility. He's the manipulative Bully in Larry Clark's film of that title, and the naive, doomed every-boy of "In the Bedroom." Here he plays Bisset's son, and he's just as believable as a sensitive guy finding the strength to make his own way in the world without abandoning his assertive (and not entirely loving) mother. Altogether, this movie maps the rocky shoals of ambiguous family relationships as well as any I've seen. If you want "entertainment," skip this. If you want "easy" watching, skip this. If you want tidy emotional resolutions, skip this. But if you're up for a visually gorgeous, subtly acted reflection of the skips and stumbles that comprise most of our emotional lives, check this out.

'R Xmas (2001)

The perfect xmas movie for modern America

[10/10 · 15 December 2002]

Ferrara does not know how to make an uninteresting movie. Whatever you think of the content of his films, everything he does is a stylish, riveting exercise in visual story telling. This movie is no exception. There's surprisingly little dialogue, but what there is sings with a sense of modern city life. The aural and visual atmosphere of New York City, both upscale and downscale, is rich and multi-layered, and the characters seem like people you've seen on the street, or in stores, or in clubs, many many times. I don't know how "real" the action of this movie might be, but it seems as real and believable to me as anything I've seen on screen in a good long while. This is the perfect holiday movie for 21st century America, and a near-ideal expression of the meaning of modern Christmas.

The Way of the Gun (2000)

guns & cars and more guns & cars

[4/10 · 15 January 2001]

Guns and cars and guns and cars and cars and guns and guns and guns and cars and cars and guns. An internally logical plot? Forget it. Dialogue spoken by characters who might be real humans? Forget it. Anything to lead a viewer to want to suspend disbelief? Forget it. As for characters... we get foolish, sadistic, personality-free sociopaths. Anyone sympathetic? Forget it. The only person who comes out of this mess alive (aesthetically speaking) is James Caan, but that alone is not reason enough to spend your valuable time or money. This is the sort of movie where the viewer wishes that the main characters would all get killed off quickly so the movie can end and the viewer can get back to cleaning the bathroom. Alas, the characters take a long long time to die.

Beau Travail (1999)

This is a visually gorgeous, psychologically complex Melville adaptation.

[10/10 · 21 April 2000]

This updated adaptation of Melville's "Billy Budd" fascinates on multiple levels. Set in a present-day outpost of the French Foreign Legion, it focuses on the emotional and professional relationships between the Claggart figure (Sgt. Galoup), the Capt. Vere figure (Commander Forestier), and the Billy Budd stand-in (Legionnaire Sentain). The primary focus is Claggart-Galoup. In contrast with the original source and most of its theatrical-cinematic adaptations, this film goes to some length to try to establish the motivation behind Claggart's (Galoup's) hatred of "Billy." Here, all the characters are social or domestic fugitives who've formed a new "family" in the Legion. When the new, popular, conscientious (but relatively unproven) recruit Sentain finds favor not only with his peers but with the father-figure Forestier, the reliable long-serving and relatively unrewarded Galoup (a loner who idolizes the old commander) suddenly finds himself subject to unexpected and uncontrollable jealousy. Thus the movie becomes a psychological study of "family" jealousy which echoes Cain and Able as much as the Melville source. Claggart-Galoup is not a symbol of abstract evil (nor the sexually jealous predator he's sometimes seen as), but an emotionally vulnerable character broken by the unfairness of fate's rewards. The movie's plot and characterizations do not reflect the homoerotic tension that some interpreters find in the story, but there is certainly a homoerotic element in its visual presentation. As shot by Agnes Goddard (who appears to be developing into one of the great cinematographers of our time), much of the movie is visually indebted to Leni Riefenstahl. The sequences of soldiers training in the desert are certainly modelled on Riefenstahl's "Olympiad," and are equally beautiful. These scenes, combined with desert vistas and flashes of Arab-African culture, make the movie visually spectacular. The movie has added sociological and psychological interest in its close observation of the details of life in an isolated community of highly disciplined men (it made this viewer want to run home and iron all his shirts as a way of demonstrating masculinity). It's interesting to note that this gorgeous, complex film was shot on a miniscule budget in about 3 weeks' time (and this makes one wonder where all the money goes that gets poured into so many mediocre -- or worse -- Hollywood films).

Der Aufenthalt (1983)

Exceptionally moving exploration of forms of innocence and betrayal.

[10/10 · 13 July 1999]

I was lucky to catch this movie (English title: "The Turning Point") at a university mini-festival of East German films. As far as I know it was never commercially released in the U.S. Based on a fictionalized memoir, it concerns a teenage German soldier captured in Poland at the end of W.W.II and falsely accused of war crimes. It's an extra-ordinary and complex exploration of the concepts of guilt, innocence, betrayal, justice, and self-deception. It's not a movie about good guys and bad guys, winners and losers. Rather, it concerns issues of both personal and institutional responsibility during war and its aftermath, and it's immensely moving. Not flashy cinema on the surface, but so beautifully written and acted that it stands out as one of the most haunting war films I've seen in the last several years (far more so than the recent jingoistic Hollywood blockbusters). It poses difficult, complex questions about human behavior during war, and offers no simple answers.