This is a continuation of the previous post. I recommend you read them all in order.
7. The American
Starring George Clooney
Directed by Anton Corbijn
released: 2010
Our Celebrity Guest Viewer was here for the showing of this movie, but consensus was no less attainable for that: we all agreed with Sherry's assessment that the movie spent a great deal of money on eyedrops, because the performers did so much staring: either at each other, or off into space. The film is an hour and forty-five minutes, consisting of a few shootings and one chase through a charming Italian hillside town, plus about seventeen minutes of dialogue. The rest of the time, the camera watches somebody stare.
That is, of course, an exaggeration, but it does capture the mood of the film, which may be described as pensive or suspenseful but is really just slow. Very slow.
It begins promisingly with "Jack" (George Clooney) and a pretty girl relaxing in post-coital bliss in a remote Swedish cabin. They go for a walk and discover tracks in the snow. Jack pulls out a gun and starts hunting snipers. ("You have a gun?" says the girl.) Jack shoots a guy, then tells the girl to go call the police. When she, dazed and confused, finally turns to go, Jack shoots her in the back of the head. Why? It's never explained, and the four of us came up with three unsatisfactory explanations. Then Jack hunts down another shooter before disappearing into the crowds of Paris, where his employer or whatever tells him to lie low in Italy. The rest of the movie is concerned with Jack's growing ambivalence about his career choices. We watch him mull things.
The American is very nicely photographed and edited, and the performances are for the most part capably done, with a special shout-out to Paolo Bonacelli as the town's priest. He deserved better lines. When Jack grabs a scooter and chases down another would-be assassin, we feel hope that things will pick up; they don't. When Jack meets a gun-buying customer in a restaurant, we think there'll be some action now, boy! There isn't. And when Jack proves that brain beats brawn in the penultimate shooting of the film, we are surprised, but then we knew it'd happen like that, because, you know, Jack is the Good Guy here and it has to. And then comes the final shootout of the movie, between the Good Guy and the Bad Guy. Nobody wins.
I feel like I should say more, but there's really nothing else to say.
Starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy
Directed by Julian Jarrold
Released: 2007
I suspect this film was chosen for the Third Annual Havasu Film Festival because it includes a small-ish though vital performance by Maggie Smith as the crusty Lady Gresham, who believes herself entitled to order a preacher's daughter to marry her heir. She has maybe three scenes in the film; it is possible to watch this beautiful movie from start to finish, admiring the glorious countryside (it was shot in Ireland, re-labeled as England), the elegant costumes and props and manners, the clever dialogue and the magnificent script, and remember only Maggie Smith's bitchy character informing Reverend Austen that she will not be attending church that day.
Maggie Smith is undeniably that good, but the film is about the relationship between the two main characters. Anne Hathaway (an American! Horrors!) and James McAvoy (a Scot playing an Irishman ... well, that's okay, apparently. He is known for his skill with accents.) portray Jane Austen and Tom leFroy, both real people. She's becoming the world-famous author, he's becoming a successful lawyer. They meet and fall in love. (History does not record most details of Jane Austen's private life, so this stuff is all made up. Go with it.) You really don't need to be told more than that. One of the nice things about our factual ignorance of what went on in Jane Austen's life when scholars weren't looking is that we can make her anything we want to. The makers of this film wanted to make her a hero for 21st-Century romantics, and they have succeeded. As a romantic myself (though really more of a 20th-Century version), I recommend this movie.
9. Notes on a Scandal
Starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett
Directed by Richard Eyre
Released: 2007
Which is worse: an attractive thirty-something teacher who cheats on her older husband with a fifteen-year-old student, or the wizened old crone who blackmails her about it? The woman who is driven to madness, or the madwoman who pushes her down that road?
In this case, the wizened old crone is Barbara, played by Judi Dench, a grumpy history teacher at an English school who has lost patience with newfangled methods and soft post-modern jargon. She has not a kind word to say about anyone or anything, and leaves no thought unexpressed, even if it's only expressed in her diary. She starts off criticizing, in voice-over, Sheba, the new arts teacher, played by Cate Blanchett. At first she seems only judgmental, a kind of crochety grandmother who, one suspects, has a lining of silver in the storm cloud of her thoughts. But after Sheba demonstrates a willingness to be friendly, Barbara latches onto her and attempts to supplant the younger woman's own family in her affections. She becomes the increasingly demanding friend who won't go away.
But once the old woman witnesses the arts teacher's indiscretion with a student, she realizes the hold she has over the younger woman. Her view of their relationship takes on an increasingly creepy cast, and we begin to feel a relative sympathy for Sheba, despite the culture of moral outrage that we feel bound to apply to her actions. Is Barbara jealous, and if so, is she jealous of Sheba's attractiveness or of her happiness? Does she want Sheba as a friend, a companion, or a lover? In the end, the two women destroy each other and I doubt that anyone would admit to feeling either's destruction is undeserved. We are voyeurs of the process; it's thrilling to watch through their windows and see how it's done.
Starring Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson
Directed by Bart Layton
Directed by Bart Layton
released 2018
The most remarkable thing about this "true-crime thriller" is that all four of the people who actually attempted the real-world heist came on camera to talk aboout their view of the scheme. They don't agree on the details, but the film handles the disagreements with shrewd juxtapositions, leaving the viewer to decide (a) if the variances matter, and (b) who's probably telling the truth.
The heist involves the theft of millions of dollars' worth of rare books from a Kentucky university library. We watch the conspiracy progress from wild idea to careful scheme, then watch it disintegrate into a briefly-successful farce. I felt no sympathy for any of the bone-headed conspirators: not the art student who let himself get sucked into a harebrained scheme; not the stoner student athlete who is the driver of the scheme; not the fastidious young man who is willing to help as long as he doesn't have to actually do anything; not the straight-laced young man who is recruited as a getaway driver.
As one of the real-world thieves puts it, "I was torn between the desire to keep the adventure going and waiting for the insurmountable obstacle that would stop everything in its tracks and return things to normal." But the obstacle never arrives: each difficulty is dealt with by these halfwits in what seems to them a logical way. The scheme comes together, and in the end they believe they can actually accomplish their heist. The movie chronicles the development of their plan and their ludicrous attempt to execute it. The result is a kind of testosterone-fuelled farce, entertaining on one level, laughable on another.
11. All is Bright
Starring Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd
Directed by Phil Morrison
Released: 2013
Dennis has just been paroled from prison in Canada after four years. He arrives home to learn that his wife told their daughter he was dead. "I just couldn't take it anymore," she explains. She expects to marry René as soon as he gets a divorce.
In this black comedy, Dennis (Paul Giamatti) and René (Paul Rudd) go off to make their fortune, such as it is, legally by selling a truckload of Christmas trees in New York City. Unlikely colleagues, they endure adversity -- often of their own making -- and find a sort of resolution in a most unlikely way.
I enjoy movies where characters show real growth; this is one such film. Interesting, even amusing at times, but not funny. And even though Giamatti tends to get on my nerves as an actor -- I don't know why, he just does; it's something to do with the shape of his face -- and I find René's reactions not really credible all the time, I would recommend this movie as a nice little Christmas film if you don't really want a Miracle on 34th Street kind of vibe.
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12. Allied
Starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Released: 2017
A love story set in Britain in World War II. Pitt plays Max Vaten, a Canadian officer who speaks French, albeit with a Quebecois accent. Sent to Casablanca as a spy after the fall of France, he is assigned to play the husband of Marianne Beauséjour, a Resistance agent there (Marion Cotillard). They fall in love while accomplishing their assignment (try not to think about the likelihood of such an arrangement in real life), and Max succeeds in getting Marianne back to London, where they marry and start a family in north London.
Difficulties arise. Information has been received indicating that the real Beauséjour was killed some time before in France, and a substitute put in her place. Max is called in to be informed, and instructed about how to behave while the authorities execute a plan to make a definitive determination. The scene where these instructions are delivered seems raw and out of place, as though Pitt never got to rehearse it; as though it was written, or re-written, just before being filmed. In any case, starting with that scene, Max demonstrates phenomenally bad judgment at every opportunity, gets one courier killed, royally fucks up another courier drop for his own purposes, endangers a number of French operatives in the process (and implicitly kills a number of unseen French girls as well), and tries to steal a British airplane. Just before that, we learn that his wife's judgment is every bit as bad as his own.
This movie is just over two hours long. There is plenty of action throughout, and I enjoyed the portrayal of that era, as always. I also enjoyed the twists of the plot to some extent, but I have to admit that the set-up phase of the story took way longer than necessary. It seems to me it could have been done in ten or twelve minutes, but was given 46: long enough for me to start noticing the flaws in the story. It would, I think, have been better to devote most of that time to building the characters, including supporting characters, in the part of the story that takes place in London. Or they could have devoted more time to the two tasteful sex scenes. I spent the first one wondering how anyone could have accomplished that in the tiny little coupe they were driving. The second was less distracting and all too brief.
Starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts and Bob Hoskins
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Released:1991
When Maggie Smith died, most of the tributes I found on the web site Imgur.com referenced her role in this film, so it's no wonder I was surprised to discover that it's a small part, bookends really: a couple of scenes near the start, then one at the end. She does it very well, of course, made up to look much older than her actual age at the time, but considering the breadth of her career, this was hardly a major performance by her.
And more surprising to me, it wasn't a great performance by Robin Williams. He is at his best when he goes off the leash, ad-libbing and extemporizing while others stand around and admire the talent. He didn't do that at all in this movie, and the result is a kind of flat, whine-y performance as Peter Banning, né Pan, rediscovering his heritage.
Dustin Hoffman is much more the consummate performer as Hook. His kiddie-film villain is right on the mark. Is he scary to little kids? If he is, he can't be too scary. He's a fun villian.
The real surprise is that Spielberg could produce such a sadly dated movie. I suspect that people who came of age in the 90s -- people who post on Imgur.com, I guess -- look on this bit of fluff as a seminal influence in their development, much as I see the British Invasion or The Graduate. (I've tried to think of some kiddie film from the mid-to-late 60s for comparison, but nothing comes to mind; I must not have had a childhood.) Hook is full of giant cellphones and skateboards, and Never-Neverland is done in those awful primary-color palettes. How was this movie nominated for Best Visual Effects? It must've been just on the strength of the names associated with it, because the reality was unimpressive so long after Star Wars Episode Four.
