Elf: 2003, dir. Jon Favreau. Seen on DVD (Jan. 6).
Oh, this movie is goooood. Real good.
And I mean that in the sense that after being on the receiving end of some spectacular display of bullshit, you look up at the person responsible and say, “Oh, you’re good.” Maybe you fell for it, whatever it was, but you are still aware enough of the mechanics behind it to be able to see through it and know, yeah, that’s pretty damn slick.
That’s Elf for you.
Now don’t get me wrong. I liked watching Elf. I laughed a whole lot. It will probably join my list of movies to watch while wrapping Christmas presents. I have no objection to watching it again if someone puts it on TV while I’m around.
But I am cynical enough to see that Elf is a triumph of marketing-based commercial filmmaking, that it pulls every string perfectly, that the filmmakers were absolutely aware of what an audience wants out of a film and delivered just that.
Category: theatrical reviews
The Ultimate Garlic Experience
Garlic is Better than Ten Mothers: 1980, dir. Les Blank.
and
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe: 1980, dir. Les Blank.
Both seen at Alamo Downtown (Jan. 5) as part of Alamo’s “Ultimate Garlic Experience.”
The Alamo Drafthouse chain of theaters in Austin always seems to be offering the Ultimate Experience of something or other. They have a portable movie screen and have shown movies in bowling alleys, lakes, the middle of the woods, and other wonderfully bizarre locations. When they do have Ultimate Experiences in a theater, the evenings include themed meals, silly contests, appearances from the director or a star in the film … you get the idea. Sometimes I wonder if Tim League, founder of the Alamo franchise, is related to William Castle, and I mean that as a compliment.
Last night I went to the Ultimate Garlic Experience at Alamo Downtown. Two short documentaries from Les Blank were shown, Garlic is Better than Ten Mothers and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Since Les Blank’s movies are not available on DVD, and are difficult to find on VHS, that alone seemed like a good reason to attend.
Atlantic City (1980)
Atlantic City: 1980, dir. Louis Malle. Seen on DVD (Jan 2).
For some bizarre reason, I had Atlantic City mixed up with Nashville in my head, and it took me a minute during the credits sequence to realize that this was a Louis Malle movie, not Robert Altman. I know, sometimes I feel like I’m not worthy to be a film geek.
Atlantic City is an odd and interesting little movie, which almost got lost between the other movies I saw last weekend, which were bigger and flashier and sillier and funnier.
For example, it is odd to see Susan Sarandon so young, and Burt Lancaster so old (although I’d recognized him in Local Hero when I saw it last year, so it wasn’t as surprising to me as it was to my boyfriend).
House of Flying Daggers (2004)
House of Flying Daggers: 2004, dir. Yimou Zhang. Seen at Dobie (Jan. 4).
I am a terrible, cynical person. Some of the first words out of my mouth when this movie ended were, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Later on, I was heard to say, “Mongo only pawn in game of life.”
You have to take your cynical hat off if you are going to see House of Flying Daggers, which is a terribly sentimental and melodramatic love story disguised as a martial arts movie. I think this movie works only if you view everything in it as an allegory for love.
The Stepford Wives (2004)
The Stepford Wives: 2004, dir. Frank Oz. Seen on DVD (Jan. 3).
Last year, I bought an old library copy of the novel The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. I wanted to read the source.
Wait, we need to go back even further. When I was junior-high age, I saw the 1980 made-for-TV movie Revenge of the Stepford Wives one night on TV. I don’t remember much about it except for Julie Kavner (remember when we used to see her as well as hear her? hee) … and the fact that the Stepford women were drugged, not robots. They all had to take little pills. At the end of the movie, the women all go crazy and stomp on the nasty man who’s been behind the whole scheme.
Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
Ocean’s Twelve: 2004, dir. Steven Soderbergh. Seen at Galaxy Highland (Jan. 1).
If I hadn’t seen the SpongeBob movie recently, I might well say that Ocean’s Twelve is the silliest movie I’ve seen in a very long time. So that’s my verdict: this movie is not as silly as an animated singing sponge. But it’s pretty close.
I liked Ocean’s Eleven (the 2001 one, not the 1960 one) quite a lot. I thought it was a very smart movie with a good cast. I was particularly fond of George Clooney, although I liked just about everyone except Julia Roberts, and at least she didn’t annoy me. I own the DVD of Ocean’s Eleven, because I like watching a clever caper movie, and you know it just about broke my heart when I found out that the Bellagio doesn’t really look anything like it did in the movie.
Ocean’s Twelve is fun, and it’s entertaining, and we had a good time watching it. But it is more like the original Rat Pack Ocean’s 11 than it is like the remake. It’s a bunch of guys (and a couple of chicks) all having a whole lot of fun making a movie together, without much worry about details like the storyline. The dialogue is often quite good, the acting is fine, the direction is stylish and fun. But the story is a mess.
The Ladykillers (2004)
The Ladykillers: 2004, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Seen on DVD (Dec. 16).
Sometimes I worry that I am losing my sense of humor and fun. Everyone loves Napoleon Dynamite but me. I ran a Google search on Buca di Beppo after writing the previous entry and yeah, everyone seems to think that it is a wonderfully fun place with decent food, except for me. I have tried to watch the TV shows “Arrested Development” and “Scrubs” and didn’t laugh. Am I turning into a humorless old grouch?
But I watched The Ladykillers this week and let me tell you, I laughed my ass off. That is some funny and weird movie. I liked it better than the original, which is an Ealing comedy and classic and so I am probably committing some sort of heresy, but I don’t care. (My review of the 1955 original is here.) The 2004 movie was routinely panned by critics, and no one went to see it, and it seems to be generally considered a flop. But I enjoyed it immensely.
Muriel’s Wedding (1993)
Muriel’s Wedding: 1993, dir. P.J. Hogan. Seen on DVD (Oct. 31).
Unfortunately, this movie caused a new agreement about DVD rentals to be established in our household, especially since I saw it not long after renting Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
The agreement: No more watching movies with ABBA in the soundtrack when my boyfriend is home. It shatters his poor delicate nerves. He has to play a lot of Warren Zevon and John Hiatt afterwards to recuperate.
Fortunately, I really liked Muriel’s Wedding even with the ABBA music. I am not the world’s biggest ABBA fan myself, but I felt the music was very appropriately used in this movie.
I am not the world’s biggest fan of “chick flicks,” either, and I didn’t even think of this movie as a chick flick until it was pointed out to me. (When I am queen of the universe, we will use the term “chick flick” to describe movies in which women kick some serious ass, and there will be many fine movies made in this particular genre. Movies where women sit around the table eating cheesecake until they bond and then start dancing to Motown hits will face my fiery wrath.) This was such a lovely little movie that I didn’t notice it’s chick-flick-ish-ness.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1983)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High: 1983, dir. Amy Heckerling. Seen on DVD (Nov. 6).
Fast Times at Ridgemont High finally got back in print on DVD, so I didn’t have any more excuses for never having seen it. That’s right. I had never seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High. My boyfriend had That Look that he gave me earlier in the year when I found out I had never seen Caddyshack, so the movie went to the top of our rental list and we got it immediately after the new DVD released. We had this beautiful shiny new DVD from Netflix that we may have been the first people to watch.
I don’t know why I had never seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High, except that I was too young to see an R-rated movie when it first came out in theaters. I don’t know why I didn’t include it in the paper I wrote on teen melodrama for a graduate film class—either it must have seemed like too much of a broad comedy or else it was entirely off my radar. I’ve seen scenes from the movie, and mostly what I knew about was Sean Penn as Spicoli, and that it was directed by Amy Heckerling.
(I used to keep close track of movies directed by women, back in the day. I ought to do that again … I noticed all the movies starting to be nominated for awards for 2004 and realized that women are entirely missing from the director and screenwriting lists, and the acting roles didn’t look that choice either. Greeeeat.)
The Getaway (1972)
The Getaway: 1972, dir. Sam Peckinpah. Seen on DVD (Nov. 3).
Sure, Ali McGraw was pretty. I won’t debate that. But why all the fuss? For one thing, her acting annoys the crap out of me. I haven’t seen Love Story and probably won’t unless there is a god of vengeance who will be very displeased in me for not believing in him and, when I die, will subject me to a continuous and unavoidable watching of the worst weepers in cinematic history. I’ve seen clips of the movie, as we all have, and it is enough to assure me that I am not missing some great performance by Ms. McGraw.
She is particularly annoying in The Getaway, and I don’t think we can blame it all on the usual misogyny in Sam Peckinpah movies. I think a better actress would have handled the role in a less snippy and whiny way. Faye Dunaway leaps to mind.
But yeah, all the roles for women in early 1970s American films were rotten, I won’t argue with that. The Getaway is certainly no exception. Sally Struthers plays this babyish chick who thinks nothing of throwing over one boyfriend for another man, and right in front of the boyfriend, too. I can’t think of a woman I’ve liked in a Peckinpah movie except for Ida Lupino in Junior Bonner. I can’t think of a woman I’ve liked in an early 1970s film except for Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude.