Middle of the Row

I just got home from Silver Linings Playbook.

Philadelphia is playing Dallas as I type this, which is especially amusing because that football rivalry plays a small part in the film.  I haven't read Matthew Quick's original novel, but I'm pretty much in love with David O. Russell's adaptation.  The Master may well be my film of the year, but Silver Linings Playbook is outstanding.

 

All the performances (Cooper, Lawrence, De Niro, Weaver, Tucker) are excellent.  The two women I saw it with gave a lot of credit to Bradley Cooper (and he's great, not just a pretty face, playing nutty, vulnerable, and dangerous), but Jennifer Lawrence is spectacular.  I haven't seen Zero Dark Thirty yet and I understand Jessica Chastain is getting a lot of much-deserved Oscar buzz, but Jennifer Lawrence was terrific in Winter's Bone and she's terrific in this.  I have one of those Michelle Williams-type crushes on her, which means I'll happily go see anything she's in.

 

There's a whole lot of running in Silver Linings Playbook.  The main characters are running from past mistakes, they're running from treatment and conventional wisdom, and they're running from each other.  Cooper and Lawrence have a meet cute (feet cute?) as they  pound the pavement in the opening scenes.  Only someone who's never seen a movie will be surprised by the eventual outcome, but that's not supposed to be a dig at Russell or his film.  He takes his time, lets the story breathe even while his characters are out of breath from some emotional outburst.  It takes a lot of control to choreograph a train wreck, and Russell nails it. 

 

There's a reason they don't make romantic comedies about ugly, inarticulate people.  Oh sure, Cooper and Lawrence are unbalanced as hell, but they're so pretty to look at you can't help root for them.

De Niro brings a lot of warmth and frustration as Cooper's father, and while I thought Jacki Weaver was just fine as the mother, I couldn't help but see Sally Struthers each time Weaver appeared on the screen. 

 

An easy film to love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Covalent Bonds

I saw Skyfall last week with my lady chums.  Saw it for free.

Last Saturday, I bought a copy of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter Hunt, 1969) from Best Buy, because their $9.99 Bond Blu-rays were packaged with $10 coupons good toward the purchase of a Skyfall ticket.

I also had a $5 Reward Zone coupon, so my Blu-ray only cost $5.44. I chose On Her Majesty's Secret Service because I already own Goldfinger and the Lazenby is frequently ranked among the top 5 Bond movies.

I'm watching it now, as I type this.

James Bond (George Lazenby), handy with a blade

I can tell you exactly how many James Bond movies I watched with my father growing up, because it was the same number of professional baseball games we attended, which is to say zero.

Don't get me wrong, my dad was a great guy.  He drove me to the library a lot, and we ran plenty of errands together.  We just didn't do a lot of traditional father-son things.  He never taught me to whittle.  We never teamed up for a three-legged race or went fishing or slept with the same prostitute.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas) tries to make Bond forget all about Donald Pleasence

So it's really no surprise I came late to the Bond franchise.  I came of age during the Roger Moore era, so my bond was campy and lightweight, a real wise-cracker, not tough and misogynistic like Sean Connery.

I know JFK was a huge fan of the Bond novels, and I own all of them, mostly in vintage paperback editions.  You want to know how many of them I've read?  Double-oh-zero.  But that's the nature of collecting.  You can't just collect what you're interested in right now.  You hedge your bets and collect anything you might be interested in in the future.

This Bond omnibus (Macmillan, 1961) collects three novels: Casino Royale, From Russia with Love, and Doctor No.  Another collection, Bonded Fleming (Viking, 1965) contains two more novels (Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me) plus five Bond short stories: From a View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, Quantum of Solace, Risico, and The Hildebrand Rarity).  I like to think I'll get around to reading them eventually. 

I have one more unread Ian Fleming book in my collection.  It's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Random House, 1964), the book he wrote for children.  I saw the film adaptation with Dick Van Dyke at a tender age, and despite my relative inexperience with film criticism, I wasted no time telling my parents the movie stank.  This was no Mary Poppins, no Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.  Have you seen this film?  It's shitty shitty lame lame, and I say that as a fan of Dick Van Dyke and his ottoman tripping antics.

But back to Skyfall, which I found perfectly entertaining.  Daniel Craig is dynamic, Javier Bardem is deliciously creepy, and the theme song left my head the moment the lights came up. 

 

My only gripe is with AMC management, which made me dump my dinner leftovers before entering the theater.  They offered to hold my two slices of Thai Chicken pizza while I watched the movie, but I politely declined and tossed the food in the trash. 

 

Then I paid $8 for a bag of popcorn, but since I got a free movie ticket it seems awfully petty to complain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 










 




















 

Middle of the Row

We saw Argo last week and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. 

It's a real accomplishment for Ben Affleck, who did a fine job with Gone Baby Gone(2007) and earned well-deserved raves for The Town(2010).

Any director who can wring moments of genuine suspense from a dramatized story the audience is already familiar with has my total respect.  I know the hostages make it out alive, but that didn't stop my heart from beating faster during the airport interrogation scenes.   

When the Oscar nominations are announced, I imagine Affleck will hear his name a couple of times.  Still, I don't think Argo is a better movie than The Master or Moonrise Kingdom or even Frankenweenie.  Argo is entertaining and well-crafted and totally worth your time, but I can't honestly say it's one for the ages.  It's good, it's great, I'm glad I saw it.  But it just didn't feel like high art to me.

To which Alan Arkin would surely say, "Argo fuck yourself."

Middle of the Row

I saw Frankenweenie on Sunday night. 

There was a time in my life (1985-99) when a new Tim Burton film was an event, something to be admired, a sure-fire Friday night plan.  And then came the unfortunate Planet of the Apes remake and a lukewarm Big Fish (which for all I know is perfectly good, I remember almost nothing about it) and then four more films I haven't even seen except for Sweeney Todd which I thought was pretty entertaining. 

Which brings us back to Frankenweenie.  I remember the live-action short, but this story was meant to be animated (re-animated?) and the full-length version is superior in every way.  It's funny, it's tender, it has a big, socko finish.

This is how good I thought it was:  I didn't even finish my bag of popcorn.

But that's not all. 

I saw a woman in a green sundress.

I know it's October everywhere, but it's still summer in the desert.  There's a cooling trend coming at the end of this week, but it was still ninety degrees on Sunday.  Sundress weather, maybe the last weekend of it.

This woman with the green sundress had short hair and she was standing in front of me, so there was neck, there was back, there were shoulder blades. 

I was reminded of that scene in Citizen Kane, the moment where Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) tells the story of the woman with the parasol:

 

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry.  And as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

 

White dress and parasol, green sundress--it makes no difference.  I saw some skin on Sunday that reminded me of necks I've kissed, backs I've rubbed, shoulders I've placed my head on.  Familiar, but different.  Close, yet distant. 

 

In another week or two, all the sundresses will be hung in closets or stowed in drawers, replaced by sweaters and scarves and coats. 

 

A month from now, when it's cold and rainy and chilly and damp, let's see which memory is stronger: Frankenweenie, or the girl in the green sundress.





Middle of the Row

I saw The Master again last night, this time with Corey and Michelle. 

It is impossible to watch this movie and not be struck by the sheer physicality of Joaquin Phoenix.  It's an amazing performance, funny and brave, complicated and award-worthy.  You can't take your eyes off the guy, and you'd be wise not to.     

Philip Seymour Hoffman is outstanding as always in a less showy role, but The Master requires every bit of his enormous presence. There are plenty of opportunities for Hoffman to chew the scenery, and he doesn't waste any of them.

Phoenix and Hoffman need each other in The Master.  The characters need each other, the actors need each other.  And little Amy Adams, so prim and proper, wields so much power in this movie. 

It's breathtaking, all of it.
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The movie was at 6:15, and I got to the theater at 5:45.  If you look closely at the stub, you'll see I paid $7 for a student ticket instead of $9.50.  The guy in front of me told the cashier he was an ASU student, but didn't have his i.d. card.  The cashier shrugged and said "you'll have to pay full price." 

I used to work at the university, and even though my i.d. says "staff" it looks identical to a student i.d.  As I dug in my wallet for my money, I must have accidentally pulled out my staff card and laid it on the counter. 

The cashier caught a glimpse of maroon and gold, grunted, gave me the student price. 

I did not bother to correct him.

Middle of the Row

 





I saw The Master on Saturday at 10 a.m., which meant I was in the theater with roughly fifty other people, most of them retirement age. 

 

I'm always a little nervous about seeing serious movies with an audience.  Young or old, they can all get on my nerves.  Oh sure, I can blot out the inappropriate laughter of punky teens whenever there's full-frontal nudity or the loud, bewildered comments of octogenarians who simply cannot follow a plot.  But I don't like having to do it. 

 

This audience was perfect.

 

I'll probably see the movie again in the next week or so and reserve most of my comments until then, but The Master was certainly satisfying in all the ways I expected, and it's clearly one of the year's best. 

 

One quick thought: Joaquin Phoenix has a peculiar way of standing throughout the film.  Each time I saw him standing there with his hands on his hips, I thought of Ed Grimley.  Or maybe Crispin Glover in Back to the Future. 

 

A little odd, but no big deal.



Middle of the Row

 

 

I have every intention of seeing The Master this week, but in the spirit of strict reporting, I did buy a ticket for Resident Evil: Retribution on Saturday.  We were celebrating a friend's birthday, and somewhere between the fish tacos and the beers and the Urban Cookies cupcakes, we slipped off to the local cinema. 

I cannot comment on the movie, because I slept through most of it. 

Lesson learned: I cannot drink a can of Old Chub (8% ABV) on an empty stomach as an appetizer.  Irresponsible, cannot be done.