prowlerneedsajump

2009-11-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

In my dream, I was part of a group involved in life or death escape from authorities. Having executed strenuous and painful athletic feats in caves, on water, ..., we had become very fit and rugged, but it was still almost certain we would be apprehended. It turned out two of our group were great young hockey players, the sons of billionaire founder/CEOs of rival companies. After an endless chase through a maze in Boston, we fled to New Hampshire. Finally, I was able to return to my apartment near Fenway Park. I realized I had left my kitten alone for several days and was worried for its health. When I let myself into the suite of rooms, people were there looking at an enormous floor jigsaw puzzle I had been working on before leaving town. It featured a photograph that held significance in the big company rivalry. I realized I was under scrutiny, maybe even in danger, because of inside information I possessed connected with the photograph. New construction by one of the two companies had surrounded my aparment building with a stark structure, controversial for its dark, forbidding architecture. One of the hockey players, knowing his fate might be in my hands, but remaining fiercely honest, quietly admitted the building was a bad thing. The hundreds of people, including myself, were being served a neighborhood feast, so we sat down on rickety rented bridge chairs. I went for a walk around the block and into an underground shopping mall. I was able to speak several foreign languages with proprietors of the shops.

Antichrist (2009)

2009-10-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

Something as unique as this is always a bonus. Writer/director Lars von Trier's film gives a slightly more scrutable David Lynch experience. See it in the theater or on a plasma screen (which I don't have because the buggers eat ridiculous amounts of power. )

Antichrist's intellectualism is authentic, not postmodern. I therefore expected the themes to travel along familiar lines, being wise to the tired stumblings of both enlightenment rationalism and Adorno's anti-everything. But it's not even about that.

Stupid that this is being shown as a Halloween movie on cable.

(Metacritic rating: 48)

Nothing Is Private (2007)

2009-10-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

A configuration of minor flaws here - in casting, writing, direction, photography, editing - add up to something that is the opposite of enjoyable. It's as if the man or woman who makes it a movie was out sick.

Hint to filmmakers: with source material that is good but unavoidably politically incorrect - the commercial title was Towelhead, the film's reechoing epithet - you must not freakshow the characters. They can't be sometimes real and sometimes cardboard cutout.

(Metacritic rating: 57)

Amores perros (2000)

2009-10-04T05:37:00.000-07:00

I believe the title must translate as When Terrible Things Happen To Terrible People. It's a Dogme-esque film set in "Iberian America." Karma: former college professor, 20 years before, had dropped out, leaving wife and child, to become a guerilla. Now living outside society but in it, he saves a nearly dead fight dog. But while the man was away from his hovel, the recovered canine has killed or maimed most of the other dogs he cares for. The vicious dog represents violent radicalism which ideological belief allows to flourish - with devastating results.

(Metacritic rating: 83)

You Don't Mess With The Zohan (2008)

2008-06-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

The hommus is plentiful as the Middle East meets the Lower East Side in Adam Sandler's successful goof on terrorism. The laughs are split between body-fluid situations and satire of the low-brow, 70's-ish preferences of Israelis and Arabs in America (apparently they all LOVE Mariah Carey). The latter category is largely lost on audiences here, but don't let your quiet fellow theater-goers get you down.

John Turturro hasn't been this ethnically funny since The Big Lebowski (1998).

(Metacritic rating: 54)

Sex and the City: The Movie (2008)

2008-06-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

The creative spark of the series was its narrative sociology. The movie thankfully did not leave that behind. The many relationship stories unfold amongst fashions fashions fashions, but each pauses for a peek through the writer's unique lens.

(Metacritic rating: 53)

Redbelt (2008)

2008-05-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

David Mamet writes and directs smart films. His essay, Why I Am No Longer A 'Brain-Dead Liberal', is very smart. It's like his political mindset over time followed the plotline of The Spanish Prisoner (1997): there is a foreground narrative, conventional and believable, but once Rebecca Pidgeon appears on the screen, a wider and sterner reality will be revealed.

She's the actress in his movies, and the companion of his heart who was midwife to his conservative epiphany. Again, it's not that what came before has to be contradicted -- appearances are all we have to go on; if deceiving, they can be re-resolved. You comprehend better what it is that you thought you thought..

Don't try to read conservatism into Mamet's new gem Redbelt. It's just a martial arts picture, even, or especially, in the sparring of the high-powered attorneys. Don't miss it.

(Metacritic rating: 69)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

2008-05-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

As a mainstream sex comedy, a hurtin' genre if ever there was one, Forgetting is money. Speaking of Vince Vaughn, that's who Jason Segel, the film's writer and lead actor, reminds me of, in more ways than one. The difference is that I still don't know whether V.V. is circumsized.

When I realized the film was not crass or juvenile like The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) or especially The Heartbreak Kid (2007), I wanted to stop the projectionist and lead a standing ovation.

(Metacritic rating: 67)

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day (2008)

2008-05-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: prowlerneedsajump by definition loves Frances McDormand.

This warm and thoughtful comedy set in 1939 London lets Ms. McDormand shine and is by far the best movie she has been in for a while. Expect eye candy reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Beautiful for a date!

I wonder if anyone else got to thinking how Rome's Julius Caesar had traded way up from Servilia and Calpurnia?

(Metacritic rating: 63)

Smart People (2008)

2008-05-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

Smart People is worth seeing, but not a must-see. I've heard the Sarah Jessica Parker bashing, saying she ruined the movie, but I think the writing of her character is at fault. The movie didn't explain why she felt compelled to lie to make Quaid leave her bed after sex --- the best we have is the gay male best friend supplying her whole backstory in a sound bite. The key arc of the movie is the bitter professor's coming back to life, but the woman who catalyzes this awakening is not a well-developed character. That's a flaw in the writing.

The characters are mostly unpleasant, and we're not really rooting for them. The exception is the main character. When he has undergone a barely perceptible thaw ("a twinkling of humanity"), we smile. Surprisingly touching.

(Metacritic rating: 57)

my blogname

2005-04-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

My blogname is from Fargo when the Frances McDormand character is temporarily stuck because her patrol car's battery is dead.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116282/quotes