Movie Notes: All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Director: Lewis Milestone

This is a very powerful anti-war film.  The film convincingly immerses the viewer into the terrors of the war, and it feels very raw.  It's obvious that the pain of the war was still felt when the movie was made.  It evokes the pain so obvious in the literature of the period.

The only real draw-back is in the too earnest speeches given periodically by Lew Ayres are out of character with the otherwise authentic feeling of the movie.

Movie Notes: Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow

This was definitely the award season movie I was most looking forward to seeing, and it really didn't disappoint.  This is really difficult story-telling because of all political land mines surrounding the plot, but I thought the filmmakers did a great job.  It didn't seem to me a political film, in an agenda-driven sense, but rather a story about one person's drive and commitment to a cause making sure that cause happens.  Jessica Chastain is very good in the role of catalyst and crusader.

I can't recommend it to everyone because it's a dark bloody movie about dark and bloody things.  However critical the advanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA may have been in finding bin Laden, they're not fun to watch.  They shouldn't be fun to watch: they're terrible and dehumanizing.

Neither is it appropriate to make revenge-fantasy porn about bin Laden's death, and this movie carefully avoids that.  I thought it illustrated the raid pretty fairly, and while I think bin Laden's death was just, it's still terrible to kill people, and the movie shows that.  The sequence with the interpreter walking through the house near the end of the raid contrasted very well with the special forces' machine-like efficiency.  I thought that was very emotionally effective.

Anyway, good movie, even if it looks like it's on the outs this award season.

Movie Notes: Animal Crackers

Animal Crackers (1930)
Director: Victor Heerman

The Marx Brothers second film is a chaotic, cracklingly funny, bizarre and confusing chain of events full of shady characters, an empty plot, and shallow characters.  In other words, it's epitomical of their best work.

Not everything these guys do makes me laugh.  Some gags make me laugh long after the scene is over.  I imagine on different nights, different scenes would strike me as funny, some nights maybe none of them would strike me as funny.

Oh, one last thing, it's nice to see Zeppo have a comedic moment.  The dictation scene is quite funny.

Movie Notes: Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (1941)
Director: Orson Welles

It took me a few viewings of Citizen Kane before I could appreciate it as entertainment.  Knowing that it has been declared "the best movie" by so many people actually gets in the way of just enjoying it for its own sake on its own merits.  It's not only an interesting movie, it's an entertaining one.

It's technical brilliance is well documented, but the element of the movie that I want to mention here is that it strikes me as a very honest film by Welles.  I like art that seems to mirror the inner reality of my life, and I think Kane does that because Welles exposes his own troubled soul in exploring the life of Charles Foster Kane.  Where the movie seems a bit cold is where he perhaps withdrew a little to protect himself.

Movie Notes: A Day at the Races

A Day at the Races (1937)
Director: Sam Wood

This isn't the best of the Marx Brothers.  It's a bit too tame, too long, and it is tainted by the unfortunate racist climate of the era.

The two best comedic bits are the phone conversation between the Florida medical board and Whitemore, and the examination of Mrs. Upjohn.  The examination sequence descends into true Marxian anarchy, and brings life to this otherwise staid picture.  Chico and Harpo's musical number was OK, too.  Oh, and I liked Harpo's examination scene, ending with a novocaine shot to the leg.

The other sequence in the movie with real energy is the dance sequence by the barn.  It's that sort of contained African-American expression that is regrettable today, but the performers far outclass the musical numbers of their white counterparts.

Movie Notes: Love Actually

Love Actually (2003)
Director: Richard Curtis

A Christmas fantasy about love where almost everyone gets exactly what they want.  It's very well done, and very fun.  It's just so patently unrealistic that I assume it's intentionally so.  At which point, I wonder, why?  I don't know.

The most compelling (by far) of the many stories is that involving the relationship between Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman.  Which makes it the most intriguing thematically as it is the only one that has its feet flat on the ground the whole time.  Is the whole movie essentially pessimistic?  Is the only real experience of love we can expect one of difficulty and pain?  Is it a criticism of sappy romantic love stories?  Is the pain just background to accentuate the unrealistic joy?

Movie Notes: Trainspotting

Trainspotting (1996)
Director: Danny Boyle

A thrillingly paced and orchestrated merry go-round of debauchery and the horror of empty chests.  The movie's well made, but it has nothing significant to contribute to your life, so it's not worth it's baptism into stimulated depression.

Movie Notes: Stagecoach

Stagecoach (1939)
Director: John Ford

My four-star first impression of Stagecoach upon my first viewing was that it was a very fun western.  I now think it's something more than that.

Stagecoach is a film, like Casablanca, that exploits stereotypes as archetypes to address real issues at a fundamental moral level as popular entertainment.  This is about as good as Hollywood ever got during its Golden Age to making art -- which is to say Hollywood could do quite well!  It's broad-stroke art, with little enough nuance, but a great deal of depth communicated via short-hand.  Ford communicates so much with a camera that, as a crash course in the art of film in preparing to make Citizen Kane, Orson Welles is said to have watched Stagecoach over forty times.

It's so beautiful.  Monument Valley crowned with majestic clouds.  Horses, riders, and stagecoaches rolling along at break-neck speeds.  Dallas exiting the low adobe house through a long hallway, the encroaching feeling of civilization that communicates.  This is film as film!

The stereotypes, and perhaps more interesting, their relationships, are compelling.  The City, the Desert, and Man; Civilization, the Savage, and the Outcast.  Inside the stagecoach, the characters get to know each other, confront their own selves, and make difficult choices.  Most of them will have a chance at redemption, but only two will truly escape themselves and the "blessings of civilization."

Movie Notes: A Matter of Life and Death

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Directors: Powell and Pressburger

This was an interesting film, and I mean that in the very best sense.

The movie's plot, in a nutshell, is that the British pilot of a WWII Lancaster survives, against all odds, his fall from his shot-up plane over the coast of England without a parachute.  Afterward, he meets the last person to whom he had spoken, an American radio operator with whom he falls in love, and Death -- in the form of an effete French gentleman who attempts to convince him to die.  The movie's plot travels forward in parallel: a technicolor production on earth wherein a neuroscientist and his new found love work to save his life, and a black-and-white drama in heaven where he appeals his death sentence to the highest court.

Heady stuff this, but the production rises to the occasion in its own peculiar style.  David Niven is very good, and I like the look and sound of Roger Livesey, but in this film his single-tone manner of delivering lines got a bit old.

The movie, shot during the last days of the war, is eminently timely.  Death is an ever-present reality, but to say it is more immediate during wartime is to trivialize that very real horror.  Heaven is shown to be very large, and young men in flying uniforms are constantly passing through its doors.  Other doors are also referenced, and the scale and scope of this catastrophe is thereby portrayed both cleverly and poignantly.

All in all, this is a movie I'd recommend!

Movie Notes: Les Miserables

Les Miserables (2012)
Director: Tom Hooper

Libby and I went to this movie as dedicated fans of the musical.  We love the Christian story of redemption wrapped up in the life of Jean Valjean, and get carried away by the emotionally charged music every time we watch it.  That made us soft targets for this movie, and I think it basically delivered.

Hooper really did his best work with Fantine's story arc.  He and Anne Hathaway so accurately captured her suffering that I completely ceased to be entertained, and was wholly disgusted with the evil of the world.  That's a powerful piece of art, and while I was sitting there in emotional pain, I thought of Augustine's argument against tragedy in his Confessions.  Are people entertained by this?  Do I expect to be entertained by this?

I was entertained by Valjean's conversion scene.  I appreciated the way the camera captured and channeled the tension of the moment in that church.  I thought, when he threw his papers off the top of the mountain, that we'd see a little stronger parallel between that moment and Javert's moment of decision than we did (at least in the cinematography).

I liked the live singing.  I thought Jackman did it particularly well.  I really have no complaints about the cast. Even Russell Crowe didn't bother me, despite the fact that he sang completely differently than everyone else.

Movie Notes: Ernest Saves Christmas

Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)
Director: John R. Cherry III

I watched this as a kid.  I didn't remember it, though I do remember that I loved all of the Ernest movies as a kid.  I'm not sure why.  Somehow, I found Ernest funny.  He is somewhat funny, but he's best in small doses as his humor is not very broad.

That's the beauty of this movie.  Ernest is a supporting character, and that's using him to his best effect.  That's probably the best part of the movie.

Movie Notes: The Hobbit

The Hobbit (2012)
Director: Peter Jackson

When considering how to make a prequel to the Lord of the Rings, as understood and consumed by modern American culture, it would have been difficult for Peter Jackson to have done a very accurate interpretation of the book as written.  After all, The Hobbit is a jolly fairy story about a middle-aged comfortable English gentleman of independent means who decides to go on an adventure with a group of somewhat humorous dwarves and a good-natured wizard.  It's children's literature.

So, Peter Jackson tried to cast the story in a more serious cast.  More in line with Tolkien's own recasting in his appendices and Unfinished Tales - that is, the story as told by Gandalf.  This allows Jackson to take into account the greater context of which Bilbo was blissfully ignorant.  So, the additional material is true to the world, if not to the spirit of the novel being interpreted.

Unfortunately, when you bloat a simple story with complicated themes, it's going to be hard to keep the story flowing in a natural way.  The first half of The Hobbit, where much of this greater context is found (Radagast is particularly terrible) is therefore terribly dull.  Once Jackson launches his action sequences (intentionally sillier and less frightening than the ones in the Lord of the Rings), things get more interesting.  At that point I got immersed in the story and found myself disappointed that the movie was ending when it did.  Which is good!

Also, as opposed to the action sequences (which are adrenaline-inducing), the best part of the movie was actually the Riddles in the Dark sequence.  Which is as it should be!

So, all in all, this is not an amazing movie.  It's a fun one, though, once you get into it.

Libby and I intentionally sought out a theater showing it in 48fps.  I wanted to experience it closer to the way the director intended.  I found the higher frame rate really distracting, at first, but eventually I got over it.  It does make everything crisper looking, and there's perhaps more a sense of actually being there.  Unfortunately, it also exposes the special effects to be what they are, and in that sense Libby found it distracting for the whole movie.  Computer animation, sets, and costumes look like computer animation, sets and costumes.  I don't know if this is the future of the movie industry, but my preference is still for 2D film at the normal frame rate.

Movie Notes: Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory (1957)
Director: Stanley Kubrick

The execution scene staged in this movie is intensely powerful.  When artists grip their audience as compellingly as Kubrick does during htat sequence, they've done something special.

While I freely admit to having sentimental taste in movies, I also like a movie that really bites at my moral intuition.  This movie challenges them, and draws its power from them.  I don't think there are many deeper wells from which the artist may pull.

Anyway, a beautifully shot, fascinating film that I highly recommend to everybody; though it's not an easy one to watch.

Movie Notes: To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not (1944)
Director: Howard Hawks

What's really remarkable about this film to me is the gooey underbelly presented by both of the hardened leads.  I know it's cliche in this kind of movie, and I know Bogart and Bacall do the same thing in other movies similar to this one, but the way they balance the sharpness and gentleness in their relationship on the screen is compelling.

Libby and I always make fun of the whistle line in the movie, but there's  definitely a smolder going on here!

Movie Notes: Skyfall

Skyfall (2012)
Director: Sam Mendes

Libby and I saw this a few weeks ago, now.  I'm really behind on my movie notes.

This was an entertaining, if rather serious, Bond film.  I liked two things: first, that Bond's womanizing is shown to be a pathology due to abandonment issues stemming from his orphan childhood, and, second, the touching relationship between Bond and M.

All in all, a solid three star movie.

Movie Notes: Lincoln

Lincoln (2012)
Director: Steven Spielberg

I was so excited about seeing this movie, with some trepidation, since the trailer first came out.  The excitement is due to the intersection of historical geekiness and the wonder that can be a cinematic interpretation of our greatest president (I loved the aw-shucks mythology in John Ford's The Young Mr. Lincoln), and the trepidation came from the War Horse style shots in the trailer.  I was afraid Spielberg was going to pile on the oozy sentiment (as much as I love sentimental pictures).

Anyway, Spielberg showed remarkable restraint, and this is a very good movie.  There are moments where the cinematography and John William's music come across too strongly, but they are few, and don't stand in the way of the great performance around which this movie rotates, and from which it draws its life.

That performance is Daniel Day-Lewis' apparently effortless accomplishment of re-creating for all of us this great man.  His performance is stunningly naturalistic, and fits this movie's intentional effort to comment on the mythos and man of who this president was as well as Brando's nervous fidgeting fits the anxious moral conflict of On the Waterfront.  I can't imagine he won't win Best Actor, but this is the sort of performance that transcends that sort of affirmation. 

I also wouldn't be surprised if this movie wins Best Picture, but I still prefer Moonrise Kingdom.