Author: Chris

For some reason, I have been reading the slew of atheist books that have recently appeared: Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens. There was a reference in the Hitchens (God is not Great) to this documentary, which won an Oscar for best documentary in 1973. It is the study of a young Pentecostal preacher named Marjoe Gortner, where Marjoe is a contraction of Mary and Joseph. Raised by revivalist preachers, Marjoe began preaching at age 4, and continued into his teens. He became disaffected, and moved into the California counter-culture. He then returned to preaching in his twenties, this time cynically milking the crowds, and dreaming of a career as rock star or movie actor.
Continue reading Marjoe (1972)

On a flight from Copenhagen I just experienced the following movie combo: Music and Lyrics, Maid in Manhattan, Pirates of the Caribbean II. Surely no one has had worse?

This documentary about Ralph Nader takes its title from a line by George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” That gives a flavor of the central dilemma facing any assessment of Nader.

The documentary is straightforward enough: archival footage and interviews. Nader himself is interviewed several times, and prominence goes to the so-called “Nader’s Raiders” who worked with him in the early days. The first hour charts Nader’s career as a consumer advocate from the early conflict with GM and the formation of his “Raiders” through the highpoint of the Carter years when Nader was largely responsible for some of the most important consumer protection legislation of the late 20th century, to the exasperation of the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton years, by which time American business had learned how to fight and win the public relations battles and Nader watches his legacy slowly dismantled. The second hour covers the period since 2000 and Nader’s two presidential bids.
Continue reading An Unreasonable Man

Notionally a loose sequel to Henry Fool, Fay Grim defies easy characterization. A Hal Hartley film, on the face of it, this is an elaborate international spy thriller. Fay Grim becomes aware that Henry Fool, to whom she was once married, was a spy working on and off for the CIA. The notebooks containing his “confessions” are then clues to his past, and every intelligence service in the world is after Fay and the notebooks. But it is clear that this is far more of a parody of spy thrillers than one itself. The plot becomes ever more elaborate and bizarre, with dead ends and twists that strain credulity.

So I’m not sure what the movie actually is, except to say that this is probably my favorite movie of the year so far. It is darkly funny, and the writing is superb. I was hanging on every word of the dialogue, especially scenes with Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) whose seriousness in the face of the absurd was a joy to watch. Almost every performance is excellent, even Jeff Goldblum. It is nice to see him not perpetually wise-cracking, and he utters the perfect deadpan line when asked by Fay why he and the US tried to overthrow Allende: “it was not appropriate for our economic interests.” Parker Posey goes a little over the top as she plays Fay, but her character grew on me as she transformed from shallow ditz to sacrificing sleuth. Fay and Henry’s son, Ned (Liam Aiken), also turns in a great performance. The movie’s tone changes in the last half hour, becoming more serious, but it is still riveting, particularly a long conversation between Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) and an Osama bin Laden character played by Anatole Taubman. Finally, the camera work is great as almost every scene is shot a little crooked and from below so that all the actors lean to one side and you get ironic detachment just from the framing. Highly recommended.

Closely based on the play (which I have not seen), this is set in the recent past and follows the experiences of a group of 7 or 8 boys at a British grammar school as they spend a semester studying for the Oxford and Cambridge University entrance exams. This was a curiosity of British education, now abolished, that involved students spending an extra semester at school to take specialized exams for Oxford and Cambridge, because those two universities claimed that the regular final exams (A levels) did not adequately test for what they were wanted in an undergraduate. The main theme is conflict between the gaining of knowledge for its own sake, and learning in order to pass the exam. The former is symbolized by the old History teacher, Hector, and the latter by a new teacher, Mr Irwin, brought in by the headmaster to increase the number of the school’s students who go to Oxbridge (one of the primary status symbols by which schools are judged). The very different approaches are on display as the two teachers prepare the boys for the exams and interviews, with Hector encouraging singing, soulful discussions of poetry and the First World War, and using one’s French to pick up prostitutes, while Irwin tells the students to choose the topics they write about and their favorite hobbies and composers strategically in order to impress the examiners. Years ago, one of my students who was also an English major, told me that all English majors at Oberlin could be neatly divided into either “truth and beauty freaks” or “theoryheads.” Hector clearly champions truth and beauty, while Irwin represents less theory than Thatcherism: the sublimation of all value to that of the market.
Continue reading History Boys

Nothing special, but a real blast. From the same team that brought us the wonderful Shaun of the Dead, this movie parodies cop action movies, repeatedly name-checking Bad Boys, Die Hard, and Point Break. These are not difficult to parody, but Hot Fuzz does it in a fresh, and uproariously funny way. A much smarter, funnier Reno 911. Supercop Nicholas Angel is sent to a bucolic English village as punishment for showing up his colleagues in the London police. Pretty soon the body count is on the rise, and the movie becomes ever more manic until it climaxes in a joyfully excessive 20 minutes shoot ’em up. Lots and lots of fun.

First out of the box is Spiderman 3. It is by no means the best of the three, but this is certainly very enjoyable, and it shows that Raimi has stayed largely true to his vision of Spiderman. This is long (135 minutes), and even more talky than its predecessors. There is endless discussion of doing the right thing, of always having a choice, of being true to oneself, and saintly Aunt May is finally beginning to grate on me. Both Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are too whinny and self-absorbed to really enjoy watching (unlike both the earlier movies). Maguire has become the Frodo Baggins of this franchise: he sucks the life out of it whenever he is out of costume.

But the movie succeeds because of the villains: they are all wonderful, and there is enough ambivalence and complexity about their characters that they never become cartoonish (if one can say that as a positive thing about a movie based on a comic book). James Franco returns in the Green Goblin role, and does a great job of managing his conflicting impulses. There is a great moment when he winks at Peter Parker and his entire face changes. He becomes the spine of the movie. Then Thomas Haden Church portrays Sandman, and again every scene with him conveys a tragic sense of despair. Finally we have Topher Grace as photographer and slime villain. He mostly provides comic relief, but he is so much more lifelike than Maguire that he steals every scene that they are in together.

The action sequences are astonishing, and worth whatever the CGI budget was. An aerial chase with the Goblin is particularly good. Finally, Raimi’s old pal from the Evil Dead franchise, Bruce Campbell, has a hysterical scene as a French maitre d’. It is played strictly for laughs, and I strongly recommend that you try to watch it in a French movie theater to see how the French react.

The plot is straightforward. The sun is dying and a mission is sent to drop a giant “solar” bomb on/in the sun to reignite it. The crew of 8 are meant to detach from the bomb and return home. An earlier mission (the spacecraft nicely called Icarus) failed for reasons unknown, and now the Icarus II is hoping to succeed. It will not be a spoiler to say that pretty much everything goes wrong. The cast includes Michelle Yeoh and Cillian Murphy and nobody else I have heard of.

I recommend this, but not as much as I had hoped. It is a Danny Boyle film, and I had hoped for something a little different out of a genre movie, just as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later offered a twist on our expectations, and also a little of Boyle’s dark humor. Instead we get a highly competent, and certainly gripping (I have no nails left), but otherwise entirely conventional sci-fi disaster movie: The Core made by adults who understand how to craft a movie. Everything takes a back seat to the special effects, which are terrific. The psychological drama of the crew falling apart and contemplating death doesn’t appear to concern Boyle at all, which is lucky because only Yeoh and Murphy appear able to act. The sun deserved a place in the credits, as there is wonderful use of light — blinding light — as the crew expose themselves to the sun voluntarily and involuntarily. Initially, it looks as though Boyle is offering an homage to 2001, as the dialogue is sparse and we are treated to endless shots of the spacecraft and its “payload.” But while Kubrick offered us a sedate, near silent, antiseptic future, Boyle’s is just plain loud, and every contemplative moment is displaced by the crash of machinery or drums and bass on the soundtrack. Near the end Boyle introduces an almost supernatural figure, which I think was unnecessary and a cheap plot device.

I have made this sound worse than it is. I just had high expectations. It is a pleasure to see a genre movie executed this well, but he could have done more.

‘The Last Mimzy’ is not worth a topic of its own, but we can use this for other movies for kids. ‘The Last Mimzy’ has a somewhat over-complicated plot about humanity in the future dying out because of the legacy of pollution. They send Mimzy’s (a stuffed rabbit made by Intel with assorted tools for time travel) back in time in the hope that children in the past will be able to figure out the message send unpolluted genes into the future. I have not made this sound particularly good, but it really is a sweet movie. It avoids the portrayal of overly stupid or evil adults — in fact all the characters are sympathetic — and the kids are especially good. There is a sense of wonder and possibility that makes this a classic children’s film. And Timothy Hutton… whatever happened to him? He used to be at the top of the second tier of male actors (Q&A, for example), but then disappeared. He enjoys himself in this. Oh, and Rainn Wilson (Dwight in the Office) is really good as a grade school science teacher.

Who knew Cleveland had an international film festival? I picked up the listing of films and there is a bewildering variety. There is a new Andrew Lau film, ‘Daisy,’ that I’ll try to check out, but beyond that, I have heard of none of these, and I could use some help. The listing is here: http://clevelandfilm.org If anyone has heard anything good about one or more of these films, I’d appreciate the heads up.