Category: likey

sherrybaby/maggie gyllenhaal

since people on this blog are clearly bored, here’s a crackling recommendation. in sherrybaby, which is hereby joining my best-of-2006 list with full grades, sherry is an ex-con just out of jail and on her way to the halfway home that is to be her domicile. in the halfway home, she immediately does two things, in the following order: 1) she calls her child, to whom she’s not talked for three years (the child is about four), and 2) she fucks the director. this is pretty much what she does for the rest of the film, too: she attempts to establish a connection with her child, and she has lots of sex. sex seems to be the only way sherry knows of connecting with people and, for a change, these connections are not the abusive, exploitative, violent type films about dysfunctional women tend to portray. the men sherry beds may not all be rescuers, but they are all right. director laurie collyer is hell-bent on not giving us targets for easy judgment. even when sherry gives a matter-of-fact, bored blow-job to an employment counselor who’s understandably reluctant to put her to work in a kindergarten, you don’t hate the guy. he’s got a lousy job, and it’s not like he asked. Continue reading sherrybaby/maggie gyllenhaal

Bring the funny

Another short post: I rarely watch stand-up. I catch snippets on Comedy Central, and remember why. I rent a very rare concert film, like Sarah Silverman’s, which is actually pretty good, and I’m still kind of underimpressed. It’s not a genre that intrigues me–it’s like 70% miss and 30% hit and completely formally uninteresting to boot.

But two recent viewings beat the percentages. Demetri Martin’s standup “Person” is not on dvd, but you can catch most of it on youtube. He’s odd, and his ratio of hits to misses is closer to 65-70 to 35-30, and he tries out a few interesting variations that make the act something a bit more involving, too. His shtick: he looks like he’s 10, and he’s one seriously silly person. My favorite bit involves a large pad with graphs/charts for comedy.

But even better–and a lot odder (in the form of the dvd, which has both stand-up and various filmed bits that aren’t sketches but are not exactly backstage chatter either)–is Zach Galifianakis’ Live at the Purple Onion. His jokes don’t always work, but he delivers them with such strangeness, you get the sense that half of his material is being born on the spot. He’s really intense, and then he’ll pull back for an exceedingly silly self-deprecatory chatter on the stage. I’d even say that I get the sense that the filming of the dvd gives us a skewed, inferior vision of his abilities–he gets a bit caught up in the camera, and while funny I have this feeling he’d be even stronger live. Favorite bit: he has a running series of gags about characters he’s developing. One is the Timid Pimp, and that had me laughing for about five minutes.

3:10 to Yuma

Taking a break from papers, prep for our spring semester, and the heavy-duty (and worthwhile) intellectual razzmatazz on this site (and our sibling blog on books), I watched an old western, based on an Elmore Leonard story. Yuma stars a really wonderful Glenn Ford, playing a manipulative, smart-talking serpent of a bad man (who may have some kind of code in there, under the smirk)–caught and guarded, before the titular train to prison, by a smalltime family-man rancher (Van Heflin) trying to make a few bucks to get through a drought. It’s nothing special, but it’s smart and well-made and I set all else aside and sank into the pleasures of a finely-etched B flick.

Anyone got any other less-known, escapist pleasures to recommend, as semesters get going?

notes on a scandal

this is a genre film — a psychopathological thriller a la patricia highsmith and thomas harris — that, like the best of its kind, comments on the deeper issues of misdirected love and pathologically unmet need (or: what do you do when the things you crave are forbidden?). notes on a scandal is brilliantly written/directed and brilliantly acted by all involved, though i would like to emphasize the amazing performances of cate blanchett and judy dench, who work together beautifully.

barbara (dench) is a no-nonsense high school history teacher who can break up a fight by saying ‘enough’ and get kids to fess up in three minutes flat. she’s also a lesbian so transparently repressed that everyone knows it except herself. sheba (blanchett) is a new, clumsy, and breezily beautiful art teacher who’s decided she needs a break from her quirky but demanding family of four. she’s married to an older, much less attractive than she (not difficult, since she’s glorious) guy (bill nighy), and her progeny are a grumpy teenage daughter and a 12-year-old boy with down syndrome. when sheba shows up in barbara’s school, it takes barbara exactly one second to decide that she’s going to become her ‘best friend.’ Continue reading notes on a scandal

Children of Men

Films in which the future of the human species is at stake tend to be problematic; the commodification of despair is tricky stuff. Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of P.D. James novel is certainly a very entertaining, emotionally and intellectually powerful film with one of the best endings of the year. And it is beautiful to look at. But that’s kind of ironic, yes? Here the landscape of broken, bombed-out buildings (shot in muted, blue-grey tones) approaches something best described as rubble-chic (the art direction is superb, but one questions if the end of the world should be reminiscent of early mornings at Hogwarts). That’s cinematic dystopia for you. But I’ll not labor the point; Clive Owen looks appropriately grizzled and that will do. Continue reading Children of Men

Crispin Glover’s What Is It?

Crispin Glover has been working on What Is It? for close to ten years now. I’ve been reading about it, and waiting to see it for as long as that. He finally brought the film (literally; he travels with it and attends every screening) to Los Angeles for three showings, which I eagerly attended.

I enjoyed some of it, and I admired more of it, but unfortunately, I really can’t say it was worth the wait. If for no other reason, it has kept Glover so busy that he has only appeared in a handful of movies in the past ten years. When he does show up, he’s not always in quality fare. For example, the remake of Willard might have been good, and Gloverhimself really is quite good in it, but it’s never more than a B-Movie. He has been one of my favorite performers since I can remember, and I’d love to see him get roles in smart, interesting oddball films, like River’s Edge and Reuben & Ed. Instead, his trip in getting What Is It? made has been epic on many levels: It started as a short film, he worked hard to get funding to make it into a feature film, he lost all faith in what he calls the “corporate methods of film-making and distribution,” and financed it himself. He did this mostly with money from appearing in Charlie’s Angels, while most of the film sat in a vault in NY and promises in post-production made to him were broken one after the other. He ended up editing it mostly himself, with help from volunteers, and for the past year he’s travelled from city to city showing it, finally ending up back home in LA last week Continue reading Crispin Glover’s What Is It?

Strangers With Candy / X-Men 3

I find it kind of amusing that there was some talk about the trailer for X-Men 3, but no talk of the movie itself. I didn’t see the first two, but I come across chunks of them on TV so often that it would now be annoying to try to watch the entire films now. I’d been told the second one was quite good and the third one bad, but at least I hadn’t seen 15 minute sections of the third one over and over, so I rented it for no good reason. Continue reading Strangers With Candy / X-Men 3

forest for the trees

i’d like to recommend a small german film called the forest for the trees (2003). i stumbled upon it at the university library and i’m still haunted by it even though many weeks have gone by. the very simple story is about a young woman who, having just been left by her boyfriend, moves to a different town to teach middle school. lonely and friendless, she latches onto another young woman who lives near her. the story of this ill-fated friendship is so painful it is hard to watch. melanie is desperately needy. like needy people everywhere, she does her do all the wrong things and, most pathetically, exudes some indefinable vibe that repels others. the director captures this predicament and its impalpable elements so sharply that, if you have ever been needy, or dealt with a needy person, you’ll cringe. the countless scenes of melanie knocking on tina’s door are harrowing. Continue reading forest for the trees

Bond, James Bond

I thoroughly enjoyed this incarnation of Bond. Making grandiose claims for an action adventure franchise would be foolish, but it is hard to quibble with the choices made in ‘Casino Royale.’ You get a much harder edge to Bond with Daniel Craig (actually similar to the excellent but much-maligned first Timothy Dalton outing as Bond), and the external scars that he sports at several points in the movie (you see bruised knuckles several hours after a fight, along with the lacerations to the face) speak to someone who is much more clearly only one step away from an assassin rather than the dandy spy that we have seen in recent years.

The main action sequence comes early in the movie and is utterly satisfying, not least because the guy Bond is chasing appears to have learned his moves from B-13: he climbs impossible surfaces, bounces off hard objects and his body appears made of rubber. Craig huffs and puffs behind him.
Continue reading Bond, James Bond