Rearview Mirror

It's late June and I'm bumping down interstates to Texas in a jam-packed Civic with my wife and our ever-faithful cat. We are changing our lives. For me it's like Chapter Three; I left my home town after high school, moved east, and stayed there 16 years. Now I'm coming back. My head has been spinning a lot lately, and movies have helped.

Back in Harrisburg we caught Horrible Bosses on the motel tube and I ended up enjoying it very much. This is the kind of movie I normally avoid. First of all, the logo of Horrible Bosses is in a particular font that I hate and that is always used to market comedies, is always all-capitals, and nine times out of ten is cherry red. This movie managed to forgo the red, but still, the font is all over the poster, and the title stinks. There must be a report somewhere concluding that this is the most effective way to sell a comedy, and it always puts me off. I expected Horrible Bosses to be about as funny as Crazy Stupid Love, which I thought was a real turkey, but which I'd imagined would be better because they'd selected a different font for the movie poster. I now have two counterexamples to suggest that I should not be paying so much attention to fonts, but I'm sure I won't stop.

Horrible Bosses actually has no surprises at all, except for the fact that it's funny. Watching it is like eating in a chain restaurant where the food and ambience are good enough that it's almost like you're eating in a real restaurant. Crazy Stupid Love is just a bad chain restaurant experience. Let's say Crazy Stupid Love is TGI Friday's, and Horrible Bosses is the Macaroni Grill. (The fact that I actually ate at the Macaroni Grill right before watching Horrible Bosses has absolutely nothing to do with my decision.)

While we're on this analogy, it occurs to me that another one of these "chain restaurant" comedies is Talladega Nights, and that movie actually contains a scene in an Applebee's. That scene really blew me away. The aspiration there may have been to lampoon corporate packaging, but the movie seems to fall completely within the parameters of that package, of what's already been tested and approved- and in the case of the Applebee's scene, the film actively praises the consistency that a corporate franchise is able to offer. It's an old problem that comedians sell out and are then fettered by their sponsors, but it's spooky in this case, because Will Ferrell used to make jokes specifically about the banality of suburban chain restaurants all the time.

Great movie experiences of late:

Our neighbors treated us to a showing at the Brattle Theater of one of our favorites, Vampire's Kiss. Most people seem to have an opinion about Nicolas Cage's wild man routine and whether it constitutes good acting. I think there's no need for the question, because the filmmakers who use Cage typically use his performance as a kind of prop, a static object that fills a space in a predetermined way, or a blunt instrument, if you like, for achieving a desired effect. They have moved beyond the question of whether the performance is convincing or not, so I am compelled as an audience member to do the same. Face Off and Honeymoon in Vegas were somewhat lame attempts to use Cage in this way. Wild At Heart and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans used him to stunning effect.

Yet his schtick, and the way it's objectified, belie his actual range. If Leaving Las Vegas doesn't convince you of his abilities, nothing will, but it's hardly the only evidence; he has plenty of convincing moments in Matchstick Men, and the fact that he played identical twins in Adaptation that I never had any trouble telling apart is also to his credit. These are actually true and good dramatic performances.

But then there's Vampire's Kiss, which is the most confounding and mind-bending of all his films. How can a movie be driven so completely by a stops-out, thrashing, bellowing Cage performance, and yet give one the feeling that something much more than that has occurred? Cage is so ridiculous here that he seems to caricature himself; how then does he manage to be tragic, and even a little scary, convincing us while at the same time appearing almost flip about the very process of acting? This is one over the top Cage performance that isn't simply a prop, or part of the machinery; it is the machinery. If we're convinced, Cage himself must be doing it. But seriously, how is he doing it? 

We also watched one of my very, very favorites, Joe vs the Volcano. I have no analysis to offer at this time. All I can say is that yet again, it left me with a strange melancholy that I've experienced every time its final credits appeared, and that I've never begun to understand. I was also reminded of who all filled the many small parts: Lloyd Bridges, Dan Hedaya, Ossie Davis, Abe Vigoda, Nathan Lane, Amanda Plummer… seriously, what a cast!

And we had to say goodbye to Cape Cod. Man, we are really going to miss the Northeast. While there, we went to the Cape Cinema, a gorgeous movie house with murals on the ceiling. We saw Russian Ark there several years ago. This time we watched Moonrise Kingdom, which takes place in a dream-like New England in the same way that Wes Anderson's other movies take place in dream versions of India, New York, and Texas. It made me wistful about leaving, of course, but I was happy that movies like this- fantasies that seem to spring full blown from their author's minds- are still being made. I suppose Wes Anderson is just another tested-and-approved brand now- Moonrise Kingdom is lovely, but breaks little new ground in the Wes Anderson universe. But at least everything in it belongs entirely to its author (unlike most of the multiplex "fantasies" of today). Here again, Anderson gives us childhood abandonment, children dealing with emotional trouble by finding hiding places and building fortresses with obsessive hobbying, and a visual style that presents each frame as though the audience were touring a picture gallery, holding us far away from the characters so that we feel safe, yet uncomfortably cold. (Anderson's sense of humor achieves the exact same purpose.) Though his films are thematically repetitive, Anderson has at least found themes that mean something to him, and has managed to adapt them to moods that are indeed different among his different films. Moonrise Kingdom, in a way, feels the most like an escape from reality of any of his films- it comes the closest to achieving the live-action storybook I think he always wanted to make.

By the way- happily, with all the hustle of packing for the move, we still had time for one last delightful Porchlight Cinema event! The movie was a perfect selection: Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Again, no analysis. But, to everyone who came, thanks. It was part of a great send-off for me and Jamie to get everyone on the porch one more time.

True Love in the Movies

I have clawed my way to New York and back four times in the last two months. Our return on the penultimate occasion was a beat-the-blizzard action thrill ride, with cars sliding into guard rails and rolling backwards into the snowy woods. We were 20 miles from Boston when night fell and the blizzard began in earnest. Perhaps only 100 yards ahead were visible, and the mess of snow on the highway surface ruined any chance of us drivers seeing the paint that makes possible the crucial process of organizing ourselves into lanes. Yet the effort was well rewarded by a grocery store found still open upon our arrival, and by hot vegetable soup and crusty bread. That was the same trip when we won a wreath on Christmas Eve, tossed to us for free by a vendor getting ready to scrap a tragic heap of trees (as he hula-hooped with a four-foot diameter wreath himself).

On one of the earlier of these adventures, I insisted that we make for the Anthology Film Archives to see a show of Robert Breer short films. Breer made the short film 69 which had haunted me since I'd seen it in college, and I'd never bothered to learn more about him but always meant to. His work is abstract and experimental, and I've always recalled that 69 first interested me because without directly offering a narrative or even a recognizable image, it evoked a series of feelings that in a way added up to a story.



The program was difficult, and I give Jamie a lot of credit, first for sitting through it, and then for not pretending to have enjoyed it. The opening short, Blazes, is a low-tech assault, three minutes spent staring into a strobe light while you attempt to discern what colors and shapes are moving around in front of you. Even more of a challenge was the cruel Fist Fight, with its incoherent soundtrack and rapid cutting among images that tremble and fall out of focus. The gentle and lovely Fuji, with rotoscoped footage of the mountain seen from a window of a passing train, let us come down a bit from the high seas of avant-garde animation before we were dizzily deposited on the curb once more. I still contend that 69 is excellent, and I found that I feel about the same about Breer's material now as I did then: that while it's opaque, its energy is right there in front of me, and it really inspires me to make something.

The best Christmas film we saw this year was The Shop Around The Corner, which I picked based on an outstanding list that I found on Wikipedia that organizes not only movies that have Christmas itself as their subject, but movies which, to various degrees, incorporate Christmas into their plots, or simply use Christmas as a setting or backdrop to their stories. The film is essentially a romantic comedy, but the romance between the two leads, although sweet and well acted, is not its most interesting or memorable thread. What I loved more was the bigger picture of the shop and its employees and customers. The boss, the salespeople, the porter and the bosses' wife who never appears, but whose image is painted by the faces of the other characters as they speak of her (or to her on telephones)- each character is an individual that I cared about and wanted to follow. The world of this film is so lovingly realized, so vibrant and full of stories that even if you took away the main love story, the rest of it would carry on just fine.

Nevertheless, it reminded me of how much difficulty I have believing in love when I see it on a movie screen. Of all the hundreds of movies you've seen about two people in love, how many of them find a way to transmit a small piece of how love feels, what it is, why it happens in the first place- some glimpse of it that allows you to empathize with the characters and understand what they're experiencing? Love is usually presented to us the same way that Godzilla or a tap dancer is presented to us- as a fantastical object of entertainment, something to make us smile, but not for us to understand, think too much about, or believe in with any seriousness. Does it feel as though the filmmakers themselves really understand, or want to understand, the love they're selling? If I can't imagine that they do, how am I supposed to care about it?

I don't know how a great love story is written or told successfully, but when it does happen, it looks criminally easy to do. We reflected on this recently after seeing The African Queen. I believed in Bogart and Hepburn's characters- they were both insufferable nerds who appeared to perfectly deserve each other, and that is worth celebrating. Yet why should this be so simply and naturally true in one film and not in another? When they face down the Germans at the end and wind up in a tight spot, there really seems to be a lot at stake. The cartoonishness of the film allows you a bit of distance (we both remarked at how many moments felt exactly like a cartoon, not excluding the goofy jungle soundtrack), but in spite of the comic tone, my investment in the characters and my wish that they succeed were profound. I can only think of a few films that really bring a blossoming romantic connection to life for me, and this is one of them (also coming to mind right now are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Before Sunrise).

Yet a love story doesn't even have to be so deeply convincing for a movie to completely succeed. Take Moonstruck, which we recently watched for the hundredth time. I certainly believed that Cher didn't love Danny Aiello, but her and Nicolas Cage? It was too whirlwind, too larger-than-life, not on a scale that I recognized. But do I care? The real subject of that film is not the romance between the leads, but the romance of being in New York City, and that feeling is burning madly in every scene. And it easily provides you with quotes to repeat endlessly while tramping through that city with your wife. The winner: "I seen a wolf in everyone I ever met, and I... SEE A WOLF... IN... YOU !"

Other movies we saw recently, all recommended:

True Grit, about which has been written, at this point, everything that could possibly be said (I'll just say I enjoyed it a lot);

Secret Sunshine, which is emotionally exhausting, but strangely thrilling in its willingness to explore novel questions about religion, grief and acceptance;

The Kids Are All Right, which we'd been meaning to see for months, and which is a plenty smart family drama, in spite of its plot mechanics;

and Toy Story 3, which winds up one of the only movie trilogies in history (how many are there?) in which all three films are pretty much great.