Monday March 14, 2005

I LOST YOU AT THE MOVIES. I have been very inattentive, dear readers, for the past few days, and though there is much excitement afoot on subjects previously considered here, I would much rather talk about some 2004 movies I just now caught up with. Skip this post if you wish, and wait for the next purple-faced rage.

The Village. The trouble with coming late to all of M. Night Shamalamdingdong's movies and knowing how they end is that my attention is diverted entirely away from the whoa-nellie money shots, and toward the virtues of the storytelling and the concepts. I call that trouble because, in the case of Unbreakable, the story wasn't much, and in the case of The Sixth Sense, while I admired the skill employed, I kept giggling at all the scenes in which Bruce Willis spoke to the living -- it turned into parody in my little mental theatre: Oh, so ya won't talk, eh? Givin' me the silent treatment? Well, two can play at that game, sister! The existence of superheroes and supervillains, and of the dead among the living, don't do much for me, unless Tim Burton is working the former and Matsutaro Mizoguchi the latter.

It is kind of sad to see Oscar Winner Adrien Brody acting like an extra from Popeye, and the devices employed to make the Big Trick work (especially that labored language -- the repeated invocation of "medicines from the towns" made me think of The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, in which the great poet grinds out masterpieces to keep his beloved Virginia supplied with "medicine and blankets") are kind of annoying. But the story moved, and blind Ivy Walker's quest and its attendant sufferings seemed to me much bigger and more meaningful than the conventions of the movie. The reveal at the end wasn't so much "ha ha, fooled you" as a pleasing coda to a modest but worthwhile theme.

Napoleon Dynamite. Greater hearts than mine love this thing. I came around at last, but with some misgivings. The style is pleasing, but not too different -- okay, not at all different -- from what we've seen in the hipper commercials of the day. Yeah, I like bright colors, negative space, and piquantly juxtaposed objects and/or people -- who doesn't? For a while it all looked like Wes Anderson lite, and Wes Anderson is pretty lite already. (Of course, as a former financial-aid preppy, I will always revere Rushmore as a sacred item.) I thought Rick Altergott's "Doofus" covered this ground better. Fuck, Napoleon's uncle was a direct ripoff of one of Stinkhair Stu’s buddies!

But I guess I'm getting soft, because when Napoleon found his bumbling way to coloness on his own terms, I melted. If the test is whether you care what happens to the characters -- and it is -- then this is a success (and, on the convincing evidence of the stupid epilogue provided with the DVD, a success despite itself).

The Manchurian Candidate. If you’ve seen and loved the Sinatra-Harvey-Lansbury version, this new take is almost comically wrong. Silence of the Lambs is lovely, and the idea of a new Demme thriller based on a famous 60s movie must have been an easy sell to backers, but festooning high-tech creepy-crawlies onto the witty old George Axelrod script is like sewing NASCAR decals onto a Coco Chanel original.

The Motorcycle Diaries. In 1952 two bright, attractive young men set out from Buenos Aires to explore South America on a motorcycle. Inevitably, one of them turns into Che Guevara. I almost do mean inevitably, because the character’s sensitivities, apparent by the end of the first half-hour, make his transformation believable, and the rest of the movie makes it real. In classic buddy-movie fashion (I’m thinking of Withnail & I more than Midnight Run here), Ernesto Guevara’s adventuresome accomplice Alberto provides the jam and the joie de vivre, but it’s the Che-to-be who gleans the insights from their journey and the ability to move on. All politics aside (despite the insistence of some Hollywood insiders), this is a beautiful, well-built coming-of-age story in which someone actually comes of age.

Well, that’s it for now. Back to the trenches, ¡hermanos!
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