Three Flicks Review

The three-day weekend provided ample time to take in several flicks. I review three here.

W.

I was really looking forward to this one. I like Oliver Stone and I had caught snippets of Josh Brolin's portrayal of the witless wonder, so I had high expectations. Unfortunately, they were dashed. There is nothing to love here, nor hate. It was just plain dull. Where was the audacity and giddy ridiculousness of JFK? Where was the passion, the judgment, the absurdity? This film feels like a solid TV movie without the commercials. Maybe it is just all too familiar. Maybe Josh Brolin, as good as he is, is just too charming. I don't know, but I do know this was a long two hours to spend for not much payoff.

Battle in Seattle

What a great movie! Okay, I am a bona-fide lefty who went into this already believing--knowing--that the WTO is the root of all evil, so I have no issues with the perspective of the filmmaker. The movie ostensibly covers the riots that took place in Seattle during the WTO's week-long meeting there in 1999. The narrative structure works so well, with the director following several individual storylines to provide multiple perspectives. What impressed me most was that even though the director's perspective is clear, all the players are portrayed fairly and complexly. The only exception to this is an American lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company; he's a jerk, no complexity here. 

I was equally impressed by one storyline that focuses on a man, a European, who is attending the meetings and trying to get the powers that be to acknowledge the responsibility of the developing world to ensure that trade decisions favor health over profit. This is such an interesting juxtaposition to the work of the protesters, who would agree with this man, but are responsible in part for keeping him from his task.

I was also impressed by how Townsend portrays the mayor and police. The mayor, played by Ray Liotta, is a particularly interesting figure, who starts out believing Seattle can savor the glory of hosting this global event and ensure that the protesters are allowed to voice their opposition. He just never anticipated how organized and effective the protesters would be. Once that becomes clear, he is pressured to unleash the police.

The acting, cinematography, and story telling are top notch. 

Frozen River

Melissa Leo plays a very poor woman living in upstate New York. Her husband is a compulsive gambler and leaves with the money they have saved for a new mobile home just before Christmas. When she goes to look for him, she discovers that a Native American woman on the nearby reservation has taken his abandoned car. The woman tells her she can sell the car to a guy just over the border in Canada, but when they get there (after driving over a frozen river), she is forced to smuggle two Chinese illegals back into the US. Quickly, she realizes she can make enough money to buy the double-wide. 

This is a gut wrenching, unflinching portrayal of poverty in America. But it is amazingly heartening and hopeful as well. A very original tale that I will not soon forget.

Reflections on "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"

Okay, I've said it before, and I will say it again: Lousy movies really chap my hide. I was looking forward to Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I like Michael Cera. I'm a sucker for stories in which cool teenagers (i.e., smart, anti-superficial, funny) triumph over privileged, fake ones. And, I was led to believe this movie would have a great soundtrack....so it was with high expectations that we popped the DVD into the machine tonight.

Oh, I failed to mention that this movie was a critical darling when it was playing in theaters. It must have been a slow couple of weeks because this flick is a doodie (as Spalding would say)!

What can I say? Michael Cera phoned it in. The three female characters were boring, grating and just plain stupid, not necessarily in that order. The dialogue was cliche, spartan, and unimaginative.

The highlight of the action for the first hour (it was only an hour and 24 minutes long--thank God) consisted of a drunken 17-year-old puking in a public toilet, dropping her phone and gum in said toilet, fishing them out and reinserting the gum in her mouth.

The love story was boring, lame and completely uninspired. In order to convince us that Norah and Nick really belong together, we have a scene early in the movie where the villain (Nick's ex) tells Norah that she's "heard on the street" that Norah has never had an orgasm. This is so that at the end of the movie, when Nick and Norah are having sex (in a recording studio), we can hear and see Norah's tremendous "O" on the sound board. Ewwww!

The soundtrack pretty much sucks, by the way.

Pigman: Then and Now

I recently had a flashback to the Jackson public library, where I spent some time my first summer living in Amador County. I remember these great books that the librarian recommended: Pigman; My Darling, My Hamburger; and A Hero Ain't Nothing but a Sandwich.

A couple of years ago, I told my son Joe to read Paul Zindel's Pigman. I remembered reading it as a kid and how it made me feel--devastated. I actually couldn't remember the plot, just that it was something to do with an old man and some mean kids. I just reread it and was amazed at the honesty of the story. Two high school students write alternating chapters about their friendship with a recent widower who collects ceramic pigs and eats snails and chocolate covered ants. The alternating first person structure helps us experience the blossoming of the friendship with the kids. Eventually, the kids act irresponsibly and break the old man's heart. Alone, ill and bereft at the callousness of his teenage friends, Mr. Pignatti dies of a heart attack when he discovers that his beloved baboon at the zoo has died.

As a girl I felt so terrible about the death of the Pigman and angry at the kids. As an adult, I experienced it as a really bleak look at the lives of three people who are just trying to pretend that they are not alone, outcast, and stuck in a life without meaning. Some kids' book!

My plan now is to re-read the other books I have listed.