Warm Springs

2005 polio movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The guy from this movie has his political career and family life put on hold when he is diagnosed with polio and becomes a paraplegic. He retreats to the titular spa to rehabilitate. The movie sort of leaves things hanging, but I'm pretty sure he became president.

Cory recommended this about six years ago, and I kept putting it off because I thought it looked boring. There's a disturbing lack of kung-fu, and it doesn't have the FDR on Eleanor action that I hoped it might; however, I did enjoy the thing. It's certainly well acted. Branagh abandons Shakespeare (unless Shakespeare somehow wrote this) to play the future president, and he's just really really good. It's hard to explain why he's good. I mean, he nails the emotional ups and downs of FDR, but a lot of actors could have done that. What I like about Branagh's work is that he does these little things that humanize the character, taking FDR from some guy you've read about in history books to a guy you get to know as a human being and see grow in the context of the story. Cynthia Nixon plays Eleanor, that hot little number. Now, I'm sure she nails Mrs. Roosevelt's mannerisms and vocal inflection and all that, but she kind of annoyed me. Don't get me wrong--Nixon's good. She also does a good job with the human side, like in a scene where she discovers that her husband is boinking some other broad.  David Paymer and Tim Blake Nelson are also good although the latter plays a character who I am convinced is just Tim Blake Nelson. I didn't know while watching the movie, but I learned that they used authentic locations and stuff  along with actual disabled people to tell this story, lending the whole thing more of an authenticity. Branagh was actually swimming in the same pool FDR swam, staying in the same cabin, and driving the same car equipped with hand controls so that he could drive feet-free. I haven't verified it, but I think Branagh was also wearing FDR's underpants. I was also impressed with the effects used to make Branagh's atrophied legs. At least I assume that he wasn't using FDR's actual legs. And I'm also assuming that he didn't do something to himself to make his legs actually look like that. Daniel Day-Lewis might have done something like that. With simple direction and the great performances, there were a few scenes that managed to move me. I liked a lot with the Roosevelts' marital relationship, and a scene with a little girl walking nearly brought a tear to my eye. Good movie even though it has less Nazi werewolves than the other version I saw.

Argo

2012 Best Picture

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: One of those countries with all the oil finds a bunch of white people and decides to attempt the world record for the longest sleepover. Six people aren't invited, presumably because they are "dweebs," and they go whining to some friendly Canadians where they subsist on a diet of elk juice and sugar-free Pop-Tarts. The U.S. sends in a guy who they think might be Mexican because he has a dark beard to play a practical joke on them all.

This is very well done drama, tense and meticulously detailed. The period details and snippets from news footage or speeches helped nail the realism, at times almost to the point where I thought it was a little too much, like they were shoving the fact that all of this might have happened just like this in my face. It's definitely one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction type films. The best part about it, I think, is that it maintains high levels of suspense even if you know the outcome and the fate of all these characters. It's edge-of-your-seat stuff as things build to a tense crescendo, a final series of close calls after a whole bunch of other close calls. I'm impressed with Affleck's direction--as well as his depiction of a Mexican man--because he pulls this all off without any trickery. This is all fairly straightforward, pretty much exactly what a movie version of this story would have looked like in the 1970s if that were possible. I also liked that there was a little humor mixed in with the drama, a lot of it from the characters played by Alan Arkin and John Goodman.   Argo's got good performances, an authentic look and feel (I have no idea about the historical accuracy or inaccuracy of what's going on), a consistent tone, and a ton of thrills. I'd watch it again and probably enjoy it just as much. But is it really a Best Picture?

I heard, by the way, that they're working on a sequel featuring Boba Fett. That is definitely something to look forward to.

Hatfields and McCoys

2012 mini-series

Rating: none

Plot: Following the Civil War, the titular families living on opposite sides of the border between West Virginia and Kentucky talk trash and shoot at each other for a couple few decades.

This birthday gift from my father isn't a real movie, but if I'm going to spend nearly five hours staring at a screen, I need to count it as one. Also, I want my three readers who didn't watch this with me to know how good it is. The acting is terrific from top to bottom although there are so many characters that all look like people from the border between West Virginia and Kentucky, two of the states America can really be proud of, and my wife and I initially had a difficult time keeping track of them. Costner and Paxton are especially great, but all the participants do a great job to add flavor to the time and place. I loved the family feud trash talk. They should have settled this feud by lining everybody up to trade insults with a few impartial judges later determining which side had the best insults. I don't know if these people actually spoke like this to each other or not, but I'm going to pretend it's completely accurate because it makes history more fun. I also don't have any knowledge at all about this historical feud, but if this was accurate at all--Wikipedia told my father that it was--then it's really informative and paints this wild picture of how this second Civil War almost started. Wild, wild stuff, the type of story that could get kids more interested in history. You really grow to hate a few of these characters--Berenger's Uncle Vance, Ronan Vibert's despicable lawyer Perry Cline, the mean "Bad" Frank played by Andrew Howard--and have trouble finding any redeeming qualities in most of the others. But they're all characters you love to spend time with, even if it's nearly five hours of time. My favorite character was in the series only briefly--a posse hopeful who can shoot a rat's ass at forty yards and who tried to join both sides of the Civil War but couldn't because his genitals were askew. Really cool stuff and definitely something your father should think about buying you for your birthday.

FDR: American Badass!

2012 historical comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Roosevelt fights Nazi werewolves, straight from the history books.

This movie has its moments, and Brian Bostwick and Ray Wise are good as the titular president and MacArthur respectively. Unfortunately, this thing is just so cheap. And I mean "cheap" in every single sense of the word. The effects are cheap--CGI explosions that I bet my son could make and pasted-on werewolf fur. The humor is cheap, a lot of dick jokes and polio jokes that are the sort of thing I hate the television show Family Guy for. And cheap puns. Marco Polio and a play on "debriefing" somebody. This was written by the guy behind that wiffleball movie  I watched earlier this year. Ross Patterson is his name, and he has a small part in this one, too. I think this guy's got some potential as both an actor and a writer, but he's got to learn to channel things and probably mature a bit. He's probably a little too South Park-inspired for his own good. He could also, of course, use a little more money to work with. There's a whole lot of ugliness here, definitely more than laughs. One scene probably typifies this most:

FDR has just had an affair in which his mistress squirted ketchup and mustard on his "tiny little polio legs" because, I guess, they resemble hot dogs. Eleanor pops in and says, "What the shit?" There's a bit of an argument which ends in Eleanor saying, "Tell them a rainbow took a shit on your legs." Now, I could be completely wrong. That might be historically accurate. Or it could just be completely tasteless. Either way, it makes me wonder why I watched this.

Titanic

1997 blockbuster

Rating: 12/20 (Abbey: 16/20; Becky: only watched enough to ruin the experience for me)

Plot: As you can easily tell by the above poster, this is about the historic boat that sank in 1912 after ramming into a giant poor guy and a giant slut who were impersonating icebergs in the Northern Atlantic.

I'd already seen this monstrosity for the 100 year anniversary of Titanic, but Abbey and I had some time to kill and decided to pop this in. Of course, I only wanted to watch it for Kate Winslet nudity and was hoping that my daughter would have fallen asleep way before that, likely since large chunks of this compete for Most Boring Chunks of Movie of All Time. But no, Abbey didn't fall asleep. Not only that, my mother-in-law came into the room to watch the movie with us and asked specifically about that scene. Talk about killing the moment. I mean, Gloria Stuart and her wrinkles butting in intermittently is nearly enough to make a guy flaccid for life anyway. And then you add a mother-in-law? There's a cure for virility if you're ever looking for one. So I did what probably any other guy would do in a situation as awful as this one--skipped over the best scenes of the movie and be forced to watch them on Youtube more than a week later. Eight times.

And that, dear readers, is as terrible as what any of the actual victims of the Titanic tragedy had to deal with.

In fact, one could watch Titanic as a metaphor for my personal tragedy.

1) Leo is dissatisfied with his life, wants a change, and finds his way onto Titanic. In my situation, I had just watched a movie called Monster from a Prehistoric Planet that, despite frequent references to "Playmate Island," lacked nudity. So I perused my mother-in-law's dvd collection, saw Titanic, remembered that it's got Kate Winslet's boobs in it, and popped it in.

2) Leo sees Rose for the first time. I also saw Kate Winslet for the first time, and like Leo, I liked what I saw. She's very nearly perfection in this movie. Leo and I both think, "I should just skip ahead to the scene where she's naked."

3) Leo and Rose develop a friendship, a development that lasts well over four hours. I develop sleepiness but stay awake in anticipation of the best scene in Titanic.

4) Bang! The boat hits an iceberg. That iceberg symbolizes my mother-in-law in my tragedy. The boat represents my journey to see Kate Winslet naked, of course.

5) People start drowning, falling to their deaths, and turning blue in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. In my tragedy, that represents me hitting the forward arrow button on the remote and skipping over the only scene that matters in this movie with the exception of the couple shots where computer-animated people are falling from the back of the ship when it's all ass-up and hitting parts of the ship and flipping around.

6) Rose lets go of blue Leo who dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. That's just like my dreams of seeing Kate Winslet naked!

Obviously, James Cameron didn't make this movie as a metaphor for my personal tragedy. No, he made it to make a buttload of money. That this movie starts with the money-grubbing explorer looking for a gigantic blue diamond, a grave robber tearing apart the ghostly remains of this beautiful and very real ship that once had beautiful and very real people on it in order to become a rich king of the world. And that's offensive.

Look, if I made a 9/11 movie in which two fantastic-looking young people, knowing that their plane has been taken over by terrorists, decide to have sex in the airplane bathroom, a lot of people would be offended by it regardless of whether or not one of them was Leonardo Dicaprio. My special effects might be spectacular, but it wouldn't matter. My movie would be offensive. This isn't different. Cameron's taken a historical tragedy and added a lot of flair, an unbelievable love story, and a pair of nipples. The focus is just all wrong here. The lessons of the Titanic are in this bulbous motion picture, but the viewer is distracted by what's going on with the two main characters.

Cameron does a lot really good here. The underwater footage of the sunken ship, whether it's real or not, is really cool. It's haunting footage, and any emotion I felt during this movie was during these early scenes and not when the boat was sinking and its passengers dying since the movie had essentially turned into an action movie with only two characters who matter by that point. There are other individual scenes--the death of some poor people, the captain's demise, the stuff with the musicians--that worked really well, and in a movie that was about Titanic instead of Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet, they would have contributed to an emotional piece of historical fiction. The ship looks great even though you can tell in all the grand sweeping shots that it was created with a computer. I can't imagine another movie giving a better experience of what it was like on this ship. Well, other than that cartoon with the rapping dogs.

Click on that link there if you want to see the dumbest thing ever made.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011 history lesson

Rating: 15/20

Plot: It's the exact same plot as this movie actually.

Either I'm in a really good mood or Captain America: Full Sequence is the best of these pre-Avengers Marvel movies. As always, I went into this knowing nothing of the titular superhero. Like the rest of these superhero movies, this does a fine job of explaining Captain America's origins. It's a lot like the other superhero origin stories, but I really like how the protagonist becomes no more than a goofy propaganda symbol before he runs off doing remarkable things. And the makers of this really nail it with the stage shows and posters and things. They also nail 1940's America which looks stylized and cool, straight out of a comic maybe. The bad guys are the same ones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Nazis with an interest in the occult, although there could have been a better bad guy than Red Skull Man. The special effects are mostly fine although there is a scene where Captain America, right after he gets his powers and starts dressing like a flag, runs in a way that makes Superman's running in the original Christopher Reeve movie look normal. It's the newly-Superheroed Rubbery Blubbery Leg Syndrome, I guess. I don't know much about Chris Evans, the guy who plays Mr. America here, but he also played Fire Man in the Fantastic Four movie. I'll have to watch that one, I suppose, just in case they're in the Avengers movie. Speaking of those guys. Fire Man, The Rock, Ice Surfer. Who else is there? But I digress. I liked Chris Evans as the hero here. I also liked Tommy Lee Jones who seems to do his best work when grumpy. This is the type of movie that a true patriot, such as myself, would have trouble not enjoying. I mean, watching this red white and blue guy sneaking around in such a dopey superhero costume with the most conspicuous prop ever? What's not to like there? How come I didn't read about any of this in my 8th grade American history class?

I was pretty sure that this contained some inaccuracies and thought I'd do a bit of research to get things right and not offend comic book aficionados who might stumble in and read this. So I looked up the bad guy's name. Red Skull really was his name! I just have to assume I'm right about the rest of this stuff, too.

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

1967 Movie Club Selection

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

First things first--I don't remember the character's name, but there's a guy in this thing who has the best hair ever.

There are a great deal of words in this thing. Some, especially a lot of the ones that were sung, were incomprehensible. And a lot of them flew right over my little head. I was in bad need of subtitles to help me out. Even with subtitles, I doubt I'm intelligent enough to attempt swimming in the various layers of Marat/Sade. Freewill vs. predetermination, the power of the individual vs. the community, equality, freedom, justice, censorship, nihilism. Heavy stuff, and this is a challenging and intense experience. Draining even. The style instantly draws you in, almost makes you feel trapped in there with the inmates of the asylum. The single setting is sparse, but I like how some of the features of the bath house are utilized. The camera's definitely not afraid to get right in there, allow you to get intimate with the crevices of the actors' faces. At times, this is almost a movie you can smell. There are a couple of scenes that I just loved. First a "Marat Nightmare" scene with steamy effects, demonic silhouettes, and disorienting music. The second was a scene that started with a chant (in rounds) about "general copulation" and ended with some hot dry-humping orgy action. The ensemble cast is excellent. Patrick Magee is haunting as the Marquis, and I also liked Ian Richardson as the other titular character. My favorite characters, other than the hair guy, were the clown-make-upped chorus that would pop up and sing the weird little songs. Marat/Sade is heady stuff, but it's impossible to take your eyes off the screen as the camera maneuvers through all those crazy mo-fos. It's intoxicating and exhausting, and I wish I was enough of an intellectual to fully appreciate it.

So, fellow Movie Clubbers, what did all y'all think?

The Right Stuff

1983 airplane and spaceship movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Traces the advances of flight and the U.S. space program from the time Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier to the training and travels of the Mercury 7 astronauts.

Der Stoff Aus Dem Die Helden Sind is a thoroughly engaging, light-hearted breath of fresh air. There were a lot of ways this material could have been approached. This movie almost fictionalizes the events and characters, and never steers away from an opportunity for a little humor. Instead of inflating the hero aspect, the script makes these pilots and astronauts very very human, and I really liked all the scenes with the bumbling politicians. Their scenes aren't far off from Abbott and Costello routines or an Ionesco play. The scenes with the flights are very realistic without being overly special-effecty, and even though anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of this period of history knows what happens with the characters, they still manage to hold the tension. At six hours and forty-three minutes, this movie is very long, but it's never boring. The music was a bit much a lot of the time, and the sudden narration at the end is weird. Overall, I really enjoyed this very warm look at the Cold War, a movie that puts a human face on the wacky and wild world of space travel. If nothing else, this movie may have inspired me to incorporate horses into my sex life.

Cory always wanted to be an astronaut as a little boy. Or a shark. Watching movies about them was the next best thing. He recommended The Right Stuff.

"Breaker" Morant

1980 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: During the Boer War, a war that nobody's even heard of, three Australians are put on trial for killing Boer prisoners-of-war and a missionary.

"Breaker" Morant is a movie that just seems different, and I think I finally figured out why. As I watched, the pacing seemed off. After finishing, however, I realized what is different about the pacing--there's nothing wasted here. Everything the director shows us contributes to either the flashback sequences or the courtroom stuff. Most films like this would take a different approach, I think, with superfluous character development or extraneous scenes designed to pull at our guts, but this just lays out the facts, revealing them incrementally in the flashbacks or the courtroom revelations. Of course, the way the story unfolds is a little different too. There's nothing that really dazzles in this. The performances are great from top to bottom, but none of the actors draw attention to themselves and give any of those obvious award-winning performances. Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man) is great as the title character, but Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitzgerald are also good as the other two lieutenants on trial. And Chris Haywood, providing some lighter moments as Corporal Sharp, was also really good. The war scenes are exciting, but the court room scenes are even more powerful. I really liked the flashback structure, and knowing nothing about the true story this is based on, I was surprised by how wrong I was about what actually happened or how things were going to turn out. This raises interesting questions about war, specifically the idea of "war crimes," and justice, and it's really a nice little gem of a movie.

Note: I may or may not have given this movie a bonus point for a bawdy limerick. Knowing me, I probably did since "bawdy limerick" is my favorite literary genre.

This Cory recommendation wasn't one I looked forward to watching or really expected to like. I guess I should trust him a little more.

A Man for All Seasons

1966 English king movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: More history, so I don't even know where to begin. It's all about Sir Thomas More and how he pisses everybody off, especially King Henry the VIII who wants to end a son-less marriage with Catherine, a woman he no longer finds hot, and marry Anne Boleyn, historically regarded as the Paris Hilton of the day. Sir Thomas More's a religious nut with too much of a conscience and refuses to first agree with Henry that this is all a good idea and later to take an oath which makes him a treasoner. More's head is removed (Oh, snap!), a decapitation which ruins his chances to take future oaths. Ironically, oath-taking was one of his favorite hobbies.


It's just great watching a collection of great actors (I believe the collective noun for that is a fluther of actors, just like the collective noun for a group of jellyfish) playing with such great writing, and A Man for All Seasons has a fluther of great actors and some terrific, literary dialogue. Paul Scofield won the Oscar playing a walking oxymoron, loudly silent and bursting with a calm fervor, but he couldn't have done it without the help from the supporters to bounce these lines off. Roseanne Barr gives a subdued performance as the Jabba-esque and weasly Cardinal Wolsey. George Segal is just right as the despicable Cromwell while Sonny Bono manages to be even more despicable with the brown-nosed Richie Rich character, with just the right amount of shadiness and flattery. And who wouldn't appreciate the comic stylings of Buddy Hackett as the Duke of Shipoopi or Vincent Price's unusual but interesting take on the Jiminy Cricket character. And I really dug the way Henry Winkler plays such a daffy Henry VIII. My favorite scene in the movie is when Henry jumps from his boat to a muddy shore, looks down at the mess he's splashed on himself, and starts laughing hysterically, joined in laughter by his entourage only after he glances back at them to see if they're laughing. Only an actor as good as the Fonz could manage to bring the funny without causing an otherwise serious film to completely lose focus. I really like the bits of humor peppered into the story. Lines drip with irony, murky cinematography (the film starts with shots of shadowy gargoyles) adds a sense of foreboding, and the tension caused by a tug-of-war match between God and government that threatens to tear poor More apart builds at a perfect pace. The movie's a pessimistic and timeless treatise on the negative effects that can result when a man actually follows his conscience and on how actions, or a lack of actions, speak more powerfully than any words can. There are a lot of ways the last scene could have been handled, but I thought the chilling and elegant ending this one has is about perfect. That a movie based on English history didn't completely bore me is a plus, and I wasn't bored by a single minute of A Man for All Seasons.

Note: Due to Blogger issues, I had to write this three times. The first one was probably the best.

Walker

1987 satirical biopic

Rating: 14/20

Plot: American adventure-seeker William Walker is sent to Nicaragua by Cornelius Vanderbilt to spread a little democracy with his ragtag army of misfits dubbed The Immortals. Soon after, he declares himself the president of the country and ticks everybody off.

Frustratingly uneven stuff here. Director Alex Cox has no shortage of intriguing ideas, and there are some moments in this that are visually impressive. Add Joe Strummer's eclectic score, and you've got something that looks and sounds really good. Ed Harris gives an (intentionally?) over-the-top performance as the title character. The blood's exaggerated, there are numerous (intentional!) anachronisms, the supporting performances are really hammy, and the black comedy is chaotic. There's also a narrator who inexplicably shifts from first to third person and back again. There's a lot I liked though. This has the best version of "Moonlight Sonata" I've ever heard, one that sounds like it was recorded on broken instruments. There's also some bestiality and cannibalism, and a great scene where a guy laughs at a bird. Oh, and Peter Boyle's got some bitchin' sideburns in this one. It's a fun little movie, probably the most bizarre historical movie I've seen. Those anachronisms--watching cars speed by carriages, characters reading Time magazine, and a helicopter descend on the proceedings--are humorous, but they also help nail down the point. But after an hour and a half of this, I felt like I'd been squirted with too much satirical venom from Cox's multi-colored plastic squirt gun. Or bludgeoned with a plastic squirt gun, especially with the contemporary footage used over the closing credits. It's a ballsy but messy film, one that I can like more than laud.

Russian Ark

2002 trip through a museum

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A guy stumbles awake at the Winter Palace of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. I think he's a ghost. Anyway, nobody seems to be able to see him, but he encounters a Frenchman in black who can and they wander about meeting historical figures and looking at pretty pictures.

Favorite scene: The Frenchman leaves a room. The door closes behind him, and he just stands there for a moment. The door opens slightly, and a guy's head and shoulders peek out. He blows a raspberry at the Frenchman who immediately blows one back. Then, the guy's head and shoulders go back into the room, and the door closes.

This movie is boring. Maybe even really boring. Part of the trouble was probably that I don't know anything at all about Russian history. I recognized some names (i.e. Catherine the Great), but those names might as well have been anything (Danny Doppleheimer, Lance Bickenstaff, Corrina Peabody, etc.)because they didn't mean anything to me. Despite the movie's relatively short running time (just a bit over 90 minutes), I had to watch this in two installments. My son couldn't make it through fifteen minutes. Having said that, this is a remarkable achievement, and the more I think about the amount of work that had to have gone into this production, the more I'm impressed. The film's famous for being the first film that is an uninterrupted single shot, the camera flowing through a myriad of rooms occupied by seemingly thousands of actors and actresses. The effect is dreamy, hypnotic, and exceptionally beautiful. There's artwork--naked people statues, paintings--and the architecture of this palace is artistic itself. Most of the time, the screen is stuffed with beauty, and I found my eyes wandering from corner to corner of my too-tiny television to take it all in. Technically, it's just an amazing long take. If one of these thousands of people screws up, everybody has to get back in their places and the whole shoot starts over again. And even though this movie was shot in 96 minutes or so, it actually involved four years in preparation, practice, and positioning. When I think about how much work had to go into things like lighting, I'm just amazed. Truly an ambitious and extraordinary feat. The guy who plays the Frenchman, Sergei Dontsov, is especially good, and I loved how the camera would drift over a wall or a painting or thousands of dancing people and then settle on the guy just standing there waiting. Russian Ark is also interesting because you get a first-person point of view. You borrow the anonymous narrator's eyes for 90 minutes which puts you right in this museum. And you don't even have to pay to get in! I wonder if there are any other first-person movies like this. Is anybody even reading this far? This is too dull, too haunting, too historically dense, and too Russian to appeal to most folk, but there's really something fascinating about the whole thing. It absorbs you.

I looked it up, by the way. The finished film was actually the fourth take. The first three had to be stopped because of technical difficulties.

Becket

1964 historical drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Sad times in 11th-Century England as two homosexual lovers split up.

Love the dynamic between a randy and spiralling-out-of-control O'Toole as Henry II and Burton as the calmer more contemplative Becket. Both characters have a passion though, and it comes across through some great dialogue. Like The Lion in Winter, the script seems to be written by a person who realizes that every word matters, and while watching, I felt that it was important not to miss a single word of the dialogue. Henry's got some of the bile and bite of The Lion in Winter Henry, but there's also a strange repressed tenderness and hurt in the character as well that makes him even more interesting. The developing conflict is very real and very tragic because there's a heart to the characters. I must say that I was a little bored whenever O'Toole wasn't on the screen although one of my favorite and most powerful scenes is when Becket excommunicates the guy. But O'Toole has a way of taking a character you're really supposed to hate (he's abusive to everybody including his mother, he's power hungry, he's too much the coward to come out of the closet, his facial hair is a little wacky, he whines) and making him not only immensely entertaining but somebody you sort of like and want to see more of. I think I like his Henry II in The Lion in Winter a little better maybe, but I like the sets better in this one. It's a very good-looking movie with vibrant colors and period textures. I also liked John Gielgud who plays the (also gay) French king.

This was recommended by Cory.

Jubilee

1978 punk rock unpleasantry

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Thanks to a mystic mime with a shimmering crotch, Queen Elizabeth I, an advisor, and a midget are able to travel to 20th Century England. They find that it's a pretty trashy place. Living in that modern England are several filthy punk rockers. Like most punk rockers, they're funny looking. Scantilly-clad Crabs, spiky-haired Mad, the shirtless Amyl Nitrate, Chaos, Angel, Sphynx, and Viv, bored out of their minds, talk a whole lot and then run out and do what punk rockers do best--act punky. They vandalize, murder, pillage, and expose themselves. This likely upsets the midget. Then they play Monopoly. But, since they're punk rockers, they don't follow the rules! Hell yeah!

Made with his non-actor punk rocker friends on a budget of apparently sixty-five dollars and seventy-three cents, Derek Jarman's Jubilee looks exactly like you'd expect it to look. It looks like trash. Now I understand that Mr. Jarman was probably intentionally making a trashy film and that's generally something that I can appreciate, but this was not entertaining or insightful at all. I believe the non-relatable characters rambling long and philosophical, the shocking images of late-70's counterculture, Hitler allusions, and the bad hair were supposed to make me feel something, but that's the biggest problem with this movie--I didn't feel anything at all. Jubilee is a poorly written and even more poorly acted, and with the possible exceptions of pretty boy Adam Ant and oft-nude Crabs (my brother's favorite part of the movie, it seems), there's very little here worth seeing. This is gross, languid, and stupid when it needed to be full of energy and dangerous. It's not shockingly memorable enough to be as "good" as a John Waters' movie, it's not satirical or smart enough to be A Clockwork Orange, and it's not original enough to be truly avant-garde. It's nothing more than an embarrassing pop culture artifact that nearly made me wish I was watching a movie about deviant disco dancers instead.

Sort of recommended by my brother.

Night at the Museum

2006 family comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Unemployed Larry Daley is a disappointment to his son. He manages to land a job as a night security guard at a museum but discovers the exhibits come alive at night because of some Egyptian gold tablet thing or something. Just as he starts to get the hang of controlling things at the museum, he finds out that he also has to stop criminals from stealing the Egyptian gold tablet thing. All while simultaneously winning the affections of his son and the pretty tour guide! Go, Larry Daley, go!

I think there's a clever premise here, but it too often takes these nose dives into these chasms of stupidity. Why does Teddy Roosevelt need to have a crush on Sacagawea, for example? Why does the Easter Island head demand gum? There are some funny moments, but there are more occasions when the story is cliched and predictable or the gag goes on for too long. At times, this thing sparkles with life and is both fun and kid friendly, but at other times there is way too much going on and the action gets chaotic and distractingly unbelievable. There's a mean monkey, too, and I just can't tolerate mean monkeys. Mickey Rooney might be the best thing about this movie although I also liked Ricky Gervais as the museum's manager/director/whatever-they're-called and Steve Coogan and Owen Wilson as miniature gladiator and cowboy. This is a big loud movie (the kind of movie I watch parts of in pain, just wishing it was a silent comedy), and perhaps the nicest thing I can say about it is that it wasn't as awful as I thought it would be. I'd also not object to seeing the upcoming sequel.

This was a school movie. I suggested Buster Keaton movies instead, but my colleagues weren't interested.

The Lion in Winter

1968 historical drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: I'm not great with history. Let me see if I've got this right. Henry VIII or IX has his wife, Queen Katharine, locked in a tower because she was "bitchy," a perfectly valid reason to have a queen locked up in 5th Century B.C. England according to the King Handbook. But it's Christmas time, which in the 5th Century was actually called Christmas tymme and had nothing to do with Santa Claus (not born yet) or Jesus Christ (mangers hadn't been invented yet) but everything to do with elves (not featured in the movie) and festive damnation and giant banquets offering varieties of puddings, and Henry the XII or V is in good enough spirits to invite his wife to a Christmas celebration. They've got a lopsided tree and everything, so it seems the appropriate tymme for the king to announce which of his three sons will sit atop his throne after he shakes off his mortal coils and no longer needs a throne. A gay French guy and Henry III or CXVII's mistress are also invited. They sit around screaming insults at each other and having a terrific time until one of the sons puts his finger (the dirty one) right in the pudding and ruins it for everybody else. Christmas tymme ends.

I really can't remember the last time I enjoyed dialogue this much in a movie. Every single line, it seems, is so crisply written and venomous, and it's just a ton of fun watching O'Toole and Hepburn (as well as the supporting cast) deliver them. It's sometimes difficult for a movie that is so dialogue-driven to engage me for over two hours and historical or period pieces are really not my bag, but this one packs such a saucy punch, that it's almost impossible not to be entertained by what is going on. I really like that this movie tricks you into thinking something big is going to happen, that all the tension and conflict is building to something, and then (spoiler alert), that something really never comes. This has got to be one of the most dysfunctional families in cinematic history, yet they are so much fun to watch and so much fun to root against. I think I rooted against them anyway. I don't know. Maybe I did like them. With all the brilliant writing, by the way, I believe my favorite line is the very simple one spoken by son John that seems to come from a Monty Python movie--"You stink. You're a stinker and you stink!" I might start saying that to my students.

This was a Cory recommendation.

Flags of Our Fathers

2006 war movie

Rating: 14/20 (Dylan: 12/20)

Plot: So what we're left with is our memories. Swirling stars above a city of stone, silver buses and snapping fingers. I fondled a girl and rapped for nickels outside a smorgasbord while you watched a dying man desperately attempting to win you a stuffed seal from a claw machine. Just how baggy did I wear my pants back then? And did I ever tell you that I never actually wrote that rap song, the one about Dave Winfield, the one you told me was clever but were likely far too smart to actually think that? It doesn't matter. The stuffed seal didn't care, so why should anybody else? All those dead people, that black wall, and the teasing of a rainbow umbrella lifted toward a glum sky. What was I doing, and why was I doing it? That's what I'd like to know.

Dylan didn't like the structure of this one (he did say that he liked the movie), but the bouncing between the war scenes on Iwo Jima and the travels of the three surviving flag raisers worked well. The movie is too long and at times seems redundant, and the last twenty minutes or so is bogged down by some narration which almost makes it seem like an entirely different movie. I like the messages at the heart of this movie, and Eastwood does a good enough job of portraying the harshness of war as well as the harshness of post-war realistically. But I was bored far too often with the safe direction and the Hollywoodiness of it all. We'll watch Letters from Iwo Jima soon enough, I suppose.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

2007 action adventure movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Historical treasure hunter Ben Gates is back and all ready for the chance to make a sequel and watch the dough roll in. This time, finding the treasure (in this case the legendary Mayan city of gold) will also (somehow) save his family name (implausibly) and reconnect him (clichely) with his estranged wife (lamely). The ever-deepening mystery of Abraham Lincoln's assassination (you sockdologizing old mantrap!) takes Ben Gates and his posse to France, England, Washington, and South Dakota. Or North Dakota. I can never remember where Mt. Rushmore is. I'm pretty sure it's South Dakota though. Ben Gates would know! He knows everything!

When the first movie came out, it was already my third favorite movie of all time before I had even seen it. The line "[normal dramatic Nicolas Cage voice] I think the dollar bill is trying [changing into an overly dramatic Nicolas Cage whisper] to tell me something" was something I quoted for months! When I finally saw that first movie on a plane, I was disappointed that it wasn't in the movie. I was surprised, however, that I liked that first movie. It was an entertaining pile of stupid, and all the historical stuff worked into the story seemed fresh. This sequel is as entertaining, probably only worse than the first because it's no longer fresh. Suspend disbelief, ignore plot holes galore, tolerate America's worst actor, allow the action to take place much much too quickly, excuse Disney's lack of grit, and forgive the abundance of cliches, and this is easy to enjoy. It's not great film-making and probably far from it, but nothing about this one would make me not want to watch a third installment.

I watched this one at my school. That's right. We're two weeks into the school year and already showing our kids movies. All the children on the team watched it though, so we at least didn't leave any of them behind.

The General

1927 historical comedy

Rating: 20/20 (Dylan: 11/20; Emma: 15/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Johnny Gray has two loves in his life--his girl Annabelle and his train engine The General. The former is less than impressed when Johnny can't get himself enlisted to fight for the South in the Civil War. The latter is stolen by Union spies. Oh, snap! Johnny Gray's in hot pursuit as he attempts to single-handedly rescue train and girl.

The girls actually made me watch this one. Classic comedy made better by the historical authenticity and the fact that it's based on a true story. My favorite thing about this is that the comedy comes so naturally. In lots of slapstick, the comedy is an excuse to have a characters, a setting, plot, etc. With The General, you've got the story at the forefront and the comedy fits in around it. Not a lot of the slapstick is forced, and a lot of it is subtle, almost stuff you might miss the first time. The comic timing looks complicated and is executed perfectly. Iconic shots, great gags, classic moments. I actually wouldn't call this my favorite Buster Keaton movie, but it's his best.

Me and somebody and dog:

Mrs. Miniver

1942 propaganda film

Rating: 16/20 (Dylan: 9/20)

Plot: It's the late 1930's in England, and apparently there's some kind of war going on. I don't know much about history. The Minivers are an upper-middle-class loving family. Phin/Sven/Fin/Vin, the oldest son, joins the air force and falls in love and marries his sweetheart. The rest of the family--the title character, her husband, and two funny-looking young children--sit around doing nothing at all most of the time, but the war, as all wars do, reaches them in ways they could never have imagined.

I teared up a little but made up for it by laughing inappropriately during a scene at the end that was supposed to be heartbreaking. My only complaint about this movie is terrible child acting unless I'm missing that Mrs. Miniver's children were supposed to be mentally challenged (it was never addressed). There's some historical accuracies, touches (see: upside-down pipe) probably not difficult to achieve since this was made in the middle of things. Director Wyler reportedly made this to tweak the average Americans' ideas about the war in Europe. Surprisingly, it's not all that dated and isn't nearly as sentimentally drippy as I expected.

My father not only recommended this movie, he bought it for me last Christmas. It's his favorite movie, one of about two dozen movies he's told me is his favorite including, most bizarrely, Somewhere in Time.

Still vacationing. I don't even have enough time to show up on film!