Browning Version (1951)

Ben Mankiewicz cracked this movie could be called Living Poets Society or Don't Lean On Me or Why Did I Expect To Learn Anything From A Ben Mankiewicz Intro on TCM, due to its supposed irreverence towards its lead compared to most films about tragic teachers. This ignores that The Browning Version still ends with rapturous applause and small, symbolic gestures of admiration towards the deposed educator in question. Though Crocker-Harris is a mediocre, unliked teacher, he sees the nobility in the profession and is hailed for it.

What's truly striking is that, unlike most films about broken spirits, there's no railing at the institutions that break them. We're shown the crimes committed against him by his indifferent peers and resentful wife - and the filmmakers never pretend these aren't crimes - but we aren't treated to any tantrums or finger-waving on the part of Crocker-Harris himself. Forced to confront his tragic situation, he's disappointed only in himself, realizing his own complicity in his soul-death before finding dignity in genuine, self-pitiless regret. I don't want to dismiss the valid, serious criticisms of social structures that drives the usual self-righteous fury in most works of this type, but to see a character accept any accountability is remarkably rare - maybe Nurse Ratched's story would have been more enlightening than McMurphy's.

Leaves Of Grass (2010)

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

Adam Resurrected (2009)

The only people who've reviewed this movie without bringing up The Day The Clown Cried are presumably people who've never heard of The Day The Clown Cried. The story - crazed holocaust survivor finds redemption by restoring the well-being of others - screams "Oscar bait," and Jeff Goldblum's camera-owning performance certainly could have been a Crazy Heart "comeback," especially considering his sudden descent to obscurity following The Lost World (which I'd assume was intentional if he wasn't currently on a Law & Order spin-off). Thankfully (at least for me and you), director Paul Schrader doesn't do uplift. Lots of mercifully unexplained magical realism and schmaltz-cutting perversity that never feels like weirdness for weirdness' sake; when Schrader's inscrutable, he's truly inscrutable. And at this point I've accepted he'll never outgrow closing narration.

Shutter Island (2010)

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

Happy Tears (2010)

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

The Decade Wrap-Up That Wasn't

For the last few months of 2009, the staff at Anthony Is Right were planning a major decade-wrap up, celebrating 100 Artists Who Released More Than 20 Songs In The 2000s That I'm Bothering To Keep On My iPod with a Trouser Press-style summation of their work over the last decade. Pre-production was mighty nifty, but these ambitions were scuttled by a non-crippling but totally annoying ear infection that lasted well over a month, soon followed by an obnoxious cold that lingers on today. Combined with moving plans, wedding plans, work and nitrome.com, you should be able to see why it didn't happen.

Thankfully, my buddy Keith Harris (who probably shouldn't write more and move back to NY, but I wouldn't stop him if he did), is doing a very different, but possibly even more awesome decade overview on his revived Useful Noise blog. This space should get more active as soon as sinuses permit - at least until that damned wedding - but I feel like the oh-those-aughties train has passed. So go ride his, if you're not already.

P.S., please check out One Star Music, a tumblr I'm curating of YouTubes from albums that received one star or less in a published music guide. If I'm doing it for my health, it hasn't been working.

Nine

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

Everybody's Fine

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

Recent Movies I Did Not Love

In order of descending tolerability.

A Serious Man
"You goys with your suburban suffering movies, I'll tell you suburban suffering..."

Law Abiding Citizen
A white, working class black-ops strategist decides the American judicial system is corrupt, forcing an African-American careerist to pay witness his diabolical deathtraps - Saw as a teabagger's fantasy.

The Box
If you don't want your Twilight Zone story bloated with elaborate sci-fi explanations, retro kitsch and someone walking through a magic portal, don't hire Richard Kelly to adapt it.

2012
Lavishly portrays the apocalyptic endpoint of the "Too Big To Fail" philosophy with resignation rather than outrage, and still expects you to care whether John Cusack gets back with his ex.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox
The stop-motion animation keeps Wes Anderson from falling back on slo-mo, if nothing else.

Zombieland
The on-screen text, celebrity meta and interminable faux-Michael Cera narration suggest a zombie movie for teenagers too cool for zombie movies, but not too cool for Diablo Cody.

Antichrist


Where The Wild Things Are
A child acts out lesser Beckett with his stuffed animals.

Armored
Script so threadbare, direction so workmanlike, lead so wan, quality supporting cast so wasted that I left with fifteen minutes to go, knowing the Wikipedia entry would resolve the plot just as thrillingly.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

House Of The Devil

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints' Day

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

(Untitled)

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

Bronson

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

Review at Tiny Mix Tapes.

Big Fan

Rather than detail why I loved a Taxi Driver for fanboys starring Patton Oswalt and climaxing on Passyunk Avenue (the appeal seems pretty obvious to me, cartoonish supporting cast aside), I'd rather bring up a subject I haven't seen acknowledged in any reviews. So...

SUBTEXTUAL SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Is there any reason to believe that Oswalt's character is not gay? It's announced he's a compulsive masturbator, but he never shows the slightest interest in the opposite sex (the ladies at the strip club don't even make him blink). He sleeps under a crotch-centric poster of his favorite footballer, and has slo-mo visions of the sweat-dripping jock when he sleeps. A resolute Catholic, he denies any interest in the kind of life his married siblings have, and seems happy to spend his nights with his henpecking mother. The film even peaks with Oswalt locking a gay-baiting Eagles fan ("Giants fans suck my balls!") in a men's room and blowing a load (of sorts) on him. I'm glad the film never makes it overt - it would have reduced the scope - but writer/director Robert Siegel would have thrown a small cop to heteronormative behavior if he didn't want us to see it.

Humpday

In the mumblecore hit of 2009, Mark Duplass, the evasive boyfriend who resents his girlfriend and free-spirit brother in the 2005 mumblecore hit The Puffy Chair, plays an evasive husband who resents his wife and free-spirit college buddy (somebody give this guy a series on HBO). Determined to prove their eternal bohemianism, the guys decide to tape themselves fucking for The Stranger's erotic film festival, despite (or rather, because of) their heterosexuality. That the pair refuse to abandon their drunken whim the morning after conceiving it should make perfect sense to Kevin Smith and hopefully no one else.

A tape of two bros navigating the basics of physical affection could make a great skit, but the hour that precedes it in Humpday is to Hollywood comedy what Henry Rollins' "spoken word" is to stand-up: a sloppy simulacrum that expects a cookie for avoiding crass pay-offs. But when your material is this silly, there's no point in leaving them out. Even Kevin Smith knows that.

Stupid Horror Movie Round-Up

The crazy pills come fast and easy in Sorority Row - wouldn't it be a better prank to let the freaked-out "murderer" of Audrina Partridge call the cops than leave him alone with the body after telling him to dismember it? - but the characters' baffling life choices are of a piece with the bitchy performances (I don't know if even Leighton Meester could shrug off a rising body count as easily as the unfortunately named Leah Pipes does here), campy dialogue and silly death sequences. While I wouldn't say the film was inspired, it did deliver the prerequisites of the slasher genre with a modicum of wit and self-awareness. Also, boobs.

Aside from a regrettable moment of T&Quease, none of this can be said for The Collector, which glumly trudges through an even more absurd concept. If your M.O. was to break into houses and tie up the residents before slicing them to death, would you bother setting up elaborate booby traps in the empty rooms of the house? What's the point of nailing razorblade-lined planks of wood to the windows if those inside have little chance of reaching for them? Why tape kitchen knifes to the chandelier if you're going to blow the place up before the police can admire the handiwork? If a desperate thief-by-necessity (played by an exceptionally drab TV named Josh Stewart - watch out for this airsuck) hadn't wandered into The Collector's dastardly game, no one would have been around to play it. Without Saw's dimwitted morality plays to justify the dour tone, the film feels like a grisly, joyless homage to Home Alone (a comparison point I'm embarrassed not to have thought up myself - thanks, Leila).

While The Collector takes little pleasure in its sadism (and why make a horror film if you're not going to?), it at least delivers the prerequisites of the slasher genre with a modicum of imagination and minimal fuss. We aren't repeatedly graced with the sight of the director's wife wandering around with a white horse and shit, as we are in Halloween II (thanks for the opening dream dictionary definition, Rob Zombie, lest we assume Michael Myers just has a thing for ponies). The 44-year-old fanboy's returns have diminished to little more than a stream of facial traumas, the sound of Scout Taylor-Compton whimpering (never mind who she is, it won't come up again), a brief Deadwood reunion, less than thrilling cameos from Margot Kidder and Howard Hesseman, and interminable chatter more Diablo Cody than John Carpenter. If I have to struggle to remember anything Malcolm McDowell said or did in your movie, your last name probably shouldn't be Zombie.

Funny People

I thought it would be like taxes, but watching this was more like having an unusually awkward visit from an old friend. You're glad to see them and wouldn't have missed it for the world, but you have to wonder if everything's alright. Are they drinking too much? Is everything all right at home? Why were they talking about that ex the whole time? Was that self-deprecation or self-pity? Who knows? I wanted to say something, but had no idea how.

As weird as it was for Judd Apatow to cast his wife and kids as an opportunity lost while chasing success, these quirks might just be due to his chucklebuddies not knowing how to critique wanna-be James L Brooks. Maybe no one ever suggested a rewrite where the emotional focus was on the nice guy trying to make it in comedy rather than an embittered movie star of questionable talent. Sure, it might have meant cutting his family out of the film (not like Leslie Mann needs his help to get work at this point), but Adam Sandler might have gotten that "he can act!" Oscar nom if his lumpy Jack Nicholson kept to the background while Seth Rogen and Aubrey Plaza took the romantic spotlight. Why spend months beefing your cast's stand-up chops if the movie isn't really going to be about stand-up?

The muted reaction to the movie might be beneficial, as he's neither being pushed to chase that Oscar or told to make with a new Cannonball Run or get out of Hollywood. With his dayjob as The Biggest Producer In Comedy keeping him busy, hopefully he'll craft his next dramedy a little more astutely. Or, considering the value of an astutely crafted dramedy, he'll just stop directing movies.

The Headless Woman

I assumed at first that the upper-class Argentinian dentist in Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman was suffering from severe brain damage following a small car accident, only no one cared about her enough to notice. Neat premise, but do we need to watch her smile with false serenity and hang up on people for a full 90 minutes to get it?

Once her conversation skills returned, it became clear she was simply concerned that the dead dog we saw lying in the street was actually a lower class orphan, or maybe she hit a dog and an orphan, and did she really stay in that hotel the night after and how do we really know anything and do we really need to watch her smile with false serenity for a full 90 minutes to get that the rich are detached from consequence and experience? Imagine Michael Haneke's Cache if you took out the MacGuffins and left those menacingly banal shots of someone silently making left turns.