One Great Movie and One Truly Awful One

Get Low is a really good movie, with a really great performance by Robert Duvall. Is he capable of a bad performance? Like Gene Hackman and Jeff Bridges, he makes everything he does look easy and Get Low is no different. It's the story of a man who decides to have his funeral while he's still alive-to have people come and tell stories about him and for someone to win his house and land in a lottery. As it turns out, he's the one who has a story to tell (that scene is the best in the movie). Bill Murray is low-key as the funeral director, Sissy Spacek (and a pleasure it is to see her on screen and sharing scenes with Duvall) as an old friend and Lucas Black as the young assistant funeral director, a bit baffled as to the situation. This is a low-key movie. Not much happens, it is action-packed. It's pleasures are found in watching truly great actors do their thing with other great actors-and it's marvelous to watch.

I can't say Black Sunday wasn't fun to watch, it was. This is the witchcraft movie form 1960, not the blimp-filled with-shrapnel-at-the-Super Bowl movie of 1977. Who was in it? I don't really remember. There was a witch who had a mask filled with sharp nails hammered into her head, a couple of hundred years later, she was freed from her coffin and tried to kill some more people and take over another girl's body, there were vampires and lots of cheap effects. But I have an affection for this movie and here's why: at the end, the villagers break into the castle and take the evil witch and burn her at the stake. And said villagers have torches and pitchforks-it was awesome. I know that angry villagers with torches and pitchforks are a cliche in horror movies but I'd never actually seen a scene where they did their thing. On the other hand, this movie was not scary in the least. All the actors in it were bad (were they lip-synching? They all seemed not to be but maybe the soundtrack was off), the effects were silly and it all seemed to be filmed on a cheesy back lot some place-except for the one scenes of someone in shadow riding up to the castle-that castle looked real. Was it scary? Not in the least. You want a good, scary witch movie? Go watch Suspiria, which, although crappy in it's own way, is still better than this. Good, scary witch movies are hard to find-the witches are either really sexy (the witches of Eastwick, Practical Magic) or truly evil hags (The Witches) but to me, a good witch movie, with scary evil-doers are few and far between.

But if you want a good, scary, haunted house movie-you can't go wrong with The Changeling. Or the Haunting of Hill House (the original, of course).

Why I don't Watch Mad Men

Everyone loves Mad Men. The clothes, the drinking, the smoking. The casual sex, the casual misogyny, the casual sexism. Ah, the good old days, when guys could do whatever they wanted and t was okay. That's not why I don't watch it, by the way. the period is fascinating to me and they pretty much get all the details right (as far as I can tell when I've watched, which hasn't been often). Here's why I don't watch:I loathe every person on this show. I don't care that Don Draper picked up a dead man's identity during the war the reinvent himself. I do care that he sleeps with almost everyone he's attracted to and is fine with that. yes, Jon Hamm makes Draper very appealing and he's very good at his job but he is ( to quote Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday) "wonderful in a loathsome sort of way". His one redeeming quality is that he's kind to his children-who he doesn't seem to want. He leaves them with Betty and has his bachelor pad in the West Village. And he leaves them with one of the worst mothers ever. Does he really think the kids will be okay with a Mom who seems to view them as accessories with no feelings? Betty doesn't care about her children, she cares about what she wants and how she looks (both personally and socially) and that's pretty much all that matters. Sal is gay and torturing his wife by ignoring her. Pete would sell his soul to be as good as Don Draper. Joan likes to come across as the modern gal who knows how the world works (but who also wants to marry a doctor) but she's engaged to the same man who raped her. Peggy? Ah, Peggy. She is probably the most sympathetic character on the show, as she is ambitious, isn't really afraid to show and also has the brains (mostly) to back it up. Peggy is doing pretty much the best she can. I don't want to comment on everyone else on the show because they are all pretty loathsome in their own way. John Slattery left his wife for Don's assistant (this sort of thing really didn't start happening until the 70's), Pete is married to the rich girl because he covets her cash and standing in society, what-isname lives in Montauk and is quite pretentious (but he dates a black girl, which makes him a little more open that the others-Joan showed her vicious side in her comments about her).
But here's the thing-these people don't seem to be human, with human failings that make their flaws understandable. And they aren't likable, which magnifies their flaws. Would you want to friends with any of them? I might have a drink with almost any of them, or sleep with Don Draper or John Slattery, but do I actually like ANY of them? Hell, no. Why would I want to be friends with a woman who pinches her child to make her behave? Or Joan, who makes awful comments about the black woman whatisname is/was dating-saying he must have met her when she was clerking at the grocery store? And can you actually be friends with Don Draper or John Slattery? Not as a woman, you can't because they would either want to sleep with you or ignore you-they seem to have only the two categories. And therein lies the problem. I'd love to meet any of the characters on Lost. I'd hang out with Mulder and Scully, meet up with the characters on Warehouse 13 or Eureka or go hunting bad guys with Michael, Fi and Sam on Burn Notice. They all have their flaws but I like them. I can't say the same for Mad Men.

Crimson Rivers

Did I like Crimson Rivers? It's hard to say. There are many things I did like. It was beautifully shot: cold, smoky and atmospheric. And it was genuinely creepy and confusing, which I also liked. But here's the problem-I got the English-dubbed version. I'm sure in the original French it was much better but the dubbed version had a few problems, which it took a couple of viewings to understand.

Let me start with the plot-a man has been found secured to the side of a mountain in a small, isolated college town in the French Alps. He's naked, his hands have been cut off and his eyes cut out and various cuts are on his body-and the coroner says the murderer did their best to keep the victim alive as long as possible. Jean Reno is sent to investigate the murder. Meanwhile, Vincent Cassell is another cop investigating another murder, which eventually coincides with Reno's case and they end up working together. More people die, Reno falls for a beautiful student/mountaineer and a very convoluted plot is somewhat revealed (I had to watch it twice to figure it out). But the dubbed version is AWFUL. No one's voices fit their faces except for Reno-who does his own dubbing, thank God. Men in their 30's, 40's and 50's sound like they're being dubbed by teenagers. I kept thinking "what is bothering me here? Something is way off" and it wasn't until the second viewing that I got it. If you can find this in the original French, I would highly recommend it but not this version.

Inception and X-Men Origins:Wolverine

I'll say it flat out:I loved Inception. Yes, it was difficult and confusing-that's what I loved about it. Talk about a movie that does not dumb down to it's audience-Inception takes you on a wild, crazy ride and expects you go along with it. Is it confusing? Yes. Is it exhilarating? Yes. You can't go into it thinking that a plot about going into dreams and planting ideas there will be easy to understand, especially when it's one sub-dream after another.

Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) is a dream-thief, but now he has a new assignment-to go into a person's dream and plant an idea there. He's assembled his team-an Architect to design the dream (Ellen Page) an Actor (Tom Hardy) to play various parts in the dream and a Facilitator (Joseph Gordon Levitt) to keep an eye on things. Is it easy? No, of course not. The subject knows how to fight them off in his dreams, Cobb's dead wife keeps showing up and raising hell (no coincidence that her name, Mal, means bad in French) and they keep having to go deeper into the subjects dreams to do what they need to do. Everyone is good in this movie. Leonardo is tortured, Ellen is cute, spunky and smart (and it's no coincidence that her name is Ariadne), Tom Hardy is clever and funny and how did it happen that Joseph Gordon Levitt is cute, sexy and funny? This movie is wild, crazy and difficult. If you think it's going to explain everything, you're wrong. Even the end is a matter of opinion. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

One more thing: I would really like to give props to the editor of Inception. It is masterfully cut-it's amazing. The last thirty minutes or so of jumping between one level of a dream to another to another tests both the audiences ability to keep it all straight in their heads and the editor's skills in cutting at just the right spot. Props to you, Lee Smith. You did a great job.

Not much to say about X-Men Wolverine, blah blah blah. It was fun, Hugh Jackman did a decent job, Liev Schreiber played another bad guy and Ryan Reynolds stole show with his smart-ass mercenary. No wonder they want to build a movie about deadpool! Was is it fun? Yes. Was it stupid? Yes.