I recommend this film, co-written and directed by Paolo Virzi. It’s a believable, and often moving story–albeit a familiar (and maybe for some, tiresome) one. A doll-faced hick moves to the big city with her family. As she struggle to fit in, to make friends and adjust, there are big disappointments and small triumphs, blah blah blah. Such a familiar tale is bound to be tedious unless we truly care about the characters. And in this film, we do–or I did, anyway. I cared not only about Caterina, but her father. And, in a way, the film could also be titled Caterina’s Father in the Big City, or Giancarlo in the Big City. (more…)

I have this probably false memory of seeing Peter Bogdanovich’s Nickolodeon as an ABC movie of the week, the film’s excesses–and there are a good number, usually to the film’s detriment–exacerbated by the noisy bombast of the intertitle ABC movie-of-the-week theme as we went to commercial, and the bullshit bombast of the slew of ads interrupting the film. Whether I saw it in that particular venue, the tone of that memory aligns with my more specific recollections of the film: many scenes of cluttered brouhaha, a tendency toward din rather than wit, lots of falling down. Burt Reynolds.

But while there are too many people falling down, a “comic” fight scene that is as long but about one-third as interesting as the alley brawl in They Live, an occasional bid toward wacky that makes one wince, and the leaden balloon that is Burt Reynolds playing wacky* [see below]…. the new director’s cut of Nickolodeon (which was I believe actually shortened from the theatrical release, but most pertinently transferred into a lovely black-and-white from the too-golden sugar-dust look of the color print) …. well, it’s lovely. It’s funny, just melancholic enough to be sweet and not saccharine, full of the trademark Bogdanovich eye for compositional perfection, replete with many bits of slapstick and screwball dialogue that work like gangbusters (the occasionally-great W.D. Richter co-wrote the film), and a genuinely moving sense of the silly wonder of moviemaking. I really enjoyed it. (more…)

Hey! I know you’ve been missing me terribly here, but the last movie we saw was The International. I have nothing interesting to say about it.

I thought this would be the best place to pose this question because I don’t have an e-mail address for Mauer, and I know Arnab and Reynolds at least will be able to help too. It’s a weird request that is guaranteed to bring down the tone of the blog. But it’s cultural if not related to film.

My dad has asked me to create a CD of “butt songs.” (more…)

I just liked the title of that film. Not enough to rent, but I’d probably enjoy it more than the disappointing Ricky Gervais stand-up special. One neat bit, but mostly it seemed a little too planned and imitative. (I read an interview recently where he talked about his admiration for Louis C.K. I’d say grab some of LCK’s stuff.)

But the mash-up western horror The Burrowers is a helluva good little b-movie — atmospheric, carefully attentive to its standing in both genres, and with a smart, sly cast (and generally strong, if very lo-fi direction). It runs some very nice riffs on the captivity narrative, on the racism of the Western, but I don’t want to oversell–it’s mostly concerned with creepy, clever, carefully-paced fun. Two or three plot shifts caught me offguard, and it was well- and (for a great change) under-written. I suppose noting that it’s about creatures climbing out of the ground to grab humans will throw most of y’all off the scent, but it is well worth a gamble (and not too gory/scary).

I can’t find a reference to this movie on the blog, but it is the kind of title that the search function does not easily find. So apologies if there is already a thread. The plot is pretty straightforward: Juliette (Kristen Scott Thomas) is released from prison having served fifteen years for the murder of her six-year old son. She goes to live with her younger sister (who was barely a teenager when she was imprisoned), the sister’s husband and their two adopted Vietnamese children. At first, Juliette is practically catatonic, affectless most of the time, but ready to snap at people who tiptoe around her situation or use polite euphemisms (”‘Inside’? It’s called prison.”). The great bulk of the movie traces the slow thaw and return to normality of Juliette, as people come to terms with her, and she finds herself once again able to love: her nieces, her sister, a man. (more…)