Tweeting the Movies, Jan ’11
In alphabetical order, the tweets I wrote for some of the movies that I caught this past month (vastly under-representative, as I saw 25 movies this month):
ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, ’74: Starts treacly, but once mother-son duo hit the road, so does film: flighty & grounded at Alice’s pace of life
ENTER THE VOID, ’09: Low-life melodrama bled through experimental art. “Soul’s eye view” mannered, meditative, crass, whettingly psychedelic
ISHTAR, ’87: So they made HAROLD & KUMAR movies in the 80s, starring A-listers (Beatty, Hoffman) to boot! Preposterous, broad, kinda funny
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (Extended), ’01: Expansive, mythmaking
LOVE ME TONIGHT, ’32: Rickety songs, but crisp chiaroscuro, sprightly direction, comic use of sound make up for a lot. “Oh! oh! oh! oh!…”
MEMENTO (Chronological), ’00: Brutally ironic. Memory-loss plot duly serves Nolan’s penchant for exposition. His most moving dead wives, too
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ’77: De Niro fearlessly mean, Minnelli never splashier; Scorsese milks their push-and-pull with grandiose aplomb
RAGING BULL, ’80: A stylish, dripping biopic of raw male ego. De Niro’s weight flux a bit gimmicky; Pesci understatedly impressive
SCARFACE, ’32: Thrilling eruptions of gunfire abound, and yet hammy and preordained as a Thankgiving dinner. Are remakes hammier still?
SHE DONE HIM WRONG, ’33: Mae West still chews delightfully on her rounded vowels, but scripted quips don’t match her NIGHT AFTER NIGHT debut
STAGECOACH, ’39: Inventive boxing-in of a tiny motley cast across dusty, empty locales, capped with two genre-making showdowns
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, ’44: Reprises CASABLANCA’s moods of war-time dissent, quiet heroism, sultry exchanges—and yet never feels copied. How?
THE YOUNG MR LINCOLN, ’39: Atrocious liberal tosh, beautifully staged and lit, tastelessly incoherent on justice and mob rage
I wanna watch ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE ! That year’s best actress nominees were simply excellent, all of them, as i heard. Probably even better than this year’s. Who was your fave among the 5 women of 1974?
1Of the five, I’ve only managed to catch Alice and Chinatown so far. I already wouldn’t want to choose between them, since Burstyn’s and Dunaway’s roles represent such different and difficult demands that it’s not fair to pit them against each other. If I had to, I’d nudge up Burstyn’s sassy, earthy take on the overlaps between woman, mother, singer-wannabe, employee and girlfriend. But Dunaway’s evocation of wary, self-conjuring enigma is pretty essential to the sinister moods of Chinatown as well, so one would do well to watch and cherish both films and performances.
2