The Oncoming Hope

Canadian indie band Stars once sang that when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. I can think of no better way to convey the shocking final 15 minutes of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.

When you watch the film, you'll marvel at how fresh it feels. Following a credits sequence that hits you in the face with "angry-dancing", we're introduced to the social world of a Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Then, as now, the outstanding existential threat is gentrification.

Spike Lee chooses to face character complications head-on, and no one's free of scrutiny. Giancarlo Esposito's "Buggin' Out" , the film's would-be Malcolm X, swings easily from overblown concern at the lack of black faces on the wall of Sal's Pizzeria to inviting universal ridicule when a cyclist scuffs his Air Jordans. Lee's camera treats his affectations unkindly, the upward zoom adding extra heft to his already comical hairstyle. Even so, much like Falstaff, this thoughtless dilettante sets the film's tragedies in motion.

Sal, our pizzeria owner, professes love for the people of Bed-Stuy, citing his pride that the young adults in the neighborhood grew up on his pizza. Nonetheless, he does not hesitate to call them "animals" and "niggers" when the mood takes him. And yet, there's little doubt that he loves the people he serves, even as a deep-seated disrespect for them wins out over his seemingly better nature.

Disrespect really is the order of the day here: whether you're Mookie, Tina, Radio Raheem, Sal, or even Sal's useless sons, how you deal with disrespect defines your character (at least up to a point). Mookie does nothing for so long that his big act almost feels like a triumph. Raheem hides behind his music, and when that's disrespected, he explodes. Sal's deep-seated racism comes to the fore. He's not an anti-social racist like his son, but guilty of ugly prejudice none the less.

The exception is the Greek chorus. They constantly comment but never act. They are less characters than narrators, involved less with the specific lives of the neighborhood than in defining the shapes of the setting. Lee treats them to some of the most beautiful videography in film history as they lounge under umbrellas against a wall painted the brightest red ever seen outside a Tarantino film.

I don't want to linger on the ending; if you haven't seen the movie, you need to experience it for yourself. I will say this, however: la plus ça change, la plus la même chose.

By the time Detective Chang jabs a fifth chopstick into Van Gogh's brain, we're not just covering our eyes, we're wondering why. The senseless act perfectly mirrors the senselessness of the story: Chang's trying to find out who put out a hit on him, but when he begins his chopstick dance, we already know the answer to that question and so does Chang.

This scene, like so many others in Nicolas Winding Refn's disaster of a movie, made the impossible possible: falling asleep while a man's limb is severed, falling asleep when a sword passes through a woman's body, falling asleep while Ryan Gosling just stands there, waiting.

Oh god, the standing and waiting. A better actor might have sold this role, but while facing all his ethical turmoil (I assume that's what he's facing--it might be a particularly disappointing bout of constipation) he never achieves anything more than blankness.

So thank goodness for Kristin Scott Thomas. She swoops in, a bundle of bleach and poison, bringing the only forward movement to a story that really doesn't need to move forward at all, and should have been terminated at the outset.

Utterly against type, she takes her character to a level of malevolence unseen since Jackie Weaver in Animal Kingdom (a movie you should not miss, if you haven't seen it already).

I don't know what to do when there's a single performance that shines like a diamond in a pile of shit. Is she objectively good, or is she better only in comparison? I've heard early clamors from the Twitterati for an Oscar nom for Thomas, and I find the thought strangely distasteful. Isn't the performance a failure when it's not in keeping with the rest of the movie?

I really shouldn't complain. At least she brought some entertainment to the whole dour business.

Silver Linings Playbook earns its ending in a way few movies do, let alone recent ones. The film concentrates on something that's usually treated as a simple waypoint in other movie journeys: finding a way to peek your head out from behind the Sisyphean boulder, even when all the signs suggest you should continue to hide. The boulder causes continuous crushing pain, but at least it's pain you're familiar with.

And speaking of crushing pain, do not be mistaken; the first 30 minutes of the movie are profoundly uncomfortable. You will be squirming in your chair, especially when "the incident" is revealed, the moment that lands Patrick Solitano Jr. in the mental hospital.

Patrick (and who knew there was an actor hiding inside Bradley Cooper?) gets out of mental hospital, only to land in a more abstract prison. He suffers from dreams he can't let go, he's oppressed by his parents, he's written off so often that when anyone shows him kindness, he can't even recognize it (and notice that these moments are when he's most explosive).

When he meets Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany, the real fireworks happen (and not the good kind). They need each other's help, but it's dark and desperate - Pat can't see beyond his own need to reconnect with his estranged wife, and Tiffany never loses sight of her own needs for even a second (take THAT manic pixie dream girl meme). She's not gonna put up with his blindsided bullshit, and if that's the side of himself he brings to work, she doesn't hesitate to manipulate him outright.

It's a complex situation with no easy solutions, and would have been a disaster without Jennifer Lawrence's nuanced performance. Also stay tuned for Robert De Niro, who actually acts for the first time in thirty years (and he's just as terrific as you remember him being).

Mental illness is often treated as a plague upon other people - an affliction for the weak or the mutated or the poorly raised. But when it comes down to it, who hasn't felt the atmosphere become so tight, so oppressive, that you feel like space is literally closing in? When you can't see anything inside your head, let alone outside of it? We write those moments off, "I was stressed," "I haven't gotten enough sleep lately," but as soon as a doctor puts a name to someone else's bad moment, we cease to treat it as a natural part of human experience, but as an unforgivable failing.

At the end of the day, you still have to live, you still have to function. But that isn't easy, and Silver Linings Playbook doesn't pretend it is. Go see it. It deserves all it's Oscar noms (and if there's a God in the academy, it will win Best Picture).

I didn't set out to watch a "Black" film on Black Friday, (nor do I wish to pretend that "Black Friday" deserves codification as anything other than a commercial black hole). An interview with Martin Scorsese, who described a certain moment in the film as the one that forced him to become a filmmaker, led me to pluck Black Narcissus from the quicksand of my Netflix queue.

Like me, dear reader, you may have the wrong impression of the film (and the Netflix description certainly doesn't help, with its vague intimations of a crisis of faith in exotic lands, tagging the film in the "faith and spirituality" bucket).

Black Narcissus has elements of horror, romance, and the subtly erotic (the horror scenes are perhaps the most unexpected, and the most beautiful). It's more in the vein of In The Mood for Love than of the "stiff upper-lip" films that transfixed post-war Britain. Sex and desire are ever-present, even through our leads spend most of the film wearing nun habits.

Five nuns, led by Deborah Kerr's Sister Clodagh, move to a remote palace in the Himalayas, kindly lent by an Indian general in exchange for providing schools and medical services to the local children. The sisters are forced to rely on Major Dean, a Brit who know his way about the locals. Needless to say, sparks fly in many directions.

Clodagh's studied restraint sits against the animal attraction between the Indian prince and Kanchi, a lower-class girl rejected by her family for being too open in her many affections. Rather than suggesting that this is some native savagery, Sister Clodagh comes to envy their youthful impetuousness, troubled by regrets of her own.

Now, despite being set in the remote hills of the Himalayas, Black Narcissus was fully filmed in Britain, at the Pinewood Studios. Which perhaps accounts for the one jarring weakness in the film.

Despite carefully researching the architecture, the climate and the foliage of its remote setting, the powers-that-be still chose to brownface the female Indian lead, Kanchi.

In an incredible scene, we see Simmons do traditional Indian-style dancing, and to her credit, she's very good at it. But why not hire an Indian actress trained in classical dance? Which, as anyone who's seen even a single Indian movie knows, is literally every Indian actress (I could explain the reasons for intersection of dance and theatre in both classical and modern Indian culture, but I'll spare you).

It's even more jarring when you consider how carefully the film deals with "otherness". Certainly our good nuns believe they're bringing enlightenment to the savages, but Powell and Pressburger make no such judgment. In fact, with one line from our extremely handsome male lead (WWJD), the filmmakers reveal the inherent silliness of such beliefs, that if bringing the "light" means turning a man against his own family, it cannot possibly be more righteous.

(Clodagh and her sisters do come to recognize this, and certainly this contributes to their turmoil. If the motives of the Holy Order could be so wrong about one thing, why can't they be wrong about others, especially the right of a woman to be a woman?)

Basically, the filmmakers are saying that being one of the darkies is in fact a perfectly acceptable (even beautiful) human condition, unless of course you're in a mainstream movie. In which case, bust out the brown foundation and raven-colored hair dye.

Powell and Pressburger's film is well regarded as one of the first masterpieces of technicolor filmmaking, and I'd go so far to say that it's still one of the most beautiful films in existence.

Despite its one great failing, Black Narcissus still stands up as a great study of what makes us human, even under the most stringent rules in the most trying of circumstances. Go watch it, then come back and play in the comments.

"The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92," reads the tagline for Suspiria, Dario Argento's accidental adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Our heroine encounters three impossible things before breakfast, though it takes until dinnertime before she believes them.

Death, sorcery, witches. Our human tendencies prevent us from accepting a description of death as it truly is -- utterly mundane. Death is simple; expiration. Suspiria pretends at creating horror at the manner of death, while Argento knows (and shows) that the real horror is loss. We feel that undercurrent running through every action in the film; loss of control, loss of power, loss of sanity, loss of love. When you reach that point, there's nothing left. Just more death. Everyone reacts to the first loss in the film. We never meet her, but we can figure her out by the way people miss her.

Argento fuses German expressionism (think of the side-eyed angles in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) with a gleeful bloody mindedness the likes of which I've never seen. 35 years have passed since Suspiria came out; no horror movie shows such originality in its set-pieces. Argento takes full advantage of your visual senses, using color and design to great effect.

Suzy Bannion trips lightly through this rabbit hole, a ballet school where students mysteriously disappear and horrific accidents happen to all who cross the tightly drawn Madame Tanner. Part of the surreality of the film comes from Bannion's "curiouser and curiouser" attitude to the awful events that surround her. Even as the ballet school descends further and further into the pit of despair, she's mostly unaffected, which is for the best. Otherwise, the audience would be sitting in constant despair.

Suspiria takes horror back to its roots: nightmares. Think of your nightmares; even the most terrifying are more rooted in whimsy than in terror. The terror, in fact, plays in almost incidentally to the strange narratives our minds plant in our dreams.

After you see it, come back and tell me your thoughts. And that's an order!

Trivia

The building filmed as the dance academy actually exists, including the loony exterior:

The Haus zum Walfisch can be found in Freiburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, and was known as the House of the Whale when it was built in 1516.

As Hurricane Sandy (known to some of you as FRANKENSTORM and to the more pedantic of you as THE METEOROLOGIST'S MONSTER) swaddles the Eastern seaboard with an extremely wet blanket, my thoughts turn to fictional New York weatherpocalypses past. These are their stories. DUN DUN.

1. The Day After Tomorrow

My greatest Frankenstorm pleasure (apart from a couple of extra "work-from-home" PJ days) derives from a lingering memory of a bunch of Oxbridge holier-than-thous snickering through a screening of The Day After Tomorrow at an environmental agency I once worked at.

"New York city shalt not be graced by a hurricanous monstrosity in any reality!" they exhaled, along with hearty fumes of red wine and superiority.

Now I'm not going to pretend that The Day After Tomorrow offers a portrait of anything approaching reality, but complaining about a lack of verisimilitude in a Roland Emmerich film is a bit like complaining that an orange tastes of citrus. What The Day After Tomorrow DOES give us, in order of priority, is a shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal (at a time when he still belonged to the indie kids), and amazing special effects shots of the New York Public Library drowned in a snow-pocalypse (Brangelina aint got NOTHIN' on weather-related portmanteaus...).

2. AI: Artificial Intelligence

Because it's never quite obvious that the weatherpocalypse has already happened long before the start of the movie, AI's controversial coda hits you in the face like a sickly sweet rhubarb pie. When I first saw the movie, I was the classic "love the movie, hate the ending" viewer, until I watched it a second time and suddenly got it.

Setting plays an important role here, implying that Kubrick's overall intent was something closer to Tree of Life than to his usual bleakness. It's the the crisis of human existence boiled down to its most fundamental battle: the creations of man vs. the creations of nature. And the beauty of AI is that it's impossible to figure out exactly who's winning between those dueling spawns, though humankind clearly lost. Poor David clings to the last vestige of what once defined humanity, until even that's lost.

3. Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes was a great obsession of mine as a kid (that includes all the offshoots, even the tv show, which inspired my first fanfiction, written as a lonely 10 year old in Jakarta, Indonesia). I haven't revisited the classic films since my tweens (I watched them so many times I can still see every scene in head), and as my mind developed, I came to realize that the films are microcosms of mankind's worst tendencies, especially the first film.

Planet of the Apes basically amounts to a wet dream for xenophobes, operating on the premise that as white men become the minority, the new colored overlords are barbaric murderers, concerned only with the downfall of the white men. (I'll take this opportunity to point out that the human women left in this particular white supremacist nightmare fantasy land LITERALLY HAVE NO VOICE).

But none of that dulls the impact of the incredible reveal at the end of the film, the only scene left from Rod Serling's original script for the movie. Taylor and Nova finally make it to the Forbidden Zone, only to find out that the "alien planet" he's landed on is, in fact, post-apocalyptic Earth. We don't know the exact circumstances that led to our Great Lady's semi-burial, but it's a decent guess that the climate had a fair bit of impact in the 700 years since Taylor and his fellow astronauts left Earth.

Conclusion

Weatherpocalypses fast and slow have long been a Hollywood obsession, so there are FAR more films that I haven't even touched upon. What are your favorites, whether New York or not?

Christopher Nolan movies mean many things: angsty heroes with dead lovers, action scenes that whiz by so fast they leave you upside down, and plotlines that require devoted attention lest they become incomprehensible.

Enter Insomnia. There's a dynamic, interesting female lead (notably still alive!), a plot that owes more to careful characterization and mood-building than twists and turns, and most notably, a single action scene that isn't even part of the film's climax.

Nolan places us in the infinite sunshine of an Alaskan summer. I mention the setting because it means as much to the movie as the characters actions, weaving itself into every scene in surprising ways. Al Pacino's Will Dormer goes for days without sleep; is it because of the endless sunlight, or something else? Watch the way the sunshine breaks into particular scenes, even as he goes mad trying to block it out.

Hilary Swank's character, who starts out idealizing Dormer, quickly realizes something's amiss. She's patient in playing her hand, but you can see she's ready to at any given moment. Robin Williams plays the third in this triangle; he couches his murderous character with such a "man-next-door" sensibility that we're constantly forced to question whether he might actually be one of the good guys. Saying more would spoil the film.

Insomnia's a thriller that follows none of the traditional thriller beats; we know exactly who all the guilty parties are from the beginning of the film. What's more unusual is that they know as well. Circumstances force them all to dance around each other in perfect balance, electrons and protons, held apart by forces none could have foreseen. This dance provides more than enough tension to keep our interest. And so it happens that Nolan's most engaging movie is the one with the least action.

Have you guys seen it? What are your thoughts?

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but somehow missed.

Tarantino fans treat Jackie Brown as the ugly little stepsister in his oeuvre, and critics seem to ignore it altogether, even though it's Tarantino's most effective homage to the art of filmmaking. One can assume it's ignored because it's the least "Tarantino-esque" of his films; you've got the wit, you've got the experimental story telling, you've got the references to genre b-films, but it's more of a human story.

The story's framed as a simple heist, but the gangster elements merely provide a skeleton for Tarantino to hang a much more complicated story about unrequited love, loyalty, and the tension between love, greed and fear.

Emotions are important. The characters who make it through the film have the good sense to either love Jackie or fear Ordell, and often both. The "fearless" characters end up with bullets in their brains; Louis, with his post-prison haze, Melanie, with her failure to connect with the real world, Ordell, with his general sense that nothing in the world actually affects him.

Tarantino sets the story up as a delicate conflict between three teams: Louis, Ordell and his concumbines, the ATF agents, and Jackie and Max (the bail bondsman played to perfection by Robert Forster).

Much of the rising action in the film comes from the steady disintegration of these partnerships. In each case, Tarantino provides us with moments of hope that he brutally strips away, most tragically with Jackie and Max.

You can't create this kind of story without a powerhouse acting talent, and the cast meets the challenge. So much of the film is conveyed through fleeting expressions; blink, and you'll miss important character moments.

Even if you haven't seen the run of seventies' films that made Pam Grier a star (I haven't), Jackie Brown provides a perfect showcase for why she's idolized by so many. Robert de Niro plays completely against type as an inept dumbass who sleepwalks through the world until anger breaks him free. Samuel L. Jackson steals the show with a surprisingly restrained performance.

Have you seen Jackie Brown? Share your thoughts in the comments!

"To Room With Love" is not one movie, but four. Three are perfect, and the last remains perfectly entertaining, if less moving. What surprised me most is the youth of the cast (which stood in stark contrast to the devoted Woody Allen fans in the audience, who waved goodbye to geriatric at least a decade before).

I don't normally do this, but for the sake of coherence, I'll review each storyline separately.

THE BEST ONE:

Woody Allen deserves a prize for creating a movie about the lives of 20-somethings that's not only hysterical, but relatable. I'm not sure exactly why, but the immediate post-college years seem to inspire only the worst type of film: navel-gazing affairs that treat ambition like sickness, or movies about people losing track of everything only to "find themselves" at the end.

Those films (usually terrible romantic comedies) ignore a simple fact: 20 somethings are actually adults, not oversized children let loose on an unsuspecting world. You offer to cook dinner for your friends, because it feels like the adult thing to do, even when the only things you know how to make are brownies, and sometimes not even that. But you know what? We have a hell of a lot of fun trying.

Pretending to be adult also involves being a little pretentious (part of youth is failing to understand that constantly showing off your knowledge doesn't actually prove your intelligence). Allen finds a brilliant conceit to allow us to both fall in love with these unctious people and mock them from afar.

Ellen Page probably has the most difficult role, playing the flutterby with the most superficial personality (Allen clearly chose her for her incredible Diane Keaton impression). But we also have to fall in love with her. And we do.

I won't say anything to spoil the central conceit of this segment, but let's just say that cell phones are important. And like me, you may wonder why all the women are wearing button down shirts (it's a hint!) Also, Jesse Eisenberg, if you're reading this, marry me.

EQUALLY GOOD BUT MINUS EISENBERG:

The second story sets up a perfect counterpoint to the first. Two newlyweds from a small village have just moved to Rome and they're as young as the previous group, and even less experienced. They're not playing at adulthood, they have to grow up.

The casting director's found a real star in Alessandra Mastronardi, who finds herself lost within her first 5 minutes in Rome. Blah blah, magic city cakes, she breaks down by a film shooting featuring her most beloved Italian movie star. Her hijinks take twists and turns that are both hilarious and awesome (and make my shriveled feminist heart scream out in glee).

Meanwhile, poor Antonio finds himself accidentally embroiled with a prostitute (played by Penelope Cruz, who steals every scene she's in. Seriously Hollywood, stop casting her in shitty movies. Or maybe do, so she can keep being awesome in foreign films).

The ending of their story works for me, but I'm sure that it won't for some. I look forward to debating it with you in the comments.

THE FUNNIEST SEGMENT

It should come as no surprise that the funniest (and in many ways the objectively strongest) segment is the one starring the Woodster himself. I can't even think of a way to write about it without spoiling its increasingly hilarious turns, but lets just say that we wade knee deep into absurdist comedy (and half of the audience fell out of their seats at the climax of this segment).

Also notable: Alison Pill follows up her impressive turn in Midnight in Paris with even more charm.

THE UGLY ONE

The final segment, featuring Roberto Benigni, deserves neither an image nor a lengthy review. I won't say it was boring the first time around, but in future viewings, I shall dub these scenes "BATHROOM BREAK".

OVERALL

It's nice to know that after all these years Woody Allen still has the desire to experiment with forms in filmmaking. Through To Rome In Love, he plays with time and space in ways that are totally unique. It's often said that his film locations are characters in and of themselves, but I'm pretty glad that's not true here.

In fact, there's an astonishing lack of what I'd describe as Woody Allen "tropes", like scenes in museums. The tone is bittersweet, which he's never quite done before. These are human stories, and Rome merely provides a platform to launch these stories, which are as much about Italians as they are about the Americans who get lost in their country.

Where Midnight in Paris succeeded as a total wish fulfilment fantasy (you may recall that I dubbed it Paris Porn), To Rome With Love works better as a cohesive film.

The climactic scene in Thor takes place upon the cinematic equivalent of Mario Kart's "Rainbow Road." This is an unfortunate allusion for the filmmaker to make, given that the characters in Thor are drawn with even less depth than Mario and Luigi.

vs.

A microscopically drawn love story between Thor and Ugh!GardenState apparently provides the basis for Loki's terrible decisions in the last third of the movie. This from a character whose machinations are so invisible that no one should be able to sense them. That the Asgardian courtiers do sense them makes the movie about a million times more difficult to enjoy. He's smart, and he's thoughtful, but hey, that must mean he's evil.

Basically, Thor's the kind of guy Asgard would have a beer with. Despite no evidence whatsoever that he's anything but a warmongering dilettante, the Asgardians wet their pants at the very mention of him, forgetting that his decision-making capabilities rest ever so slightly above that of your average houseplant.

I'm not saying that Thor doesn't deserve character growth or redemption, but it's frankly ludicrous that anyone would place their faith in him before he earns his redemption.

The movie's total commitment and belief in Thor's frat-boy wonderfulness undermines everything else that actually works in the movie, like the underlying themes of brother vs. brother, which were explored with such great success in The Social Network.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's drawn to geekdom because the winners are rarely the pretty, the popular, or the strong. Genre fiction tends to favor the clever, the ones who use their brains and their wits to get by in the world. In this post-colonial world, do we really need another hero whose only functional attribute is a toothy grin and the ability to beat the shit out of his lessers?

There's no choice involved in Thor being Thor. He's born with his kingdom, and wins it back from Loki with nothing more than a little violence. Even Tony Stark, blessed with his millions and his brains, makes the moral choice to use his power for good. Same with Bruce Wayne. Thor? He's just born with it. Why would he bother to be a just ruler at all? And more to the point, why does anyone believe in him as a ruler?

Things I DID Like:

• Kat Dennings
• Kat Dennings
• Kat Dennings
• Darcy
• Tom Hiddleston's performance as Loki

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but somehow missed.

As film fans mourned the recent passing of groundbreaking screenwriter Nora Ephron, I realized it was time to watch Sleepless in Seattle, her most successful film (granted, "most successful" is a matter of degrees with a filmography like hers). I'm sorry I haven't watched it until now; I fell of my chair laughing in certain scenes, and cried big giant monkey tears at least three times in the movie.

I tend to avoid romantic comedies like the plague, for the simple reason that I tend to love them a little too much, which creates such a cognitive dissonance with my feminist and intellectual bona fides that my brain simply shuts down (I'm not kidding. I once was forced to watch a Katherine Heigl romcom on a plane. It pains me to say I loved it. (Seriously, Romcoms On A Motha-------- Plane. THE HORROR).

Sleepless in Seattle clearly rises miles high above the genre, setting an example that was never replicated in Hollywood (there are some French romcoms that live up to it, but, of course, they're in French). I've written previously about my love for Serendipity, which shares a certain approach with SiS; they take the fundamental implausibility of the genre and build it into the plot.

What could be more ridiculous than a Baltimore news reporter stalking a lonely father in Seattle? Frankly, with a tagline like that, it's impossible to believe that the movie wouldn't be a complete trainwreck. But it works, for a few reasons.

1. The Double A-Plot Structure: Most movies have one A-plot and a number of side plots, and they all come together at the end of the film. Sleepless instead tells two distinct stories, allowing neither to fall completely into ridicule. Of course, Meg Ryan's story skirts much closer to the edge of believability, which brings us to the next point.

2. Meg Ryan's Performance: Holy shit, is she good in this movie. She's channeling a young Nicole Kidman, with a wide-eyed intensity to match. Unlike other romcom heroines, she's extremely confident. Her bad decisions aren't a result of a lack of self-esteem, but of a deep-seated unhappiness that she barely seems aware of. The script conveys this economically; when she tells Bill Pullman it's not him, it's her, we know that's actually true. It is her, and that's ok. She ends things and takes a stupid chance because life has disappointed her. And that's one of the most realistic character choices I've seen in a mainstream movie.

3. Tom Hanks' Performance: I cannot even speak about it. Total perfection. Where Annie's disappointment drives her character forward, Sam moves with his anger, which has warped him so badly that he can't love anyone. I'm not convinced that changes by the end of the movie, which is why the film ends where it does.

The ending truly is remarkable in so many ways. Throughout the film, I kept wondering, "Is it just me, or is Sam a terrible father?" He belittles Jonah constantly, ignoring his emotional needs. So when he reunites with Jonah, he actually realizes he's been a bad father. And without anyone explicitly having to say that he's become completely self-absorbed after his wife's death, it's acknowledged, bringing the character's story around full circle.

That's what's great about the film; it's more than just fluff. There are very serious undercurrents bubbling to the surface, which is rare in the romantic comedy genre. The romance, while highly compelling, provides a platform for stories about human weakness.

It's no secret to those that know me that Les Miserables is one of my favorite novels of all time (I guess I just have a thing for socially conscious doorstoppers about poverty, nobility, revolution and the ultimate impossibility of redemption).

Of course, due to that doorstopper-iness (tots a word), it's basically un-filmable. So I'm more than a little interested in seeing the movie musical version. Though the trailer focuses on Fantine, what strikes me most is how this is the role Hugh Jackman was born to play.

Amanda Seyfried seems perfect for Cosette, and Hathaway's singing is more than competent. As for the boy? Marius was my first great love, and I've long given up on any movie portrayal matching the image in my head. At least Eddie Redmayne has the requisite intensity.

Share your thoughts below!

"That guy could read from a phone book and make it interesting," you've never said about anyone. But if you did, you've probably said it about Alan Rickman, or as we all know him, Snape.

Well, actions speak louder than words, and watching him drink tea in the finest Shakespearean style beats any number of "I'll get you, Potter" + death stares.

Bear with it. It starts slow, but once you get to 1:22, the teabag hits the fan.

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT

To be honest, I didn't even know about it ::fails::. For many reasons that are now obvious, it's not considered one of Sidney Lumet's great films, despite a fantastic performance by Al Pacino.

I found out about the film through The Savage City, T.J. English's fantastic account of police corruption and race riots in the 1960's and 70's. Frank Serpico's a minor character in the book, but his importance to changing the culture of the NYPD cannot be over-stated (in fact, the real-life impact of his actions are weirdly understated in the film).

THOUGHTS

The movie covers the 12ish years of Frank Serpico's life with the NYPD, from the clean shaven days to the full-blown hippie madness.

Serpico's shown as a paragon of virtue in his professional life, though we're given little context as to where his ideals come from. Certain scenes clearly inspired the original Life on Mars series, but somehow the idealism of the protagonist makes more sense in that more fantastical scenario. What gives Serpico the strength to maintain his virtue even when his sanity's at stake?

The film's tight focus on Serpico's greatest moments of stress gives Pacino about 90 minutes of Oscar material. I can't help but think how the film would have benefited from a slightly broader scope. We play ample witness to corruption within the police departments, but we're not shown how scary the '70s really was in NYC. The problem isn't just that policemen were corrupt; the entire politics of the city created a patronage system where entire populations turned to crime as a substitute for their self-worth.

I fully recognize that some of my issues with the film may have to do with the datedness of certain details, but it also seems like a case where Lumet's commitment to "issue-raising" takes precedence over making a deeper study of the setting. Also, Tony Roberts. Can't take that guy seriously. Which is definitely the Woodster's fault.

All that said, the film has many pleasures. Lumet gives New York so much attention that Woody Allen might be jealous. The West Village doesn't look like that anymore, and we can be sure that it never will again. Look at Dumbo, for godssake!

And now, a tour of Al Pacino's ridiculous outfits (Frank Serpico, ever the egoist, claims that Pacino doesn't nearly do justice to his "forward-thinking fashions):

Betty Blue's leads are naked about 50% of the time. There's no getting around that fact. If you find something deeply offensive about the human body, then there's no point in watching the movie.

But I will say that the film features the most honest sort of nudity. There's a weird sort of prudishness that suggests there's no reason to be naked except to touch and to feel other human bodies. The nudity of lovers is never just about sex; it's about being comfortable enough with another person that you don't have to wear your armor around them constantly.

Even Roger Ebert somehow can't see past Betty's boobs, which is a shame, as there's so much more to the movie.

Zorg, our brilliantly-named protagonist and jack-of-all-trades, takes up with a young firebrand prone to irrational bouts of fury. I won't spoil them for you, but it's amazing how quickly we turn from supporting her little rebellions to recoiling in horror from them.

Betty Blue's also an extremely funny film. Zorg's a great little comedian in his messed up world, miming at life while Betty excels at it.

The brilliance of the movie doesn't come from Betty's little tantrums, though (as witty as they are). The most superficial reading suggests that Betty's crazy and that's that. Really, she's symbolically fighting the steady encroachment of domesticity and the struggle to find her voice in a world where Voice is greeted with horror (it's no coincidence that each bout of craziness is set off by a new rejection of Zorg's long abandoned novel).

Eventually, even she forgets about Zorg's novel. There's no great moment of clarity or acceptance; life just keeps getting in the way. There's something incredibly true about that. We're not all broken by the abandonment of our ambitions; we just change.

The places change, the faces change, even the music changes. And that's easier for some than for others.

Betty Blue suggests that with each change, maybe we leave a small part of ourselves behind, until we're broken into jigsaw pieces, left desperate to make ourselves whole again. It's a depressing thought. It's not a happy movie.

You should see it anyway.

I'm no great fan of Hemingway (frankly, apart from In Our Time, I can't understand the appeal of his work whatsoever), but The Old Man and the Sea was a particular bugaboo. I had to read it no less than 5 times over the course of high school and college, and each time, I wanted to put a bullet in my brain. The narcissistic obsessions of men who've lost sight of everything that makes life worth living don't tend to excite my interest (see also: Dick, Moby).

But part of my issue with Old Man is that like Santiago, the writing, too, is lifeless. Add to that the fact that every creative writing professor I ever had in college insisted that the only correct way to write fiction is to model oneself on Hemingway's style (aka bloodless and devoid of beauty), and you have all the makings of an Oncoming Hate.

But this, this is beautiful. A German film-maker turns the story into 4 minutes of stop-motion gorgeousness. Watch and marvel.

the old man and the sea from Marcel Schindler on Vimeo.

This is pretty amazing. Some kind soul has created a video featuring the earliest roles of some of our big stars today. My main takeaway: it's possible that Jack Nicholson has actually become less creepy over time. And Zach Braff in a 1980's Woody Allen movie? What?

I am a bit surprised it didn't include Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall, but I guess you could make an entire video just of debuts in Woody Allen films.

Enjoy!

I have but one thing to say: David Cronenberg directing a novel by Don Delillo. I know, right? I haven't actually read Cosmopolis, but unlike most of his work, it sounds like there's nary a baseball to be seen:

It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end. The booming times of market optimism -- when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments -- are poised to crash. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limousine. Today he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut across town. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol's funeral, and a violent political demonstration, Eric receives a string of visitors -- experts on security, technology, currency, finance, and a few sexual partners -- as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future. (via Goodreads)

So not even a little topical, then.

I've often thought that Delillo's as un-filmable as David Foster Wallace, but I'm not against people trying. And if anyone can put a fresh (and weird) spin on the (already weird)novel, it's Cronenberg. Then again, it's got R-Patz in it, who's mostly proved to be box office poison outside of a pair of YA series. But it's also got Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche and Paul Giamatti?

Enjoy the trailer, at any rate!