Depression: this is the best word to describe how I feel when I see an advert for an upcoming movie. My friends have suggested to me that these dark feelings probably stem from snobbery and an inability to have fun. And while they could be right, we live in a logical, if irrational, universe, so they're wrong. Just because I have a highly cultivated, built-in "bullshit detector" does not mean fun is foreign to me."Tron: Legacy", for example set off alarm bells. Ten seconds after the commercial ended, the thought that paying $10 a ticket to see that "film" seemed like a bad idea. Because of this warning, I did not need to later justify to myself why seeing a film with badly written characters, in a badly written story, pumped up with fake-looking effects (yes, I said fake), was a wise weekly expenditure. None of my friends, or any like-minded critic I keep up with, spoke highly of Jeff Bridges' return to cyberspace. I am sick and tired of crappy films. We live in an era of them, where getting you to fork over the price of admission is more important than entertaining you, the audience. I spent four years in film school watching and studying the films which taught Spielberg, George Lucas and Roland Emmerich how to make films. Those films were no more or less entertaining because they were made before I was born or without me in mind.
I have a very large collection of films and an overstocked Netflix account. My entertainment options are quite vast and I am never at a loose-end when, on Friday night, my wife and I want to be entertained and want to avoid the disappointment, of another $20 down the drain, at the local multiplex. This is a new column, which will appear in this blog-space when I feel like it, featuring movies I believe are worth your time. You may love them or hate them, but I guarantee you won't feel indifferently about them.
My wife often jokes that before I met her I knew nothing about films made prior to 1970; and all she knew were movies made after 1970. This is not true, all ribbing aside. I possess a very thorough knowledge of classic Hollywood cinema. I am also a very big fan of European and Asian films made up to the 1980's. However, I went to the movies regularly while growing up, and through college. I saw "Pulp Fiction" at an advanced preview and "Men In Black" an embarrassing number of times. For those chrono-phobes out there who believe anything in black and white is worthless or starring anyone but Robert Pattinson a complete waste of time, I will pick two films per entry; one film made before 1972 and one after 1972, the year of my birth. In my senior yearbook, from Boulder High School, many of my classmates wrote predictions that one day I would become a film critic. Well, here I go!
Rififi (1955) Directed by Jules Dassin Starring Jean Servais b/w in French
Did you like the "Italian Job", with Mark Wahlberg or the "Ocean's" films with George Clooney, Brad Pitt etc? Or how about "The Pink Panther" films? This is the movie that started it all. Four men plan a perfect robbery, taking every contingency into account that could foil them. Instead of black cats tripping alarms or a fly landing on someone's nose, causing them to sneeze or any other cliched movie device to cause the thieves downfall, the character's personalities begin to emerge. By being themselves, they cause everything to go wrong. What begins as a super-slick, quintessentially cool-French flick begins to resemble a Shakespearean tragedy, by the end. Stunningly acted and directed, this films is as thrilling as an of the modern incarnations it spawned. My favorite moment in the film? The heist, which takes place in almost total silence, jangling the audience's nerves to breaking point.
Availability on Netflix: Mail, not on Instant
Library Availability: Highly probable
About subtitles: If subtitles upset you, then I advise you to get over yourself; or become fluent in the language of the film's origin. In a multi-tasking society, I am vigorously impatient with anyone who believes they cannot possibly watch a movie and read at the same time. In my educated opinion, of the two greatest movies ever made, one is in English, the other French. Great cinema transcends the language it is made in. It's a visual medium! Get it? I'm glad you do!
Impromptu(1991) Directed by James Lapine Starring Hugh Grant, Judy Davis, Julian Sands and Emma Thompson
My father's taste in film is fairly limited: raucous comedies, the occasional sci-fi and a few thrillers. In 1993, he came up trumps, when he advised me to watch Masterpiece Theater. The weekend in question featured a film called "Impromptu" starring Hugh Grant. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" would not break box office records for another year. The public television institution was fortunate to take advantage of this future global celebrity by having him introduce this film, which had slipped under the radar two years earlier. I will attempt to retrieve some of his opening speech, from the dusty corners of my memory.
"The film concerns among others the composer Franz Liszt, the brooding and brutal painter Eugene Delacroix, the poet Alfred de Musset and above all the Duchess Aurore Dupin, better known as George Sand. George is everything a 19th century lady SHOULDN'T be. She writes saucy romantic novels, she dresses as a man and she takes up men and discards them with the same ease, and almost the same frequency, with which she takes up and discards her cigars" "Sand and her companions make later artist sets, Andy Warhol's for example, look about as daring and avant garde as a Von Trapp family picnic" "No one expects [George Sand] to find her true passion in a man who is the very antithesis of everything she stands for. Frederic Chopin is modest, retiring, impeccably well-mannered and totally appalled by the bohemian artistic set of which she is the center. But, an artist he most certainly is. Paris's most celebrated composer in fact, and it is the sheer untrammeled sublimity of his music that draws her so relentlessly to him. Impromptu".
Cough! Cough! Cobwebs! Dust! Ack!
Anyway, when Hugh Grant has a great script to work with, he is more than a trembling pretty boy: the man can act! In fact, everyone is producing their best work here; and while it is not the most visually imaginative film I have ever seen, the story more than makes up for it. Each actor clearly researched their roles and performs them to the hilt. Not until "Immortal Beloved" in 1996 would we see as great a portrayal of a great composer as Hugh Grant's Chopin. It is not the best film of the 1990's, but it is my favorite; the film I think about without trying, and the DVD I will throw into the machine when I want to see an enjoyable period piece.
Availability on Netflix: Instant View (So what are you waiting for?!)
Library Availability: Possible, if your local library has a well-stocked AV department
