Some of the Films I've Watched Lately a Few of Which I Enjoyed Greatly

The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Anderson. I unreservedly love this movie. And I loved it all the more with this latest viewing. Dysfunctionality has never been funnier. Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum steals the show with lines like these:

“Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?” 

“I'm very sorry for your loss. Your mother was a terribly attractive woman.” 

“I've always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember. That's just my style. But I'd really feel blue if I didn't think you were going to forgive me.”

“Chas has those boys cooped up like a pair of jackrabbits, Ethel.”

“Hell of a damn grave. Wish it were mine.”

“You wanna talk some jive? I'll talk some jive. I'll talk some jive like you never heard!”

“Hey, lay it on me, man.” This said when meeting a distinguished African American man. 

Royal, as should be obvious from the above, has a propensity for being totally inappropriate. But it’s not as though he’s surrounded by sanity. His family is a wacky crew. His sons (Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson) are, to put it charitably, eccentric (albeit successful) and his daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow) — who he introduces as his “adopted daughter” — is so far out there you couldn’t find her with a telescope. Attached to the family is more madness such as Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) and Eli Cash (Owen Wilson). Only his ex-wife (Angelica Huston) seems at all normal and only just. This and Rushmore are peak Wes Anderson, for my money only Moonrise Kingdom has matched these two.

The File on Thelma Jordan (1949) Siodmak. Barbara Stanwyck stars opposite Wendell Corey. Wait, what? Wendell Corey the leading man? That can’t be right. He was always the protagonist’s buddy -- notably in Rear Window -- never the main man. Actually Corey  was fine in this picture though it would have been better served with someone else in the lead. Like a leading man. William Holden? Melvyn Douglass? Dana Andrews? Maybe they and others all turned it down. TFTJ is being shown on Criterion Channel as part of their "1950 the Peak Year of Noir" series. There’s always one basic problem with noir: you know the “bad guys” aren’t going to get away with it. The mystery, such as it is, is what is going to trip them up. The plot here is not worth detailing but suffice to say Stanwyck is the villainess though not half as interesting as she is in Double Indemnity. Of course this one wasn’t written and directed by Billy Wilder. TFTJ is a solidly mediocre picture, certainly no waste of time but nothing you’re going to much remember after watching it — unless you blog about it.

The Immigrant (2013) Gray. Simply a terrible movie. The first really bad one I’ve sat through in a long time. Marion Cotillard stars, or rather she goes through the motions. The brilliant Joaquin Phoenix similarly reads his lines and hits his marks. Jeremy Renner plays a thoroughly uninteresting character with little evident enthusiasm. The film starts off dark in confined spaces and one imagines we’re being set up for wide open vistas and large spaces with brilliant light much as John Ford would do. Nope. It stays that way through the entire running time. There is nothing interesting about the film except to imagine why some critics liked it. Cotillard plays an immigrant from Poland in 1921 coming to New York with her ailing sister. It’s a great set up but the rest of the film is a complete disappointment.

The Passenger (1975) Antonioni. Sometimes I amaze myself. Prior to my latest viewing I’d watched The Passenger once before many years ago and didn’t like it. In the intervening years I’ve read and heard so many good things about it that I decided it deserved a second chance. After all, I’d disliked another Antonioni film the first time I saw it (L’Aventurra) and thought it masterpiece after a second viewing. Guess what? Same thing happened with The Passenger. Who was that person who didn’t like it? What a great film! Jack Nicholson stars as a disaffected journalist in North Africa who assumes a dead man's identity. Turns out the recently deceased was running guns for rebels and had some serious enemies. As was his custom, Antonioni took his sweet time in telling the story with long lingering shots that allow the viewer to breathe and think and take in any of the various locales that the protagonist travels through. Maria Schneider co-stars. The Passenger ranks up there with Antonioni's best. The closing scene has got to rank with one of the best endings in cinema.

The Lady Eve (1941) Sturges. One of the ten greatest screwball comedies of all time for me and countless others. Hell, it's one of the great films of all time, period. In Barbara Stanwyck’s great career she was never better. Certainly never funnier nor sexier. Henry Fonda proved here that a great actor can play in any genre as this was a rare foray into comedy for him. A supporting crew of Eugene Palette, Charles Coburn, William Demarest and Eric Blore round out a picture worth seeing again and again. And again.

Prizii’s Honor. (1985) Huston. Such was the state of American cinema in the eighties that this was not only a very popular film but a highly acclaimed one. Honestly it’s not bad but sure ain’t great either. Jack Nicholson shines as always, Kathleen Turner is sultry, as always. Angelica Huston (directed by her Dad) turns in a nice performance (it won an Oscar?) the supporting players are just fine. But Huston who directed some of Hollywood’s great films (Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King, Key Largo) was not in great form in this his penultimate directoral effort and more importantly the script was not up to the actors. The line “do I ice her or do I kill her” is memorable but not much else is in this in one ear and out the other film.

Mirror (1975) Tarkovsky. Critic Antti Alanen called the film a "space odyssey into the interior of the psyche.” That’s as good a description as any. This was my fifth or sixth viewing and I found it just as mysterious, enigmatic and enthralling. It’s like free form jazz on film, hopping from one scene to the next, cutting in actual footage of the Spanish Civil War or a bullfight. A woman floats in mid air. A woman we haven’t seen before upbraids a main character. A barn burns. It’s a puzzle why we’re watching certain things but they are compelling and it makes sense just as it doesn’t. I love this film.