Thursday Movie Picks - Single Location Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. We're always here, every Thursday, picking three movies that fit the week's theme - join us! The water's fine!

People talk a lot about the need to "open up" plays when they transfer to the big screen, their thinking being that because a film does not have to be confined to one set and can go anywhere, audiences do not want to sit for a couple of hours and watch something that takes place in only one location, unlike in the theatre, where you are somewhat bound by the constraints of the stage.

The following films, my picks for this week, are just three examples of films that put the lie to this idea. All that matters is that the film is made well, no matter where it takes place.

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) I could just as easily have made these picks only Alfred Hitchcock movies, but I decided against it. I've talked about him a lot recently. Rope isn't one of his best movies, but it's an interesting experiment that works more often than it doesn't. Famously ironing almost all the gay out of the stage play based on the Leopold & Loeb murder case (memorably brought to the screen several times, by lesser filmmakers than Hitchcock, but both Compulsion and Swoon have things to recommend them) and filming the whole thing so that it looks like it was done in one take, Hitchcock succeeds at the very least in putting us in the middle of the action of a stage play that also happens to be a locked-room murder mystery. In it's best moments, it's thrilling, but there's too much philosophizing from Jimmy Stewart, playing a character whose darker side he can't ably portray yet, and thus it drags for long stretches. But don't get me wrong: Mediocre Hitchcock is still better than the best films of many other directors!

Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967) Now THIS is how you do a single-room thriller. Audrey Hepburn, Oscar-nominated for one of her best performances, is Suzy, a blind woman living in a basement apartment. Her husband has just returned from a trip, bringing with him a doll, taken as a favor to a woman he met at the airport. Unbeknownst to them, the doll is full of drugs, and some very bad men soon come to the apartment looking for them. What follows is one of the most tense, edge-of-your-seat, dig-your-nails-into-your-armrest-or-companion movies ever made, as Suzy must match wits against Alan Arkin's evil head baddie.

Carnage (Roman Polanski, 2011) Oh, dear lord, this one. Look, Polanski is very damn close to the top of his game here, but I will never for the life of me understand why they didn't just go with the original Broadway cast (Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, and Hope Davis) instead of the cast they did, nearly all of whom are miscast and most of whom don't really pull it off. Don't get me wrong, for the most part Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet are good, but.... when they're not, they're AWFUL. The story couldn't be any more basic: Two sets of parents meet to have a civil discussion about an incident where one of their kids attacked the other at school, and slowly things start to devolve until the adults end up acting just as much like children as their kids. But Polanski finds every possible angle from which to shoot in this cramped apartment, maximizing the set like no other.

Thursday Movie Picks - High School Reunion

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You can take part, too! Just pick three movies that fit the week's theme and say a little bit about them. It couldn't be easier!

If there is anything worse than high school, it's high school reunions. My ten-year one was four years ago now, and I didn't go. Everyone who I wanted to see, I was either still in contact with through Facebook (thank God for Facebook!) or saw semi-regularly anyway. So I didn't feel the need to spend money to eat catered food in the place we had our Senior Prom and stand around looking at other people I barely remembered making small talk about our lives.

Not that all high school reunions are bad! My mother still fondly remembers the first reunion she went to where she realized all the cheerleaders who made her life hell in high school, and had married their jock boyfriends, had not only peaked in high school, but were basically still living it. And had gotten fat.

Perhaps it's due to my ambivalence towards these types of events that I haven't seen enough movies about them to fill out the full three picks this week. I mean, I know of plenty of others - Peggy Sue Got Married, 10 Years, Romy & Michele's High School Reunion - but I haven't actually seen them. And that's kind of a rule I set for myself with these things: I have to have seen the movie in order to pick it. So I only have two this week. Here goes nothing.

Veronica Mars (Rob Thomas, 2014) Yes, this is the movie that kickstarted (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!?) the craze of using Kickstarter to fund movie projects. No, it's not great. And no, I don't particularly care. As a huge fan of the canceled-too-soon TV show about a whip-smart teenage outcast/private eye (Kristen Bell) and her former Sheriff/current private investigator father (Enrico Colantoni) living in a deeply divided California town, this movie was like catnip to me, and delivered just about everything I wanted from a Veronica Mars movie. Snappy dialogue, noir-ish murder mystery plot, and smart commentary about the intersection of race/class and privilege. After moving as far away as possible from the town that caused her so much heartbreak, soon-to-be lawyer Veronica comes back to her hometown of Neptune, CA after a call from her ex-boyfriend asking for her help exonerating him from a murder charge. And it just so happens that her high school reunion is taking place at the same time. What's a girl trying to get on the straight and narrow to do? Yes, there's a bit of a bar to clear if you didn't watch the show, but I have to think that most of it would still be enjoyable anyway.

Grosse Pointe Blank (George Armitage, 1997) One of the best films of the '90s, Grosse Pointe Blank tells the story of one Martin Blank, a professional assassin whose most recent job is to kill someone in his hometown. And it just so happens that his ten year high school reunion is taking place at the same time! And it ALSO just so happens that the man he's been hired to kill is the father of the girl he still has a crush on from high school. Ironic detachment has rarely been done better than this movie, and while it's definitely a product of its time, the great performances from John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Dan Aykroyd, and Joan Cusack (among others) keep it feeling fresh, and the zippy pace makes the film just fly by. This is a really fun one if you haven't seen it.

...and that's it for me this week, folks! I got nothin' else!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - To Catch a Thief

To Catch a Thief is one of my favorite Hitchcock films. If I'm being honest with myself, it's not one of his best, but it is oh so very good at being what it is - an entertaining, luxe, escapist thriller - that it is always in my Top Ten Favorite Hitchcocks. Few of the Master of Suspense's Hollywood films are so purely entertaining, and none have as much glamour.

I love many things about To Catch a Thief, but we are here to discuss cinematography. And there are three things I really love about the cinematography of To Catch a Thief.

1. The location photography, including best rear-projection driving scenes in Old Hollywood.

2. The visual wit. This is one of Hitchcock's wittiest films visually.

"Un poulet!"

3. The green-ish nighttime hues.

 

 

"Mother, the book you're reading is upside down!"

That last one is my favorite moment in the film, a perfect example of the film's wit. But I felt weird picking it for the Best Shot, since what makes me laugh is the placement of that line of dialogue. My Best Shot comes near the end of the film, as Cary Grant's retired cat burglar John Robie hides out on the roof waiting to catch his copy cat. We've only just found out that the costumed gentleman dancing with Grace Kelly's danger whore Francie all night was not John but rather the insurance adjuster working with him to protect the jewels he has insured, and Hitch cuts right to John on the roof and does the magnificent pull-out (which I wasn't able to gif):

It's so stunningly lit, and the camera moves so perfectly, and it puts you right into John's slightly vertiginous head space - he knows what he's doing, he's in his element, but he's nervous. If he doesn't catch this guy, he's going to jail for something he didn't do. And might also lose a beautiful woman in the process. It's an effortless shot, just like the whole film.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - One From the Heart

To call Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart "stylized" would be an understatement. To call it "artificial" would be even more of an understatement. It is, by a pretty good margin, the strangest American film I've ever seen, and were it not for Nobuhiko Obayashi's completely batshit insane House, it would be the absolute weirdest fucking film I've ever seen, period.

To begin with, it takes place in Las Vegas, and takes the artificiality of that city as far as it can go: The entire thing is shot on a soundstage, and looks it. BOY does it look it.

SILVER MEDAL

Then, there's also the almost expressionistic lighting, shading nearly every scene in neon shades of red, green, blue, and yellow.

They're about to do it, so they put on the red light

And on top of all that, it's mostly shot in a series of long takes, which often overlap with others that may or may not be taking place in the same place/at the same time, sometimes to wondrous effect, sometimes to disastrous effect. I say "disastrous" because of that whole "may or may not" caveat. There are times when characters appear to cross paths (they actually cross right in front of each other, in full view, and we watch them do it), except then the camera pulls back to reveal that the second character is actually not in the same place at all. Which makes it more confusing when it happens later and the two characters actually ARE in the same space at the same time.

And as if ALL THAT weren't enough, it's all set to a song score by Tom Waits that is near-constantly blaring on the soundtrack. If ever there was a musical film that was ashamed to be a musical, it's this one. The characters never sing, the songs just play like a third-person narrator or Greek chorus that we never see. Except that the songs don't really ever make that much of an impression, partly because they all sound very similar, partly because it's occasionally difficult to make out the lyrics over the dialogue, and partly because the lyrics don't always seem to fit quite right with the story as it's presented. Songs in musicals come organically out of the narrative, when a feeling is so strong or a situation so important that expressing what's happening in mere dialogue simply isn't enough. But the songs in One From the Heart aren't really used that way. Or at least it doesn't feel like it.

Thursday Movie Picks - Immortals

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Take part in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them - couldn't be easier!

What an interesting, tantalizingly vague topic for this week's Thursday Movie Picks! Immortals, huh? Like, gods? Or vampires? Or legends, who may die but will live forever in other ways?

Somehow, I managed to not quite go down any of those routes. Although I had initially wanted to be very cheeky and pick three movies with legendary actors playing legendary people (like, say, Lincoln, Amadeus, and Ali... not that it necessarily would have been those three exactly, but you get the idea), I decided against it because somehow, it just didn't feel quite right somehow. But still, I think these three fit the bill for this week quite nicely.

Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis, 1992) What would you do if you had the opportunity to remain young forever, WITHOUT becoming a vampire? I don't know about you, but of the many, MANY things I would do, fight with my best frenemy about a wimpy, mustachioed Bruce Willis is not one of them. Oh, I kid, I kid. Willis is actually damn funny in this, as the man torn between Meryl Streep's actress Madeline Ashton and Goldie Hawn's author, both of whom have taken a potion provided by Isabella Rossellini (who else?) that provides eternal youth. This zany camp classic has aged remarkably well, and I'm not just talking about the groundbreaking visual effects. This gets to the heart of the love-hate relationships between women better than perhaps any other movie released in the modern era. It's also perfectly cast from top to bottom.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945) Oscar Wilde's immortal story of a young man so beautiful that his portrait takes on all the rot of age and moral decay for him is far more tantalizing to read than to watch, but even this early filming of the tale gets at the horror of the story in ways the book does not. Hurd Hatfield is a perfect Dorian Gray, and Angela Lansbury is lovely as the gutter girl Sibyl Vane who may have stood a chance at stealing his heart, if it hadn't already turned black as pitch. Plus, the horrifying ending really exploits everything you can do with film, as pure a coup de cinéma as has ever existed.

Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988) What? I had to throw in something remotely off-center! You can't deny that the "ghost with the most" isn't immortal - he's been around for over 600 years, and given the number on his ticket in the waiting room final scene, he's going to be around for a whole lot longer than that! So what if he's technically part of the after-life? He is living there, after all! Michael Keaton's performance as the titular "bio-exorcist" (a ghost who gets rid of the living) is one of the greatest comedic performances of all time, a hyper-committed work of near-insanity that creates a wholly original character out of nothing. There's nothing else like it. And come to think of it, there's nothing really like this movie, either. It's the ultimate horror-comedy, deliciously designed, perfectly cast (really, AMPAS, you couldn't find room at the Oscars for ONE of the film's magnificent Supporting Actresses?!?), and undoubtedly the work of an utterly singular director. It's a pity what Tim Burton has become over the past decade. The likelihood of getting something as fun as this from him again is LOW.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Trevor

Goddammit.

This is easily the hardest episode of Hit Me With Your Best Shot I've ever participated in, and I'm including in that the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon episode, which I didn't participate in because despite trying three times, I found myself unable to remember that I was supposed to be looking for a best shot, so caught up was I in Ang Lee's deft, magical storytelling.

It's not just that Trevor is a very, VERY good short film, and that I could very honestly pick pretty much any shot from it and come up with a justification for why it's the Best. It's that I had never seen the short that birthed The Trevor Project before, and I didn't put two and two together and realize that this lovely short was even related to that SUPER important organization before watching it, and was thus totally unprepared for what I was about to watch.

I LOVE the little Harold & Maude phase Trevor goes through at the beginning

Thursday Movie Picks - Wedding Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us in holy matrimony by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
Hello, everyone! Love is in the air this week on Thursday Movie Picks, and, if you will, please indulge me a bit...

This week is Wedding Movies, and, well, my sister got married exactly one month ago. And despite the unseasonably cold, wet weather on the day of the wedding, it was a beautiful, beautiful day - she looked so beautiful and so happy, and I got unexpectedly choked up watching my parents walk her down the aisle. So please just indulge me for one second as I bask in the beauty just once more...

SO PRETTY!!

Okay, back to the matter at hand. Movies. About weddings.

This was tough because there are so many to choose from. So I wanted to do movies that I love that I haven't mentioned on the blog yet. I kinda hope it also coincides with movies no one else picks, but just know that if you haven't seen these yet, you probably should. To know them is to love them.

Well, except maybe the last one.

Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2001) There's something about traditional Indian weddings, isn't there? The pomp and circumstance, the tradition, the symbolism, the MONTHS-long preparation... it all really makes the day itself feel like a big event - a culmination as well as a kick-off. Which is appropriate, since a wedding is essentially the line between one's single life and one's married life, especially in the case of an arranged marriage, like the one at the center of Mira Nair's kaleidoscopic portrait of modern India. Joy, tears, fights... it's all here, and all so relatable. It is so deeply felt on the levels of film craft and performance that we feel so much for ever single character, no matter how little time we spend with them, or how little they speak. This is how you do a big ensemble family film.

Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008) I have gotten into knock-down, drag-out fights about the quality of this one, so let me tell you right up front: I think Rachel Getting Married is a masterpiece. The family dynamics are so keenly observed - in Jenny Lumet's super-smart script, in Demme's unadorned direction, and in the incredibly astute performances. Anne Hathaway was robbed of an Oscar for her stunning, against-type work as Kym, a recovering addict on a weekend pass out of rehab for her sister's wedding. She's been away from her family for quite a while, but it doesn't take long for her to completely upend the delicate balance that has been built in her wake, and the long-held, deep resentment among various family members boils up at all the perfect (read: ABSOLUTE WORST) times. Rosemarie Dewitt is low-key brilliant as the titular bride, Bill Irwin and Debra Winger all kinds of wonderful as the divorced parents, one open-hearted and warm, the other closed-off and prickly, and then there's the always lovely Anna Deveare Smith as Dad's new wife, and the shockingly natural Tunde Adebimpe (lead singer of TV On the Radio) as the groom. Add in the ever-present musicians, and you have the perfect recipe for a delightful/awful wedding weekend. And the wedding, the centerpiece of the film, is just stunning: a swirling, deftly edited, wondrous piece of film that seemingly brings every character arc and plot turn to a close almost completely without dialogue. I love this movie so much, and even moreso after my sister's wedding, because now I know firsthand just how deeply true it all is.

The Wedding Date (Clare Kilner, 2005) I WARNED YOU. Remember that long-ago episode of Thursday Movie Picks where I picked three "Crappy Rom-Coms That I Love Anyway"? Well, this one almost made the cut. I mean, what's not to love about Debra Messing hiring Dermot Mulroney - the world's foremost male escort - to take to her sister Amy Adams's wedding? With Holland Taylor as her mother? Actually.... quite a lot. This is a preposterous, ridiculous movie, with characters constantly being in places they would never be doing things they would never do. But Messing and Mulroney are so goddamn charming that I kind of enjoy it anyway. Call this one a favorite Guilty Pleasure, while my other two picks are All-Time Favorites.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Morocco

Written as part of the series hosted by the lovely Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience, THE essential site for film lovers and actressexuals of all shapes and sizes!

What becomes a legend most?

Not caring. Not having any ever-loving fucks left to give. THAT is what becomes a legend most. For what does a legend care for the peons of the world - those people beneath her who would grovel at her feet for the chance of getting a glance from her ever-shrouded eyes, the "little people" who encompass most of us? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Oh, she may have her reasons. She could be so insanely talented that everyday trivialities are nothing to her. She could be so unbelievably beautiful that she simply cannot bear to look at anything not as lovely as she. Or, she could have been hurt so deeply and so often over the course of her life that she has realized that there's nothing left in this world she could possibly give a damn about.

Except maybe this man. Because let's be honest, who wouldn't?

Josef von Sternberg's Morocco wasn't my introduction to Marlene Dietrich (that would be Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright), but it was my introduction to the work that defined her (with von Sternberg), and somehow I hadn't watched it until now. Well let me tell you, the lady is AMAZING. Amy Jolly is the baddest bitch on the seven continents and then some. Help her pack up her luggage after it collapses open on a boat? Whatever. Employ her to sing at your café in the titular country and give her advice on how to work the crowd? Alright, fine, if you must. But you best believe that when she does deign to pay attention to you, she will only do so with complete and utter disdain:

Silver Medal

Basically, that same insouciance that makes Buster Keaton one of the silver screen's greatest comedians makes Marlene Dietrich one of its greatest Divas. She is the living personification of the old adage "Less is More," and it took me seeing Morocco to realize it.

Bronze Medal

Watch as one by one she singlehandedly disarms every single man around her! Thrill to her shocking performance in... SHOCK... menswear! Gasp as she works the crowd by kissing a woman full on the mouth! IN 1930!!!

She kissed a girl. She liked it.

But when she finally gets Gary Cooper alone, she reveals where that give-no-fucks, take-no-prisoners attitude comes from. She's been let down by a few too many men. Turns out, her strength comes from a place of deep sadness, a mask she puts on to get through the day. We finally see the real Amy(/Marlene) in this shot, just as Cooper's legionnaire tells her that he wishes he had met her ten years ago - before he joined the Foreign Legion:

BEST SHOT

He's all but told her he loves her, and she looks like she's just been told she has forty-eight hours to live, like she's going back into hiding after sticking her nose out of her hole. Von Sternberg even has her dressed in black and boxed into the frame - here she is, in the same trap she's found herself in time and again, and the only way out is to cut it off now, before she gets in too deep. Again. What a beautiful character moment - one that makes you see her in a completely different (but still drop-dead sexy) light.

Thursday Movie Picks - The Internet

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You should join in the action by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them - it's easy and fun!

This week on Thursday Movie Picks: THE INTERNET. Meaning, the thing that I'm writing on, and you're reading on at this very moment.

Well, I'm writing now, and you're reading in the future.

Wait. Or you're reading now, and I'm writing in the past?

Is this how time travel starts?

Anyway, there's one very specific movie about the internet that I'm sure everyone will pick this week, because blah blah blah GREATEST MOVIE EVER yadda yadda yadda.... and I just don't feel that way about it, so.... I'm just not going to pick it.

So there.

Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze, 2015) Cyberbullying, meet the found-footage horror film. Unfriended is completely ridiculous, and honestly not all that scary, BUT when watched late at night, with the lights off, on your laptop.... it really does become almost unbearably creepy at points. The premise - a group of friends chatting via Skype become haunted by a malevolent ghost in the machine, possibly their friend who recently committed suicide after an explicit video of her was posted on Facebook - is kind of genius, and if you want an idea of what the youth of today are up to when no one's looking, this is pretty hard to beat. But... a great idea does not make a great movie.

We Steal Secrets (Alex Gibney, 2013) I mean, you COULD bother with Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate, but other than Benedict Cumberbatch.... WHY? Especially when you have the real thing right here? Gibney's incredibly engrossing documentary wades deep in the moral muck surrounding the website WikiLeaks and its divisive founder, Julian Assange. It's fascinating, depressing, and deeply, deeply cynical all at once. An essential film for anyone currently living on planet Earth.

Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron, 2010) OH, the lengths to which I will go in order to NOT pick THAT movie this week, ladies and gentlemen! I know what you're thinking. "This movie isn't about the internet, it's about cooking!" To which I can only say, "Well, yeah, but it's ALSO about BLOGGING about cooking!" I don't know that Julie Powell was the first celebrity blogger, or the first to have her blog lead to a book deal, but Ephron's deliciously entertaining trifle is as much about being a blogger as it is about being a chef, or being a woman, or being an American abroad. And as such, it really feels like the best possible choice for a blogger to pick when picking films about the internet!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

I have a confession to make: I am not a massive Star Wars fan.

I have said that I am on numerous occasions, and I'm sure I had good reason to, at the time. But the fact is, I am really only a casual fan. The original Star Wars was instantly my favorite film of all time upon seeing it, and it's still comfortably in my Top Five. I was a card-carrying member of the Star Wars Fan Club in my youth, read a few of the Expanded Universe books, and saw each film of the prequel trilogy on opening day. BUT... I wasn't really active in the Fan Club and let my membership lapse after only a couple of years, I still haven't read the Han Solo trilogy even though I've owned those books since middle school, and I never ever saw the need to see any new film at the first midnight screening.

The first shot is the inverse of the original's - BRONZE

I also don't have the sort of emotional attachment to the franchise that leads me to get into heated debate about which of the films is best and whether or not we should even pay attention to the prequels. I read stories of the fan restorations of the original trilogy with great interest but never particularly care to search for or download them. I also - God help me - only own the original trilogy, in the silver DVD box set that came out almost a decade ago now.

The original Star Wars may be a formative text for me - as it no doubt is for many nerds and cinephiles alike - but I have never really been anything more than a casual fan, and I'm okay with that.

It's for this reason that I greeted the announcement of a new trilogy with J.J. Abrams at the helm with a shrug and a Facebook post reading, "If I see so much as ONE lens flare, so help me, J.J....."I knew I would see it, but I saw no point in getting excited about it. Star Wars is a one-time-only thing, an improbable success that forever changes the landscape of what comes after in such a fundamental way that we still aren't quite aware of the full extent of its reach. The fact that Disney was making a new trilogy only served to me as evidence that the snake was now officially eating its tail.

So color me shocked that in the weeks leading up to the arrival of Episode VII - The Force Awakens, I was so excited about seeing it that at one point while buying the tickets, I actually started shaking. And my anticipation as I sat down in the AMC Loews Lincoln Square IMAX with my Mom (from whom I inherited my love of Star Wars) was at such a fever pitch that I was practically squealing with delight. And then the title came up to that blast of John Williams's iconic score, and I was seven years old again, clapping my hands and downright giddy at the prospect of watching another Star Wars movie, this time on the biggest of all screens, in 3-D!

And I never, EVER, get excited about 3-D.

Thusday Movie Picks - Aliens

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us a bit about them!

LET'S DO THIS (extra-terrestrial) THING!

(Sorry, I just finished a brain-dump list of the funniest films EVER, so I just want to get right to the point!)

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) The grand-daddy of all alien movies, Ridley Scott's masterpiece starts out like a sci-fi film, but ends up being a killer haunted house flick, with the spaceship standing in for the house as a mysterious, flesh-hungry alien gets loose and starts picking off the crew members one by one. Every performance is memorable (Veronica Cartwright! Tom Skerritt! Ian Holm!), but movie characters don't come more iconic than Sigourney Weaver's "final girl" Ripley.

Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot, 1999) What if satellite transmissions of Star Trek somehow made it into space to a not-particularly-intelligent alien race looking to be rescued from persecution? That's the question posed by Galaxy Quest, a definite contender for funniest film of the '90s. The answer? They come to Earth, kidnap the actors responsible for the iconic characters, and force them to man the ship and save their species in one last final episode of the show. Except that now, the show is real! I can't believe how perfectly cast this thing is: Tim Allen as the womanizing ship commander, Sigourney Weaver as the sexy (lone) female, Alan Rickman as the British "real thespian"/emotionless alien doctor, Tony Shalhoub as the nervous chief engineer, and Sam Rockwell as a "red shirt" (you know, one of those nameless, disposable extras who maybe had one line before they got unceremoniously killed off in their one episode gig). And then the brilliant Enrico Colantoni, Missi Pyle, and Rainn Wilson as the aliens. Plus, Justin Long as the ultimate fanboy. Galaxy Quest is a blast - even if you're not a Trekkie (I'm not)!

Lilo & Stitch (Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders, 2002) I make no bones about it: Stitch may just be my favorite Disney character. An alien science experiment hellbent on destruction gone rogue and pseudo-domesticated by a sweet little Hawaiian girl named Lilo, Stitch is just the cutest little agent of chaos you've ever seen. The film around him follows suit, ending up as easily the best of Disney's rather fallow output between the "Golden Age" of the '90s and the new computer-animated hits that have come in recent years.

LIST: The Funniest Films

So, over at The Film Experience, Nathaniel posed the question to readers of what movies make us giggle the most. And honestly, I sort of randomly picked the first one that came into my head, but I could feel the floodgates opening, and then I had the kind of day at work today that made me need a really good laugh, so I decided to just do the damn thing and make a list! So here it is: My totally arbitrary, not at all thought through, probably missing a ton of titles, not in any particular order (but maybe it is...) list of....

THE FUNNIEST FILMS EVER

 1. The Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1934)

2. The Producers (Brooks, 1967)

3. Airplane! (Zucker/Abrams/Zucker, 1980)

4. Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938)

5. Clue (Lynn, 1985)

6. A Shot in the Dark (Edwards, 1964)

7. Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959)

8. Waiting For Guffman (Guest, 1996)

9. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam/Jones, 1975)

10. Young Frankenstein (Brooks, 1974)

...and more! After the break!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Queen Margot

Written as part of the series hosted by Nathaniel R. of The Film Experience, a great website where I contribute occasionally, and which should be required reading for all film bloggers.

I don't have enough evidence to prove this, but Patrice Chéreau's La reine Margot is probably the sexiest costume drama ever made. It's certainly the sexiest one I've ever seen. At points it practically drips with eroticism. That the film is also a tremendous tragedy would only be a surprise to anyone who doesn't know French history, but as that probably applies to most Americans, it's worth mentioning, especially since the last act is really, really great at it, and with all the sex and romance on display throughout the rest of the film, it's very easy to envision a version of this story that ends with at least a little happiness.

But, this being a French historical drama about the ruling class, it was never going to have a remotely happy ending.

I found it incredibly difficult to pick a best shot, narrowing it down to four, from which one singular shot simply wouldn't emerge. I would blindly point and pick one, but that would go against the whole concept of this series, so I had to sit here staring at my screen and thinking VERY. HARD. for quite a while in order to complete the task at hand. In the end, it came down to what I think the film is about, and which shot exemplifies that best. But first, the runner-ups.

Honorable Mention

In case you're wondering, that Isabelle Adjani's Margot and her two brothers. It is heavily implied throughout the film that Margot has had relations with her brothers, and certainly in this early shot they sure do seem pretty close. But I like this shot for exemplifying how brazenly open this film is about sex and sexuality - the opening scenes are dripping with homoeroticism, incestual tension, and a decidedly female gaze. I can't think of another historical costume drama that plays that way, and it's refreshing (and somewhat depressing, since this was made way back in 1994).

Bronze Medal

Ladies and gentlemen, the great Virna Lisi. The conniving, scheming mother Catherine de Medici who sets the whole plot into motion and keeps it going right on through its tragic end. Here, as she watches her son the King die of her poison, she looks like a witch - an old crone, or perhaps even a gargoyle, looking down on everyone from the upper regions of the church. But also in the shadows, where she would prefer to stay - out of the limelight, pulling the strings for her sons to rule how she wants them to. They say "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Well, I submit this shot as evidence of its truth.

Silver Medal

The film doesn't take a huge number of stylistic risks, but it does take one pretty big symbolic one that probably shouldn't work but does, quite brilliantly. King Charles, inadvertently poisoned by his own mother's hand, sweats blood as he dies. It's a striking image, watching blood-red sweat drip down his face as he tries to get some last comfort out of Margot, and an appropriate one for the character, who spends most of the film being too nervous and unsure of himself to do what he believes is right. So here, at his most nervous, at death's door, he sweats blood. The blood of the people who died in his name, who died at his (indirect) hand, and will die in the future because of him and his failings.

BEST SHOT

This one is all about the colors and the blocking. It's not just her milky white skin against his tanned, ripped body, but the fact that they mirror the marble pillars behind them almost exactly, and what that means. They're entwined with each other, they lean on each other, but they stand independently, almost in two different worlds. He is a Protestant and she a Catholic - together they could hold up the entire kingdom of France if they wanted, but instead they're wrapped in blood (the red blanket). The blood that came before, which brought them together, and the blood to come after, which will keep them apart. True tragedy is always inevitable, and this is a lovely bit of foreshadowing.

Thursday Movie Picks - Spanish-Language Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join the party by picking three movies that fit the week's criteria and writing a bit about them - it's fun and easy!

I'll admit. This was a hard one. So many films I wanted to pick aren't technically in Spanish, but rather Portugese. And one that I was going to pick (Under the Same Moon), had a pretty good amount of English in it, too (but it's SO. GOOD. despite the fact that it was marketed like an utterly average, overly sentimental melodrama). I wish I had more knowledge of older Spanish films - there are plenty on my list (Spirit of the Beehive, Cria Cuervos..., The Exterminating Angel, etc.), but there are simply too many films and too little time, especially recently! So we had to go all recent this week, but if you haven't seen these, you really need to do so. ASAP.

Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston, 2004) Catalina Sandino Moreno deservedly got an Oscar nomination for her debut performance in this tight-as-a-drum thriller-cum-character study. Seventeen year-old Colombian Maria is working in what is basically a sweatshop to help support her family. When she dares to feel that she is being treated unfairly, she quits. And then finds out she's pregnant. And since she and her boyfriend don't love each other, she doesn't want to get married. What's a girl to do? Well, in this case, become a drug mule. Marston's incredible debut feature can be difficult to watch at times, but it is always compelling - both deeply humane and never, ever sentimental. Somehow, this works despite Marston (who also wrote the script) being about as far from the experiences of these characters as humanly possible. The film resists at every turn becoming an even slightly lesser version of itself, finding a perfect avatar in Sandino Moreno's perfect face, which remains hardened and implacable even as her eyes show you everything that's going on inside.

Timecrimes (Nacho Vigalondo, 2007) And now, for something completely different. Vigalondo's film follows an ordinary man who catches a mysterious bandaged man spying on him, and yadda yadda yadda ends up as the crux of a time travel paradox for the ages. Under close scrutiny, Timecrimes may fall apart just as most time travel tales do, but I actually think, given the explanations in the film's science, that it really may in fact hold together. But putting that aside for the moment, this is one hell of a ride, truly thrilling in every possible way. I'm honestly shocked an American version hasn't happened yet.

Undertow (Javier Fuentes-Léon, 2009) What would you do if you were forced to live a lie? To be with someone you may love, but not with your TRUE love? What would you do if your true love then died? And what would you do if they then came back to you as a ghost? From this conceit, Undertow spins pure cinematic gold. I can't say enough great things about this quietly gorgeous film. It is, quite simply, perfect.

Thursday Movie Picks - Androids/Cyborgs

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You can participate yourself by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them. It couldn't be easier!

Another drive-by week.... I got back to good ol' NYC late Monday night, and the big annual fundraising Gala at work is tonight! ACK! If only I was a robot, this would be a lot easier.

Which brings us to our theme this week! Here are three of my favorite androids/cyborgs.

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) This is THE ONE. The mother of all sci-fi movies. Evil Maria is a cyborg for the ages. Lang's endlessly inventive, template-setting masterpiece is still a marvel to behold.

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2008) Michael Fassbender's David8 is such an impressive characterization - just how sentient is David? What is he programmed to do and what traits has he acquired/developed over his existence? - that I long for the sequel only in hopes that he somehow survives. The rest of this Alien prequel is alternately fantastic and flawed.

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015) Alicia Vikander won her Oscar (SHUT UP) for her incredible work as Ava, an android so believably human that when she puts clothes on over her chrome-and-wire body you would never know it, except for the slight stiffness in her movements. Alex Garland's film is one of the best of 2015, the thinking person's sci-fi (shoulda-been) blockbuster.

Thursday Movie Picks - Affairs

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and saying a bit about them. It couldn't be simpler!
Who doesn't love a good affair? Why, I'm off to an affair of my own in a few hours: my sister's wedding!

But in this case, I'm pretty sure Wanderer means "Affairs" in a romantic sense - like when someone is involved very seriously with one person and then begins having relations with someone else. Very fertile ground for drama, comedy, and great films. I look forward to seeing everyone else's picks. Here are mine, with no commentary except to say that I LOVE these movies.

The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) RIP Mike Nichols. Probably Dustin Hoffman's second-best performance (after Tootise, of course). Also, that trailer is real, and it's REALLY awful.

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945) Only one of the greatest films ever made, with two of the greatest performances in the history of the medium, and directed by the same guy who made Lawrence of freakin' Arabia. (This one's for you, Drew! We miss you!)

Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987) Look, can we all just agree to never let Glenn Close near any kitchen knives or bunny rabbits ever again? Okay? Good.

Thursday Movie Picks - Astronauts

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them.

I'm a little late posting this week, but it is Thursday, and thus, time for Thursday Movie Picks...

... IN SPACE!!!!!!!

I have always been fascinated by astronauts, and wanted to be one for quite a long time in my youth. I remember begging my parents to let me go to space camp but it never happened. Ah, what could have been!

But at any rate, my love affair with outer space took a serious hit upon seeing one of my picks for this week. I decided that it was far too dangerous a profession for me, and another one of my picks this week confirmed that not only was it dangerous, but that it mostly involved work on the ground on Earth. WTF?! Here are my picks, going from Earth to outer space.

Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997) I'm maybe cheating a little with this one because Jodie Foster's character isn't technically an astronaut, but she does go into space. Maybe. It depends on your interpretation of what actually happens in the film's last act journey. But what I love most about Contact - besides Jodie Foster, of course - is how it focuses on the daily drudgery of work related to outer space. It's comparable to archeology: Most of it is slow and procedural, but once in a blue moon something truly exciting and magical happens. Consider this the "thinking person's outer space movie," and a damn good one.

Apollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995) This film looks at both what happens on the ground at Mission Control and what happens in space during an actual mission. Of course, this is one of those "based on a true story" movies, so most people going in already know what's going to happen (NASA has a bad case of Murphy's Law on the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, but through genius, outside-the-box thinking, manages to get their boys home), but that doesn't make any of Ron Howard's film any less suspenseful, surprising, or heartbreaking. The cast and filmmaking are rock-solid, and the special effects remain convincing to this day. The whole story did a number on me as an 11 year-old, though: After seeing it, I abandoned all desires to ever go into outer space. I'm still a huge astronomy nut, though.

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013) ...that said, I don't think I've ever seen a single image in all cinema that has inspired such fear deep in the pit of my gut as the one that ends Gravity's bravura opening seventeen-minute continuous shot - showing Sandra Bullock's Dr. Ryan Stone tumbling away into the black vastness of space. That Alfonso Cuarón's masterpiece somehow only gets more intense and thrilling from there seems impossible, but it is gloriously true. I was so impressed with this when I first saw it in IMAX 3D that I went back not a week later to see it in regular 2D just to see if it held up, and boy did it EVER. This is the most thrilling film of the '00s, an explosion of pure cinema that restored my faith in the art's ability to inspire awe, and Exhibit A for why you should see movies on the biggest screen possible, not on your freaking phone.

Thursday Movie Picks - Fish Out of Water Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. All you have to do to get in on the action is pick three films that relate to the week's theme and write a little bit about them!

This week on Thursday Movie Picks: Fish Out of Water movies. Which is VERY convenient for me, since I just watched one for another project! So why don't we start with that one...

Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) Harrison Ford received his only Oscar nomination (CAN YOU BELIEVE?!?) for playing Philadelphia cop John Brook, forced to hide out in Amish country after he gets shot trying to protect a young Amish boy who witnessed a murder. Weir and cinematographer John Seale cast quite a spell here, making Amish country feel like a lovely place to live, even if they don't have electricity and believe themselves to be superior to everyone else. The scene where the whole community comes together to raise a barn for a newlywed couple is just magnificent in every way. That the film is so good with the quiet drama that comes in Amish country makes its facility with the thriller elements that dominate the first and last twenty minutes even more impactful. PLUS: early screen appearances from Danny Glover, Viggo Mortensen, and MISS Patti LuPone herself!

...but most good Fish Out of Water tales are comic as opposed to dramatic, so....

My Cousin Vinny (Jonathan Lynn, 1992) MARISA TOMEI FOREVER, BITCHES! Look, My Cousin Vinny isn't some masterpiece of cinema or anything, but it's still funny as all get-out thanks to director Lynn's knack for staging (he also directed the comic masterpiece Clue) and the inspired comic stylings of the Oscar-winning Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito, stealing the film right out from under the nose of Joe Pesci (who is no slouch in the comedy department here). A rogue's gallery of great actors in key supporting roles take the rote city-slickers-in-the-sticks courtroom drama of the script and make it indelible with go-for-broke line readings that just kill. You're probably reciting some of them right now.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006) One of the best movie-going experiences of my life was seeing Sacha Baron Cohen's masterpiece mockumentary with my sister in a packed theater two weeks after it opened. Some films are just meant to be seen with the largest, most diverse crowd possible, and Borat is the king of those. That one viewing has colored all subsequent viewings of this for me. If you were somehow living under a rock in 2006, here's the deal: Baron Cohen went undercover in disguise as Borat, a reporter from Kazakhstan purportedly making a documentary about America, on a road trip from coast to coast, meeting with different people, attending various events, and getting an unwitting picture of America and Americans at their best and worst (but mostly worst). To say the film's timing was perfect would be an understatement: we NEEDED to laugh at ourselves in 2006, and boy did Borat ever deliver that in spades. Since most everything in the film was real (all the non-celebrities, and even most of the celebrities, had no idea it was Baron Cohen under that mop and ridiculous mustache and crazy accent), Borat almost is an actual documentary about the state of American social mores in the mid-00s. Baron Cohen's unbelievably committed, completely fearless performance is a hilarious master class in improv, but the film is so much more than that. This is social satire at its most brazen and biting, a ruthless takedown of American imperialism and exceptionalism that will probably never stop being relevant and ahead of its time.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Witness

Written as part of the series hosted by Nathaniel R. over at The Film Experience, where I occasionally contribute.

Peter Weir's Witness is one of those films whose reputation precedes it. The movie was a HUGE hit upon its release in 1985, and also received the Oscar seal of approval, with eight nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Actor (for Harrison Ford) and winning two including Best Original Screenplay. Everyone I know who was an adult when it was released LOVES Witness - especially, perhaps, my mother, who has had a crush on Harrison Ford ever since Star Wars. So, you could say I went into this viewing with high expectations.
 

But then, the expectations game is funny. Because Witness is most often described as a thriller, and somehow I got it in my head that Witness is about what happens when Ford's Detective John Book investigates a killing in the Amish community, NOT what happens when a young Amish boy is the sole witness to a murder in a train station and Book must protect him while kind-of undercover in the Amish community. The film is really only a thriller for both its opening and closing 20 minutes. The rest of it, though, is really a quiet drama introducing people to Amish culture in the broadest of subtle strokes. I don't know how much my expectations got in the way of my enjoyment of the film (and to be clear, I did like it), but up until the last act I kept wondering if this was one of those "you really had to be there" hits that spoke to something ineffable in the culture at the time of its release.

Thankfully, Weir was working with the genius John Seale (arguably robbed of an Oscar this past year for his beautiful work on Mad Max: Fury Road), who is just a fucking painter with light. It's here where the film most earns its iconic status, for me. In its best moments, Witness is some straight-up Terence Malick magic hour Days of Heaven shit.

Here's the weird thing. While watching Witness for the first time, I thought there were not a whole lot of images I would choose as my best shot. And then when I went through it again to grab some screenshots, I capped AT LEAST a dozen shots that stood out to me for various reasons, like this one, which I HAD to capture in motion as the light goes down:

FUCKING. GORGEOUS.

And then there's the scene in the garage, my second favorite scene in the movie almost solely because of how stunningly it's lit (and also because it's the most purely charming Harrison Ford has ever been):

Best Shot Runner-Up

My favorite scene, though is the barn raising, which I could just watch on a loop forever and ever until I die and be purely satisfied. It is so good that for those eight minutes, I was ready to give up all of my stuff for the simple life of the Amish.

Look at them all, all over that scaffolding like monkeys on a tree in the jungle, each tirelessly working away, singular yet also part of a whole, separate but connected. It's an extremely pleasing sight to behold. I don't know what the Amish community thinks about Witness (if they even think about it all), but this scene alone is enough to put them in a very positive light, a close, tight-knit community of people who focus on life's simplest pleasures, who live off the land and have no need for modern conveniences - because maybe we really don't need them when we work hard and have each other.

But anyway, to the business at hand: Selecting the film's best shot. The more I thought about this, the more it was really no contest. For all of the beautiful shots in the film, there was one where all of the film's craft elements came together for me in a magical way:

This comes right before that lamp shot up above, just as Kelly McGillis's Rachel learns that John Book is going to leave, to "go back to his world, where he belongs" in the words of her father-in-law, Eli. Eli tells her that they both know it's where he belongs, but this shot puts where Rachel herself belongs into question. She may be boxed in to the hand-built Amish house in which she stands, but her shirt color ties her to the outside world, where John is. The shot is just as beautifully lit as every other shot in the film, but it's just packed with meaning in a way that stood out to me.

Kelly McGillis, by the way, is FUCKING FANTASTIC in this. She does so much with just her face and no dialogue at all, conveying so many conflicting feelings that she could not even put into words if she tried.... Rachel has recently lost her husband, and here is this man from the "outside world" coming in and making her feel things she maybe hasn't ever felt before, and at any rate is not ready for. It's completely to McGillis's credit that it feels like Rachel might actually leave the world she has known her whole life for a man she barely knows. For someone I only knew as "the girl" from Top Gun, this performance was a revelation. And to think this was her first major role! People who were there, tell me: Was there REALLY no room for her in that year's Oscar lineup? Or was it one of those cases where no one could decide if she was Lead or Supporting? Or did she somehow not get good reviews?!?

*               *               *

But now that that's all done, can we please talk about the REAL star of this film? Ladies and gentlemen, MISS PATTI LUPONE:

Rocking a mullet like nobody's business.

Okay, okay, she plays Harrison Ford's sister and is only in two scenes, but still. How many women could pull off this look?

NONE. THAT'S how many.