The Earrings of Madame de… (1953): This is one of the great movies that you have NOT seen, having just been released on DVD in 2009. Max Ophuls directed what is perhaps the most visually evocative romance ever in black and white. It’s worth seeing for the ballroom scene alone. The shallow and privileged wife of a stick-in-the-mud general takes a lover, but the earrings she pawned reveal the affair and consequences ensue. Great Italian director Vittorio De Sica plays the impossibly handsome lover. TCM 10/6
The best and most entertaining movie of the Fall tells the birth story of Facebook, and may win Oscars for director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). It’s a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires.
Let’s reflect on Sorkin’s challenge here; he is writing a screenplay about nerdy guys writing computer code and making it fast-paced, understandable, funny and even gripping. To compound his challenge, all of the main characters but one are extremely obnoxious, yet he makes us care about what happens to them.
Yet the most compelling aspect of the film is Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. Eisenberg’s Zuckerman has few social skills, less social aptitude and exactly one friend, yet creates a framework for other people to share scores and even hundreds of “friends”. Eisenberg carries the film with an especially intense performance of an emotionally remote character. Eisenberg has been underrated despite strong performances in Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man. Here, it is impossible to think of another actor who could so vividly create this Zuckerman.
This is a uniformly well-acted movie. Justin Timberlake is terrific as Napster infant terrible Sean Parker. Armie Hammer is outstanding as both of the Winklevoss twins, the entitled, preppie wunderkinden. Rooney Mara nails her scenes as Zuckerberg’s soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Douglas Urbanski (usually a producer) does a viciously hilarious impersonation of former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers.
One more thing: Fincher and Sorkin know how to end a movie.
This is Woody Allen’s latest comedy about romantic entanglements and human self-delusion. It is mid-level Woody – not as good as his recent Vicky Christina Barcelona or Match Point, but not completely unwatchable like some of his other recent work. To save you 90 minutes of your life and ten bucks: the character who comforts herself with ridiculously fatuous superstition ends up happier than those who are grounded in scientifically valid reality. Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin and Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) all do their best with the material.
Tony Curtis has died. He was a very handsome and sexy guy, and the first half of his career was at the tail end of Hollywood’s Studio Era. As a result, he played the pretty boy leads in lots of mediocre action movies. He and first wife Janet Leigh (parents of Jamie Lee Curtis) made up one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples ever.
But Tony Curtis could act if he got the right role, and he made at least three great movies. The fact that these movies come from three very different genres (screwball comedy, contemporary drama, sword-and-sandal epic) is a testament to his ability.
Some Like It Hot (1959): This Billy Wilder masterpiece is my pick for the best comedy of all time. Seriously – the best comedy ever. And it still works today. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute). Curtis must continue the ruse although next to Marilyn Monroe is at her most delectable. Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957): This has Curtis’ most subtly acted role as a Broadway press agent who is completely at the mercy of Burt Lancaster’s sadistically nasty columnist. Many of us have experienced being vulnerable to the caprice of an extremely mean person – Curtis perfectly captures the dread and humiliation of being in that position.
Spartacus (1960): Once in a while, a grand epic is a really good movie , and Spartacus qualifies. Curtis plays a slave who is hit on by Laurence Olivier’s Roman patrician in a scene of BARELY implicit homosexuality. “Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?”, Olivier leers from the bath. It was a gutsy scene for a studio actor at the end of the 50s.
After thinking so more about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (and getting more annoyed), I have updated my first assessment of the movie.
The screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking). Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout. The movie’s payoff (things turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behaved) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.
Mademoiselle Chambon is the year’s best romance, and very worth seeking out; The lovers are beautifully acted by Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlaine in two of the very finest performances of the year. I’m still pushing the hardhitting documentary The Tillman Story. There’s also the George Clooney arty thriller The American. If you can still find them, there are also two excellent crime dramas – Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Animal Kingdom. For a date movie, there is the charming and relatively smart romantic comedy Going the Distance.
Without strongly recommending them, I can say that The Town is a satisfying Hollywood thriller and the silly A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop has its moments. You can skip Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
My DVD of the Week is one of the year’s best so far: The Ghost Writer. Don’t miss another of the year’s best, The Secret in Their Eyes either. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TVinclude lots of good choices: Seven Days in May, Badlands, Boxcar Bertha, Leave Her to Heaven, Twentieth Century and The Earrings of Madame de…, all coming up on TCM.
If you’re a baseball fan, there’s Ken Burns’ The Tenth Inning on PBS.
Again, Oliver Stone makes the movie equivalent of one of those glossy fashion editions – kinda fun to page through, but really nothing there. But it is glossy.
Stone sets this drama at the onset of the 2008 financial collapse, but really doesn’t have anything much to say about it, other than Josh Brolin’s character is an especially bad man.
Here’s what really ticks me off (modest SPOILER in this paragraph only). The screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking). Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout. The movie’s payoff (things will turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behave) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.
Michael Douglas is excellent in another delicious turn as Gordon Gekko, but he isn’t the main character. The protagonist is played by Shia LaBeouf. Will someone explain to me why Shia LaBeouf seems to be a movie star? I just can’t figure it out.
Once again, Carey Mulligan is good as the moral center of the story. Unfortunately, the power of her performance is undermined by the improbable and inconsistent happy ending.
Another problem is Stone’s use of nuclear fusion as an example of renewable energy that would save the planet if the bad money guys would only invest. There are very promising alternatives in renewable energy, but fusion ain’t one of them. It’s an insult to folks who are serious about being Green.
Now that Tony Blair is flogging his memoir, it’s a great time to watch the far juicier The Ghost Writer, which is a fictionalization of the writing of Tony Blair’s memoirs. It’s a first class paranoid political thriller by Roman Polanski. Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan lead an excellent cast, and Olivia Williams stands out.
In 1994 documentarian Ken Burns came out with his history of baseball, told in nine “innings”. This week Burns updates his Baseball with The Tenth Inning on PBS. The Top of the Tenth is this week, followed next week with The Bottom of the Tenth.
In Baseball, Burns used a delightful array of talking heads (players and observers), the most compelling of whom were Buck O’Neil, Stephen Jay Gould and Bob Costas. I would expect the same style – and the same quality – in The Tenth Inning.
Edward Norton corrects Edward Norton in Leaves of Grass
I’ve just updated Movies I’m Looking Forward To. We’ve got Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Howl, The Social Network and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger all coming out in the next two weeks. Here are some new entries:
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: Woody Allen’s latest comedy about romantic entanglements and human self-delusion. Stars Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and Josh Brolin. Releases October 1.
Tamara Drewe: Steven Frears (The Queen, The Snapper, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity) brings us a sex comedy. A writer’s colony in the English countryside is disrupted when a local woman returns with a nose job that has made her into an irresistible hottie. She enjoys being irresistible. Releases October 8.
Leaves of Grass: A college professor is tricked into returning to Oklahoma by his pot-dealing identical twin brother. Hilarity ensues. Edward Norton plays both twins. Strong supporting cast with Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss and Tim Blake Nelson. Rolling out slowly across the country.
Tabloid: A reputedly very funny Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death, Gates of Heaven) documentary tracing the story of a woman who had her dead dog cloned; it turns out that, years before, she was accused of manacling a Mormon missionary as her sex slave. Debuted at Telluride; wide release not yet scheduled.
