Due to some unfortunate literature–and by literature, I open the definition to include most anything of the graphic nature–vampires have been perverted into popularity.  I don’t think anyone minds a sexy vampire, but when they start glittering, somebody’s got to draw a line.  If I may be metaphysical for a second, and I think I can, there is a line drawn by natural laws in the vampiric genre with angsty human drama on the one side and ass-kicking or bowel-liquidating on the other.  That line also demarcates good and evil.  Fright Night (2011) is on the side of good.

Charley (Anton Yelchin)–though I destinctly heard “Charlie” but perhaps Yelchin already playing Charlie Bartlett (2007) accounts for the odd spelling–has given up his nerd buds (including Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse)) and started dating Amy (Imogen Poots–what a name) and hanging with deuches.  He and mom (Toni Collette) live next door to Jerry (Colin Farrell) who turns out, in rather quick screen time, to be a vampire.  Ed shows him so and when Ed becomes indisposed, Charley needs to get some help from Peter Vincent (David Tennant) a self proclaimed vampire slayer who performs his illusions in Las Vegas (where this movie takes place).  Peter doesn’t really seem up to the task, but in a way I know I’ve seen many times before.  Well, there’s some running away and confrontations and hard decisions to make.  Can you imagine that there might even be a device that allows us to undo a prior sad occurrence?  I know, hard to believe.  Still, it’s in the mold of the classic horror flicks and therefor can’t really be complained at in re cliché.

What sets this movie apart, putting to one side the limited vernacular of our characters with expansive use of the multigrammatical four letter word, is visual style.  I wouldn’t really have pegged the director of Lars and the Real Girl  (2007), Craig Gillespie, as particularly visual-oriented.  That only sad part is that its brilliance in that regard only occurs a handful of times.  One example is Charley going down a glass elevator at sunset–very nice.  But then things get very dark for a very long time.  Some of that is on my dvd player, some of that is that vampires are killed in sunlight, but I think we can stretch a point in the interests of visibility.  Also of note is the pretty strong funny that Marti Noxon brings.

As for performances, I can’t say that I remember much about them.  Farrell plays a vampire with some attitude and that’s not exactly outside his wheelhouse.  Yelchin as boy wonder, also well within his normal role.  Poots–heh–is a damsel in distress who can swing a mace with the best of them.  McLovin will always be the 21st century Cameron Frye and there’s nothing here to suggest anything greater than that on his life line–that’s a palmistry reference, I’m telling you because it’s kind of ambiguous.  The show-thief is Tennant as the debauched and cynical illusionist in a seriously dysfunctional relationship with one of his performers.  If you’re in love with Doctor Who and see him as slightly mad, but basically innocent, then you’re going to have that image shattered in this movie.  It’s great.

Now, that being said, I wouldn’t buy this movie.  I don’t come away with the desperate urge to watch it again or feel the need to add it to my collection.  I feel obliged to collect the movies I think everyone should see at their earliest convenience.  That is not to say every movie I have falls in that category.  After all, I receive gifts on occasion and some dvds go on sale for less than $4–if I have even the slightest desire to watch a movie and it costs under $4, it’s coming home with me.  Fright Night would have to cost under $4.  It’s a charming movie, no question, but it’s going to have to be at least this charming to get my compulsive need to own activated.

Oh, and one note about integrating the theme music of older movies–since I haven’t seen the original Fright Night (1985) not being one for cults–let’s set down some rules.  First, you must stay true to the theme.  The Mission:Impossible series inherited a phenomenal theme and went on to pervert its goodness each and every time.  In the Ghost Protocol (2011), it was both altered and muted, really muted, what happened there?  Second, the original has to be good.  No witty reference, I’m just making an observation.  Anyway, our movie didn’t really offend either rule, I just thought I’d mention it since this film fell so far in the mainstream (not to imply boring, you understand) that something of through-provocation should come out of the review.

Ever since I saw  Sigourney Weaver in Aliens (1986), I’ve waited for great action movies with great action heroines.  Aliens is one of the first, if not the first, movies where a woman isn’t there to be saved or protected–she’s there to save and protect.  Ripley is right there with John McClane as the best real action hero (amazing thing is, I wrote the sentence before I saw this site).  Every time a movie or tv show puts forward an action heroine, she has to be compared with Ripley.  To be compared favorably, the heroine must not be objectified.

Don’t get me wrong, I like sexy ladies as much as the next guy.  But when they do that little swagger, pump up the cleavage or needlessly undress/take showers, I think we’ve decided that we don’t care about her story, just her body.  And that annoys me.  Why?  Because there’s something different and refreshing about a action heroine, similar to vulnerable action heroes, where we’re seeing something more real and honest than Commando (1985), say.  Aliens did it, Haywire (2011) did it, Terminator 2 (1991) did it, did Colombiana (2011)?  Almost.

Cataleya Restrepo (Zoe Saldana) hears her family killed when she’s just nine years old.  She’s already got the makings of a badass, she just needs some training up.  She makes her way to Chicago and tio Emilio (Cliff Curtis), who’s connected.  Fast forward and she’s the killer she wants to be, taking out some baddies one at a time to get to her family’s murderers.  Then she takes a shower.  On her trail is FBI Agent Ross (Lennie James).  Oh, and she’s got a squeeze named Danny (Michael Vartan).  She wakes up, slides to the edge of the bed, and pulls on her top and runs out the door.  Mmm, rib cage.  Oh no, Don Louis is on her trail too!  Can she kill more people and in more incredible ways?  Yes, yes she can.

Colombiana is directed by Olivier Megaton and produced/written by Luc Besson (and others).  It’s about a female assassin who wants to avenger her family.  Sounds very familiar.  And a little familiar.  Megaton has clearly been tuteled at the school of Tony Scott.  This is all fine.  A movie with a familiar story and a familiar look.  The question is, did they take it and make something good?  Note, I didn’t say fresh and new because those are bogus adjectives–all that matters is  ”is it good?”

Uhh…  Good enough.

Acting par.  Directing par.  Actioneer comedy above par.  That’s odd, because in golf it’s better to be below par than above par–I mean the gooder kind.  Acceptable plot to keep our action from the random…par, but just.  If you’re going to assassinate people, I feel like the movie has to limit the field for us or open it up entirely.  Example:  Marco and twenty people are to blame for killing Cata’s family, now she’s killing them one by one and there are only five left.  Alternative example:  In Bogota, we know everyone in Marco’s gang by the red sashes they wear around their waists, now Cata is going to take them down.  Instead, Cata is killing people and painting the orchid for which she is named on all the bodies–there was a scene there that explained all the victims, so that might have answered the question, but I don’t think it did.  That’s a recurring problem with Colombiana, bad writing.  Luc Besson is French, so I accept that he’s going to be horribly flawed especially when it comes to English expression, but he needs to limit himself even further.

I’m no enemy to the cliché, quite the opposite.  A cliché is something familiar, a totem, that we can come to and stay on the same page.  Also, in human behavior, there are things that we always feel or do that will necessarily be repeated and to be annoyed when this truth exerts itself is just setting yourself up for malcontent.  Still, what we’ve learned is that a clichéd response is allowable so long as it isn’t literally expressed (unless done ironically).  You can’t say, “This is my last job” or “I’m getting too old for this!”  In this movie, the clichés at play include incredible agility and speed, the ability to fight about 75 pounds above your weight, and the victim that wants revenge so much she puts her family in danger.  Eh, I’ll take it.  We all know what we’re in for on this movie, don’t we?  It’s about action and doesn’t come close to Ripley or Mallory Kane.

Let’s talk a little bit about marketing and titles.  There are two sides to a title: interesting punters and expressing the movie.  Why is this movie titled Colombiana?  Syriana (2005) isn’t about Syria so much as Middle-Easty-Place.  This is about a girl from Colombia.  Why don’t you just call it “Colombia” or “Catayena”?  ”Why does anybody do anything?” you ask.  ”Shut up,” I reply.  But Colombiana really just made this movie sound B-grade.  It set an expectation that it easily met, while a sharper title may have pulled it up to a B+.  The title says what the movie is about and Colombiana doesn’t mean anything.  Implication?

Look at the poster I used rather than the one on the dvd (which is what we associate with the movie).  Once you see the movie, you’ll realize that if they marketed the movie with the poster above and titled it Catayena, it would set a far more personal tone for the movie.  That poster is for a really good movie about pain and revenge and beauty.  Maybe that’s why they went the other way.

Wait.  Johnny Cash wrote good music?  And they wasted it on the last ten second of the movie!  Great blistering bollocks, what might have been.

Woody Allen, as an institution (if that isn’t too vomit-inducing a term), is something special.  There are Hitchcock movies.  There were Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn movies.  There were Frank Capra movies.  The list could go on.  There were people out there from the 1930′s through the 50′s that were creating the dvd box sets of the future.  Now, and since 1966, there are Woody Allen movies.  Though, interestingly, he is not tied to Mia Farrow in this institution in the way that Tracy/Hepburn were.

You might try to say that there are also Mel Brooks, Spielberg, and (soon) Christopher Nolan, but they aren’t the same.  Brooks, for one, has twelve directing credits, though he comes the closest to approaching Allen’s uniformity.  Allen has a jaw-dropping 47.  (Hitch had a jaw-dislocating 67.)  Spielberg, though as productive (and far more so if you include producer credits) as Allen, doesn’t have a consistent tone, voice, or look in any way–you could probably only get away with saying Spielberg’s films share the same spirit, but that’s pretty nebulous.  Nolan, who is 42, has ten directing credits and I’ve seen seven of them and they’re all great.  They aren’t as visually consistent as Hitchcock was, but I think, in time, he will be similarly regarded as purveying a kind of genre–Nolanist.

Allen is indisputably an institution.  One film is comparable to another, but rarely would I suggest he’s made carbon copies–of the 16 I’ve seen, Manhattan (1979) and Husbands and Wives (1992) are the only ones that are frustratingly similar.  The guy has written, directed, and produced them all and starred in quite a number of them.  The credits are almost always done in exactly the same way.  His voice, even when he’s not on screen, is obvious in all the characters.  New York is the setting for probably the majority of his movies.  Ten or fifteen years ago, if you asked ordinary people about his movies, they would have put them in the category of art house.  I’m inclined to think they know better now.

Zelig (1983) follows the life of Leonard Zelig (Allen), who is “the ultimate conformist.”  He molds his personality and even his physical appearance to those around him.  He travels the world and gets into situations and scrapes of all sorts.  Once he is found out, he becomes famous for his freakishness.  But he has no personality of his own.  Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Farrow) is a psychologist who tries to help Zelig, but it is difficult.  Zelig’s half-sister takes custody of him and travels the world with Leonard as a kind of sideshow.  Eventually, however, Zelig is brought back the US and treatment is successful.  But trouble comes again and Zelig may not be able to stand it.

Zelig anticipates Midnight in Paris (2011) in a number of ways.  The comedy isn’t as side-splitting as it is consistently good.  That is, the range is limited, but always on the positive side.  It also puts Allen in the 20′s and 30′s around the famous of that age.  I might add, it does so in superior fashion than Forrest Gump (1994) did 11 years later.  Though, obviously, it is slightly easier to add people to grainy footage than the cleaner film of the 60′s and 70′s.  Oh look, there’s Hitler giving a speech and Zelig is there in his retinue.

Zelig is a mockumentary and one of the first full films devoted to the style.  Allen’s dialogue is as crisp as ever and the stand-up style jokes are hilarious.  He really made this movie, where Melinda and Melinda (2004) was something less than made.  Again, the altered footage just shows that he spent some serious time in the production and editing.  The performances too, are solid-to-good which is also pleasant to see.

Allen, as the actor, does rather well.  There are times where he has to go through some serious confusion.  We don’t get to see him play out as one of his alter-ethnicities, but that might be all for the best.  Early on, the narrator says Zelig spoke to the party guests as a wealthy Boston Republican and then to the servants as a coarse man of the people, and I wondered what Allen’s British accent might sound like.  I suspect something like a car wreck.  Still, his acting is well within charted territory for him.  You’ll be happy to know that Zelig is not played as so nervous one worries he may do his spine an injury.  He’s much more sedate and sedated.

His support is what you might expect of a Woody Allen movie–just more pieces.  Only in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) have I seen a movie where more than two or three characters get serious attention.  Zelig really allows for only one.  I’m not sure that’s a weakness so much as the way you make a story.  Here, we only need Zelig and people reacting to Zelig.

Later this year, Allen has a film called Nero Fiddled coming out.  I’m looking forward to it, but I’ve got my concerns.  First, it stars Ellen Page, to which I respond with terrible glee.  Second, it stars Jesse Eisenberg, to which I respond with extreme caution.  Third, it stars Woody Allen, to which I respond with unutterable fear.  The last movie Allen was in was Scoop  (2006) and it was quite bad and Allen was very bad in it.  So, I hope he’s still got it in him to do a non-caricature performance.  We shall see.

Sometimes people snap.  That snapping is the central premise of any number of films.  One can ask whether or not people can ever really get glued back together.  They say of alcoholics that one is never cured, just sober.  That is, until they’re not.  So, even if they pull it together, those around her or him are always on snap-watch.  Unlike bones, once broken and healed, the mind is not made stronger.  Oh well, this is comedy.

Lars (Ryan Gosling) has a breakdown in some far northern town.  He’s always been a little weird with people, but not like this.  He’s ordered an artificial “realdoll” called Bianca.  Bianca’s back story is rather similar to Lars’s and their lives are connected.  Lars’s brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and Karin (Emily Mortimer), his wife, are very concerned.  I guess you would be too if your brother carried home his new girlfriend that he assembled out of a box.  But the doctor (Patricia Clarkson) says that they should just go along with it.  I’m pretty sure that’s the complete opposite of what a doctor would say, but the movie would kind of stop in its tracks.  Either way, go along they do and the whole town gets involved–a little too involved, maybe.  A coworker, Margo (Kelli Garner), keeps trying to start a relationship with Lars, but that’s pretty difficult to do when he runs away to the garage where he lives whenever he’s faced with human interaction.  But slowly, Bianca brings him out into society.

Lars and the Real Girl (2007), directed by Craig Gillespie, is a truly wonderful movie.  It’s got heart, it’s got laughs, it’s got acting–really great acting.  The story is incredibly simple in a way–perhaps deceptively.  You’ve basically got Gus/Karin, the Doctor, Margo, and Bianca as Lars’s only interactions and all are limited.  And yet, we have a full picture of Lars and some darn good sketches of the others.  As I say, a lot of that has to do with the heart/laughs that come from the script.  But much more comes from the actors.

Gosling, who I’ve basically decided is Marlon Brando without the serious attitude problems, puts in a great performance. I’m going to have to immediately retreat since I am of the opinion that to play crazy or weird is not very difficult.  Here, though, we’ve got a character that has to develop before our eyes without any major events.  Lars is so incredibly sad and lonely that I have to respect the performance as a whole.

The supporting group I pointed out were also quite good.  Mortimer I’ve always liked and she is as terrific as usual, maybe more terrific.  In the Smart People (2008) review, I mentioned how Sarah Jessica Parker failed to take her limited role to the next level.  Well, Mortimer does.  Clarkson also stands out as putting in a particularly good performance.  I saw her recently in Easy A (2010) where she was the cool, semi-goofy mom.  Here, she’s far more staid.  She plays the character with infinite sensitivity and gravity and it’s perfect.

I’ve been talking about townspeople, so there really needs to be a positive caveat.  You might see “townspeople” and think an ensemble piece filled with popular character actors.  Then, when the big reveal happens we have to cut to each of their faces in turn to get a free chuckle at their reaction.  This isn’t one of those movies.  It’s about Lars.  The townspeople are just there for him.  They get Bianca very involved in the community.  Helping out at the soup kitchen or going to the beautician.  They don’t do this for the laugh, they do it to help.  How nice.

I can’t say much more about this movie.  Perhaps it’s one of those movies that is all about the experience rather than what it brings to you upon reflection.  That is often sign of real badness in a movie.  Not in this case.  This is an experience like coming to know a new person in your life.  You might not see them all that often, but they’ve left an impression.

The downside to library borrowing is happening in front of my eyes.  Or rather, it’s frozen in front of my eyes in the form of Ellen Page.  Well, I guess it could be worse.  Oh, just got worse.  Now it’s Thomas Haden Church with a mustache.  Yes, the movie is skipping and I can’t hear or make sense of the dialogue.  Evil is a scratch on a dvd.  It’s also an anagram for veil, vile, and live.

Smart People (2008), directed by Noam Murro, is about some miserable people.  Dr. Lawrence Weatherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a miserable English professor.  Vanessa (Page) is his miserable daughter.  James (Ashton Holmes) the son and slightly less miserable because he’s the rebel (and poet) in the family.  Chuck (Church) is the loser adopted brother to Lawrence.  After a fall and seizure, Dr. W goes to the hospital where he meets Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker).  Love-ish story a la As Good As It Gets (1997) ensues.  Lawrence is totally self-involved and he’s a snob.  Vanessa is taking after him in her desperate need to impress him and that leaves her without any friends.  James is a stranger in the place and spends most of his time with the fam bickering.  Chuck takes on the role of the stupid fool.  He might not have your book learnin’ but he knows a little about normal.

The obvious draw to this movie is that it’s hilarious.  If you like vicious sarcasm.  And I do.  Good work, Mark Poirier.  And good work Ellen Page.  Ellen and I have this really funny thing going.  She’ll like changes her cell phone number and I’ll have to track it down again or sometimes when I show up at her house she calls the cops and acts like she doesn’t know me.  Things got a little tense last summer when I tried to help towel her off at the beach and she tasered me, but I think we’ve grown closer since then.  Okay, none of that really happened, obviously.  real stalkers don’t like using as much punctuation as I do.  Stream of consciousness is probably more their thing.  Still, Page is phenomenal and she’s phenomenal here.  She plays a vulnerable jerk and does it simply.

Quaid plays this guys very gruff.  There are some miserable jerks that we really want to like.  This isn’t one of them.  I think because all the best material went to Page and Church, Poirier couldn’t really muster enough wit for Quaid.  He’s got it, certainly, but not enough to make him the victim of his own intelligence.  He’s almost always the bully and he uses his brain as a cudgel.  It doesn’t actually bully anyone, but I think Lawrence believes he does.  This all seems to show that Quaid did a good job in playing the role, but I’m not sure it really points to a good character.  Well you’re wrong, because it is a good character, it’s just a bit more under-the-top than we’re used to.

Parker has the opportunity here to be something more than an object for Quaid, but she doesn’t really take it.  I’m not really a fan, and so there’s the distinct possibility that I’ve undervalued her.  Quaid was allowed to play his role muted because he got the most screen time.  She, however, had to make an impression with far less opportunity.  She failed to do so.  Again, her material was pedestrian.  Still, that’s the job.

Church does splendidly, but great glittering Christ that mustache has got to go.  No human would ever let that thing grow like that.  Other than that, Church is hilarious.  I can’t really tell how he’s playing this any differently than anything else I’ve seen him in, but you can’t argue with results.

There’s something funny about smart people in movies.  It says a lot about the people writing the script.  To write about someone who is smart says that the writer thinks that he or she is smart.  Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re not.  They usually come to the same conclusion:  that being smart is a burden.  My favorite line from Broadcast News (1987) takes that tack.  ”It must be nice,” says Paul, “to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.”  Jane replies, “No. It’s awful.”  She’s so sad and honest when she says it.  Wonderful.  Once Lawrence realizes that it’s awful, he becomes much more sympathetic.  I guess that’s development.

Oh, and whoever designed the cover to this film should be shot.

The Dreyfus Affair, occurring through the 1890′s, began when evidence was uncovered pertaining to military secrets sent to the Germans.  Those who had access to this information included Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French officer.  Confirmation bias, indeed.

The Life of Emile Zola (1937), directed by William Dieterle, starts off with a conspicuous caveat that the film, though based in history, has been “fictionized”–a word I like because it seems so much more active and honest that “fictionalized”–something that I find very gratifying.  Films today, of course, get an immediate $5 million bump if they’re “based on true events.”  They then go on to stretch the word “based” beyond what I would call allowable nonsense.  This borders on the oximoronic when considered alongside the “truth” of the events.

First, he fights the cold.  Then he fights the censors.  Then he fights France.  Émile Zola (Paul Muni) is a Frenchie who hangs with Cézanne until he becomes too successful to stand.  He was a constant critical thorn in the side of the establishment or its defenders.  He was so prolific, his wrists could only thank divinity for being born well before the weblog.  Part one of the movie is “Zola gets rich” and the second is “Zola gets self-righteous again.”  He picked a good subject to be self-righteous about.  Dreyfus was railroaded and then, when the real culprit was found out, whitewashed.  Injustice, corruption, and cronyism all with a nice smattering of jingoism to keep it sweet.  If the courtroom was half as unjust as the portrayal in this film, then…it was still pretty darn unjust.  Bunch of loose-stooled Frenchman.  I have no difficulty believing it.  Ah yes, and where does he go when these cheese-eating surrender monkeys turn on the outer of truths?  That’s right, London.  Try to find a restaurant that serves frogs legs there, you barbarian!  (I think you’ll find they’re made of lamb.)

This is a good movie and I’ll tell you why.  Because plays into everything I think about French people.  Even Zola, the hero, is not what I would carve into stone if asked to recreate a champion.  He’s one of those people who does something nice or good to be recognized for it.  Of most polemicists, this is true.  He was also a novelist, but I’ll put that to one side because I haven’t read his stuff and the movie only goes so far to show us the titles and the wealth they provided.  It isn’t obvious.  He doesn’t ask for compliments.  He doesn’t really ask for much.  He just hears something outrageous and he rages out about it.  What we hear of his great article J’Accuse, it’s virtually drivel and entirely self-indulgent.  Conscience of man?  No, just the outrage of one.  Now, if the movie is accurate in its portrayal of the documentation Zola receives, then surely the documentation is the lead.  Instead, “Since they dared, I too will dare.”  It is his prick of conscience that require he act.  There’s a nuance there and I may be too critical of what surely is a stylistic flourish.  Still, when you’re revealing a grand conspiracy–what’s more, one that’s true–then directness and clarity are of greater importance.  Nobody’s getting bored here.

This is the character Muni plays.  Since it’s 1937, one does need to adjust for inflation.  Or rather, deflation of the high winds that older styles of acting are wont to blow.  I curse the man who created the pince-nez.  They are constantly to be taken off and put back on in order to make points or show surprise.  But that’s acceptable.  The pacing and telling of the story were also acceptable considering the time, but don’t age well.  That’s slightly overstating it.  It’s still a good movie, whatever its date, and worth seeing, but I would be lying if I said it stood up to Gone with the Wind (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), or The Thin Man (1934).  These are the first stops in 1930′s films (and I anticipate Duck Soup (1933) will join them).

An interesting note.  This film was made in 1937, a year before the Munich Agreement.  In the latter half of this movie, set in the very early 1900′s, Zola calls for peace and warns of the evils of war.  It’s conspicuous.  One explanation is that Zola is predicting World War I and the film maker is simply underlining the insanity of the war.  Another is that the film maker is foreseeing World War II brewing in Europe and is trying to forestall that conflict.  As usual, I’m channeling Hitchens here, but I think it should be pointed out that all wars are evil–but some wars are only evil on one side.  World War II, generally accepted as the example of a just war, is sometimes called out for the brutality of both sides and noted (correctly) that the holocaust is only a hind-sighted justification.  We didn’t know about the holocaust during the war and it wasn’t a part of the propaganda.  But it happened and it sanctifies the venture.  But the war was still just because Hitler, even without his Final Solution, was a crazed despot that sought to subjugate all of Europe.  For that reason, cries for peace at any price must be questioned as deeply as cries of havoc.  After all, it was a fear of war as well as the honor of France that condemned Zola as much as Judaism condemned Dreyfus.

I’m a pragmatist and as self-righteous (or more) as (than) than the next individual (so long as the next individual isn’t Zola).  It annoys then enrages me to see injustice or illogic.  Zola called it out and he was successful at it.  Perhaps he was a frog-eating, self-indulgent, pompous poseur, but dash it, the man got results and outed some pretty dreadful stuff.  I’ll take results from a Frenchman over no results at all.

Oh, Criterion Collection, what are you doing to me?  Sometimes you give me junk, sometimes gold, this time it’s a silver classic.  It’s a story about a jaded newspaper reporter who plays fast and loose with the truth.  Is this another movie about how the news media is slowly degenerating into entertainment and “human interest”?  Yes it is, but it’s not about TV or the internet.  It’s that solipsistic, self-righteous medium with all the news that’s fit to sell–the newspaper.

Ace in the Hole (1951), directed by Billy Wilder who has done some of the best comedies of the 40′s and 50′s, is about newspaper man (or is that news paperman) Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), who’s been fired from more newspapers than you’ve read.  Here he is, bottom of the heap, in Albuquerque.  He wants to make a splash so he can go back to a real newspaper.  The splash takes a little more time than he expects (a year) and is more of a crunch than a splash.  The ace in the hole is called Leo (Richard Benedict), a Indian curio hunter/scavenger, who’s trapped in one of those underground cities carved into the side of a cliff.  On their way to a rattlesnake hunt (?), Chuck and Jimmy Olsen stand-in, Herbie (Robert Arthur), come by just in time to see the action unfold.

A snap, crackle, and pop later, Chuck’s got a story going and the humans are interested.  But it’s just one man, says Herbie.  ”Better one than eighty-four….  One man, that’s human interest.”  That turns out to be the case.  Leo’s wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling), is ready to leave now Leo’s indisposed, but Chuck needs a grief-stricken wife and that’s how it’s gunna be.  He promises her the kind of cash that Leo’s trader’s shop is going to rake in while this thing goes on and that’s enough to convince her.  She ain’t clever, but she’s mean.

Things don’t get much better for Leo and things literally turn into a carnival outside.  The movie is about journalists who stage the news.  At first, it’s just your typical, cynical reporting.  ”I’m not wishing for anything.  I don’t make things happen, all I do is write about ‘em.”  Yes, you’re right, that is better.  Then things go downhill in the morality department. We can get Leo out in about 12 hours, but that’s not really enough for the story, what if we drill into the mountain?  A week?  Suits me and Leo isn’t going anywhere.  Reporters show up from all over, maybe there’s a way to keep this story exclusive.  Corruption ensues.  Everybody’s cashing in, including Lorraine.  The old city used to be free to visit–scratch scratch scratch–make that two bits entrance fee.  The price doesn’t go down.

There’s a movie similar to this one, called Mad City (1994), in which Dustin Hoffman finds himself in a hostage situation and he takes some advantage–but Hoffman keeps his soul.  Chuck/Douglas doesn’t keep a strong grip on his for virtually all of the film.  But when things get as bad as they can get, he realizes that he’s done something rather impolite and he was a fool to think he could control it.  Movies about journalistic ethics aren’t uncommon–I reviewed one a couple weeks ago–and this one doesn’t really provide an answer outside of what we might call obvious morality.

As far as craftsmanship is concerned, we’ve got it all in this movie.  Douglas gives an excellent performance with great range and is so cruel but lost my sympathies only once.  Sterling provides the only other acting role–everyone else is basically central casting–and she’s just as strong, though with less gripping material to perform, as Douglas.  The direction is good.  I was getting sleepy, but that’s more a function of the repeated five AM wake-ups this week.  There are no purely gratuitous scenes and the comedy is strong throughout in that 50′s brand of comedy way that Wilder always provides.

I read a review that faulted the movie for (a) poor plot construction and (b) absurdity.  First, the plot is really quite simple and I saw no problem in the way it was put together.  Second, to say a movie is unbelievable or somehow strains their credulity just too far annoys me most of the time.  It’s possible that a plot point can be so crazy as to become a flaw, but this comes nowhere near it.  Crowds form around terrible events and people are callous sometimes.

To say this is about “human nature” or cynical or misanthropic is to mistake the characters for the film and the film for every person ever.  Sure, thousands showed up, but many more thousands didn’t.  Yes, Chuck is cynical, but Herbie isn’t.  If this was about hating people or people failing us, then the movie would be utterly pointless.  Who is the “us”?  The audience.  And we know what’s right.

You know from the very first line of this movie that it isn’t going to work.  The central premise is a paradox and it’s origin is strained.  There’s that cadence we’re so familiar with and played by faces we’ve seen before.  And yet…

Melinda and Melinda (2004) is the tale of two tales.  Some friends are eating, one writes comedies another writes tragedies and they ask “which is the foundation of human reality?”  Well, says friend #3, I’ll give you a premise and you tell me if it’s comedy or tragedy.  That’s the device.  The premise is “a woman barges into a dinner party uninvited.”  To ask the question, and then devote a movie to its answer, already tells us how things are going to end up, doesn’t it?  Both stories are pretty conventional in their fields and only the expression is different.  If I meditated longer on the stories, I think I’d probably come to find that each is an inversion of the other, but I don’t really want to devote that kind of time.  After all, as I said, it isn’t going to work.  Why?

Like Hobie’s (Will Ferrell) story, everyone seems to miss in their timing.  Sometimes Woody Allen‘s dialogue is hilarious and the actors trip all over it, sometimes the actors finally hit their stride and Woody’s dialogue is too contrived.  Let’s go one at a time.

The lead, Melinda (Radha Mitchell), gives such a JV performance, I can’t believe it.  I don’t like to be harsh, especially about something as personal as a performance, but it’s rare to see a performance this bad outside a Lifetime movie.  A big part of this is Allen’s fault.  I want to see some history on the production because I get the impression that from ink-and-paper to the final edit couldn’t be separated by more than three months.  Allen got one draft in and everyone got one take and one cover that’s a wrap.  I say this because Allen’s scripts are usually so hilarious and the acting, especially in the case of Match Point (2005), so well done that a massive rush is the only adequate explanation.  Example:  he places a (melo)dramatic monologue–that is so unbelievable that people would either say it or listen to it uninterrupted in the first place–in a bedroom.  They can’t even sit in comfort as they gesticulate wildly when they have to punch those dramatic phrases.

The reason Midnight in Paris was so great is that Owen Wilson synthesized Woody’s language into his own SoCal vibe, but Ferrell just apes Woody.  Luckily, Ferrell doesn’t try a New York accent, but he’s clearly fighting a temptation here.  It’s just such a distraction.  Though, when you’ve got the source giving you direction, the lines must only reinforce the “right way” to do the part.  Well, it wasn’t the right way.  Ferrell is a giant of a man and clearly comfortable with himself.  He has no call to have ticks and shaky gesticulations when making awkward conversation.  Example: Greg asks, “What do you do for exercise?”  ”Tiddly winks,” says Hobie, “And an occasional anxiety attack.”   It was badly done, Woody, badly done.

I could talk about the others, but that would be a waste of bytes.  Theatrical–too theatrical–high school theater at that.  I expected more of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who has done brilliantly in so many movies–I especially recommend Dirty Pretty Things (2002)–but was, at best, middling in this.

It’s not the first or last time someone’s tried to blend tragedy and comedy (or to fail at it), but Allen had already done it (Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)) and far better than here.  That’s not to say he can’t make the same movie over and over, Luc Besson and, more despicably, Michael Bay have made their careers on basically one device–in Besson’s case it’s a character, in Bay’s it’s a car crash.  But Allen’s failed us in this movie by giving in to his greatest weakness–he doesn’t sound like most people.  Most people don’t enunciate like his characters enunciate.  They don’t use certain words–not necessarily big words–or the sentence goes too long.  Example:  ”You know, life is manageable enough if you keep your hopes modest.  The minute you allow yourself sweet dreams you run the risk of them crashing down.”

How true.

Once I arrive, it appears they already know me.  My sobriquet is “Hun” as in “Can I help you, Hun?” asks the helpful attendant.  How delightful.

More delights still, there’s something called the Millennium Stage that gives free performances every night.  Tonight, it’s Catholic University’s musical theater students putting on a musical revue–The Music of Cy Coleman–which all comes out of the Golden Age.  How earnest they all are.  The girls channel Sutton Foster and put as much of their sinuses into the music as they can muster.  The young men just play themselves with strong vocal talents, but not a little overacting.  Fellas, this is a musical revue, please don’t mouth words or make extravagant gestures, it’s unseemly.  One boy has a lisp.  I think I saw a production of Les Miserables where Javert had a lisp–it was just as distracting, but that might be my limitation.  Good God! Ladies, where is the energy?  This is “Big Spender” and you’re dogging it.  I’ll grant you the choreography is uninspired and completely unsuited to the space, but the show must go on.

I get the impression that Catholic takes the view that really the musical theater program is for vocal performance people who can’t really read music.  But I came in well after half-time so they might have been terrific before I showed up.  Maybe it was the notepad.  When I was checking my coat, I did think I was overhearing either a performance in the main hall or a recording, so that’s good.  Now that’s done and I’ve still got thirty minutes to showtime.

I’ll walk around the terrace.  I’m on the terrace level.  It smells like cheez-its.  Years and years of cheez-its.

I’ve been to theaters as a performer (small theaters) and as a tourist (real theaters), and I’ve come to find that every one becomes somebody’s home.  Performers get there hours before everyone else and they get to know every inch of the place.  The Kennedy Center is unique in my experience by being a home to the audience.  They go to the terrace cafe not with guidance, but with purpose–that pasta salad will be theirs!

Tonight, these veterans (who may well have seen action in Normandy) look a little bored–I almost said “starved.”  Surely they’ve seen Shear Madness enough times to quote it.  That must suck.  While I’ve never seen it, I doubt I would ever wish to become that familiar.  Re: Bored–case in point:  It’s V-Day and no one is carrying flowers.  I think that says it all.  That said, my prediction as to young couples would appear to be vindicated–I’d guess at ten couples under the age of thirty with possibly ten more individuals accompanying old people and then, of course, me.

Leaving this chocolate pudding–far too rich for my tongue–I’ll take a few paces on the terrace.  Now here’s a view for you.  The weather has balmed significantly and I can enjoy it out here without my coat.  Some GW student is jogging around like this is a track–odd, but probably cool.

Time to head to the Terrace Theater.  That woman is actually in a walker–if “in” is the preposition I want–and I’ve counted three or four canes.  There’s my seat.  I’m so close I can look up the piano’s skirt.  A little bustle and hum in the audience here–let’s listen in.  For some of these kids–ha–and some adults, this concert is a treat.  ”Turn off your phone.  Imagine.  You take me to the Kennedy Center…”  Jesus lady, we paid $45 for these tickets–3D almost costs as much.  But that’s just cynicism.  It’s not so bad to maintain a little mystique as long as it doesn’t keep people away.

Program Notes:

They whet our appetite for Trout with Zwilich‘s variation (if that’s what it is).  That seems like folly.  You watch Spencer Tracy before you watch Steve Martin.  Surely the same goes double in music.  Beethoven Piano Trio in B-flat major, then Zwilich’s commission–a composer commissioned to compose a piece for these players in particular0–Quintet for Violin, Viola, Cello, Contrabass (which I thought was a different instrument, but it’s really a double bass), and Piano.  Finally, Schubert’s Quintet in A major for Piano and Strings (“Trout”).  Apparently, the KLR Trio is famous–so says the knowledgeable lady on my left.  Apparently, she’s an “educator,” which is to say she designs curricula–how that makes her an educator any more than Mark Twain, I couldn’t say, but I like her.  She’s got some strong views on Midnight in Paris (2011), which I simply disagree with–it’s not a knock against a movie if you think an American audience won’t understand who the characters are–but even mainstream snobbery is fun when delivered at speed.  On my right are a couple of 30 or 40 somethings who are clearly art tourists–here today, but they don’t really live here.  I despise them.  This being my second visit, I consider myself a resident.  Snob.  Only as to class.  You can’t buy class.  Oh, by the way, Zwilich is a woman, which is uncommon for composers.

The Music:

But first, let me say that I was right to doubt my reviewing ability for music.  Remembering a tune is tough when it isn’t stuck in your head.  Zwilich’s piece is a commission, so I can’t even refresh my memory with some other performance.  I wrote down some impressions I had as the music went on (being quite silent, I assure you) and will simply copy them out (with some add/edition).  Beware, they will make little sense.  I hope that the copious introduction made this at least of some value to read.

Beethoven Piano Trio in B-flat major

First Movement: Jaunty.  The piano tells the story, the strings comment.  Delicacy.  The cellist (Sharon Robinson) looks like Zoë Wanamaker.  Man,  I hate the no clapping policy at these things.  Late!

Second Movement:  Ennio?  (Kalichstein introduced the piece commenting that the cello was not used as a solo part before Beethoven’s use of it here, and said “From the second movement, this cello always sings.”)  He is exactly right – sings!  I’ll uncross my legs at the next movement–don’t want to disrupt.

Third Movement: Back to a bit of bounce, but the second is by far the best (taste, I suppose).

Zwilich Quintet for Violin, Viola, Cello, Contrabass, and Piano

The doublebass is a comically large cello with a groovy head.  God these people are known–they just joked the bassist was “somewhere in Philadelphia, I think” with the understatement of “Yes, I believe they had a bit of trouble with the wildlife over at Amity.”

First Movement:  Spy thriller–awesome.  I can’t really tell what that is, but I liked it.

Second Movement:  There’s the jazz.  Jason Robert Brown–Ha!–That was awesome.  Misled me there (not good).  The string mews off–this needs to stay sharp.  That ended with a whimper–mistake, I think for such a rockin’ tune.

Third Movement: This woman needs to shut up–we don’t care what you think is “nice.”  Deep moods work with this crew–bouncy jazz doesn’t really.  The cello/bass get lost in the sound.  The piano has a totally different range for this movement.

This one I seem to have had the most critical thoughts on.  As a general matter, it was excellent.  Some of the details, though, need some tightening (at least to my ear).  The finish on a song is probably the most important part, I feel, and to end it “ambiguous[ly]” as the program notes have it, is folly.  Why make this kind of point (if point you can call it) with a song?  A film, I understand.  But a song finishes strong (bum BUM) or smooth (like each of the Schubert movements) or somewhere in between, but ambiguity is clearly wrong.  As I said in the second movement, there was some pseudo-jazzy slur that just marred the tune.  And the third movement, though it had its moments, just seemed wrong for the pieces.  Perhaps it translates differently in a recording–I’ll have to check.

Schubert’s Quintet in A major for Piano and Strings (“Trout”)

First Movement:  Are you really checking your texts right now?  Dude, come on.

Second Movement:  Here’s the tune I know.  God that sounds good.

Fifth Movement:  Isn’t this a TV show intro?  Something just happened that I loved–some kind of fugue or something.  Not yet!  They clapped too early–red faces all around.  The players seem to take it in stride–a smile there from Kalichstein.

My enemy du jure is cliché.  I hate Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) because it depicts high school as if times are fast and people get high.  Though this is undeniably true some of the time, it is not true for a large part–I want to say majority, but have no data–of American humanity.  The wonderful thing about Easy A (2010) is that its whole premise relies upon what I take to be the truth of high school life.  The other wonderful thing about Easy A is that it’s hilarious.  Absolutely freaking hilarious.  Bert V. Royal has written virtually nothing else for film but this movie and I can’t imagine why.

Olive (Emma Stone) is bright and funny high school student still in possession of her “V Card.”  Her bestie Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) is going camping with her hippie parents and Olive makes up a lie to avoid what is undoubtedly an unpleasant experience–the lie being a date with a fictional college student.  In fact, she spends the weekend listening to a greeting card her grandmother (I think) sends which plays–can I find it?–Pocketful of Sunshine, which she hates only at first.  Second, in my immediate memory, only to this.  Rhiannon comes back and to keep the lie alive, Olive is wrangled into saying she had a one night stand.  This puts Olive on the map and at first it’s mildly pleasant for her.  Then Brandon (Dan Byrd), who is being bullied by homophobes (i.e. high schoolers), asks that Olive extend her mendacious slutitude to him. Word starts to spread to the other dweebs in need of a sexy history.  Things start to go downhill from there–that’s as in “bad” rather than “easy.”

First off, Olive’s anonymity is a conceit I find a difficult to swallow.  She’s so smart, funny, and cute that her admitted lack of chest flesh would not be much of a hurdle.  But hey, we need a premise and we need a movie.  Fair enough.

The central theme of the film–those shared with The Scarlet Letter, a book I greatly dislike–is surprisingly awesome.  She is reading the book in her favorite teacher’s (Thomas Haden Church) class and finds it apropos.  They defuse the contrivance bomb by hitting it stoutly on the nose–everything you read in high school seems like it eerily echos your own life, these kids are that self-involved.  So true.  Premise secured:  Tick, VG.  She goes out to get some naughty clothes and stitches, with difficulty, some letter A’s to them.  Again, a contrivance I greatly enjoyed.

How is all this possible?  Because Emma Stone has more charm than…a sea otter.  She has a difficult assignment, sometimes, and that’s to pull off a direct to webcam confessional without sounding like a moron.  I’ll avoid ultimate evaluation by saying she did it better than anyone else might have.  I’ll add to this the foreshadowed musical number earning the same distinctions.  I’ve seen her in four movies now and she’s been fantastic in each of them.  I expect that she will continue to do fantabulously and must now see Zombieland (2009).

It’s a tough fight for number one charm in this movie with Stone being seriously challenged by her unbelievably relaxed parents played by the consistently excellent Stanley Tucci and occasionally memorable Patricia Clarkson (but mostly Tucci).  They get some great material and they waste none of it.  They resonate until my funny bone shatters, which sounds worse than it really is.  Perhaps credit should also go to director Will Gluck who does put some great flourishes on the high school microcosm.  Although we occasionally fall into farce and border on the grotesquely nostalgic, it’s generally on the non-vomit-inducing side.

Downside: Lisa Kudrow.  Other pedestrian performances from much of the rest of the cast who put little of their own turn on the material.  Church being the best of a mediocre lot.  Really though, it’s Emma in every scene.

I’m going to buy this movie because I have to.