Taxi Blues (1990)
This is a Russian movie, made during the truly waning hours of the Soviet Union, and as such it looks like what I think most people my age and older still imagine that part of the world looks like, though in seeing some clips from more recent movies made there, in the cities at least stores, kitchens, computers, living rooms, etc, look like what you would see in the modern United States! At the time I saw this, which is quite a while ago now, I thought it was at least interesting, however I don't remember much about it now other than the dingy atmosphere and the seeming aimlessness of the lives of the characters, who were well into middle age. I think its relatively modest themes may have been for the present-day viewer superseded by the knowledge of the immense changes in the experience of life and perhaps consciousness itself under the new order. It is worth seeing for the end-of-the-communist-era aesthetic if nothing else.
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
One of the all time iconic Hollywood movies of course, especially of the decade of the 50s, and as such I cannot help but to take some enjoyment in it, though I've never been able to see that it was particularly great. The plot and dialogue are more lumbering than even I usually like, the various messages seem heavy-handed, James Dean looks great of course but as much as I want to get into his acting I just can't do it--I really don't know what he is trying to say with this performance beyond the obvious, life-is-a-grand-disappointment-and-it-should-be-a-hell-of-a-lot-more-than-it-is kind of stuff. All that granted, every chance I get to see a young people type American movie from the 50s--and my system doesn't seem to generate very many of them for me to watch--I wish I could figure out a way to tweak it so I could see more, not that a lot of the sorts of things I would like would be available anyway, odd as that sounds.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)
A documentary that I stumbled upon kind of randomly about the case of a male medical student named Andrew Bagby who was murdered by an unstable woman whom he had been involved with and gotten pregnant, the woman's flight from the United States to Newfoundland, the attempts of Bagby's parents both to have the woman extradited back to the United States and to get custody of their grandchild, and other sundry developments, made by one of Bagby's childhood friends. This is not usually the kind of thing I go in for, but I developed a certain affection for Bagby, video of whom as a somewhat goofball teenager, college student and 20-something appeared throughout the movie. He was around my age, and seemed like someone who could have been a friend of mine if I had known him, a genuinely nice guy, intelligent enough obviously to get into medical school, although he did have to go to Newfoundland for that, liked to have fun and was clearly beloved by his family (he was an only child) and his male friends. He seemed to have had some trouble connecting with women--you can see in some of the videos where he is dancing or making an over the top speech at a wedding reception that the women at the party are not really into his schtick. He had one girlfriend in medical school who seemed to be the kind of person guys like him (us?) spend most of their youth hoping they might be able to get someday, but she dumped him and ended up marrying someone else pretty soon thereafter, which led to Andrew's becoming depressed and probably to his unfortunately getting involved, however half-heartedly on his part, with the mentally ill woman who would turn out to be his murderer. As you can see the story of Bagby himself, ordinary as it was in many ways, quite interested me on a one-time basis, and he lived in a number of places, such as Latrobe, Pennsylvania and St John's, Newfoundland, that I have never seen in a movie before and have picturesque qualities. Whenever the documentary went away from him and focused on his parents or the deranged girlfriend I didn't find it as compelling.
Andrew with, I think, the girlfriend everybody liked who broke up with him
Belle Epoque (1992)
A Spanish movie that won the Foreign Picture Oscar in its year, I am not sure how I missed this when it came out, since it is exactly in the mainstream of early 90s American arthouse-friendly European imports that I regularly devoured at the Ritz 5 theater in Philadelphia and wherever else this class of movie was shown during that 1990-94 period. Since I hadn't seen one of these films in quite a while it awakened all sorts of memories and emotions in me while I was watching it and I frequently paused it to take down notes (on my phone!) for this review, which I probably should do for every movie that shows up here, though in most instances I am not inspired to say much about them. Here are some of my in-the-moment thoughts about Belle Epoque:
Early 90s art house world/era looks ever better.
Atmosphere great, fun, like the characters.
Usually I hate the guys who are being chased by beautiful women but I like this guy (in the movie a handsome young deserter from the Spanish Civil War takes refuge in the decaying mansion of a lapsed painter with four beautiful daughters, all of whom he has sex with--I don't consider this a spoiler since it is obvious this is what is going to happen the minute they arrive at the house--the question is what it is all supposed to mean).
Little touches, lovely things I haven't thought about in years, the night air (I almost never spend time outside late at night anymore), an outdoor party with cigarettes and dancing, beds in attics. It does make me want to be young again in a particular way that I have not felt in years. It reminds you what was fun about it.
Lot of SJC feeling. Early 90s, the old, deep Europe, an artistic family with books, etc.
It's one of those magic realism type movies, and has kind of a sad ending--the old European dream that the main body of the movie takes place in dies or fades out at the end and the young characters turn their faces, grimly in my view, to the modern world and the future, represented at that time by the United States.
While this is probably not a great movie, if you are my age and the kinds of sentiments and themes that I have mentioned here speak to you at all, I think you will find it emotionally rewarding if nothing else. But there seem to be fewer and fewer people who share my sentiments and reactions to anything as the years go by.
Belle de Jour (1967)
While very celebrated to the point that even people like me are familiar with its iconography, this is obviously an all-time classic, and I am becoming increasingly persuaded that Luis Bunuel is the greatest directing talent of the sound era at least, though like many directors who worked into the 60s and 70s I believe he may have started in film during the silent period, or close enough to it that his early attempts were informed by its peculiar requirements. Paris in the 60s, especially by '66-'68 when almost everyone was filming it in sumptuous color, always looks so perfect in movies. Ironically these were the last years just before a massive societal upheaval. One is reminded that the Paris/Europe of 1788 loomed as the lost Eden to many reactionaries through the first half of the 19th century at least. And of course perfect though it all looks, much of this film is set in a brothel, though certainly a clean and comparatively attractive one, is about characters who dress well but whose minds are (primarily) fairly vapid, who have little connection to each other. The only child I recall in the movie is the daughter of the brothel's housekeeper, about whose grades all of the prostitutes and even some of the regular customers seem solicitous. The later Bunuel movies that I can recall rarely feature any children, which I think is worth noting. The character of Henri played by the famous actor Michel Piccoli as a kind of prototype of the (compared to us) sophisticated adult French male with an assertive and unapologetic heterosexuality especially stood out to me. Remarkably, Piccoli is still alive at age 93, which means he would have been about 40 when this was filmed, a decade younger than I am now. I regarded his character as being at a stage of mental life much beyond my own, to which I had not yet attained. In truth however I missed that stage of life altogether and am probably never going to attain it. As to taking up going to brothels or propositioning the wives of acquaintances and engaging in role-playing and real sexual behavior in general, depraved or otherwise, with actual live women--that sort of thing is truly unthinkable.
Ragtime (1981)
One of the more trite of the many trite comments that people make about older movies is to observe that "they don't make them like this anymore". Consequently I don't just try to avoid saying it, I try to avoid even having the thought as much as possible. However, in the midst of watching Ragtime, which was made during the period of my youth and which resembles in form and character a kind of movie that was common in that era, the thought kept recurring to me that, you know, they really don't make movies like this anymore. I'm not exactly sure what I mean by "like this". I liked the pacing of it, which seemed to suit the time period in which it was set, which had an decided energy, but not "energy" in the speed and volume and flashing pixels way that that word seems to be understood now. The shifting between multiple stories I thought was well done in giving some picture of America circa 1904, which comports somewhat with the idea that I and probably many people of my upbringing have always had of it (interestingly it was directed by the Czech émigré Milos Forman). Nowadays the idea of a feature film aimed broadly at adults is itself a novelty, I suppose. I haven't read the book, and the meaning of the various plot resolutions beyond the obvious racism-is-foundational-to-America-and-the-rich-always-triumph themes didn't make much of an impression on me. But the possibilities just beginning to be felt and hinted at in this country at the turn of the last century are suggested appealingly throughout this movie.
I don't like to be a cast nerd in these reviews--I've held back from going too deep in that vein on some of the other movies in this very post--but this one has too many notable people to omit mentioning them. First of all, of course, Forman persuaded the aged Jimmy Cagney (!) to come out of a 20-year retirement. The medium is so much more comparatively mature and the exposure of celebrities so massive now that this effect of bringing back an old star would be impossible to duplicate today. Jimmy Cagney dated back to the very beginning of sound movies, he was a real *movie star* with a public persona largely bound within those limits and then he effectively dropped off the face of the earth, and came back for one last hurrah. I like it. There is also Elizabeth McGovern (naked too!) as Evelyn Nesbit--and she is Evelyn Nesbit, who admittedly doesn't seem to have been a terribly deep person to try to portray--and I have always liked her more than the usual. She must be my type. Norman Mailer (!) has a small role as the celebrated architect Stanford White, there was Brad Dourif, the stuttering guy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, who plays another weird guy here, there was Mandy Patinkin, who I read about for years in the New York Times theater coverage when I used to subscribe to it but never had any idea who he is, though I must have seen him somewhere. Howard Rollins, Jr, who I see died some years back at just 46, gave a famously strong performance. Pretty eclectic group.
Bend it Like Beckham (2002)
I thought this would be the weak link in the group, and while it was, it was not actually as bad as I thought it was going to be, and it probably succeeds on the terms it was seeking, which was to be a feel-movie for teenagers. To be honest I am surprised there are not more movies of this type. I also had some idea that this was fairly recent, but as you can see, it is not. I don't know how much more London has changed in the nearly 20 year interval since this was made. At that time at least, despite all of the ugly modern architecture and signs of cultural degeneration, there was still something beautiful about it, even just in the sky sometimes. It's a hallowed place in the psyche of many people, such as me, who can trace large portions of their mental formation to its environs. The director (Gurinder Chadha) noted in one of the extras that much of the shooting had taken place during a heat wave in the summer of 2001, and I was actually there during that heat wave, the last time I was there, in fact, so perhaps that association had an effect on my response.
I believe at the time the depiction of Indian culture in a mainstream film in Britain was still something of a novelty--the director Chadha presents it it seems to me as a fairly broad caricature, though not as bad as the caricature of the "traditional" (white) British family--Satyajit Ray she is not. At least as recorded by the right wingish internet, the old Britain went through a period of cultural squalor about a decade ago marked by extreme female promiscuity, public drunkenness (and I was thinking, oh if I could only be there!), educational decline and the like, media coverage of which at least seems to have abated in the most recent years. I haven't kept up much with what the British Indian community is doing, though I suspect they are doing fairly well, and their culture must be beginning to have some influence on the traditional British institutions which must be resulting in some conflicts, since it seems to me really different from the West and unlikely to hold much appeal to most people with any grounding in that tradition. But if our modern age has taught me anything, it is that I know nothing of the minds of other people and that almost every intuition I have about the current state of society could not be more misguided. So I will leave that here for now.
The real Evelyn Nesbit was a babe too.
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