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Fri Aug 01 2014 17:49 July Film Roundup:
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014): A fun and surprisingly violent Wes Anderson quirk-fest, seen on the plane to England. I initially thought the fake Nazis were a weird touch. Like, Wes Anderson's love of typography must accommodate even the most evil Fraktur, but he doesn't actually want to do Nazi graphic design, so he holds off a little bit. Is this unfair? Then I got to thinking: this is supposed to be a 2014 version of a comedy from the 1930s. And The Great Dictator had fake Nazis. There were those Three Stooges shorts with the "Nazties" or whatever, and "Der Fuhrer's Face" featured the "Nutzis". So I guess it makes sense retrohistorically? Not necessarily the choice I would have made.
- American Hustle (2013): Seen on the way back from England. I've never been so glad that a film was really long. I'm going to give this film the faintest possible praise: I'm glad I spent 138 minutes of a transatlantic flight watching it. However, it's not as good as a real 70s con-man movie, so I think they should have re-released The Sting instead of making this. That movie was made in the 70s and set in the 30s, so the relative timeline matches.
I dunno, while I was watching I just kept thinking about the logistics of putting together a period piece. "Ah, this dry cleaner scene lets the wardrobe department show off an entire collection of 70s clothes in an unobtrusive way." Not a sign of deep engagement.
- The Lego Movie (2014): I only saw about ten minutes of this, because American Hustle tired me out, but it was enough to make me realize that my drawer story about Lego people (in which a family starts reconfiguring their house into a spaceship, to the increasingly violent dismay of their homeowner association) is probably gonna stay in that drawer forever.
- Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974): Oh yeah. Here's my earlier, briefer review. I imported the DVD some time ago to watch it with Sumana, and it finally happened this month. Forty-five minutes in, Sumana was very reluctant to continue, but she stuck it out and ended up appreciating what remains IMO a hell of a film. Not a top ten film, because of that incredibly slow first hour, but really great.
Sumana asked me specifically what I love about this film, and it's this: Celine and Julie discover a world of endless repetition and emotional repression, where women are relegated to subordinate parts in petty melodramas. So they break into that world and destroy it with the power of goofing off. It combines the fun of the Marx Brothers with the simple, satisfying closure of an action movie. Very eristic.
- The King of Comedy (1982): The first good Jerry Lewis movie I've seen. Has the Dog Day Afternoon thing going on where there's a lot of peril but almost no violence. Has one of my all-time favorite bits of IMDB trivia: 'Martin Scorsese has stated that he "probably should not have made" the film.' But he did make it, and it's awkward and squirmy from beginning to end, one of those films that I'm really glad I saw but I'm going to try never to see ever again.
Amazingly, I believe this film was the originator of the "Basement Dweller" trope. This is now a supercliche (it showed up again, along with Robert de Niro, in American Hustle), and I can't think of an earlier example than this, complete with nagging offscreen mother. Shatner's "Get a Life" SNL sketch is from 1986 (and written by Bob Odenkirk, apparently). I dared to find the "Basement Dweller" TV Tropes article, even though as I'm writing this I have to leave to go to work, but King of Comedy is not mentioned in the "Film" section, and everything mentioned in that section is post-1982. So... chalk one up for method acting, I guess.