Up (2009)

 

USA, 96 minutes, animated 

Directors/writers: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson 

Production companies: Disney/Pixar 

Music: Michael Giacchino 

Cast: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson

I can't claim any special insights into Pixar and all that it may or may not have done for the art and industry of animation. People everywhere get wacky for this stuff and then (the most encouraging sign, I think) cite all different titles as the place to start and/or best of all. But I've only seen a few of them—Toy Story, Ratatouille, this. And I didn't see this in 3-D. Heck, I didn't even recognize Ed Asner's voice until the credits ran. The ones I've seen all seem to have in common that they are marked by a glowing attractiveness and that they work on a kinetic level, transcending the usual problems of feature-length animated films related to something like suspension of disbelief or a general lack of engagingness. But, honestly, here's what I liked best about Up: It's funny. I mean really funny—laugh-until-I-hurt funny. And the funny comes from one of the most suspect sources of all: pet humor. That's right, on this you're going to have to take the word of a person who frequently visits and laughs very hard at icanhascheezburger.com and has even been known to forward some of it along to loved ones who never really ask for such things. Yes, the opening montage is a lovely swirling example of summary storytelling at its best, animated or otherwise. Yes, the story is captivating throughout. Yes, the action sequences are nigh on to spectacular. All that, yes. Even so, it's those dogs that are killing me here.

Trans-Europe Express (1977)

 

"Showroom Dummies" The train travel theme that runs throughout is pretty much just a variation and continuation of the 22-minute "Autobahn" of a couple of years earlier (Kraftwerk: Music Made for Travel™). But that doesn't mean this doesn't mark a giant step forward not only for Ralf, Florian & crew but for all of electronic pop music as well, a departure from previous form itself equally rooted in the warp and woof of "Autobahn." From aimless boop-boop-bip-boop-beep to melody-driven toonage rich with lush flourishes and lovely hooks and, most surprising of all for this bunch, at least to me, cracking good humor, just about everything here is nothing less than perfectly splendid. A fun way to pass time: contemplate the cover art while "Showroom Dummies" plays loud (inspirational lyric: "We are showroom dummies"). "The Hall of Mirrors" manages the same kind of stunt, but then finds a way to wedge in an inescapable sense of profundity while they're at it, viz., "Even the greatest stars discover themselves in the looking glass." Train leaving the station. All aboard!

Adventureland (2009)

 

USA, 107 minutes

Director/writer: Greg Mottola

Photography: Terry Stacey

Original music: Yo La Tengo

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Martin Starr, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Wendie Malick, Matt Bush, Paige Howard, Dan Bittner

This tender and lovely romantic comedy is an endearing fantasy set among the disaffected of the later Reagan years, who toil for minimum wage at a seedy suburban Pittsburgh amusement park. It's 1987, and James Brennan, played in nicely brisk and nerdy manner by Jesse Eisenberg, meant to spend the summer in Europe before starting a graduate school liberal arts program at Columbia. But his plans are upended by the Reaganomics-derived financial setbacks of his parents, and instead of Europe he has to stay at home and take a job at Adventureland. Love, camaraderie, jealousy, and of course wacky antics ensue among the carnies. Brennan falls for Em Lewin, played by an admirably restrained and proficient Kristen Stewart, who can't possibly be this good in the Twilight movies, which I have not seen. But she is very good here, a waif coming of age, with a brittle shell, lost in her father's various bad choices, her mother MIA due to death. Em likes Brennan for all the right reasons (and also for what we dweebs like to think are all the right reasons, such as his unerring musical taste) but has already cast her lot before she met him with an older, married coworker at the amusement park. The standard disclaimer goes approximately here that this follow-up to director/writer Greg Mottola's first movie, Superbad, is actually way more nuanced and understated. The soundtrack, in the tradition of teen movies since approximately American Graffiti, frequently contributes snips and snatches that are emotionally pitch-perfect, from the likes of the Velvet Underground, Big Star, the Cure, the Replacements, Nick Lowe, the Stones, New York Dolls, Jesus & Mary Chain, the inevitable Wang Chung, so on and so forth. Overall a nice little treat.

In the Valley of Elah (2007)

 

USA, 121 minutes

Director: Paul Haggis

Writers: Mark Boal, Paul Haggis

Photography: Roger Deakins

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Jason Patric, Susan Sarandon, James Franco, Barry Corbin, Josh Brolin, Frances Fisher

Another sobering movie about the Iraq War, this one taking on the casual atrocities of the enterprise, the inevitability of them, the planets of psychic distance that separate the quiet homes soldiers leave for their projects of honor from the fields of battle where anything can happen, and does. Tommy Lee Jones, perfectly suited craggy face pointed forward, plays Hank Deerfield, of Monroe, Tennessee, an ex-military man in a family with a long history of military men. Deerfield intrudes himself into a police investigation of the disappearance of his son shortly after the son's return from a tour of duty in Iraq. The hook is well in by the time this story settles into the soothing rhythms of police procedural, peeling back the layers of the story as forensic and other evidence is uncovered and analyzed, all of it amid the conjectures and misgivings of characters who say most by saying little. Paul Haggis, who has previously given us a lot of flash and bombast with Crash and acres of TV work ("Walker, Texas Ranger," "L.A. Law," "thirtysomething"), has some predictable tricks up his sleeve here—notably the ubiquity of digital media—but for the most part wisely lets the cast, particularly Jones, carry the weight of the drama, which ultimately transcends Iraq and other time-bound elements and finds something to say about the larger issues of war and honor and internal peace. Jones really outdoes himself with a masterly, circumspect performance. I've never been a big fan, but he is what makes this work so well.

The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood (1991)

 

For this book, Julie Salamon won a surprising amount of access to Brian De Palma and other principals behind the film version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, including all the stars and representatives from every phase of production. The expectation apparently was that the movie would be as spectacularly successful as Wolfe's book, and that Salamon's account would document that success from the inside out, no doubt providing one more successful promotion and merchandising cornerstone of the coming success empire. Instead, circumstances dictated that it turn into a fascinating chronicle of how a flop comes into existence. Films notoriously require colossal levels of collaboration, with thousands of moving parts set into motion on competing tight deadlines, which make them completely fraught with peril. Who can say, in the moment, what's right or wrong? That's what I appreciate most about Salamon's book—we know, from inevitable benefit of hindsight, what a disastrous mission these people are on. Yet for the most part their decisions rarely seem catastrophic in themselves (beyond that first one of ever pinning any hope on making a movie out of something written by Tom Wolfe, whose work is so entirely driven by a fever swamp of words on a page; even Wolfe, as Salamon shrewdly if quietly catches on early, knew enough to stay the hell away from it. At the same time, this is just rank second-guessing on my part). Salamon's tale is so compelling that I was driven to finally take a look at the movie just for the small victories she reported. And, yeah, it's bad all right—but that brief shot of the jumbo jet touching down is as good as promised.

In case it's not at the library.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

 

USA, 96 minutes 

Director/writer: George Seaton 

Photography: Lloyd Ahern, Charles G. Clarke 

Cast: Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Gene Lockhart, Natalie Wood, Porter Hall, William Frawley, Jerome Cowan, Philip Tonge 

I saw this last fall shortly after a visit to New York—hence, I suppose, in the mythical New York state of mind, thankyouverymuch Billy Joel—and what impressed and surprised me first was how genuine to the city it felt, with its Thanksgiving Day Parade and casual references to the geography, even the title, and indeed the whole Macy/Gimbels rivalry plot point, all of which makes sense given that it was shot on location. I also recall this one, growing up in the '60s, as among the older, generally second-tier Christmas fare that aired every December (each one a must-see classic according to one person or another, though the ardor, not to mention the opportunities, always passed as quickly as the season). I always meant to see it, as so many of them prove perfectly worthwhile (though not all of them—this Christmas entertainment is a tricky business), but I never did through all these years. It was actually better than I expected, nicely low-key and almost somber as it goes about the usual business of attempting to reclaim the "real" "spirit" of Christmas. Natalie Wood is suitably adorable as a precocious 6-year-old, Edmund Gwenn is a better Santa than Burl Ives himself, and John Payne reminded me weirdly of John Cusack. Always nice to see William Frawley in anything. Merry Christmas all!

In Utero (1993)

 

If Kurt Cobain is John Lennon, and Kurt Cobain's oppressive punk-rock superego is Yoko Ono, then this is his Double Fantasy. When the superior pop instincts get to hold sway, as on approximately half the tracks here, I think this is about as good as it ever got for Nirvana. When, on the other half, his internal punk-rock taskmaster takes over and runs the show—talking now about the guy who hired Steve Albini to produce in the first place—the going gets a little tougher. (The poor guy, with fans and critics grumbling about degrees of purity and his lack thereof, with a harpy shrieking away non-stop in the background of his life, and on top of everything with a wicked drug habit that wouldn't let go. How was he ever supposed to concentrate?) Also as with Double Fantasy (following which I will immediately cease the comparison and never bring it up again, and that's a promise), it's not easy to separate this final missive from the events that followed in its more or less inadvertent wake. My advice is to just get picky about it. If you like that noisy stuff, and despise the tuneful work as craven selling out, stay focused on that. Turn it up even. If, like me, you like the pop tunes, remember that CDs and most music players are programmable and you really don't have to bother that often with "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" and its ilk. Above all, I say, keep in mind that anyone who could write things as transcendent as "Heart-Shaped Box," or "Pennyroyal Tea," or "All Apologies" (which you may believe, and perhaps you are right, that you have heard enough in your lifetime by now), or "Dumb," or "Rape Me"—well, that's someone eminently worth remembering and honoring and loving. God knows he could have used it when he was still breathing.

Incesticide (1992)

 

"Sliver" At the time this came out, I admit I was a little offended by the gratuitous nature of following up the mega-nova explosion of Nevermind with this slapped-together package of b-sides, covers, demos, alternative versions, and the like. But when I got a chance to hear it I had to take that back. It's a pretty decent album. What's more, in "Sliver" it has the one song, clocking in at all of 2:17, that I think best captures Kurt Cobain in his glorious contradictions, overwhelming pain and innocence and goofy little unself-concious kiddishness. Because that's what I think he really was about when it's all said and done, and for sure that's the thing I miss the most. Pardon the indulgence: "Mom and Dad went to a show / Dropped me off at grandpa Joe's / I kicked and screamed, said please, oh no" and "Had to eat my dinner there / Mashed potatoes and stuff like that / Couldn't chew my meat too good" and "After dinner, I had ice cream / I fell asleep, and watched TV / Woke up in my Mother's arms" and finally "Grandma take me home (19x)."

 

Grace Is Gone (2007)

 

USA, 85 minutes
Director/writer: James C. Strouse 

Photography: Jean-Louis Bompoint

Music: Clint Eastwood
Cast: John Cusack, Shélan O'Keefe, Gracie Bednarczyk, Alessandro Nivola

Another movie on the fallout from George W. Bush's war on Iraq—seems like I watched a lot of them last year (behind as usual). This one is a kind of road move through the looking glass. John Cusack's Stanley Phillips, an ex-military man now a retail sales manager for a big box outlet in suburban Minnesota, learns that his wife, also in the service but still on active duty, has died in Iraq. Not yet ready to tell his two girls, 12 and 8, he simply packs them up, leaves his job behind, and sets out on a family sojourn to a Florida amusement park favored by the youngest daughter. The whole thing skirts the edges of disturbing behavior with a sure and sensitive touch in terms of Cusack's performance; and director/screenwriter Strouse's tone holds hushed and controlled, never hysterical. You're never really sure if the obviously stand-up Phillips is hanging on through the grief or has lost it entirely, as he makes calls from pay phones along the way and leaves messages for his wife on their home answering machine, whose greeting is still her, and continues to delay before finally finding the way to tell the news to his daughters. It's a heartbreaker by definition and the relief is tremendous and palpable. By the closing scenes I suddenly started to notice how invested I had become in seeing the right things happen. A nicely done production, even if the topic now seems suddenly dated and a little tired out—it isn't really.

Nevermind (1991)

 

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" It was clear from first encounter how good this album was—I will say by way of explanation that I was onto it early enough that I ended up with one of the pressings that inadvertently left off the hidden track "Endless, Nameless" (which btw has been A-OK with me anyway). But I, for one, never foresaw or even imagined the full dimensions of the greatest major label sell-out of all time. Ten million unit sales, nearly 20 years, and a generational earthquake later, it still sounds fine, though the debt to the Pixies is clear enough, in terms of its quiet-loud-quiet dynamic, opaque titling strategies, patent damage to vocal cords in process, occasional surprisingly clumsy resorts to cliché, and the overweening air of general disaffection. On the other hand, that singer/songwriter from Bleach, Kurdt Kobain, suddenly demonstrated not only that he could match Black Francis scream for scream and better him right down the line, but that he could write pop music circles around practically anyone within a 25,000-mile radius. Or, as he put it, "I think we sound like the Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath." Honestly, for all the debts that could be listed (all of the above plus Sonic Youth, Flipper, Husker Du, Saccharine Trust, Scratch Acid, yes of course Iggy, and we're just getting started), I think very few of them actually match Kurt Cobain's songwriting acumen, though I would also argue that the very best of it is not necessarily here. That's no criticism of anything on this album—it's an expression of how big a talent is behind it. (Wait a minute. "In Bloom." "Come As You Are." "Lithium." What am I saying?) Those still new to the various classic stylings of grunge, here's your starting point.