I Know Where I'm Going (1945)

A headstrong young women (Wendy Heller) sets out for an island off the north coast of Scotland where she is to marry a middle-aged millionaire she barley knows, thinking of course that this will make her life complete. Only on the way to her impending nuptials she meets a poor but charming navel officer (Roger Livesey) bound for the same island, and a monstrous gael keeps the two stranded together in a small community on the Scottish shore. Well you know what happens next, but I’ll wager a bet you’ve not seen it done more gracefully. Full of characters you want to go to Scotland and meet, and replete with the charm and quirky elegance common to the Powell/Pressburger cannon, there’s even some nifty visual and editing effects for a black & white movie. 4 out of 5. I’ve got to say it, Roger Livesey really cool.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

After seeing Spirited Away a week or so ago I became so intrigued with Hayao Miyazaki’s work I decided that I must see more. I chose My Neighbor Totoro from my second Miyazaki film because of its excellent reputation, and because it is the favorite film of the son of a friend of mine who lives in Japan. Totoro is an absolutely enchanting, sweet natured film about two young girls who move to the country with their dad when their mother becomes sick and must be confined to a rural hospital. There the girls are taken under the protection of Totoro, a giant furry nature spirt and his two little helpers. The film captures the ‘attitude’ of childhood, perhaps better then any film I have ever seen; the active imaginations, the exploring, the sense of fun, and the fear that comes with adult situations beyond your control. I found it warm, enveloping and quite sweet, words I don’t use often. A treasure, I need to show this to my niece and nephews. 5 out of 5. From the two films of his I’ve seen so far, Miyazaki seems to harbor a great deal of affection for soot.

Reefer Madness, aka Tell Your Children (1936); Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (2005)

Now a camp classic, the original Reefer Madness (aka Tell Your Children) was meant to be taken earnestly by its audiences, despite the films being in many (if not all) ways a cynical ploy. With the end of prohibition, government bureaucrats desiring to hold on to their power and influence needed a new vice to crusade against, and for some reason they latched onto Marijuana. Now widely recognized as one of the most harmless of drugs, Marijuana is presented (particularly in the quasi-documentary first few minutes of the film) as a menace, more addictive then heroin. False and/or exaggerated depictions of the drugs effects proliferate in the film, were a nice upstanding boy named Jimmy is coned into addiction to ‘the demon weed’ by nefarious drug pushers, with their loose women and hot jazz. In the end lives are destroyed, a sweet innocent girl is killed, and parents are warned to ‘tell their children’.

B or C picture stuff Reefer Madness was largely forgotten for decades, before it was rediscovered and became an ironic hit in the pot filled theaters of the 1970's midnight movie scene. It is this later, tung-in-cheek appreciation of the film which lead to Kevin Murphy’s musical stage play, and the Showtime produced film verison there of. Campy, bawdy, over-the-top, this latter incarnation of Reefer Madness is well executed pop satire, taking on not just the exaggerated anti-drug narrative of the original film, but also the fear exploiting mind set that produced it, and so much of American cultural reactionism up to the present day. Plus the songs are pretty catchy, I’m playing ‘Listen to Jesus Jimmy’ in my head right now. As clever a movie musical as Hairspray, if not more so. A curios’ curio.

1936 Reefer Madness: 2 ½ out of 5
2004 Musical Reefer Madness: 4 out of 5.

Truman (1997)

The American Experience documentary on our 33rd President. I’ve long been a fan of Truman, owing now doubt in part to the 1995 HBO produced bio-pic of the same name, staring Gary Sinise. However recently in a book of Gore Vidal essays I came across a more critical reading of Truman, in which ‘Give’em Hell Harry’ is cast as the primary enabler in the rise of the ‘National Security State’ and the start of post World War II American Empire. However its hard not to like Harry Truman, he didn’t set out for power, it was reluctantly thrust upon him, and in his small town, every-man American kind of can-do way, he was determined to “do my damndest”. If some of Truman’s policy decisions have impacted America in a negative way (as no doubt some have), I think its in the same vain as one documentary commentator described the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan, ‘this was a good, loving man, who did one of the most terrible things in human history’. I simply don’t sense malice from Truman, a little bit of naivete if anything (for example the initial liking he took to Josef Stalin at Potsdam), his heart was in the right place, and I think much of his legacy must still be counted as a positive one (such as racially integrating the armed forces, recognizing Israel, firing General McAruther before he started World War III, that kind of thing). This documentary is a good, largely informative discussion of the Presidents life, despite short comings like next to no talk about the establishment of the national security council, or how his exaggerated anti-communism only enabled the likes of Joe McCarthy, plus it didn’t even touch on the assassination attempt. All in all though, a good introduction or refresher on how one of the most unassuming of men changed the course of world history. 4 out of 5.

Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco (2007)

Though obviously far eclipsed by Los Angeles in terms of output, California’s second city of film has a significant history and reputation of its own. An exceedingly independent city, its just the right distance from Hollywood to allow its filmmakers to have the resources to get things done, but enough sovereignty to do it their own way. Obviously not ever filmmaker succeeds in San Francisco, but many of those who have made the bay area their base of operations have changed movie history. The Coppola’s (Francis Ford and Sofia), George Lucas, Chris Colombus, Clint Eastwood, and the folks at Pixar have revolutionized film making, in story telling, special effects, box office, etc. Essentially a series of mini retrospectives of film makers with strong connections to the area, the dominate strand of the narrative is Lucas and the Coppola family, film school radicals who challenged, and later took over the nations movie making establishment, and in the process made San Francisco into arguably the true creative heart of American film making (after seeing this film I’d say the Bay area is more important then New York to modern American films). Interesting, but kind of conventional in its presentation, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did another Starz produced film doc of my recent viewing, Midnight Movies: From The Margins to the Mainstream. 3 out of 5.

Homicide: Life on the Street: Season 6 (1997-1998)

The 6th season began with an over-long, not really that interesting three parter with James Earl Jones; fortunately it improved from there leaving us with a two part season final, which is probably the most exciting season ender of the series. I love how the writers turned the death of chief villain Luther Mahony at the end of the 5th season (which they did not want to do), into the catalyst for much of the action of season 6. These turn of events affect primary Lewis and Kellerman (I love that they stayed true to his self-destructive arc), but also new detective Falsone, and ultimately Bayliss and Pembelton in a manner that also relates to the latters stroke at the end of season 4. I also liked Callie Thorne and Peter Gerety’s partnership. This show has remarkably few weak spots. 5 out of 5. Also included on the boxed set is a PBS documentary about the making of the famous ‘subway’ episode.

The Lion Has Wings (1939)

Alexander Korda produced ‘documentary’ (read propaganda film) about the early British war effort makes heavy use of dramatizations. Picture follows the typical nice-guy-peace-loving-Brits-quirkily-unit-for-the-cause-of-right plot structure typical of pretty much any British film of the time. Notable for big names who appear in film, like Merle Oberon (Korda’s wife at the time), Ralph Richardson and James Bond creator Ian Fleming. 3 out of 5.

I.O.U.S.A. (2008)

Documentary on how the U.S. has a whole bunch of debt. I hope everyone realizes this, and I hope that eventual we summon up the collective will to do something about it. However this documentary is very boring, granted inherently dry subject matter and hard to liven up, but surely there is a way of making something so vital to our economic future more engaging on screen. 1 ½ out of 5.

Spirited Away (2001)

Best animated feature Oscar winner from Hayao Miyazaki, the much heralded “Walt Disney of Japan”. The mythology, style (I never got into anime) and story of the film were so strange and different from anything I’d seen before, that I felt as though I was missing something through much of the picture. However there is an undeniable something there, a sense of wonder and sentiment, which transcended what for me was an unusually thick cultural barrier. Probably the most unexpected animated film I’ve seen since The Triplets of Belleville. I’m quite found of the music. 4 out of 5.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

It seems as though the film industry is always trying to find new ways to tell us the holocaust story. The tragedy of this is that the consistent repetition of such movies could threaten to numb viewers to the true horrors of one of humanities worst moments. Indeed the Jew in the concentration camp now borders on being a trit movie convention, like the car chase. This is where The Boy in the Striped Pajamas comes in, a new take on the holocaust story that actually is a new take, because it reintroduces us to the horror of that genocide from a fresh perspective, that of a child. We’ve never truly seen the holocaust on screen from a child’s perspective, granted Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (the last film before this that I can think of to really have a fresh take on the holocaust) is largely about a fathers efforts to shield his son from such horrors, but Stripped Pajamas is on the whole from the actual point of view of the child, and this child’s not even Jewish. Bruno (Asa Butterfield in a performance that seems ever more remarkable the more I think on it) is the eight year old son of the new commandant at a German concentration camp. Bored and lonely Bruno strikes up a friendship with the seemingly titular ‘boy in the stripped pajamas’ whom he meets, and can only communicate with, through the electric fence of the said concentration camp. Bruno doesn’t understand what’s going on, he thinks at first the people in the camp to be a group of ‘strange farmers’, and while his conceptions of what goes on beyond that fence do change over time, he can never really figure it out as no one, not even the boy, can give him a straight answer.

Watching Bruno trying to figure things out, trying to reconcile the bits and pieces of seemingly contradictory information he gets, along with his own non-judgmental child’s perspective on things, offers the beginnings of the films pathos. We can see events through Bruno’s eyes, he is an excellent everyman, an innocent we can get behind. Yet we the audience are aware of the larger picture where he is not, we can see the true cause of the tension in his parents relationship, and we can see how his older sisters pubescent crush on a Nazi officer makes her so pliably receptive to this new world view proffered around her. As the film nears its climax, and we can see what’s coming, the movie offers us a new way of experiencing the Nazi’s horror, one that seemingly brings things closer to us, but if we are perceptive also chastises us; chastises us for daring to think that this tragedy, as tragic as it is, is any worse from the holocaust we’ve seen on film so many times before, just because it comes to us from a perspective that seems entirely new. 5 out of 5.

Jeremiah: Season 2 (2003)

Second and final season of the done-to-soon post-apocalyptic series by JMS. Where as season one of Jeremiah was rather episodic, season two coalesces around a more narratively unified central story line. Indeed the series development undeniably parallels that of its creator and head writers earlier, better known series Babylon 5. While the first season of Babylon was again episodic, with hints of a larger story brewing, subsequent seasons developed that emerging storyline into a somewhat dense epic television novel. Jeremiah follows suite, and indeed explores many of the same themes and concepts that so intrigued Straczynski in Babylon 5, including shadow governments, civil war, founding of alliances, questions of the divine, figureheads, the power of one person to make a difference, unrequited love, revenge, spiritual rebirth, and the father-son relationship. The series was cut short before the entire story could be told, but we get plenty worth experiencing in these final 15 episodes produced. Sean Astin proves an unexceptedly strong addition to the cast. Libby was really cute. 4 out of 5.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Survivors on a capsized ocean liner race against time and their sinking vessel in this nautical entry from the Irwin Allen disaster cycle of the 1970s. Even though this has got to be one of my dad’s favorite movies, I’d never seen it in its entirety, only a few bits and pieces mainly towards the end. This is an exciting movie, there’s a well maintained and genuine sense of tension throughout, the human crowd reaction to disasters is always fascinating, and I was genuinely surprised to see who lived and who died. The cast of then largely second string or ‘has been’ actors (with the notable exception of Gene Hackman), plus the setting can’t help but remind one of the Love Boat, but Titanic would doubtless be a better mark for comparison. Got to say that I liked that the films most heroic characters were an elderly Jewish lady (Shelly Winters) and a radical (in the best sense of the word) preacher (Hackman’s great as this hardline variation on William Sloan Coffin). A surprisingly compact film at just under two hours, I think this running time helps the pace vis-a-ve The Towering Inferno, that pluse more of a sense of realism makes me like this film more. 4 out of 5.

The Return of Jezebel James: The Complete Series (2008)

Shorted lived sitcom from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. Like her previous series Jezebel James embodies its creators quirky third-wave feminist sensibilities. The Jezebel James of the title was the childhood imaginary friend of Coco Thomkins (Lauren Ambrose), later turned into a popular children’s book character by her editor sister Sarah (Parker Posey). The basic premise has Ambrose’s slacker slob brought in by perfectionist workaholic Posey to be her surrogate upon the latter’s learning that she will be unable to carry a child herself. So you’ve got the whole Odd Couple thing going, combined with many themes and motifs cribbed from Sherman-Palladino’s previous series, such as strained parental relationships, fast-paced pop cultured-filled dialogue, characters inability to make relationships work, hanging out at diners and public meetings. Despite undeniably retreading some ground, the series is well executed enough, and helped tremendously by the two likable leads. It is unfortunate that the show proved so ratings challenged, I have a feeling it could have grown into something qusi-venerable. 3 ½ out of 5.

The entire series is available via hulu.

The Bible According to Hollywood (2004)

Two part television documentary on how Biblical stories have been portrayed in (largely Hollywood) films. The first part concentrates on the Old Testament, which provided plenty of acceptable source material for Hollywood epics. These Biblical epics were pioneered by the likes of Griffith and De Mille in the silent era and reached there apex of popularity in the 1950’s, again with De Mille still a major player in that genera (no film gets more air time in the documentary then De Mille’s 1956 version of The Ten Commandments). The second half, the New Testament, was more problematic for Hollywood, and most of the film depictions of Jesus at lest into the 1960’s were very stayed, reverent, and boring. Revisionist takes on the Christ, like the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, or later the highly controversial Scorsese picture The Last Temptation of Christ, attempted to extract more life from the giver of life. But most ‘New Testament’ films are really only marginally so, coming largely from fiction books with a biblical settings and cameo appearances by the Savior (Ben-Hur being the prime example)b or the sub-genre of persecuted early Christians (The Sign of the Cross, The Robe). A very basic introduction to some of the more notable ‘Biblical films’. 2 ½ out of 5.

Up (2009)

Up marks the 10th feature length film to come out of the Pixar studio in the 14 years since they started making ‘full length’ movies. I recently read someone comment that Pixar is the last film house in Hollywood that can sell a film on the studio’s name alone, this is because all 10 of Pixar’s features have been technical and story powerhouses, their laser focus on quality (almost unheard of in studios these days) makes there vaunted reputation wholly earned. Up continues this trend, and like the two Pixar features immediately proceeding yet, dares to tell a story with little resemblance to a typical commercial property (as someone else commented, Ed Asner movies have never been known to open big).

Up is primarily the story of Carl Fredrickson (Asner), a widower and retired balloon salesman who uses his old product to lift his house off the ground, and fly to South America after he is threatened with forced re-location to a retirement home. Stowing away is Russell (new comer Jordan Nagai) a young ‘Wilderness Explorer’ who has made Carl the focus of his efforts to earn his "assisting the elderly" merit badge. The two take land near Paradise Falls, the exotic local to which to Carl’s late wife Ellie always dreamed of visiting. There the two end up assisting a rare bird who is being perused by an obsessive adventurer (Christopher Plummer), and in doing so team up with a lovably goofy ‘talking dog’ named Doug (Bob Peterson). The South America stuff suffers the odd slow point or two, but is on the whole everything you’d want from a Pixar movie. The highlight for me however was in the beginning of the movie, were we see a young Carl as a kid meet his future wife, and the affectionate montage of their decades long marriage together that is one of the most beautiful and emotionally moving things I’ve ever seen in animation. Huzzah to Pixar for making probably the most commercially successful film ever about the emotional lives of the elderly, and for sublimiably introducing the youngsters in the audience to Spencer Tracy and Kirk Douglas, the golden era Hollywood actors on whom the appearances of the two lead elderly characters are based. 4 ½ out of 5.

Confessions of a Police Captain (1971), Executioner 2 (1984)

The theme for this grindhouse double-feature: ‘When the systems corrupt, you’ve got to take justice into your own hands’, or at least that’s the philosophy of about half the male protagonists in the two films. In Confessions of a Police Captain Martin Balsam is the titular Sicilian Police Captain, and Franco Nero the city’s new district attorney, their both after mafioso developer Luciano Catenacci , only they have conflicting philosophies on the appropriate way to bring him down. Nero is all about a by-the-book, higher moral road justice, he would like to see Luciano and his cohorts convicted fairly through the justice system. While Balsam has come through experience not to trust that system to do its job, he’s seen to much injustice done in the guise of fair justice, and is thusly not a letter-of-the-law advocate when it comes to attempting to achieve justice. And could I use the word ‘justice’ any more in this paragraph.

I enjoyed Balsam and Nero’s dynamic in this movie, its one that changes over the course of the story as layers develop in their relationship and they each attempt to determine their ethical read of the other. They both have the same goal in a general sense (getting Luciano, justice ) but a very different sense of what that means. They do however influence each other over the course of the film, developing a bond of mutual respect, but it is achieved only after they each go through a period of intensely distrusting the other. In the end it is Balsam’s cynical world view that the film implies is the more grounded and accurate one, though Nero’s tempering of it is offered (almost grudgingly) as the more workable option.

While Confessions of a Police Captain is a legitimately good movie (recast and Americanize it with bigger stars and I think you’d have a certified hit on your hands), Executioner 2 is very much not so, rather it is in fact a very bad movie. Presumably there was an Executioner 1, but what if any relationship it has to this film I could only guess, there is really no attempt to tie it into a pre-existing story. Nobody in this low budget film is capable of acting, I’d much rather watch Mitchell, or even Walk the Angry Beach, which at least aims for some dramatic pretense. Any attempt at forming a dramatic chore or character motivation in this film is strictly an act of going through the motions, the angry Vietnam vet vigilante (dubbed by the media ‘The Executioner’) feels that the war has not ended, “not as long as there is crime in the streets”, what this sentiment has to do with the actual Vietnam War is as mysterious as what the first Executioner movie has to do with this one. This has got to be one of the five or ten worst movies I’ve ever seen. Was that oddly accented news reporter suppose to be a riff on Barbara Walters? Police Lieutenant Roger O'Malley is played by Robert Mitchum’s son Christopher

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

Lavish technicolor fantasy spectacle taken loosely from the Arabian Nights. British film was a major success for its producer Alexander Korda (later the first filmmaker to be Knighted), and still exerts a childlike sense of wonder. The special effects where groundbreaking at the time and are still attention grabbing, my 2 year old nice stopped walking midway through the family room to stare once the genie emerged from his bottle. The movie evokes stylistically the fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen (mechanical fantasy creatures) as well as The Wizard of Oz (green skinned temple guards). Its really quite impressive how well it all works, considering it was filmed off and on over the course of roughly 2 years, was constantly being re-written, and had as many as six different directors (one of whom was Michael Powell, whose association with the film is why I chose to rent it). The Criterion Collection release boasts the enviable presence of an audio commentary by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, as well as one by film historian Bruce Eder, all three of whom have a strong affection for the film dating back to childhood. Everything its genera should be, 4 out of 5.