Tron: Legacy (2010)

I wanted to make sure and see Tron: Legacy in 3D for two reasons: 1) The opportunity to fully immerse myself in cinemas original digital reality, and 2) its the closest physical proximity I suspect I'll ever be able to get to Olivia Wilde. A kind of loose sequel to 1982's Tron (one of the few films that can honestly be called revolutionary), this movie feels like its got a few kinks in the screenplay that were never quite worked out, but was mostly quite satisfying, especially visually. I was impressed with how nostalgic it was, with a pinning for the pioneering 1980's video gaming of the arcade school, Michael Sheen's David Bowie/Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange impression, and Olivia Wilde totally pulling off the Louise Brooks look. The refined version of the visual look of the first film felt right, its decent enough action sequences and surprisingly good quieter moments all combined well. Seeing Jeff Bridges and (to a lesser extent screen-time wise) Bruce Boxleitner looking like they did thirty years ago was a treat, though admittedly the technology for that effect is not quite perfected yet, but its certainly getting there. Just a fun trip to the movies for me, 4 out of 5.

The Conversation (1974)

This actually works well as a companion piece to Crimes and Misdemeanors, as both have to do with the limits of personal ethics and conscience. Gene Hackman plays a very successful professional surveillance or wiretap expert who might be developing a conscience do in part to the new assignment he's undertaken, one which he only partly understands. Interesting examination of paranoia it takes us into the weird seldom explored world of the surveillance industry, that convention sequence is just so strange, it reminded me a bit of the sequence in the 2nd season of Mad Men at the Aerospace conference with the guy giving the presentation on nuclear war and all the attendees just treating it as though it were a presentation about milk to water ratios in chess slices. This is an interesting, rather low key work, great character piece for Hackman. 4 out of 5.

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

At one point in this film a character who is a successful television producer (Alan Alda) comments that while he never graduated college that Columbia university offers a course on the existential themes in his sitcoms. I don't know if Woody Allen graduated college or not but certainly his works are full of existential themes warranting at least a semesters worth of credits. Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of the directors more up front philosophical meditations, two seemingly unrelated but oddly parallel stories about men confronting the boundaries of there personal ethics offer commentary on personal morality and the question of God. Martin Landau is a successful ophthalmologist whose increasingly unstable mistress threatens to go public with their relationship, while Woody Allen is an unhappily married small time documentary filmmaker put in the unwanted position of making a film for PBS about his shallow television producer brother-in-law (Alan Alda). The film serves up the atheistic, largely amoral Woody Allen view of the universe a little heavily for some viewers tastes, but I think it treats the questions with due respect, or at least the extent to which that can be offered by someone pretty well convinced he knows how the universe works. I really liked the emphasis on grown up sibling relationships in this film, you don't see that as much as you could. The rabbi who's slowly going blind offers an interesting further commentary on the proceedings, and one I felt was welcomly sympathetic to the character. 4 1/2 out of 5.

The Larry Sanders Show: Season 1 (1992)

Basically its a sitcom about a late night talk show, set both in front and behind the camera. Hailed for its innovation during its six season HBO run, it now feels a little stale. I liked it okay, especially early on, but then the program started feeling weaker and more repetitive, much like most actual late night talk shows. Some times it works, some times it doesn't. I'm middling to this one, I may or may not watch more. Hey Now!

The Upturned Glass (1947)

Surprisingly good hitchcockian thriller concerns a doctor (James Mason) who falls in love with the mother of one of his patients, they have a brief affair and shortly after its over she winds up dead from what appears to be either a suicide or an accidental fall. The doctor suspects it was murder and launches his own investigation eventually centering on his late lovers sister-in-law whom he plans on killing in revenge. Film is solid throughout but runs about an act longer then I had expected, it is in this act that the film takes on a truly memorable character and proves it has a psychological sophistication you might not expect in a movie of its time. A sadly obscure film, but well worth finding. 4 out of 5.

The Phantom Light (1935)

Scooby-Doo type mystery concerning a Welsh lighthouse. Doesn't entirely work, in fact its kind of bad at points with confused story and characters, but it grows on you. Some beautiful shots of rough Welsh scenery at the beginning. C-

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

Loosely adapted from the Milan Kundera novel of the same name, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a very sexual film. I wanted to get the sex stuff out of the way early, it is shall we say very European and surprisingly explicit in its approach to this topic. While I don't mind what I'd call a 'moderate' depiction of sex in a movie, I get kind of uncomfortable if there's a lot of it. I considered turning this movie off, Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) the films primary or hub character (meaning he links most of the central players together, though others get about the same amount of screen time) is a skilled surgeon living in late 1960's Czechoslovakia, he's an intelligent, very literate man, doesn't care much about politics, enjoys sleeping around with multiple women (notably Lena Olin), and doesn't seem all that conflicted about it. While visiting a small country town to preform an operation he meets a young women (a lovely, young, rather Audry Tautou like Juliette Binoche), they begin a relationship and eventually marry. Tomas of course still sleeps around, he trys to explain to his wife that its just sex, and though this is not satisfying to her they still try and make it work. Soviet tanks rolling into Prague in the late summer of 1968, clamping down on a liberalizing socialist government Russia fears has moved to far afield, of course changes some things. Tomas and Tereza participate in demonstrations against the occupation, try a brief exile in Switzerland, then move back to their homeland, but because Tomas won't sign a letter renouncing an article he had written critical of the Soviet Union he is reduced to working as a window cleaner while in the city, so the couple move to the country to work on the farm of a mutual friend. It's scope, deep and complicated characters, seemingly meandering story structure, political and existential wondering, as well as its eastern European setting put one in mind of a Russian novel (though writer Kundera was of course Czech). I've become increasingly fascinated with characters who grow but don't change, or change but don't grow, or however you'd word it. The characters in this film progress, but they don't really change who they are, if that makes any sense. Anyway I think this move was done just about perfect, leaving an artful ambiguity that I wouldn't want to have explained away. 5 stars.

True Grit (2010)

If you told me that they are remaking the classic 1969 John Wayne movie True Grit my first response would be "why?" But if you then told me that it was to be 'a Coen brothers western', my second response would be "okay, that's a good reason." Apparently this movie is said to be more true to the source material (a 1968 novel) then was the John Wayne movie, but the main point is that its a 'Coen brothers western', and that's what I went to see, and I was satisfied if not floored. I liked this movie, it seemed for lack of a better word more 'authentic' then the original film, and I just loved the dialogue. Though I can't really say that either film version of this story was better then the other, just two different takes, though the Coen brothers version adds a nice little coda to the end that I appreciated. Honestly you should see both movies, I can't think of a lot of re-made material that you can say that about. B+