Truths and Half Truths

Another Saturday Night At The Movies

So, last night I rented The Ice Harvest, based once again on my trust in John Cusack's choices in terms of scripts.  It looked like a safe bet, a darkly funny film noir with Cusack and Oliver Platt, who rarely turns in anything but a great performance. Billy Bob Thornton's name on the poster didn't make my eyes light up - I find his work and his choices to be spotty at best.  But Harold Ramis was  directing - Ramis directed Groundhog Day and dozens of other marquee movies, so he's always going to be solid.  I figured it was worth the risk.

And ... I guess it was. It's one of those movies that I mostly enjoyed, but would hesitate to recommend to anyone who didn't have precisely my sense of humour and appreciation for the genre

 .Based on the novel by Scott Philips, The Ice Harvest is a comic film noir set in very cold and icy Wichita, Kansas. John Cusack is Charlie, a soft-spoken lawyer who works for local mob boss (Randy Quaid). Charlie hangs out in strip clubs, pines after femme fatale Renata (Connie Nielsen), and basically watches life happen all around him. Ready for a change, he and the much more hardened Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) steal $2.1 million from the boss and plan to play it cool before leaving town, trying not to create suspicion. All they need to do is make it through Christmas Eve--but of course Charlie spends the long night getting caught up in a series of very funny, very dangerous, and very bloody events.

Film noir is tricky stuff, I find.  Done well, it is breathtaking - the twists, the turns, the suspense, deceipt, raw sensuality, danger, and always that black, black sense of humour.  It's such a rich, structured genre - the unsympathetic loner, the femme fatale, the secrets buried in riddles wrapped in mysteries that pull all the characters along and draw the audience deeply into the story.  Body Heat, Body Double, Blood Simple, Chinatown - all of them dancing along a fine line.  One step in the wrong direction, and you slide over into camp.  A slip the other way and it's just ... well, boring.

Ramis walks that line admirably, I think - a few missteps here and there, but by and large he knows where the laughs are hidden when the lights go low.  The script is mostly solid and there are some laugh-out-loud moments (I love it when gangsters meet surprising and grisly-but-comically-ironic ends).

Oliver Platt is brilliant as a drunken pal married to Charlie's ex-wife - his performance alone is worth the price of the rental; and Connie Neilsen (who I literally could not remember from any of a half-dozen other movies I've seen he in, including Gladiator) was delightfully steamy as la femme dangereuse.  Billy Bob was ... well, Billy Bob - I don't ever see much depth or variety in how he plays characters, once you take Sling Blade out of the equation.  And Cusack was ... well, Cusack.  Puppy dog looks, sardonic grin, bafflement, self-doubt - this movie certainly played to all his strong suits.

The Ice Harvest moves towards a fairly brutal and violent ending, so be forewarned.  As I say, if you love films noirs and join me in thinking they just don't make enough of them (of any real quality), you should probably give this one a run.  If you're lukewarm on the genre, or just looking for some straight comedy, don't be fooled by the packaging - this is not a yuk-a-minute chucklefest.  (Although, that particular phrase?  Is.)

Three Movies

I don't go to the movies much. 

Every now and again, my girls collar me and drag me to some girlie flick with them, but by and large, I'm not big on the theatre experience.  Too many people, and too large a percentage of them are ignorant and unresponsive to even the acid bath that is my "Shut the Fuck Up" look.  I also don't like being charged $3 for a SMALL Diet Coke, the sticky floors (I know, I know, could be worse, ever been in a porn theatre?), and the fact I have to rely on somebody else to set the volume controls.

I have a big TV and a DVD player and patience.  So I rent a lot of movies.  In fact, the revolving clerks at my video store are always impressed that I can reel off my seven-digit membership number.  (I say "Look in the top right corner of the screen, where it has "Number of total movies rented".  They go "Holy shit."  Because it would be rude to say "Do you have no life?")

When you see as many movies as I do, you're always on the lookout for some gems.  I've given up relying on movie trailers to offer me a sense of what I'll be seeing ever since the trailer for "Throw Momma From the Train" promised the funniest movie experience of our or anybody else's lifetime, and it turned out that all three jokes in the movie were crammed into the 30 second clip.  I don't have any reviewers with whom I consistently agree.  Ebert and Whoever give it Two Thumbs Up?  Yeah, they did that for some real crap, too.

Sometimes - not always, but sometimes - I'll listen to my kids about movies they've seen.  And sometimes they'll rave about a movie and I'll agree, and other times I'll get home, slap it into the DVD player and a half hour into the flick, I'll think "Did that child really spring from my loins or was she switched in the nursery from some other infant with no sense of humour?"

It's odd, isn't it?  I can like a person - even love a person.  I can see eye to eye with him or her on 95% of any topic we choose.  I can rely on their judgement with life decisions, fashion, music, cooking, gardening, anything.  But then I bring home a movie that he or she has  adored and think, "I don't know this person at all."

And later they'll see me and say "So?  Didn't you love it?  Wasn't it great when the elephant started to goose the fat lady and she turned around and punched it and it fell down and squashed the cat?"  And I'm thinking "Keep the smile on.  Don't let her know that was the one part of the movie you were hoping they'd apologize sheepishly for, and that now you're pretty sure she's either a racist or an advocate of cruelty to animals or she just didn't understand what she was watching."  And you have to re-think your whole opinion of that person.

So I was hesitant when my friend Laura recommended "The Family Stone" to me.  What if I hated it, thought it was moronic or badly written or boring or banal and predictable or just plain offensive?  Would I have to re-think my opinion of her?  Was a five-dollar rental enough to risk a decade-long friendship over?  Well, evidently it was, because I did rent it.

I loved it.

I was actually a bit surprised in watching it, because Laura's recommendation had been fairly vague - "It's the kind of movie I think you'd love" - and she knows my tastes run to romantic comedies.  And that's what the packaging on the box promised - a comedy about relationships and love and family and life.  Perfect.

But in the end, I don't know that I'd call it a "comedy" - at least, not primarily.  There are some chuckles, some cute moments, some moments that even caught me by surprise and made me laugh out loud - something I rarely do at home in front of the TV.  But on the whole, I'd call this a very well crafted relationship drama about a large, rollicking, extended family who get together for Christmas.  This year, they get to meet the severe, mildly distasteful, very different girlfriend brought home by the favoured eldest son.  And she gets to experience the joy of not being instantly accepted by a tightly knit family.

This movie is well-crafted in every sense.  The writing is crisp and believeable; people actually say whay they would say, instead of what a screenwriter would have them say, if that makes any sense.  The cast (including Sarah Jessica Parker and Diane Keaton, two actors I am pretty ambivalent about) is uniformly wonderful with not a weak performance to be found, and the direction moves the story beautifully along.  There are some lovely non-verbal moments - moments that will warm your heart and make you seep tears.  It's an emotional movie in the very best sense of the word.  I echo Laura's recommendation.  So, two thumbs way up.

I rented "Must Love Dogs" because I've learned to trust John Cusack's choices in scripts.  If he's involved, I'm pretty sure I'll like the writing.  And this one had a bonus - Diane Lane, who I think is not only drop dead gorgeous (her kind of beauty just weakens me), but is also an amazing actress who is not in nearly enough movies.

It was a lovely romantic comedy - not, perhaps, an enduring classic but one that was thoroughly entertaining from the start to the end.  It's about the pitfalls of re-entering the dating world - including some hilarious dates gone bad - and it's about finding and pursuing something that you can't deny is just ... right.  I loved it.

And finally, last night I watched "North Country" with Charlize Theron starring in a story inspired by true events in the Minnesota mining industry.  In the mid-1980s, women were finally employed by the mines, only to go through harrowing  abuse and horribly aggressive sexual harrassment.  This is the story of a woman who decides to fight it, stands up to a thousand men and a hostile corporation, and who won the first ever class action sexual harrassment lawsuit.

Charlize Theron can act the hell out of anything, and here she's joined by Frances McDormand (one of the great actors of our time, and consistently underrated, says me) and another fine cast.  It was sometimes disturbing to watch, especially if you remember the time as being fun and carefree, and then think that while you were enjoying life, people were doing such awful things to one another, and not a million miles away in some foreign country but right in our own back yard.

It's inspiring and uplifting, has a burst-your-heart final scene, and turned out to be another great evening in front of a roaring television set.

Oh, and did I mention that there's this scene where an elephant ...

In Which My Chicks Take Me To A Flick

With their mother away on a week-long business trip, my daughters decided to take me to the movies tonight.  There was only one hitch:  I didn't get to pick the movie.

I approached the night with some trepidation, because my girls often go to the movies together - both boyfriends work some weekend nights - and their range of movie selections skews heavily toward the White Oleander/The Notebook/Fried Green Tomatoes/Beaches end of the spectrum.  In other words, this had potential to be an estro-fest, a total chick flick, and if I wanted to go with them, I was just going to have to grit my teeth and adopt the same kind of attitude that gets me through those trips to the drug store to buy paper goods.

Well, fine.  I love their company, and what else would I be doing anyway, so I went along.  The movie:  Stick It.  It's the story of a teenage girl, a rock n rollin' rebel who is forced to return to the intense, disciplined world of competitive gymnastics she had quit two years earlier. 

Mini Rant:  The world of competitive gymnastics (like the world of figure skating) generally creeps me out.  My girls were never encouraged to take part in gymnastics because it is run by a money-hungry machine that tends to feast on the broken dreams of pushy stage parents.  It devours prepubescent children, physically abuses them, and spits them out the other end with underdeveloped social skills, psychological issues, and permanent, sometimes debilitating injuries.  Other than that, of course, it's a great sport.

So I did not go in predisposed to appreciate this movie.  I kinda rolled my eyes and thought "What the hell ... I'm with my girls, it's two hours I didn't have plans for, and worst case I can nod off in the dark."

I don't know when I've enjoyed a movie more in the past couple of years.

I'm not saying this is The Godfather or Casablanca or that it will be prominently mentioned for the Oscars or the Golden Globes.  But dammit, it was a good story, well told, with engaging performances, a strong point of view, and a moral compass without being old-fashioned or preachy. 

It had some moments where you laughed with glee as these kids stuck it to The Man, some brilliant cinematography, and some real, honest-to-God surprises and twists.  The characters - in fact, the entire package -  intitially felt cliched, but layer was quickly added upon layer and by the midway point all the characters were rich and distinct and fresh and well developed and the story was carrying everything along effortlessly and without the whole "Oh, and of course, here's the part where this always happens in these movies  ..." predictablilty.

When i saw Jeff Bridges' name in the opening credits, I assumed he was slumming and had taken a part just for the money.  I'm pretty sure now he read the script, liked it,  and saw it had potential to be the kind of quality project he's usually associated with.

I'd give it 4 1/2 out of 5 Stars.  It's a terrific, fun, night at the movies. If you have teeange girls, this is a great movie to take them to, if only to keep them away from Tom Cruise movies.  This is empowering for girls, a lot of laughs for everybody, and Scientology-free.

And gymnasts (at least, the adult ones in this movie)?  Not hard on the eyes.  Just sayin'.