lust, caution

I don't like to read reviews in detail before I go see a movie, but often I want to find out if it's worth the time and the $8.50. That's where Rotten Tomatoes (which I've added to my pull down list of search engines) comes in handy. You can get a quick sense of the 'thumbs up' to 'thumbs down' ratio of a film reflected in links to dozens of reviews. Scanning the headers is a great way to get a spoiler-free review. You'll get a quick summary of the film's strength or weakness without getting too much information.

I think it was on Rotten Tomatoes that I read that Lust, Caution was a lesser Ang Lee movie, but that even a lesser Ang Lee movie was well worth the watch. I agree.

One has to respect a movie that slowly and carefully tells a richly crafted but simple story. Even in the absence of any voice-over, the viewer strongly feels the presence of the outside narrator telling the tale. The success of simple tales often depend on how well they convey the universality of the human experience they depict. The sadness of death; the joy of falling in love, etc. A movie that purports to be about passion must skillfully provide a "shortcut" of sorts that tricks us into feeling that strong emotions are warranted -- even though we may have only met the character 10 minutes earlier. Lust, Caution made me think alot, but it did not make me feel enough. The title makes me think that shortcoming was intentional, but I think the movie would have been stronger with more heart and less head.

Documentaries on Isolation

Wow, 4 movies in one week. Into the Wild confirms yet again that Sean Penn is one of Hollywood's most gifted actor and director. The casting on that movie was sooo good. Scenes with Hal Holbrook made me cry. Rainey, the old hippie was initially on the set as a river rafting consultant. He and Sean hit it off and Sean offered him a major part. He never acted before but he was great. Sean also wrote the the screenplay. Such an intense man -- no wonder he smokes 4 packs of cigarettes a day.

Every year I always attend at least one film from the Northampton Independent Film Festival. Sunday's Dhamma Brothers was perhaps one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. The film was about bringing the 10-day Vipassana Insight Meditation course into an Alabama prison and how it transformed some of the most violent prisoners within that system. It was so well done -- showing not only the effect of this intense training on the men, but also the respect they earned from the prison staff. The in-depth profiles of some of the prisoners invoked deep emphathy for these warehoused humans, many who committed horrific acts they took full ownership for. Having sat for 10 days twice (ten years apart) I am in awe that these men were able to embrace this discipline so fully, maintaining their practice for years (even after they were forbidden to do so by the chaplains who feared the effect of Buddhism on their flock).

51 Birch Street

This rich documentary is about so many things: judgment, marriage, siblings, fathers and sons, aging and death. Initially intended just to capture footage of aging parents, 51 Birch Street became much more than a family movie when director Doug Block's mother died unexpectedly and his father almost immediately remarried his secretary with whom he worked 40 years earlier. In the course of helping his father pack up the house for an impending move to Florida, boxes of his mother's diaries are uncovered and their content completely re-writes the history of his parents' 54-year marriage.

I watched it twice. Fascinating to see how easy it is to judge when you don't have all the information. And so moving to understand the capacity of humans to change -- even after 50+ years.

Make sure to watch the bonus features on the DVD -- particularly the deleted scenes and award ceremony. The website, 51birchstreet.com, is also worth checking out for its stories that other people share about their parents, tips on capturing your family for posterity, and rules on documentary-making.

The best thing about Fall

Forget the foliage. The best thing about autumn is that I no longer have to suffer through those abominable summer blockbusters. And the reward always justifies the wait. The only downside is that I almost feel compelled to gorge myself, watching 2, or even 3 movies, each week in order not to miss seeing the year's best movies on the big screen.

Gone Baby Gone, although spotty in terms of story line, was one of the only movies since Good Will Hunting to feature Boston accents that didn't make me wince. How is it that actors can miraculously eradicate all trace of an Australian accent but almost no can really nail down that awful, harsh massacring of the English language you hear in Boston (and Rhode Island). It's so distracting to watch an otherwise great movie if you have to listen to someone deliver a bad accent badly. So it was extremely pleasing to watch Amy Ryan who apparently blew director Ben Affleck's socks off. He said she is the only actor not from Boston ever to convince him that she could be. Her entire performance as a Dorchester trailer trash equivalent was so gratingly authentic that I wanted to hit her -- and it made me grateful that I no longer lived in that town (which really did get on my very last nerve virtually every day I lived there).

I'm not familiar with much of Ms. Ryan's prior work which is mostly TV. (We don't get cable in these parts and even if we did, we wouldn't subscribe since there's not much worth watching that you cant get on Netflix.) She does play McNulty's girlfriend on The Wire, though. One of the best TV series available on Netflix (with an unbelievable and well-deserved IMDB user rating of 9.7 out of 10) -- but that's a posting for another day.