Monday at the Movies - December 31, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Five of “Monday at the Movies,” the final installment for 2012 (and, I think, also the final numbered installment).  We close the year with another arbitrary theme, movies that start with the word “The.”

The Debt (2011) – The Debt barely got any play when it came out under the radar last year, which is both a surprise and a shame, because there’s enough A-list material here – done successfully, to boot – to entertain most audiences.  Parallel narratives reveal what really happened when three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas) pursued a fugitive Nazi official (Jesper Christensen) and how the experience affected them later in life.  The older agents are portrayed by “big names” – Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson – all of whom turn in their usual exceptional work; Mirren and Wilkinson find themselves at moral odds over the truth of their experience, with Wilkinson’s determination matching Mirren’s internal and external scars.  But it’s Chastain who gives the best performance; granted, she gets the lion’s share of the film as the younger Rachel, but her work in The Debt proves why she’s a rising star in Hollywood.  She is tough and vulnerable, holding her own against Christensen’s Dr. Vogel (who’s the smarmiest Nazi this side of Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List) as a proper action heroine while also allowing the audience to see just how traumatic her encounter is.  It’s an interesting companion piece to Munich, but director John Madden wisely avoids the preachy moralizing Spielberg deployed in his 2005 Mossad movie (which, coincidentally, also co-starred Hinds).  It’s hard to believe this is the same director behind Shakespeare in Love and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, since The Debt is more intense and more severely compelling than those two (not to denigrate either, of course), smartly playing on the relationship of past to present while brilliantly leading the audience to several premature conclusions.  In short, The Debt is overwhelmingly underrated.

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) – After 12 Angry Men, I’ll follow Henry Fonda into any movie, particularly with the expectation that he’ll be playing a character of similar moral fiber (Juror #8 is, after all, one of cinema’s best good guys) – even if I’m not the world’s biggest devotee of westerns.  The Ox-Bow Incident, regarded as a classic, stars Fonda as a drifter suspected of rustling before he gets enfolded into a lynch mob in pursuit of a trio of suspected murderers.  The “plausible doubt” element (familiar to us 12 Angry Men fans) is of course the central conceit of the film, as is an interrogation of the validity of vigilante justice (familiar to us Batman fans).  My father rightly pointed out that the film feels a bit like a Twilight Zone episode, and I think he’s onto something; the film is sans the supernatural, but it includes the morality play aspect and the simplistic cinematography, as well as the cast of character actors in smaller roles.  What’s disappointing is that the film feels a bit like a 22-minute story stretched into 75 minutes, repetitive at times and unfulfilling in others (as in a hasty subplot involving Fonda’s sweetheart).  Perhaps worse, Fonda is criminally underused, likely due to the size of the large supporting cast.  It’s not that the movie is bad – it just isn’t great.  And it suffers by the unfair comparison to 12 Angry Men (which I contend is a perfect film) that I held in my head the whole time I was watching The Ox-Bow Incident.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Happy New Year, loyal readers! 

Django Unchained (2012)

It’s all been building to this:  I’ve spent the last few months revisiting the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino here at The Cinema King, all in preparation for Django Unchained – Tarantino’s eighth directorial feature.  Django Unchained is, at worst, an odd film; at best, it’s another wickedly entertaining entry from one of this generation’s most vivid and unique filmmakers.

Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx as the eponymous freeman, liberated from slavery in order to assist the theatrical bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) in tracking his prey.  Django and Schultz make a deal:  if Django helps Schultz track the nefarious Brittle Brothers, Schultz will help Django free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a promise which leads the pair to the plantation of Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).  At Candieland, Django and Schultz pretend they are shopping for slaves, though Candie’s house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson, by way of Uncle Ben) suspects the pair are being less than honest.

In many ways, Django is a kind of departure for Tarantino.  For one, the film isn’t littered with blood and guts like some of his earlier works, though there’s still enough of the old ultra-violence (especially at the end) to interest even Alex DeLarge.  Moreover, the film is told in a straightforward linear fashion, without the temporal hijinks we’ve come to expect since Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill.  Finally, and possibly most surprisingly, Django is the first Tarantino film to deal with “serious” issues like slavery instead of stopping short at visceral themes like revenge (an overarching theme, though, of all Tarantino films).

All of this, however, is to say what the film doesn’t do.  What the film does do is provide a snappy and engaging romp through a dark chapter in American history, a kind of Gone With the Wind for our generation.  As with Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino explodes his setting, touring the entirety of the antebellum South (circa 1858) with Foxx and Waltz as our tour guides.  Django is a “spaghetti southern” in this regard, as we follow two eclectic protagonists on a deeply personal quest through a perilous landscape.

Of these two protagonists, Waltz is (perhaps unexpectedly) the far more compelling.  Foxx is serviceable as Django; his determination to save his wife is tangible, but his deeper personality is never really accessible (a subplot about his humanity ebbing while he impersonates a black slaver, for example, never really pans out).  As Schultz, though, Waltz steals the show with his garrulous and gregarious performance; much as he did as Hans Landa in Basterds, Waltz brings this character to explosive life, deftly handling Tarantino’s tricky dialogue and humanizing Schultz’s contempt for the institution of slavery in the way that I wanted to see done in Lincoln.  (In this respect, then, Django is more honest with its audience than Lincoln was – a sentence I never thought I’d write!)

The third trademark of a Tarantino film, aside from extreme violence and peppy prose, is a solid supporting cast.  And in this Django does not disappoint.  We’ve got the “unlikely choice” – Don Johnson as a slaveowner a la Colonel Sanders.  We’ve got the “big name” – DiCaprio, who drips detestability as the film’s ostensible antagonist.  Though his Southern accent seems a garish caricature, I suspect that’s the point; Tarantino villains are seldom subtle, and the broad strokes surrounding Calvin J. Candie make it all the easier for us to hate him.  Finally, there’s the “veteran collaborator” – Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen.  If Waltz steals the show from Foxx, Jackson steals it right back in the film’s third act, making Stephen a nuanced menace somewhere between Stepin Fetchit and Darth Vader.  The gross stereotyping in his early scenes may elicit laughs, but those laughs quickly give way to fear when we see the true cruel danger he poses.  Jackson handles both aspects well and doesn’t forget to chew the scenery along the way.

Indeed, Foxx aside, most of the players in the film seem to be having a great deal of fun with the picture, which helps the audience have fun, too.  Django is probably not the “important film” Tarantino hoped it would be by tackling such a weighty issue as slavery, but it does so in a mature way without preaching a sermon the audience already believes.  Instead, Tarantino tries to have some fun with the material, and the film he’s created steps far enough out of the boundaries of realism that the audience can have an uncomplicatedly good time.

Django Unchained is rated R “for strong graphic violence throughout, a vicious fight, language and some nudity.”  There are several cartoonishly bloody shootouts, a scene of two slaves being forced to fight to the death, F-bombs and N-words galore, and two fleeting glimpses of naked slaves being tortured.

Jack Reacher (2012)

Somewhere in the aftermath of the infamous couchjump heard round the world, Tom Cruise became a bankable performer with a penchant for entertaining action flicks.  Jack Reacher is the latest in a set of diverting pictures, even if it’s not the most inventive movie you’ll see this month.

Cruise is the titular protagonist, an army cop turned drifter who lives off the grid in order to cherish fully the freedom for which he and his comrades have fought.  After an army sniper is arrested for the killing of five civilians, Reacher comes to Pittsburgh to close an old case and accepts the offer of attorney Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike) to investigate further before running afoul of a criminal enterprise run by the weary survivalist “The Zec” (Werner Herzog).

Christopher McQuarrie pulls double duty as screenwriter (adapting from the Lee Child novels) and director, and it’s apparent that he’s the same man who brought us the script for The Usual Suspects.  Jack Reacher is similarly structured, with small moments (like bullets falling on the floormat of a car) repeated and explained later.  But unlike Suspects, Jack Reacher doesn’t rely on a last-minute game-changing gimmick, opting instead for a more straightforward approach that lets us discover the clues just a few seconds after Reacher does.  The dialogue is snappy, with Reacher rattling off one-liners like an American James Bond.

The plot turns on Reacher’s observations, including a few deductions that might impress even old Sherlock.  And Cruise does a good job as the passive action hero, without much of a personality but with enough natural charisma to carry off the script’s cleverer lines.  Cruise manages to make Reacher an engaging figure without sacrificing the enigma that otherwise makes his character a cipher.

Herzog is a particularly great choice for a villain, with his hoarse whispers conveying menace and malice tempered by his overwhelming ennui.  When The Zec retells his backstory, Herzog’s droll delivery imbues the dialogue with subtle terror that most other character actors would have overplayed or at best managed unsuccessfully.  Pike, though, is unfortunately interchangeable with most other actresses, serving as a generic sounding-board against which Reacher can be exceptionally bright.  Her chemistry with Richard Jenkins, who plays her father, is a success, but she doesn’t do much in the film until she’s cast in the damsel-in-distress role – a shame, since Pike seems to be just shy of the A-list.

In the third act, though, a near-cameo from Robert Duvall proves always welcome.  Playing a grizzly ex-Marine, Duvall is a good combination of “familiar face” with “begrudging sidekick,” turning an action movie trope into a reunion with an old favorite.

Jack Reacher isn’t fantastically inventive, its rejection of flashy stunts and show-off writing meaning it probably won’t be overly memorable in a few months.  This is no Mission Impossible, for example, where the only person smarter than the main character is the screenwriter, who can’t help but show off cleverness.  What saves the film from obscurity, though, is the smart script paired with Cruise’s performance as the hero. 

Jack Reacher is clearly the start of a prospective franchise, to which I say – more of this clever writing done without bombast is welcome.  Jack Reacher is, like Taken, a film that chooses to do well rather than to do flamboyant; if you want flash, stay home, but if you want a no-frills cerebral action film, reach for Reacher.

Jack Reacher is rated PG-13 “for violence, language and some drug material.”  There are several fight scenes and shootings; most are bloodless but still moderately intense.  There’s an F-bomb or two, a few scenes set in a bar, and a mention of cocaine.

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #2-1!

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#2 – It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
I can’t be faulted for including at least one “traditional” Christmas movie on the list, can I?  Any Frank Capra movie is worth watching any day of the week, and It’s a Wonderful Life has become such a Christmas staple that it’s part of all our traditions.  True, its status as a mainstay on network television was due initially to a lapsed copyright, but after that copyright was reinstated the film remained part of our holiday tradition.  There’s no substitute for Jimmy Stewart’s earnestly heartfelt sincerity and the nostalgic simplicity of Capra’s world, and the truest testament to this film’s lasting success is its cultural ubiquity.  Everyone from Batman to J. R. Ewing has wondered if life would be better without them, and there’s always been a Clarence-esque figure to show them just what an awful hole is left when someone isn’t around.  Though the film may be naïve, it’s difficult to say that it isn’t compelling.

#1 – Stalag 17 (1953)
Anyone who knows me has heard me say these words:  “Stalag 17 is a perfect movie.”  And it is!  William Holden stars as Sefton in Billy Wilder’s adaptation of the stage play about a German POW camp where one of the Americans is a stoolie – and it’s up to Sefton to find out who it is, since the other prisoners have him pegged as the guilty party.  Best of all, it’s a holiday treat since the film takes place right around Christmastime 1944; the Americans throw themselves a Christmas party replete with musical accompaniment and Betty Grable by way of a straw wig.  And when Sefton finds out who the rat is, he does so as his compatriots sing “O Come All Ye Faithful” in a perfect use of visual language (which we know is my favorite facet of filmmaking).  It’s an underappreciated gem, but Stalag 17 has everything a great film needs – it’s intense, it’s mysterious, it’s funny, and it’s touching without being saccharine – and it qualifies for this list, to boot!

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #4-3

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#4 – The Godfather (1972)
Honestly, The Godfather belongs on any Top 10 list this side of Hollywood, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it landed here.  When I reviewed it back in April, I couldn’t say enough nice things about it, and my most recent rewatch reminded me just how perfect this film is.  So it meets the year-round requirement, because there’s honestly never a day that I wouldn’t watch this movie if I had the three hours to spare.  But what makes this movie seasonally appealing is that the end of the first act is set during the holiday seasons, a detail most might not remember.  To be fair, there’s so much about this film that’s unforgettable, and Christmas is perhaps a small detail on which to fixate.  But when the Don is shot by Sollozzo’s goons, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) is out Christmas shopping, Michael (Al Pacino) is at a holiday matinee with his girl Kay (Diane Keaton), and snow falls amid the Christmas lights adorning the hospital where the Don lays in state.  Although Sollozzo is insincere when he bids Tom “Merry Christmas!” the cheer the film brings is a fine fit for the festive season.

#3 – The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Tim Burton for the hat-trick!  Though he didn’t direct The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick did), his influence as producer and story-writer is acutely felt in this holiday double-dipper, suitable for Halloween and for Christmas.  Be honest, you already know all the lines by heart, and there’s a little part of you that can’t help but sing “What’s This?” every time you see the first snowfall of the season (which, up in my neck of the woods, still has yet to be).  As the spooky setting of Halloween Town gives way to the cheery bliss of Christmas Town, share in the sense of magic and wonder as Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman) rediscovers all that is charming about the December holiday.  Even though the residents of Halloween Town (spoilers?) get it wrong in the end, the spirit of Christmas – embodied by Santa Claus – reminds them that their hearts were in the right place, and the sweetness of the film is matched only by its infectious enthusiasm for its own unique concept.

Come back tomorrow for the epic conclusion:  Movies #2-1!  Place your bets now, ladies and gentlemen...

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #6-5

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#6 – Batman Returns (1992)
Come on, you’re reading The Cinema King – you had to expect Batman at some point on this list.  I’ve commented elsewhere that Batman stories and Christmas go together like gingerbread cookies and eggnog, and Tim Burton’s second outing as the Bat-director plays that card to the hilt.  Burton’s Gotham remains gothic under a blanket of snow and all the tinsel of a major metropolis decked-out for the holidays.  Michael Keaton is back as Bruce Wayne; Batman’s enemies here are The Penguin and Catwoman, with Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer turning in iconic performances.  It’s never a bad time to watch a Batman film, and Batman Returns is one of the better Bat-movies – even if it’s more a Tim Burton movie where Batman plays a supporting role to a literal traveling carnival of freaks.  But watching Batman defend the lighting of Gotham’s Christmas tree ought to give anyone a dose of holiday cheer.

#5 – Die Hard (1988)
In many ways, Die Hard is a de facto choice for any tongue-in-cheek list of Christmas movies.  It’s so far from most films classically considered to be Christmas movies; it’s clearly a late-80s action movie starring Bruce Willis as the yippee-ki-yaying cop John McClane.  But there’s an element overlooked by most, what those in the know remember about this movie once December rolls around:  that office party that Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his gang raid?  It’s a Christmas Eve soiree, which accounts for how every cop in New York can surround the skyscraper when the heist goes down.  Add in John McClane’s classic “Ho Ho Ho” message he scrawls on the body of a thug wearing a Santa hat – you can bet that wasn’t on Gruber’s Christmas list.  At its core, though, Die Hard is just a great bit of fun, filled with classic action, clever dialogue, and enough Yuletide cheer to make even the grouchiest Grinch a little peppier.

Come back tomorrow for #4-3!

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #8-7

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#8 – Edward Scissorhands (1990) 
Tim Burton’s fourth film is a solid choice for Christmas and a bit of a gimme for this list, but it’s one that doesn’t insist upon itself as a holiday film because of the absence of snow.  Ever the imaginative one, Burton sets the film in snowless suburbia, letting the spirit of the story take center stage.  And what a sweet story it is, a contemporary fairy tale with that Burton edge; Johnny Depp is iconic as the titular silent protagonist, nonthreatening despite his bladed fingers.  His romance with Winona Ryder covers the sentimental requirement, and Burton’s trademark sly sarcasm toward the cookie-cutter neighborhood makes this a year-round treat.  But lest you forget why Edward Scissorhands makes this list, keep your eyes peeled for the ubiquitous Christmas lights and reindeer decorations, and the fabulist explication for why it snows during the frame story is as touching as they come.

#7 – Goodfellas (1990) 
I’ve already lavished praise on this film, one of Martin Scorsese’s gangster epics and quite possibly one of the greatest films of all time.  It’s sharp, it’s witty, it’s thrilling, and it’s downright entertaining, cementing Robert De Niro’s reputation and forging one for Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci.  But what’s it doing on a Christmas list?  It’s not exactly a festive film, what with the strong bloody violence and general criminality.  After the film’s major “Lufthansa heist” segment, in which the mobsters successfully pull off the score of their lifetime, they celebrate with – what else? – an office Christmas party, all set to The Ronettes’ “Frosty the Snowman.”  Though the décor is festive, the demeanor of Jimmy Conway (De Niro) is anything but; in fact, he’s downright Grinchy as he demands that his goons take back the mink coats and Cadillacs they’ve bought with their share of the loot.  You could even argue that this Christmas scene is the pivotal turning point of the film, for when the soundtrack shifts to Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” you know that scowl on Jimmy’s face bodes ill for his little elves.

Come back tomorrow for #6-5!

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #10-9

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#10 – Love Actually (2003)
While I confess I’ve only seen this movie once, about five years ago, I can safely say that not a Christmas goes by that I don’t think about Love Actually.  It’s probably because of the sweet-as-sugar finale in which Liam Neeson’s son gets to perform “All I Want for Christmas Is You” onstage with the lady of his affections.  But the holiday spirit is in the air throughout this movie, which has one of the best ensemble British casts this side of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  You’ve got Alan Rickman unsuccessfully navigating office politics vis-à-vis Christmas gifts, a snowy evening in which Andrew Lincoln uses cue cards to profess his love for Keira Knightley, and Rowan Atkinson as the walking embodiment of the Christmas spirit.  Then of course there’s Bill Nighy, whose turn as an aging pop star gives some of the best laughs of the film, especially as he tries to shoehorn Christmas into The Troggs’ “Love Is All Around” before attending Elton John’s holiday party.  It’s a year-round affair for how romantic it is, but it’s especially Christmas-worthy.

 #9 – Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
You can’t go wrong with Robert Downey, Jr., especially if he’s dodging snowfall and self-absorbed supermodels with reindeer antler headbands in a hardboiled detective film that allows him the freedom to run wild at his most antic.  This is a fantastic if underappreciated movie that pairs RDJ with Val Kilmer, who plays an irrepressible private investigator named Gay Perry.  The script and direction by Shane Black are both smart, and holiday film fans are in for a treat when they see how irreverent it is, quite unlike any other Christmas film.  For example, the film begins with RDJ acquiring Christmas gifts for his son – the catch is, he’s shoplifting them.  You won’t see that on TCM this year.  The clearest indicator of the film’s Christmas setting, though, is the Santa Claus costume worn by Harmony Lane (played by Michelle Monaghan) in several key scenes, including one where a seduction attempt goes awry when RDJ deduces a key clue.  I highly recommend Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, even if there’s no mistletoe over your television.

Come back tomorrow for #8-7!

Monday at the Movies - December 10, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Four of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, we’ll take a look at a few films that grapple with mental illness – perfect timing for those of us enduring the slings and arrows of finals week.

American Psycho (2000) – Either this movie is more fun than it ought to be, or there’s something seriously wrong with me.  Before he was Batman, Christian Bale was Patrick Bateman, yuppie investment banker by day and vicious serial killer by night.  Mary Harron’s infinitesimally gentler adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s downright brutal novel is, simply put, a hoot.  Bateman is insane, no question, and his deeds are despicable, but Bale’s trademark fascinating immersion in the role is riotous to watch, vacillating wildly between pent-up emotionlessness and manic indulgence in his homicidal tendencies.  And as a social satire of 1980s New York, American Psycho is positively brilliant, exposing the excesses and pettiness of such a superficial society without moralizing.  Instead of preaching, the film makes its satire entertaining by encouraging us to laugh at it; the deadpan seriousness with which Bateman examines a business card belies both his internalized rage and the ludicrous attention given to such minutiae.  The standout feature of this film is its ambiguity, which enchants rather than maddens the viewer; a mesmerizing interrogation scene with Willem Dafoe forces the viewer to question who knows what, an uncertainty played to the hilt by Dafoe in three different takes.  By the end, the film pays off on its repetition of the trope of mistaken identity, asking us whether any of these people really “exist” in a tangible form.  What’s not uncertain is how much fun the film manages to be, with an engrossing and star-making performance from its lead, who charms even as he twists the knife.

Black Swan (2010) – Black Swan is in many ways the dark side of American Psycho’s white swan.  Darren Aronofsky’s balance of ballet and mental illness explores in very disturbing and unflinching ways the consequences of the quest for perfection.  Natalie Portman won an Oscar for her role as Nina Sayers, a ballerina whose starring role in Swan Lake is slowly driving her insane; she suspects her understudy Lily (Mila Kunis) of sabotaging her work, though recurrent hallucinations make it difficult for her to discern reality from delusion.  Barbara Hershey has an underappreciated role as Nina’s controlling mother, a former ballerina and perhaps the source of her daughter’s difficulties.  Where American Psycho treated its protagonist’s insanity as exuberantly entertaining, Nina’s descent into madness is distressing and almost uncomfortable to watch; the fast-and-loose representation of reality unsettles the viewer as mirrors misbehave and strangers bear Nina’s face for fleeting frames.  Portman’s Academy Award was well-deserved, as she embodies well Nina’s fears and anxieties by giving the character a full sense of life such that we know her even before we see her dance.  Yet, even though the film is unsettling and uncomfortable, there is something poetically beautiful about it, an aesthetic exquisiteness created by the combination of Aronofsky’s deliberately arranged shots and Clint Mansell’s reworking of Tchaikovsky’s music.  There’s certainly a comparison to be made here with Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, which deals with similar themes, but Black Swan is more metaphorical and more beautiful, one of 2010’s best films, to be sure.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  With the release of The Dark Knight Rises on DVD, look for an Armchair Review sometime in the near future!

Monday at the Movies - December 3, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Three of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, in anticipation of Django Unchained we’re finishing up the last two Quentin Tarantino movies that haven’t been reviewed on the site; as we did with our Christopher Nolan retrospective, links are provided to the reviews of the other films, in order of release.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Jackie Brown (1997) – I’ve long considered this my least favorite Quentin Tarantino movie, in part because it’s the least flashy in his oeuvre.  But as I get older I’m looking at the film differently, and I think it’s actually one of his better films because of its aesthetic restraint.  Adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel (the only entry in Tarantino’s filmography not based on an original screenplay), Jackie Brown stars Pam Grier as the eponymous stewardess who schemes with bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) and the ATF to take down kingpin Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson).  The three leads are all in fine form – Grier is believable as the kick-ass protagonist, Forster plays romantic but subdued, and Jackson is pitch-perfect as the villain – but the highlight here is how well Tarantino makes his homage to the blaxploitation genre without being consumed by it.  Tarantino has had a difficult relationship with homage, with some “loving references” feeling a lot like plagiarism (the burial of The Bride in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, for example), but here he seems tapped into the feeling of a blaxploitation movie (and even, with Grier and Sid Haig, some of the familiar faces) without sacrificing watchability for self-indulgence.  The film is smart and spirited, witty without being too wild.  The smaller parts from the ensemble cast – which includes Robert DeNiro, Bridget Fonda, and Michael Keaton – make this movie feel quite full, but it’s a fullness that gives the film depth and relevance.  Rather than exist just as an homage, Jackie Brown is one of Tarantino’s more accomplished films, perhaps out of place in an otherwise exhaustively exuberant catalogue, but at the same time perhaps the most mature (in sensibility, not in rating) of his films.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)

Death Proof (2007) – Tarantino recently noted that he wants Death Proof to be regarded as his worst film, which prompted me to revisit it.  Originally part of the double-feature experiment Grindhouse with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Death Proof stars Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, a serial murderer who victimizes two groups of women with his invincible stunt car.  The first group (including Sydney Poitier and Vanessa Ferlito) succumbs to Mike’s car and the objectifying male gaze of the camera; this is Tarantino at his most exploitive, and it seems that the lusty way he films these women is less an homage to the genre of female revenge film and more a personal fetish given celluloid life.  Though Russell is better and more badass in this first half, the problematic treatment of women borders on deplorable.  The second half attempts to redeem these sins, with another group of women (including Rosario Dawson, stuntwoman Zoë Bell as herself, and Tracie Thoms, who’s like a cross between Wanda Sykes and Samuel L. Jackson) taking on the task of revenge.  This group is more fun, in part because we spend more time with them and know them better, but that attention leaves Russell by the wayside, giving the film a very uneven feeling.  Tarantino’s dialogue is punchy, but everyone talks like everyone else.  The result is a film that on the surface is peppy and poppy in the “grindhouse” tradition, but if you look deeper the film is fraught with problems – of representation, of balance, of identity.  I enjoyed the film enthusiastically as a high schooler, but age has somewhat cooled me on this movie; if it ends up being the worst Tarantino film, I can live with that.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Be sure to check back later this month for a full review of Django Unchained, but for now that does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Between finals week and The Dark Knight Rises on DVD tomorrow, I’m gonna be pretty busy, but next Monday we’ll have a look at a few movies that wrestle with sanity (opportune timing for those of us going crazy for finals).