Speed (1994)

Or, as Eddie Izzard calls it, "La Vitesse."

This movie was pretty fucking deep, you guys. That is why I have not written in a week. It is because I have been PROCESSING.

Speed is about a man named Keanu Reeves, who is a brave cop but a terrible driver. He first appears in the movie flying over the San Francisco pavement to get to a hostagey bomby kind of situation. By "flying," I do not mean "driving quickly." I mean that he is airborne, in violation of the laws of God and man. Anyway, Keanu Reeves can't be great at everything. He shows up at a skyscraper with his partner Jeff Daniels, and they're sent to figure out how a crazy terrorist (Dennis Hopper) is planning to kill a bunch of people in an elevator. Their job, again: figure out what Dennis Hopper is doing. But Keanu's all, "Let's fix this ourselves, right now, just the two of us, because that is how hostage situations are resolved: with cranes and jumping." SPOILER ALERT: it is good that he goes all rogue on the saving-people portion of the evening but stupid that he tries to go after Dennis Hopper without reinforcements. As far as I can tell? Anyway, it doesn't really work out. Dennis Hopper gets Keanu to shoot Jeff Daniels, escapes in an explosion, and now has a shiny new vendetta against Our Hero.

The rest of the movie: Dennis Hopper blows up a bus, calls Keanu to tell him about another bus that will blow up if… you know the rest. Keanu tries to get to the bus before it reaches 50 mph, but he sucks, so then he has to jump onto the bus and keep it above 50. The driver gets shot, which means someone else has to drive! Will it be Keanu? As we all know, a fundamental rule of drama is that if Chekhov's Terrible Driver is placed on the wall in act one, he must drive terribly in act two. But no, disaster averted: Sandra Bullock drives instead. So we have bus shenanigans for a while (featuring Beth Grant!), and then the movie wraps up with a train thingy, okay done.

Before I saw Speed, I'd only heard about the crazy driving parts, not the elevator and train set pieces. There's a reason for that: the bus is the fun part of Speed. I don't know why the other bits go on so long, honestly. This movie is two hours, which seems pretty long for an action movie that should be 90 minutes.

The characters: Officer Keanu Reeves is such a dick. My goodness. He is always saying things like "C'mon, Jeff Daniels, save my life," when ostensibly he should be most worried about the ten or fifteen civilians on the bus with him (and also Jeff Daniels has his own shit to worry about, you know?). Plus at the beginning, he suggests shooting (hypothetical) hostages to "take them out of the equation."

Dick.

Dennis the Terrorist Menace confused me. He says shit that's supposed to be intimidating but isn't particularly. I mean, he's trying to blow up a dozen people. He's intimidating. But nothing is added by lines like, "It's getting on to 11 A.M., and I think it's going to be a very pretty day. HAHAHAHAHA!" Okay? Okay, I guess, Dennis Hopper. A solid B-.

Frank Booth Memorial Blog Entry

Sandra "Driverface" Bullock brings the charm, of course. I liked that she was the bus driver. She helped save everybody, you guys! But then OF COURSE we can't leave well enough alone; Keanu, who has already saved her by SPOILER ALERT getting people off the bus, has to save her harder on a train. Ugh. Apparently Joss Whedon was a script doctor for Speed, and he overhauled the end, so what the hell, dude. I expect better from you. ANYWAY: none of that was Sandy's fault. In the hilarious words of an IMDB commenter: "Sandra is a delight to watch as well as hear - she has a voice you literally can wrap yourself up in." Perhaps not, but a fine performance nonetheless.

1994 was a crazy time: Dennis Hopper was credited above this powerhouse.

But, hands down, the two best characters: the Out-of-Towner (Alan Ruck) and Ortiz (Carlos Carrasco). The Out-of-Towner is, as you'd expect, a white-bread middle America kinda guy visiting L.A. for the first time and look what happens to him. Ortiz is the laconic Angeleno sitting next to him. Their chemistry is fan-fucking-tastic. Out-of-Towner says shit like, "Your tax dollars are paying [police] salaries! If we die, they gotta take a pay cut!" and Ortiz is all "LULZ O'CLOCK." Speed is pretty fun, but it would have been a MODERN CLASSIC if these two had been the main characters. An odd couple story about two wacky dudes stuck on a bus that might blow up! WHAT A GREAT MOVIE.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Tirez sur le pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) (1960)

This was the first French New Wave movie I've ever seen (sorry, mom!), and it left me intrigued but unsatisfied. I'm gonna watch more Nouvelle Vague, but if this was what Truffaut was up to, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about (sorry again, mom!).

Tirez sur le pianiste is about a piano player named Charlie (Charles Aznavour). He works in a dive bar/club and wants to stay out of trouble--but just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in! Or whatever. His older brothers are fuck-ups and criminals, and when Charlie helps one of them evade two thuggish pursuers, he attracts the thugs' attention. Charlie accidentally gets his co-worker Léna (Marie Dubois) involved in his troubles, too. (Ironically, the bad guys decide she's associated with him because she asks him to walk her home at night. Because she doesn't feel safe. I thought that was a nice touch.) Turns out things aren't what they seem, of course: Charlie has a secret past, which Léna knows about. In fact, she stalks him because of it? But in a cute way! Anyway, she has some ideas about his life, as do the thugs, his brothers, and his boss at the bar. Charlie, like many noir protagonists, is a mostly passive figure at the center of swirling chaos. Okay? Okay.

I really enjoyed the two leads' performances. Dubois does some kind of magic (acting?) that makes her character seem more likable and less undeveloped than the script deserves. Aznavour balances Charlie's timidity and charisma beautifully. (Also, he reminds me of Kevin Spacey, all detachment and dimples.) Their chemistry with each other was fine, but their makeout scene was Very Awkward. They don't so much kiss as press their faces together. Plus the camera doesn't just hang out on them; it does this weird thing where you see them and also a panning shot of Léna's apartment over them? Or maybe under them?

Dissolve back and forth, forever. ))<>((

As for other characters, there's a prostitute Charlie likes to sleep with (Michèle Mercier); she also takes care of Charlie's little brother when he's out (i.e. most of the movie). Charlie's boss (Serge Davri) is one of those okay-until-he's-not types, and the violent confrontation between Charlie and Plyne was one of the least believable, least enjoyable parts of the movie for me. I guess I'm not supposed to find it "believable" because the New Wave wants to teach me about artifice and bust down all my square ideas about narrative film. Bore snore. A work of art that makes me reexamine my ideas about plot/story/politics/zucchini is exciting. A chain-smoking Frenchman telling me to reexamine my ideas is irritating.

Though I found some parts of the movie boring/annoying, Truffaut's style is undeniably cool. The sequence where Charlie and Léna drive out of town has a lovely, familiar feeling. It's shot through the windshield, and over the course of a song ("Dialogue d'amoureux" by Félix Leclerc and Lucienne Vernay, apparently), the city's streetlamps are replaced with the sun rising over the snowy countryside. I enjoyed select images much more than I enjoyed the film as a whole: opening credits inside a piano with its hammers hitting, a gangster with a musical lighter, a betrayal framed with--not sure how to describe these:

What is this technique called? Besides "cool."

Finally, I want to mention the first scene of the movie, which did not let me down. Truffaut does this hilarious thing that shows up in lots of French movies: he has two complete strangers talk about very personal things for no reason. I love seeing movies where this happens, and I love the reliable pattern for these conversations: "intimate detail, proverb/platitude, agreement/disagreement, proverb/platitude, intimate detail." Example:

Man A: In the old days, there were never enough syringes. My wife and I met when we looked up from our shared needle. Haha! You know what they say: a stitch in time saves nine.
Man B: No, I don't think so. After all, what's true is true.
Man A: I have celiac disease.

Sound like bad dialogue? Maybe here, but translated and spoken by two knobbly-nosed men strolling down a narrow Parisian street, it's stylish. Welcome to French cinema!

Announcement

I've decided to start paying attention to the Bechdel test when I watch these movies. In case you haven't heard of it, for a movie to pass the Bechdel test:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

So, henceforth, I'll note in the tags (labels? If you insist, Blogger) if movies pass or fail. Watch out, world!

Easy (2003)

Jamie (Marguerite Moreau) always be sleepin' with fellas, and she's so unhappy, and this behavior is so self-destructive, yadda yadda yadda. Ya see, the fellas never want to commit to a relationship with her after the fucking. Causal link? Probably!

So there's that going on, and I'm like "EH." But, soon enough, she sleeps with John (Naveen Andrews), and he's still into her and there's happiness but then sadness but then Mick (Brían O'Byrne). Bonus: wacky hijinks with family and friends. Everybody's in love; whatever. And sometimes there are tall things and tension about people falling from same.

This romantic comedy has approximately 4 love subplots too many. It also features Emily Deschanel's trademark wooden acting, a criminal underuse of D.B. Woodside, and an attempted suicide that makes no sense. In short: kind of a mess.

On the other hand, the combined charm of Naveen Andrews and Brían O'Byrne is CONSIDERABLE. I watched the movie because I wanted to see them, so I guess I got what I wanted, and that is okay/good.

That is all I have to say about this film. Nope, one more thing: in the future, movies should feel free to not have scenes centered around turtle diarrhea.

Who Am I This Time? (1982)

In the darkest, earliest eighties, Jonathan Demme, Christopher Walken, Susan Sarandon, and John Cale got together to make an episode of American Playhouse based on a Kurt Vonnegut short story. If that does not sound like heaven to you, please know that we see the world very differently. Disregard the rest of this review.

Basically it's a sweet shortish movie about a boy and a girl who fall in love. Walken plays Harry Nash, the star of all his small town's community theater productions. Offstage, Harry is a hardware store clerk with paralyzing social anxiety. Helene Shaw (Sarandon) is new to town and gets recruited to play Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. (Harry's playing Stanley, of course.) She falls in love with him and is super sad when she finds out that he won't ever talk to her because he won't ever talk to anyone outside of plays.

BUT SPOILER ALERT SHE FINDS A WAY AROUND THIS, A WAY TO MAKE THEIR ROMANCE BLOOM. Can you figure out how? Probably you can, yes.

Honestly, this TV movie doesn't quite fill its 55 minutes, but I don't care. This shit is just too adorable. It is the most adorable.

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

This movie was pretty weird. For the first maybe 10 or 15 minutes, I was not sure about it. Then, suddenly, I was completely in love: a darkly, awkwardly funny neo-noir about doubt and ignorance and speech and sterility and messiness? Sign me up! I kept being in love with it for a while, then my feelings cooled, but I was thrilled with the very end.

I really enjoyed:
-The vast majority of the performances, esp. those of Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, and Katherine Borowitz. (Borowitz has a small role--Ann Nirdlinger Brewster--and she's so funny in it, her eyes frozen wide with comically misguided terror and urgency.)
-The lighting and cinematography and what-have-you, although I'm not even for a second going to pretend I know shit about those things.
-How quiet it was. It's a patient movie.
-Coen brothers. Duh.

I did not so much like:
-Billy Bob Thornton. I know that the webs were once abuzz with praise for his minimalist performance, but it sometimes feels so minimalist that I wondered if Thornton was just talking to me as himself. This might have been less bothersome if I had seen the movie when it came out. Watching it now, I was at times too aware of the connection between Ed Crane and the epic douchebag who insists that his music is more remarkable by far than his jettisoned film career, and who, at his most petulant, waxes not-quite-poetic about his King Kong model-building.
-Scarlett Johansson. Don't enjoy her acting. Too sleepy for my taste.

The thing I both liked and disliked was the pacing, which was alternately too slow for me and exactly slow enough.

What? Why?

What: This is a blog for me, Dear, to review movies I watch instantly on Netflix. If you read these entries soon after they're posted, and you are a Netflix subscriber, you can go watch 'em, too! Isn't that cool?

Why: I felt like it.

Do you work for Netflix?/Are they giving you money?: No, obviously not. Just look at this crappy little blog, tucked away in the darkest, obscurest corner of the Internet.