The Lady Eve (1941)

I have always dreaded old movies. When I was little, I didn't like black-and-white. No idea why. Then I grew up (relatively speaking), and suddenly I loved black-and-white movies but whoops also feminism. Movies made now are bad enough in the way they treat ladies, but most of the pre-1960 stuff I've seen is nightmarish. (This may be because I haven't seen that many old movies. Because I avoid them.) Anyway, I went into The Lady Eve assuming that the gender politics would make me miserable, but they didn't! They were decent enough that I could just pay attention to whether I liked the movie or not, and I did because it's awesome.

Charlie Pike (Henry Fonda) is the heir to an ale (not beer) fortune. Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) and her dad are card-sharps: she reels rich men in, and her father takes them at poker for large sums of money. Charlie is their mark on a cruise from South America to… North America. But OH NO Jean falls in love with this sucker, and she insists that they not steal his money, and she's going to marry him but OH NO he finds out the truth (minus the she-loves-him part) and wants nothing to do with her. Then she goes after him--for revenge? Or to win him back? THE LADY EVE coming soon to computers near you.

The timeline of their romance is insane, but I assume they don't call the genre "screwball" because of its realism. Speaking of screwball, Henry Fonda delivers some pretty decent physical comedy in this movie, you guys! I didn't know Juror #8 had it in him. He's always tripping over stuff (get it? The Lady Eve. The fall. Get it? Get it?), and there's one scene where he keeps getting food all over his nice jackets. Haha! Fonda also manages the impressive trick of making his character seem likable and reasonably intelligent. Pause for a moment and consider: that is an amazing feat. The most casual examination reveals that Charlie Pike is a bland, credulous boob. Have you seen the Branagh Much Ado About Nothing? It's like that: Claudio's a piece of shit, but Robert Sean Leonard's performance makes the character seem more decent than really makes sense. Charlie (Fonda) is a less-horrible Claudio figure--gullible, boring, jealous (but not so jealous and angry that he publicly humiliates his fiancée and doesn't mind causing her apparent death SPOILER ALERT). I've digressed. What I was trying to say is that, in defiance of reason, Henry Fonda sells this character as a cool guy who maybe even deserves Barbara Stanwyck, which he doesn't because no one deserves Barbara Stanwyck.

Oh, Barbara Stanwyck, you electric being. I am in love now. Stanwyck's character is so quick, so sexy, and so confident, and watching her, I could only imagine that Stanwyck was more Jean than Jean. Which she might not have been because acting is not the same as living, but the performance was good enough to make me think stupid thoughts.

Circling back to the gender shit at the beginning of this post, I really want to express my gratitude to this movie/Preston Sturges/everyone involved for not being awful. Charlie Pike does not spend the movie talking down to Jean--you know, the "listen, little lady" bullshit. Also, he gets really mad at her at several points in the movie, but he never threatens to hit her. Holy fucking Moses. How incredible is that? Thanks, It Happened One Night, for making me astonished by basic humane behavior in olde tyme pictures.

Party Down, S2E9: Cole Landry's Draft Day Party (2010)

Hello, America! I have not written in a while because I was very busy being sick and going to work and watching all of Sons of Anarchy (not available on Netflix Instant, I am sad to say). While I haven't watched a Netflix Instant movie in far too long, I did watch an episode of Party Down, so I'm going to write about that. Here we go.

Party Down is a very funny show, and if you are not watching it, you should start. It's about a group of cater waiters in Los Angeles. It being L.A., most of them aspire to be Hollywood somebodies (actors, writers, etc.). It being a darkish show, none of them ever get anywhere. It's fun, it's easy to get into, it's all available on Netflix Instant. Go forth and watch it.

That being said, I thought "Cole Landry's Draft Day Party" was a little weak (relative to the rest of the very good season). It lacked in three areas that make Party Down one of my favorite comedies on the air:

1) The crazy guest spots. Party Down has the most consistently delightful guest roles of any show I've ever seen. J.K. Simmons pops up twice as a foulmouthed studio exec who runs on rage. Veronica Mars' Jason Dohring and Alona Tal knock it out of the park as College Republicans. Kristen Bell plays Uda, an ice queen who works for our heroes' competition, Valhalla Catering. I thought I was going to injure myself laughing at Rob Huebel and Kerri Kenney-Silver's hedonistic community theater actors. Thomas Lennon plays a man desperately trying to organize an orgy... and I haven't even mentioned what were, for me, the two best performances on Party Down (and two of my favorite comedic TV performances in memory): Steven Weber as mobster Rick Sargulesh and Jimmi Simpson as a Marilyn Manson-esque rock star collapsing under the weight of his ennui.

2) The twists. That might be a weird thing to say; this show is no LOST, you know what I mean? (What I mean is that Party Down is not a portentous, frustrating drama that I gave up on in season 2.) What I really mean is that Party Down is a fun-times sitcom that is not about suspenseful plots. Still, episodes of Party Down frequently surprise me with some reveal--e.g. the end of "James Ellison Funeral." But the unexpected bit of "Cole Landry's Draft Day Party" was completely expected. Whenever I see "secret relationship" in a TV show or movie, I go, "Okay, gay." Maybe I wasn't supposed to be surprised? I don't know; that was a letdown for me.

3) The main characters' big emotional moments. Usually this manifests as acute disappointment in themselves (Roman in "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday") or in the world (Roman in "Joel Munt's Big Deal Party"). Very occasionally, the emotional moment is a happy one. I loved "Not On Your Wife Opening Night," in which Roman ditches his scorn for a night; at the end of the episode, he emerges from a van with a goofy grin and drunkenly exclaims, "Magnicifent!"* There wasn't a moment as blissful as "Magnicifent!" in "Cole Landry," nor was there anything as hopeless as, for example, Henry's response in "Precious Lights Pre-School Auction" to "you'll never work in this town again!": "I know."

Still, "Cole Landry" had its moments. It was a good episode for Lydia (Megan Mullally). For once, she knew more about the event than her coworkers did. Who's savvy now? Plus, one of the funniest lines of the episode had to be "You don't think I have to bite my tongue every time I carry a tray with Santa Barbara grilled eel beaks in a baby pinecone sauce?" (Sorry for the quotations, everyone. As Genevieve Koski has pointed out, the hilarity of Party Down's lines lies largely in the actors' excellent delivery.)

I loved Roman (Martin Starr) underestimating a pre-med football player's intelligence. This reaches its apotheosis when Roman starts--and persists--in explaining the concept of irony:

ROMAN: Irony is when you say one thing, but you mean the opposite. For example--
ZIGGY (the football player): I could stand here all night and soak up this knowledge.

The only character allowed to be really wacky in this episode was Ron. As per always, Ken Marino played it to the hilt. Ron's worried that he doesn't produce enough ejaculate, and the episode opens with him unloading (yeesh) his concerns on an unwilling Henry. Adam Scott's reactions are spot-on because of course. Adam Scott is always spot-on in Party Down. Everybody watch Party Down, dammit! Anyway, Ron's preoccupation lasts all episode, and it's pretty funny.

The Cum of All Fears

TO SUM UP: "Cole Landry" is good but not good enough for me because Party Down has spoiled me because it is a great show that you should be watching so it doesn't get canceled. If you are not watching Party Down, you are part of the problem.

*I guess all my examples of feelings come from Roman? Don't know what that's about. Maybe it's about how Martin Starr has gotten a lot of excellent material this season.

Frozen River (2008)

I'm going to make this one brief because I want to stop thinking about this movie as soon as possible. Look: it is a good movie. I am not criticizing its movieness. But it is just so sad.

It is too sad.

Okay, so here's this very sad movie, quickly: Ray (Melissa Leo) is fraying from her efforts to support herself and her two sons. Out of desperation (which desperation is painstakingly, lovingly depicted on screen), Ray resorts to smuggling Asian immigrants through an Indian reservation across the Canada-U.S. border. Her, um, partner in crime, I guess, is Lila (Misty Upham), a similarly miserable, trapped woman.

This is a feature-length trek through grinding poverty. It is not pleasant to watch. It is unremittingly bleak. Well, not quite unremittingly. There is a little bit of remitting. At the very end.

I mean, good job everyone involved. The acting's great: Leo is fucking ridiculous. It is such a good performance. If you know me, you know that I am deeply in love with Kate Winslet and was thrilled when she finally won her Oscar, but 1) she won it in the incorrect category (her role in The Reader was supporting) and 2) if she was gonna get stuck in Best Actress, she deserved to lose. Sorry, Kate Winslet; I still love you. But Melissa Leo breaks my heart as Ray.

Courtney Hunt, the writer-director, also deserves massive, massive credit, for, among other things, writing the character of Ray--one of the more richly developed roles I've seen in a long time. And if we're talking specifically about roles for women... shit, this is leaps and bounds ahead of everything else.

Okay, before I end this, I also want to mention the wonderful performances of Misty Upham as Lila and Charlie McDermott as Ray's teenage son T.J. When I finished watching this movie, I wondered what else McDermott had been in. Is he great in other things? Is he in other great things? Well, apparently he is a regular on The Middle, a show whose existence and success are as depressing as the plot of Frozen River.

The Brother From Another Planet (1984)

How fun was this. The Brother From Another Planet is about an alien refugee (Joe Morton) who crashes in the harbor off of Ellis Island. He makes his way (by chance, I guess, though the geography's a little suspect) to Harlem, where he has Problems because he doesn't understand Human Ways (like money) and also he's mute. But then he wanders into a bar populated with quirky regulars, and they adopt him!

We follow the Brother through his mundane travails (finding somewhere to live, a job), his weirdo quests (some stuff with drug dealers, some other stuff with a lady), and his pursuit by two bounty hunters, the Men in Black (John Sayles and the perennially foxy David Strathairn).

Fish-out-of-water scenes are, of course, obligatory for this kind of movie, and they often feel hackneyed. Not so here. In the hands of Sayles, Morton, and Strathairn, everything is fresh. I giggled the maximum amount when the Brother saw a crucifix for the first time. (Morton's reaction shots are always dynamite, actually.) There's also a very funny exchange between the Men in Black and the bartender, Odell:

Man 1: Beer.
Odell: What kind?
Man 2: Draft.
Man 1: On the rocks.

Now, this may just seem okay amusing, but Sayles and Strathairn's delivery really sells it: they're totally deadpan, but they still convey a confused panic at the bartender's question--and then Sayles' alien recovers with misplaced confidence: "On the rocks." ON THE ROCKS YOU GUYS. FOR BEER. OH THE HUMOR. No, really, it's a very funny scene.

A very funny scene.

The beer scene is a great way of introducing these two creepy villains. They are the vague menace hovering over the story, and while they're intimidating, no one is so frightened as to cooperate with them. This is one of my favorite running not-quite-gags in the movie, and it reaches its peak when they try to question a public servant about the Brother. She looks nervous for a second, and then she dispatches them with piles of paperwork and requests for verification of identity and employment.

The movie is admittedly uneven: its low-budget-ness, which really shines in the simple approach to alien tech (e.g. the Brother's eyeball surveillance, the Men in Black's imaginative alien fishing reel), makes for a pretty fucking boring climactic chase sequence. Also, I did not so much enjoy the drug subplot, which includes an atmospheric (by which I mean "tedious") tour of nighttime Harlem and culminates in the Brother doing something that made me very uncomfortable.

BUT: those few things aside, this movie has a lot of heart. It's filled with fun characters, and Morton holds everything together expertly. I don't think I can praise his performance enough: he's expressive, charismatic, sympathetic--and silent.

Finally, I have to end with some cool trivia: Joe Morton has the distinction of being the first actor to appear in two movies reviewed on this blog. (He played Keanu Reeves' commanding officer in Speed.) Also, John Sayles is clearly campaigning to be my new favorite director. Item 1: I liked this movie a lot. Item 2: he self-finances his movies by doctoring scripts. Item 3: IMDb informs me that in a poll two years ago, Mr. Sayles said that The Spirit of the Beehive is one of his 10 favorite movies. BOOM. Great job, John Sayles.

El Espíritu de la Colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973)

Two things about this movie:
1. I did not understand it at all.
2. I loved it.

Six-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent) lives in a Castilian village in newly Francoist Spain. At/near the beginning of the movie, she sees James Whale's Frankenstein and is captivated by it. When she and her sister Isabel (Isabel Tellería) are laying in bed that night, Ana asks the older girl about the motives of the monster and the mob. She wants to know why violence happened--why the monster kills the girl, why the people kill the monster. Isabel doesn't know, but when Ana accuses her of ignorance, Isabel reacts by lying: the monster is alive, and he lives nearby!

You guys, this is great. The characters of Ana and Isabel are maybe my favorite depictions of childhood in any movie I've ever seen. (Plus, fun side effect of making two prepubescent girls the main characters: this film passes the Bechdel test so hard.)

Ana becomes preoccupied with the monster, whom she wants to befriend. And Isabel elaborates on her lie, of course. Here's how you summon the monster. Here's where the monster lives. Ana returns to the abandoned building--the monster's house--without her sister. She looks around, and you can see that she's hesitant, nearing skeptical. But she sees a footprint that's gargantuan in comparison with her own tiny foot, and an incredibly subtle change comes over her face. I got so excited in that moment. She's on the verge of knowing better, but she pulls back just in time.

Look, I could happily describe how each scene of this movie made me feel, but that would be ridiculous, so I'm just going to say that there's a lot of important, loaded stuff in this movie: mushrooms, loneliness, a Republican soldier, bees, a family in pieces. If symbolism were physically dense in the same way as celestial bodies, this movie would be a fucking neutron star. I'm often impatient with that sort of thing, but this time I was too busy being engrossed. And this movie--because it is really, really good--is 100% enjoyable even if you, like me, know nothing about fascism, Spain, or filmmaking. The acting, writing, and direction are as confident as they are understated; the cinematography (by Luis Cuadrado) and music (by Luis de Pablo) are flawless. If I recommend this movie any harder, I am going to pull a muscle.

El Espíritu de la Colmena could have been prescribed to me as medicine. When I watched it yesterday, I was so sad, and I needed something as sad as I was--but still undespairing. And frankly, I needed to see something that made me feel but didn't even try to make me understand.