The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)

During the getaway from their latest heist, master thief Lupin III and his sidekick Jigen realize that the cash they've stolen is fake. They set off to the tiny principality of Cagliostro to search for the source of the superb counterfeits. On the way, they see a beautiful young woman in a convertible trying to elude a car full of thugs. She is Princess Clarisse of Cagliostro. Lupin tries to rescue her, but the thugs win, and Lupin and Jigen travel to the eponymous castle, determined to recover both Clarisse and the counterfeiting plates. Oh, and Clarisse is engaged to marry Count Cagliostro--an evil dude who tries really hard to kill Lupin.

I'd been told (by the Internet) that this movie works without any background in the Lupin III series, and it does, but not that well. There are two characters--the samurai Goemon and con artist Fujiko--who seemed totally superfluous to me. I can only imagine they're in the movie because they're established characters in the series, and fans would expect them. Even Jigen (Lupin's sidekick) and Zenigata (a Japanese cop who pursues Lupin) seemed to be treated as more significant characters than they were in this particular story. The Castle of Cagliostro works as a stand-alone movie, but I think I'd probably have liked it better if I had read the manga or seen the TV series, and I think I've enjoyed other Miyazaki films more in part because they felt more self-contained.

The Castle of Cagliostro's main characters--Lupin, Clarisse, and the Count--bear a strange resemblance to the main characters of The Princess Bride. Count Cagliostro is a carbon copy of Prince Humperdinck. Lupin must cleverly work around an injury in his assault on the castle. He and his two sidekicks even set up a "terrifying apparition" routine to interrupt the wedding--a routine very much in the spirit of the Dread Pirate Roberts. In the same scene, I was honestly surprised when the officiating clergyman didn't say, "Mawwidge is what bwings us togevah today." (Instead he tells Clarisse, "You must speak now. Otherwise, silence will be accepted as consent to this union." GOOD. That is a good policy.)

Clarisse cannot object to the union because the villainous Count has sedated her. Even without the drugs, though, Clarisse is pretty passive. She has the opening car chase going for her, but after that, she turns into a garden-variety damsel-in-distress. At one point, there's a wide shot of her standing still as the lights are switched off in her well-appointed tower prison.


I thought it would be funny if she just stayed that way, perfectly still--if she switched to a state of suspended animation whenever there were no men around to talk to her. Alas, she does not; instead, she occupies herself with staring rapturously at a fuckin' flower Lupin gave her or whatever. The movie's other female character, Fujiko, seems to have much more potential. I presume she's a regular in the Lupin series; it's too bad she's such a minor character here.

Overall, I felt like The Castle of Cagliostro was not a particularly compelling movie, but it had some very compelling sequences. The car chase with Clarisse, Lupin, and the baddies is a lot of fun, and I loved Lupin's heist antics on the castle rooftops and in the aqueduct. But I didn't love the movie, partly because I didn't know enough about the characters, and partly because my expectations were too high. I was hoping Cagliostro would be as magical as later Miyazaki movies like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, or even Porco Rosso. It's not.

- Liked It

The Commitments (1991)

Note, in the front row: baby Glen Hansard!

Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) is obsessed with music. Two of his friends ask him to whip their band into shape, and he responds by taking it apart and putting together a new one: The Commitments. This soul cover band has a wise old veteran trumpeter, an egotistical dick of a lead singer, three talented female backups (who could easily have replaced insufferable frontman Deco), and five young nerds on guitar, bass, sax, piano, and drums. Will the band succeed, or will it be destroyed by too much infighting and not enough money?

Early on, one bandmember suggests that they may be too white to play soul music. Jimmy responds that the music fits them because "the Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud." This sort of sentiment, well-intentioned though it may be, makes me really uncomfortable. First of all, it seems to render actual black people invisible? There are black people in Europe--and, indeed, Ireland--and if white Irish are "the blacks," then who are black Europeans? Also the blacks? Different blacks? Now, Jimmy's trying to draw a parallel between Britain's historical treatment of the Irish and America's historical treatment of black people. I get that. But that is itself problematic: you can't reduce "blackness" to just the experience of oppression or to a romanticized picture of musical "character" born of suffering. Not to be (even more) obvious (than usual), but it's a bit dehumanizing to treat people as metaphors instead of as, um, people.

This same sort of presumption manifests later in the movie, when club walls are papered with the band's posters proclaiming them the "Saviours of Soul." I'm sure Roddy Doyle, Alan Parker, et al. didn't mean anything by it, but saviors from what? I don't know. Maybe this isn't as bad as it seemed to me. I do this; I make a big deal over practically nothing. What do you guys think?

Race stuff aside, the movie seemed to me to have some structural weaknesses. The Commitments is based on a novel, and it felt like it would work better as a book. I haven't read the book, but I'm going to speculate wildly that there's probably more substantial character development there than in the movie. Plus, I think novels can get away with having less conflict than films.* There's a lot of conflict in the movie, but it isn't explored in a plottish way; it just erupts and subsides and erupts again, unhandled and probably unhandleable. (These are all official critical terms. Pauline Kael will back me up.) Anyway, to me, the movie felt a little thin on plot and on character.

Still, it's not thin on charm. I enjoyed watching it. I rooted for the band. I loved the dialogue between Jimmy and Joey "The Lips" Fagan at the end. Couldn't ask for a line much better than "That would have been predictable. This way it's poetry." Overall, though, I expected to like the movie more than I did, and I expected there to be more there there. (Not unlike my feelings on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.)

Maybe I should just be happy I got through it. In the last couple days, I have tried to watch Diabolique and Return of the Secaucus 7 and gotten bored with both. I think I'll go back to them. They're probably very good. Maybe my attention span is just shot. Maybe I'm having post-Moon malaise, as I predicted I would. Maybe, right now, I only have eyes for The Wire.

*It is possible that I'm full of shit.

- Liked It

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

"Bitterness is a paralytic. Love is a much more vicious motivator."

Okay, so Poirot doesn't actually say that. That's Sherlock Holmes in the new miniseries Sherlock, which everyone should be watching. (More generally, everyone should be watching everything Steven Moffat touches right now. He is at the top of his game.) My original point: Poirot easily could say that thing about bitterness and love. It's true of the criminal motive in Murder on the Orient Express.

Fifteen people board a sleeping car of the Orient Express in Istanbul. One of them is murdered, one of them is famous detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney), and the remaining baker's dozen are suspects. Over the rest of the movie, Poirot collects clues and talks to the passengers, then assembles them all in the dining car to expose the guilty.

The big reveal scene follows that age-old screenwriting adage: "Show, and also tell." This scene is so long! Lumet is a brilliant director, but I don't understand some of the choices he made in this movie--for example, why he chose to include Poirot's detailed description of the crime and lengthy flashbacks. There might have been room for both of those things, but not for so much of each of them.

One of the film's strong points, on the other hand, is its music. This movie has an honest-to-God overture! I love overtures, I love when movies have them, and this is a great one. Listen to this fucking overture:



Now are you stoked to see a movie, or WHAT? The whole score of Murder on the Orient Express (composed by Richard Rodney Bennett) is fantastic--the best thing about the movie, no question.

Overall, I thought the film's pedigree outshone the film itself. I imagined that Lumet, Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, and John Gielgud would, together, make a great movie, but Murder on the Orient Express is just pretty good. It's fun. And strangely heartwarming.

- Liked It

Banlieue 13 (District B13) (2004)

"This is actually the best part of my day so far."

In the near future, violence has skyrocketed in the impoverished outskirts of Paris, which are now ruled by sadistic drug lords and their private armies. The French government has either responded to this phenomenon or caused it by walling off the most dangerous "districts," like the eponymous B13. Leïto (David Belle) lives inside B13. He is a vigilante (?) and landlord (??) who has stolen a lot of heroin, in a public service kind of way. When enforcers come to recover the drugs, Leïto destroys the stash and leads them on a merry chase across the rooftops. B13's kingpin, Taha (Bibi Naceri), retaliates by kidnapping Leïto's little sister, Lola (Dany Verissimo). Leïto almost rescues her, but the cops double-cross him, he goes to jail, and Lola is enslaved by Taha. (We'll come back to that.)

Meanwhile, in a more respectable part of Paris, we meet Capt. Damien Tomasso (Cyril Raffaelli), a cop who's infiltrated a criminal Spanish roulette operation? I don't know; something like that. Something gambling-related. Damien arrests the head Spaniard and, um, kills like twenty guys? Because that is a correct end to an undercover operation. Once Damien's bad-ass cred is established, the movie partners him with Leïto; the two of them are sent to B13 to disarm a bomb that Taha has stolen from the French government.

This movie is not that great. The plot is generally thin and yet still sometimes confusing. The characters and stakes are established in ways that ensured I would not care about them. The acting ranges from workmanlike to atrocious (I'm looking at you, Marc Andréoni). But--and this is a big "but"--there is PARKOUR. If, somehow, in this day and age, you do not know what parkour is, look it up on YouTube. You're welcome. Also, cancel all your plans; you will be watching parkour videos for the next week or so.

Raffaelli's stuntwork as Damien is good, and I enjoyed the set piece that introduces his character, but the real star of the action (and thus of the movie) is Belle. His chase scene at the beginning of the movie is so great. Sorry to wimp out on describing it, but if I say, "He leaps out a high-rise window onto a rope," it is not nearly as cool as when you see him leaping out a high-rise window onto a rope. I wish B13 were all parkour chase scenes, strung together with the bare minimum of dialogue. Parkour porn, in short.

But it is not that. Instead, it tries to be a real movie with, among other things, a real lady storyline. Bad decision. Listen: you cannot have your one and only female character spend the majority of the film being drugged and raped. I don't mean the only female character of note. I mean, truly, the only female non-extra onscreen. This movie is very much like Tennessee Williams, in that it hates women and is totally gay. Leïto and Damien spend their acquaintance 1) fighting in order to form an emotional bond, 2) handcuffing each other to things, and 3) basically doing it. I approve of all of that, but I wish action movies could be super gay without driving women into the cave of rape and irrelevance. If you will it, Luc Besson, it is no dream.

While we're on the subject of "me complaining about this movie's problems," B13 also has a slight case of Iron Man-itis. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I do not want action movies preaching to me about nonviolence or the democratic process. It draws me out of the world of flying people and whizzing bullets and back into the world where high body counts are horrifying, not entertaining. The scene in which Damien speechifies at the defense minister is B13's equivalent of the press conference where Tony Stark declares he has "more to offer this world than just making things that blow up." First of all, no, you don't. Second, shut up. Don't burden me with an excursus on your highly selective morality; it ruins the amoral fun of the movie.

My "liked it" rating may be confusing in light of the preceding paragraphs, but, in the wise words of my roommate Mary, "Parkour always deserves seven stars."

- 3 stars

CHEATER #1: Seen In Theaters, January-July 2010

"Cheater" is a new feature wherein I will discuss things that do not fall under the purview of this blog. This first entry is admittedly derivative of Raphael's movie rankings; when I told my roommate Muffin I was going to do this, he laughed and said, "Raphael's whole point is that he joylessly ranks things. Now you're doing the same thing and condemning yourself for unoriginality. It's like the two of you are in a contest for who can enjoy things the least." Yes, we are, and I am winning.

Five stars - Loved It


Io sono l'amore (I Am Love) - Gorgeous melodrama about a rich Milanese family. Tilda Swinton plays the matriarch, a Russian immigrant who “stopped being Russian when she came to Italy” (or [Italian] words to that effect). The movie tracks various upheavals in the Recchi family: daughter Betta’s coming out, the family company’s transfer of power and possible sale, and, foremost, Emma’s affair with her son’s friend Antonio. More than plot, though, Io sono l’amore hinges on atmosphere and feeling. I adored this movie. Near the end I thought, This is probably almost over why why why I would watch this for six hours. It’s beautiful. It’s about love (surprise!) and sex and food, and it’s stylish and thematically rich and ambiguous. It’s brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed. The score is all John Adams, who has never allowed his music to be used in a movie before. But of course he gave permission for this movie, because this movie is a dream.


Inception - Speaking of dreams! Inception is really fucking well done. I appreciated the restraint when it came to dreamlike images; the premise of the movie is so trippy that piling more surreal visuals onto it would have felt like, well, piling on. I also appreciated Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is talented, oh-so-fine, and apparently fixing to show the world that he can be an action hero because he can be anything. Seriously, has any young actor, past or present, controlled his/her career as deliberately and cleverly and with such simmering ambition? I have only good things to say about Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I appreciated the different levels of dreaming and the effects they had on each other.

If I were to make one criticism (and I am), it would be that DiCaprio and Cotillard's roles should have been reversed. I got uncomfortable and bummed out by the portrayal of a Strong-Willed Dude and his Lovely, Doomed Wife. Also, the love interest/antagonist character has a ball-and-chain implication that I could do with movies not attaching to women for once, especially when the love interest/antagonist gets no character development beyond that. Also also, could’ve been a lady action hero! Also also also, nothing about the characters--not even their names--would have needed to change if their genders had been flipped. But whatever. Christopher Nolan, despite being a very good director, uses female characters as obstacles, traumas, or exposition in service of his movies’ men (see: Memento, The Prestige, Inception, and especially The Dark Knight). He should work on that.


How to Train Your Dragon - Funnnnnnn. The Viking village of Berk is routinely beset by dragons. The hulking townsmen fend them off or kill them, but teenager Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is small and nerdy. Like geeks of yore, he tries to make up for his physical weakness with technological superiority, building a catapult. During a dragon attack, Hiccup fells a Black Fury--the most elusive and powerful species of dragon. He finds the dragon the next day, injured in a nearby canyon, and they bond, much to the (eventual) chagrin of the anti-dragon residents of Berk. From there, it unfolds basically how you’d expect, and it is charming and such a pleasure to watch. All in all, a wonderful children's movie in which characters eventually recognize the oppression besetting their enemies, aid them in their revolution, and then everyone is friends and the aristocracy is dead! No? Maybe?

Four stars - Really Liked It


Winter's Bone - Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is a seventeen-year old raising her two younger siblings and taking care of their catatonic mother. Her father, a meth cook who disappears for long stretches, has skipped bail--a bail he paid by putting his family's house up for security. Ree sets out to find him and save her family from homelessness. Few people help Ree, many try to wreck her investigation, and through all this she is a model of sympathetic strength. She's smart and kind and brave and dogged and… you know what? It is kind of weird to see a character with no discernable flaws whose every problem arises from circumstance. All the conflict in the movie happens because she refuses to give in to an impossibly cruel world. There is nothing wrong with her. And something about that just felt flat to me. I would have felt more engaged if this hadn't seemed to me the story of a saint’s martyring.

That said, I was still very engaged! I leaned forward in my seat for much or most of the movie. I cringed during the scene in the pond. I am not a robot. Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is great, as are the performances of John Hawkes as Teardrop and Dale Dickey as Merab. The script was lean, Debra Granik’s direction beautiful and stark, and overall it seemed like a great portrayal of desolation in the Ozarks, although what do I know from the Ozarks? In any case, an excellent movie that didn’t suck me in as much as I thought it should have.


Micmacs à tire-larigot (Micmacs) - Jean-Pierre Jeunet + Rube Goldbergian schemes + antipathy to the arms industry = my movie, for me. Thank you for making a movie for me, world! The sweetly awkward Bazil (Dany Boon) goes to live with a merry band of marginals in a scrap dump after his life is upended by a stray bullet in the head. They have a grand old time salvaging trash and turning it into exciting stuff, and they agree to join Bazil on a quest he happens upon: revenge against the weapons manufacturers whose products injured Bazil and killed his father (who died defusing a landmine when Bazil was a child). Micmacs is a lot of fun. The resolution is weaker than the rest of the movie, but I still came out of the theater delighted.


Please Give - Kate (Catherine Keener) and Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) are two women who are guiltily preoccupied with being good. Kate worries her wealth is parasitic: she buys dead people's furniture cheap and sells it in her fancy vintage shop; she's also waiting for her next-door neighbor to die so she can break through the wall and expand her apartment. Rebecca feels obligated to care for her sour, mean grandmother--the aforementioned dying neighbor. The main cast is filled out by their family members, none of whom have Kate or Rebecca’s “goodness” impulse. Please Give questions the usefulness of that impulse, but it also explores what it is to live without it, to be a mean grandmother, a vain sister, or an amoral husband. It’s a quotidian-lives-of-upper-middle-class-New-Yorkers kind of movie, which is not a lot of people’s bag, but I guess it is my bag? I liked this movie. The performances are strong, and the characterization is great.

Three stars - Liked It


Greenberg - Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is a sad guy who is mean to everyone, including his lovely romantic interest Florence (Greta Gerwig) and his lovely friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans). I enjoyed this movie most when it was being very, very awkward but not very, very cruel. Examples: the first, abrupt sex scene and the scene in the hospital when Florence is recuperating. (The burger-on-belly bit was one of my favorite jokes ever. Fucking gold.) The movie overall, however, did not do that much for me. I really enjoyed Gerwig and Ifans’ performances, though.


Breaking Upwards - I remember liking this independent rom-com, but I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to remember anything about it! Um, it’s about a couple (Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein) attempting an open relationship and doing so messily and often thoughtlessly. It features Pablo Schreiber as a very creepy dude and Andrea Martin as a super awesome mom. It was made for something like $15,000. I thought it was good.


Predators - I am not alone when I say that the opening of this movie is the best part. Still, I had a good time watching the whole thing. The downside: Predators has a weak script. The characters are so unlikable and the challenges so insurmountable that I disengaged, the "run-get killed-run" pattern gets repetitive, and the plot twist was telegraphed by the movie's premise itself ("prey" humans are chosen for their ruthlessness, so the one gentle human will turn out to be ruthless). The upside: a strong cast. Adrien Brody makes for a really interesting action hero. Alice Braga made me sympathetic to her slight character, though not to the writers who assigned all the feelings to The Woman because of course they did. I am Walton Goggins' #1 Fan, so of course I loved him. I did not love Louis Ozawa Changchien's role, but I don't think that was his fault; his character, a Yakuza enforcer named Hanzo, was a parade of stereotypes. Laurence Fishburne makes a welcome appearance as a crazy person. Another upside to Predators is its direction. I'm not commenting on anything technical because I don't understand anything technical. What I'm saying is, "I had a good time, it looked okay, and I could tell what the fuck was going on." The trend of shooting action movies all close up and shaky irritates and confuses me, because I am 85 years old.

Two stars - Didn't Like It


Iron Man 2 - I liked this better than Iron Man, because this was shittier. I know everybody else liked Iron Man, but I didn't--perhaps because I saw it on a 13-inch computer screen with an ex-boyfriend who liked almost no movies or perhaps because its "violence is wrong; take a look at this Taliban dude on FIRE!" ethos pissed me off. Anyway, Iron Man 2 has plenty of objectionable shit--privatizing world peace? Ugh go die--but it didn't bother me, because I could not take anything seriously in the movie that featured Mickey Rourke as Angry Russian Fusion Whip Man. One might say, "Why did you take anything seriously in the first movie? It is a superhero movie!" and to that I would say, "Because, though Iron Man had a lot of explosions, it did not have enough explosions to keep the political anxiety section of my brain at bay." Did Iron Man 2 have more explosions than its predecessor? I felt like it did. It's possible that the two movies were similar but my reactions were vastly different: during Iron Man, I thought: what a waste of Jeff Bridges; during this movie, I thought, Hi, Don Cheadle and Sam Rockwell! It is nice to see you! Robert Downey, Jr. was charming in the first movie and is charming in this one. The only thing I can think to say about either the characters of Pepper Potts and Natasha Whatever or the performances of Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson is: how aggressively boring.


Leap Year - I did not see this in theaters, per se. I saw it on my bed, while it was in theaters (don't tell the IP police). My roommate Alice and I lay on our stomachs and played the "regressive gender politics" drinking game. Basically that means we consumed beer steadily as we watched this movie. We howled and mocked our way through it, and we had a grand old time, which puts this movie in the uncomfortable category of "this is shit, I know this is shit, I don't want Netflix to think I want to watch as many movies like this as possible, and yet I undeniably enjoyed it, though that probably just means I enjoy Alice's company." What's the star rating for that?

One star - Hated It


Clash of the Titans - Boy, did this make me feel vindicated about Sam Worthington! He is every bit as boring as I always expected but could never prove, having avoided seeing Avatar, Terminator Salvation, etc., barf. (Tangent: in February, NYT Magazine asked actors what their favorite performances of the aughts were. Answers ranged from awesome--Vera Farmiga said Michael Fassbender in Hunger--to regular--Clooney said Marion Cotillard in La Môme--to INSANE: Sam Worthington's favorite performance of the last decade was apparently Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor. And what's weird about that choice, apart from everything, is that The Nutty Professor was released in 1996. Perhaps he meant 2000's Nutty Professor II: the Klumps? I hope not! Sam Worthington, you are so weird.) Anyway, this movie is a ludicrous assembly of trashy special effects, terrible makeup and costumes, and a nonsensical script. I don’t think director Louis Leterrier was necessarily aiming for coherence, to be fair, but what he was aiming for, I do not know. This movie has Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes playing opposite each other, and even they cannot do anything to make it less of a piece of shit.

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!