Män som hatar kvinnor (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) (2009)

Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace, in an awesome performance), a researcher/hacker with a criminal past, works for a large security firm. She's been assigned to spy on Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a journalist recently convicted of libel. After she gives the information she's gathered on Blomkvist to a lawyer named Frode, Frode approaches Blomkvist on behalf of his client, Henrik Vanger. The ultra-wealthy Vanger hires Blomkvist to spend the months leading up to his prison sentence investigating the murder of Harriet Vanger--Henrik's niece. Blomkvist moves to the island of Hedebey, home of Henrik and family, and begins to dig.

He doesn't find much on his own, but Lisbeth, still hacking his computer, figures out a clue and e-mails him. Blomkvist, annoyed but intrigued, shows up at Lisbeth's door and gets her to join his investigation. Together, they are the best crime-solving team ever, uncovering a series of gruesome murders on their way to solving the Harriet mystery.

Before Lisbeth joins up with Blomkvist, there's a subplot where she has to deal with a new probationary guardian. From his first appearance, it is clear that this man--Bjurman--is controlling, sadistic, and an all-around winner. Lisbeth's interactions with him felt like the scariest, highest-stakes part of the movie. He's not central to the plot, but he is the clearest and earliest indication of the movie's big theme: misogyny. The Swedish title of the movie (and of the original book) means "Men Who Hate Women." I think this is pretty funny; I can imagine the English-language publisher saying, "Nope! Nope! No! Call it something else; call it anything else. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Great. Print."

Men Who Hate Women Including the One with the Dragon Tattoo does an exceptionally good job of using vagueness to build suspense. The Vanger Group's business looms over the entire movie, yet I don't remember what kind of business it was. Are we ever told? Similarly, the infrequency of Blomkvist's contact with Vanger family members added to the unease I felt about them. It's really unnerving when Blomkvist is summoned to a meeting with the assembled Vangers, severe middle-aged and elderly strangers staring him down in an underlit living room. Henrik's brother Harald is the only Vanger on Hedebey who doesn't go to that creepy meeting--which makes him even creepier. Harald is the movie's bogeyman. He's mentioned often, and his house is an imposing presence on the island. He can't be overlooked, but he can't be seen, either. It's a really typical way of building up fear of a character, so I feel weird making a thing of it, but I thought this movie carried it off particularly well.

In general, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo uses familiar tricks but makes them feel compelling, not worn. Some of the plot developments were predictable--who was sending the pressed flowers, Lisbeth's violent crime--but that didn't bother me or make me enjoy the movie less. Plus, let's be real: it is incredibly refreshing to see a thriller about misogyny rather than a thriller filled with misogyny.

- Really Liked It

Sè, Jiè (Lust, Caution) (2007)

I keep seeing movies about women enduring unimaginable pain--Frozen River, Winter's Bone, and now Lust, Caution. Next up: Lars Von Trier's entire catalogue! (Haha, just kidding. I will never watch Antichrist. Just so we're clear, if you would like coverage of Antichrist, this blog will disappoint you. May I recommend the MDCC Media Center instead?)

Okay, well, that turned into a pretty weird lars von tangent. Back to the movie at hand.

Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) is a college student in Hong Kong in 1938. A hunky dude named Kuang (Wang Leehom) recruits her and four other students to perform a patriotic play (in order to drum up pro-China, anti-Japan feelings). The audience eats it up, and the six students, giddy with success, decide to take the logical next step: assassinating a collaborator. Chia Chi poses as Mrs. Mak, wife to a conveniently rich and even more conveniently absent businessman; her job is to act sexy and draw the target, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), into the students' house, where her co-conspirators will kill him. She almost pulls it off, but Yee is too cautious and insufficiently lustful, and he leaves.

Mrs. Mak doesn't get another chance to seduce Mr. Yee; he moves back to Shanghai. The students are demoralized, but wait--it gets worse! Yee's bodyguard shows up, catches the defeated would-be assassins packing up “Mr. and Mrs. Mak’s house,” and threatens to expose them. They murder him. How do they murder him? Why, very slowly and brutally and inexpertly. Chia Chi runs away, horrified, and that's the end of the first half of the movie.

Three years later, Kuang finds her in Shanghai. He is now a member of the grown-up resistance, and he asks Chia Chi to reprise her role--Yee is now head of the secret police, and the resistance does not like him at all. Mrs. Mak and Mr. Yee start fucking. I found the sex scenes disturbing, stressful, and fraught with uncertainty. That's how one is supposed to react, I think, so great job, Ang Lee et al., but YEESH. Anyway, the uncertainty: the uncertainty is key. Does Yee love Mrs. Mak? How does she feel about him? Will he get assassinated? Will she get caught?

I refer to the main character alternately as Wong Chia Chi and as Mrs. Mak because, over the course of the movie, I found myself forgetting that there was ever a Chia Chi. She's completely divorced from her life, transformed from college student into high society wife. On a bus in Hong Kong, Chia Chi tries her first cigarette because her friend tells her "Artists have to smoke." A few years later, in Shanghai, she stares longingly at every cigarette she sees. She becomes a smoker, because that's how smoking works. Likewise, Wong Chia Chi becomes--to what extent is debatable--Mrs. Mak, because that’s what happens (or can happen) if you pretend to be someone every day. I’m hedging because the character of Wong Chia Chi/Mrs. Mak is pretty opaque. I'm not sure who she ends up being or what she ends up feeling.

When does she enjoy having sex with Yee? Never? Always? Sometimes? It's necessary for Mrs. Mak to want him, but Chia Chi really seems to, too. And that may be why sex is such a powerful centerpiece for this dangerous relationship. Everything else is a lie, but their feral sex seems like it must be honest. It is the most compelling, most emotional thing we see Wong and Yee doing together, so my interpretation of their relationship is largely an interpretation of their sex.

Also, side issue: Chia Chi loses her virginity in a singularly unsentimental fashion. During the Hong Kong plot, the students decide she needs sexual experience before seducing Mr. Yee, so one of her friends, an awkward, sexually bland young man, helps her practice. The tediousness of Chia Chi's first sexual experiences were, for me, a silent specter over her relationship with Yee--whatever he is, he's not boring in bed. I wondered if she would have been as deeply affected if she'd had intense sex before. "With whom?" you ask? (Thank you for asking.) With Kuang! They totally crush on each other. I really wanted those crazy kids to make it work.

It’s funny: I thought the strongest and weakest elements of Lust, Caution were the same as in another Ang Lee movie: Brokeback Mountain. In both, I loved the characters. I loved seeing superb actors create these absorbing (and super sad) relationships. But in both movies, I was less enamored than I would have been, had the pacing been quicker. Sorry for being a dumb clod or whatever, but I think these movies are TOO SLOW.

This might be a weird comparison, but watching Lust, Caution was sort of like reading Perdido Street Station: I read Perdido in little 2-5 page bites for a WHILE, but at a certain point, I felt a kick (no incepto), and I read the rest in one sitting. The second half of Lust, Caution has what I wanted from all of Lust, Caution: a slow pace that's tense and engrossing. That's a different sort of slowness than in the first half, which felt a little lethargic. I think I would have loved the movie if it had been more ruthlessly edited. (Like this blog post, am I right, fellas?)

Okay, now there are things I need to make sense of in this movie, and so I have created some DISCUSSION TOPICS. They are posted after the break, and they contain spoilers. Please do comment on these Very Important Issues if you've 1) made it this far and 2) seen the movie.

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.

Avatar: the Last Airbender, Book 1: Water (2005)

This show's okay, but I did feel like it had too few white people? You know how that is, when you're watching some mainstream Hollywood entertainment and you're just like, "Damn. So many people of color." It's not that big a deal, but if they were to adapt this into a movie, my one recommendation would be "more white people." If I were permitted to elaborate, my recommendation would be "more white people except make the Fire Nation genero-brown. A sort of South Asian/Middle Eastern/Latino group. I would find those racial politics more palatable--and current!" That would be my recommendation.

Just kidding, everybody! I am simply making a timely (nope) joke about The Last Airbender, a movie so nice that it has a lower RottenTomatoes score than Jonah Hex. Terrible though the movie may be (going off of conventional wisdom here; I haven't seen it), the Nickelodeon cartoon on which it's based, Avatar: the Last Airbender, is really good.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is about a kid named Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen) who's supposed to save the world. His world is made up of four countries: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. (I question the structure of these nation-states: while the Earth and Fire countries are contiguous, the Water and Air territories are far-flung, at opposite ends of the map and separated by Fire and Earth lands. How, exactly, did the widespread Water and Air cultures develop similarly? Did they start in one area, then colonize the others? Also, while the Earth Kingdom is multiethnic, the other three populations seem to be homogenous. Maybe?) ANYWAY: a small minority of each country's populations are "benders"--people who can "bend" one element to their will, using Chinese martial arts. The Avatar is the one person who can learn to bend all four elements.

At the beginning of the series, Aang has been frozen for 100 years (along with his giant six-legged flying bison Appa) in a huge ball o' ice at the South Pole. He's discovered by Katara (Mae Whitman) and Sokka (Jack DeSena), two teenage members of the Southern Water Tribe. Katara is a Waterbender. Sokka is a Xander--sometimes heroic, but lacking in superpowers and typically used for comic relief. The 100 years that Aang missed were pretty important, on account of the Fire Nation went genocidal and exterminated his Air diaspora peoples. The Fire Nation has also been waging war on the Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom for a century, but the Water and Earth people aren't as bad off as the Air people (i.e. they still exist).

The show follows Aang's quest to master all four bending disciplines and defeat the evil Fire Lord. He is accompanied by Katara and Sokka and pursued by the Javert-ian Prince Zuko (Dante Basco), heir to the Fire Nation throne. Zuko has been banished by his dick Fire Lord father, and he can only regain his honor and return home if he captures the Avatar.

This is a really fun show, and the second half of the season is especially impressive. I tried to make a list of my favorite episodes of the season but quickly realized that my favorites were pretty much "episode 10 through 18," which is too many favorites. Oddly, some of my favorite episodes are allegorical: "The Great Divide" explores conflict and subjectivity; it follows two feuding tribes as they are forced to cross a treacherous canyon together. That kind of story (especially in kids' TV) usually feels heavy-handed to me, but this one is thoughtful and interesting. Likewise "Jet" and "Bato of the Water Tribe"--two episodes that examine trust from different angles. These episodes could easily have descended into preachiness but don't. Avatar is notable for its strong plots and lack of condescension.

This show also has badass gadgets! In "The Northern Air Temple," the Fire Nation has these tanks where if you flip them over, the center bit where the humans hang out flips over, too. I'm explaining this poorly, but the way this goes down is the good guys manage to flip over a tank, and they're like YES but then the middle of the tank flips itself, the tracks keep on rolling, and the good guys are like OH SHIT. It is very cool! That whole episode is replete with steampunk insanity and delightful designs.

The one other thing I want to talk about in Avatar: the Last Airbender is FEMINISM. (Sorry this is so haphazard, by the way, but it is pretty hard to review a whole season at once, especially when you are not putting in the time and effort to write something well [see: me, right now].) FEMINISM is important in this cartoon, as exemplified by episode 18, which I think is called "The Waterbending Master," but I'm not going to double-check, and I don't know for sure because while I wrote down other episode titles in my notes, here I only wrote "118 - fuck you patriarchy."

The main conflict in "The Waterbending Master" is that Aang and Katara have traveled no joke across the fucking EARTH to study with this dude named Master Paku, but when they get to the Northern Water Tribe (which, incidentally, is Polar Venice--bridges and canals carved out of ice; it's great), Paku says he'll only teach Aang. "In my culture ladies are not allowed to learn to water-fight. Go learn how to water-heal, you vagina." Katara and Aang's shared position on this is "are you a fucking joke," which makes sense, because they traveled the entire distance of the world for this purpose and now sexism what the shit.

Katara gets mad, Aang says that he's not going to study with an asshole who won't teach ladies, and Katara says, "wait, no, that's a bad idea because the world will end if you don't learn waterbending." She resigns herself to not learning for all of 6 hours or something, but then she and Aang decide that, every night, he'll just teach her what he learned that day. Master Paku catches them immediately, gets super angry, and kicks Aang out of his class. Katara and Aang go before a tribunal or some shit to appeal this, and the chief says that maybe Paku would take Aang back if "you [i.e. Katara] swallow your pride and apologize." Through his shit-eating grin, Paku says, "I'm waiting, little girl." And a vein bursts in Katara's temple and instead of "I'm sorry," she is more like "FUCK YOU; P.S. PISTOLS AT DAWN." So then she fights this incredible master, right, even though she only knows a little waterbending. And she does such a good job! He still hands her her ass, but first she bends like she's never bent before.

The fight doesn't convince Paku that he's an ass, but his discovery that Katara's grandmother is his long-lost betrothed what ran away to the Southern Water Tribe does convince him because Katara seizes on the opportunity to say, "CLEARLY SHE LEFT YOU BECAUSE OF PATRIARCHY." Harsh? Yes, but Paku immediately shapes the fuck up and teaches her waterbending. Result! Now, what's interesting about all this is that before fighting Paku, Katara is a less capable waterbender than Aang. She starts the series knowing more, but his learning curve is much steeper. Post-Paku-conflict, Katara becomes the bomb. She is better at waterbending than Aang. She is the best. One could interpret this as an inconsistency, but I see it this way instead: her "come to Jesus" moment ("come to Jesus" = "feminist epiphany") has opened the floodgates and revealed her amazing latent power. POTENT METAPHOR YOU GUYS.

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.

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.