Village Vidiot

  “Sweet and Lowdown,” September 17,  2000 (1999), video   Very good Woody Allen film starring Sean Penn as Emmett Ray, the fictional second best jazz guitarist of the 1930s. Always chasing the image of Django Reinhart, he struggles against himself, women, and life. Success is followed by his simply falling from view. This is a…

“The Cider House Rules,” September 17, 2000, video.  Overrated film based on John Irving novel about an orphanage, an orphan, his mentor the doctor/abortionist well played by Michael Caine, and apple picking in the 1940s A good but not a great movie. I much preferred the novel although it also was about 100 pages too…

“The Tao of Steve,” September 11, 2000, theater.  Really fun indie film about men and women. Dex is overweight but full of life. He plays his line of eastern and western philosophy to woo women for 10 slacker years and then meets Syd again at a college reunion. He has to confront his own emptiness…

“Topsy-Turvy,” July 17, 2000, theater.  Mike Leigh’s tribute to the trivialities of Gilbert and Sullivan. Well acted and sometimes painful to watch, it is rich and wonderful. To think this improvised is quite amazing and a true tribute to director and actors. The subject is so small and meaningless but so wonderful and rich. Quite…

  “All About Eve,” May 2000 (1950), video.  What with all the references from “All About My Mother,” we had to see this wonderful, quick-witted, well-acted Mankiewicz tour de force about a young woman, Eve Harrington, scheming and manipulating people to get to the top. Bette Davis is astounding as the aging (40s) star of…

  “All About My Mother,” May 17 2000 (1999), theater, Spanish, subtitled.  Nice to see director Pedro Almodovar finally hit it again.  A very well-crafted film that only occasionallyslips into melodrama but avoids both the boring soap-operaish aspects, the over-the-top silliness, and the in-your-face- shock theatrics of his earlier pictures without changing t“conventional” characters.  The…

“The Dreamlife of Angles,” April 30 2000, video, French, subtitled  Very good film about two young girls who come, by chance, to know one another. They move in together and begin to share lives. They become involved with some very interesting bikers and one takes up with a middle-class user of women who twists her…

  “Three Kings,” 24 April 2000, video.    Very good action flick about four US soldiers going after the gold stolen from Kuwait by Sadamm Hussein during the Gulf War. Good work by George Clooney, Ice Cube, Marc Wahlberg, and Spike Joynz. Good critique of US policy and Bush. Fine camera work, interesting weirdness about…

  “Blue Streak,” 27 February 2000 (1999), video.    This Martin Lawrence action comedy had a great premise but it fails utterly to pull it off. ML plays a jewel thief who gets out of jail after a robbery gone terribly wrong and wants to find the loot only to discover he stashed it in…

“Jerry Maguire,” 24 February 2000 (1996),  video.  Unsatisfying Tom Cruise piece with fine work by Cuba Gooding. The film looks at a sports agent who comes to hate himself for the bullshit of his work. Disgusted, he dashes off a manifesto about the job and, shock of shocks, is fired. One admiring accountant (Renee Zelwenger—boy…

  “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” 19 February 2000, video.  Well, I got shagged again watching this flat, lame James Bond spoof from Mike Myers.  Another flaccid comedy.  A couple of cute parts about Dr. Evil and his son, and the flying phallic space ship, but it was largely a waste of time. …

  “A Walk on the Moon,” October 17, 1999 (1999), video.    Very good and underrated drama about a young mother’s affair with a blouse salesman during summer 1969 at a lower-middle class Catskillls resort. Fun soundtrack, thoughtful humane dealing with the problematics of liberation and responsibility. Well worth seeing. Set in the context of…

“Enemy of the State,” October 15, 1999 (1998), video.  OK action comedy about surveillance and state intrusion into the lives of private individuals. Will Smith, Gene Hackman, and John Voight (as the villain) star. Well made, commercial piece of work. Fun to place this in Hackman’s ouvre next to the much more serious and fascinating…

   “The Buena Vista Social Club,” September 1999, theater.  Wim Wender documentary about Ry Cooder’s rediscovery of Cuba’s “son” musicians. He reunites them, brings them out, and reopens all their careers. The music is great, the film leaves some important gaps unalalyzed: why did they fall from favor and disappear in the 1970s? Politics? Aesthetics?…

“The Celebration,” September 17, 1999 (1998), video.  Very good, very intense, dark, dark Danish comic drama about an intensely dysfunctional family. A birthday party for the pater familias. falls apart when one of the children speaks truth to power and unveils the family’s dirty secrets. A fascinating, often perversely funny, family and national drama, including…

  “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,”  September 10, 1999 (1998),video.   Ok UK crime comedy, not the madcap romp it was touted as, but interesting for me. Bronwen was bored and fell asleep. Several guys get deep into debt when their rep is cheated at cards by the city thug. They plot a robbery to…

“Bowfinger,” August 17, 1999, theater.  Sometimes funny, sometimes just sort of dumb Steve Martin-written and acted comedy about an nth-rate director making a film starring Eddie Murphy (sometimes great!) as Kurt Ramsey, a psycho action star. He doesn’t know he’s in the film. The really funny stuff involves “Mind Head” (Scientology) a bogus cult that…

“October Sky,” August 17, 1999, video.  Set in 1957 as Sputnik circles the globe, this well-received sleeper of a historical drama chronicles the real struggle of four young boys from a West Virginia mining town to improve themselves and their chances of escaping the mines by exploring their fascination with rocketry and building their own…

“This Is Spinal Tap,” July 15,  1999 (1984), video. Wow. This stands up sooooooooo well after all these years. A wonderful, goofy look at the fictional band. Great work by all, including Christopher Guest. A real secret pleasure. Even funnier when, while channel surfing, I stumbled across Howard Stern interviewing Iron Maiden with their one-armed…

‘The Thief,” 4 June 1999 (1997), dvd.  Well done, very painful Russian drama about a young woman who becomes involved with a thief. She and her son become pawns in his selfish game traveling the country and robbing. He uses them as a setup to ingratiate himself with others, worm his way into their confidence,…

“The Slums of  Beverly Hills,” 1 May 1999, video.  Ok comedy with some very nice and funny bits about a Jewish family going from cheap apartment to cheap apartment, all to keep their Beverly Hills address. Weirdness about the daughter’s coming of age and sexuality (painful, if well played), and some very deep oddness about…

  “The Opposite of Sex,” 10 April 1999 (1997), video.  Very smart, funny, unsettling, interesting, playful, well acted, and well written and directed film (John Roos) about a 16-year old girl (Christina Ricci) wise and cruel beyond her years, who leaves her Louisiana home and mother and journeys to live with and exploit her gay…

  “The General,” 4 April 1999  (1998), theater.    This is an interesting look at an Irish criminal, Martin Cahill, who stole over 60 million dollars worth of jewels, paintings, and materials in addition to private burglaries. A brutal man of ascetic tastes (he raises pigeons as a hobby), he marries one sister and beds…

“Life is Beautiful,” 13 March 1999, theater.   Sentimental comedy about the power of love, humor, and faith. Comic actor, writer, director Roberto Benigni places Italian Jews in concentration camp. Assimilated Italian Jew woos and wins Italian Catholic girl about to marry pompous bureaucrat. Their loving marriage produces a wonderful child until father and son are…

“Henry Fool,” 27 February 1999 (1997), video.  Interesting, oddly humorous (often grossly so) and peculiar story of a young garbage-man transformed from tongue-tied sanitary engineer to Noble-laureate poet by a bizarre stranger who gets him to write. Well-acted piece by Hal Hartley. Owes more than a bow in style at first to “Eraserhead” but becomes…