Dogs Bark

Opting Out - - The Social Network (2010) - - 30 January 2011

Not Recommended. The buzz about The Social Network is a repulsive example of what’s wrong with both Hollywood and America.  Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and actor Jesse Eisenberg portray Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg as a vile scumbag, obsessive climbing his only social skill and little of the actual intellect required to start-up a company. All his insight is depicted as reactive and Facebook itself, a tantrum of rejection. Given this, I never connected to the characters or their story and their downfall became a bore. That story is completely false, according to those who were there; Sorkin now lamely calls the work a ‘metaphor’ and Zuckerburg, an ’altruist,’ in case anyone’s still listening.  We also now know that Facebook itself came out of an economy cranked up on toxic assets. If anyone really thinks that it's worth 50 billion, I’ve got an eight-bedroom house in Pahrump to sell them.

Celtic Hillbillies - - The Fighter (2010) - - 26 January 2010

Recommended. The beginning of this movie was like an excellent first date; by the end of The Fighter, it ain’t love, but dinner was delicious. The three courses, are Bale, Leo and Adams, also by kind circumstance, the three Oscar-nominated actors. I’ve praised them all before and Amy Adams (Julie and Julia, Doubt) . . . mostly as a foil to Ms. Streep. Here, she plays off both Melissa Leo (Frozen River) and Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) with ferocity - - literally in some scenes - - and skill. The plot concerns a battle for the soul of real-life fighter “Irish’ Micky Ward (Mark Wahlburg) among his girlfriend (Adams), insanely overbearing mother (Leo) and crack-addled brother (Bale). Bale’s true-to-life performance caps a shot of white poverty and provides a northeastern doppleganger to Winter’s Bone. Dicky Ecklund would be chillingly at home in the Ozarks.

I Just Wanna Make Movies About You - - Who Do You Love? (2008) - - 20 January 2011, at the 20th Tucson Jewish Film Festival

Strongly recommended.  Why does Hollywood keep asking this question? Who Do You Love? was made in 2008, same year as Cadillac Records, a flashier movie with Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess, Beyonce Knowles as Etta James and the same story. I strongly recommended Cadillac Records, as I do Who Do you Love?, so which is better? Well, to quote, Phil Chess, ‘they’re both full of BS but this one has less.’ Maybe that’s because Cadillac Records didn’t even include the younger Chess brother. I definitely prefer Alessandro Nivola over Brody and Chi McBride did a better Willie Dixon. Many of the other characterizations are smaller in Who Do You Love?; Etta James, for legal reasons, turns into a compilation, unremarkably played by Megalyn Echikunwoke. Some nice period jazz makes up Jeff Beal’s score (Pollack).  A soft light drapes David Franco’s excellent pictures.  So would it kill you to see both?

The Land of Might-Have-Been - - Gosford Park (2001) - - 19 January 2011

Strongly recommended. Hard to believe that Robert Altman is gone. One expects him to emerge tomorrow with a marvelous cast and story submitted for our consideration. Gosford Park was almost his last movie and really was also his true farewell. It may also have been his best constructed film. The story is murder most foul over an English country weekend, with a herring of every hue cast our way despite a perfect and moving solution in the last reel. In fact, the arc of the story, from the arrival to departure of the guests, is wonderfully poignant. Altman's attention to the life of service that claims half the cast is also masterful. I particularly liked the scene where Hollywood star Ivar Novello (Jeremy Northam) sings several songs written by the real Ivar Novello, as the entire house, servants and masters (save nasty Maggie Smith), inhale a moment of beauty. Sweet.

Valued Families - - The Kids Are All Right (2010) - - 18 January 2011

Strongly Recommended. I’ve known some lesbian couples but few with children.  Thus I can’t comment on the issues of raising these kids, or lack thereof, and on the authenticity of this aspect of The Kids Are All Right. But that aside, the relationship of Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening), as rendered by these splendid actresses, is the most authentically portrayed marriage of the year. For those sick with worry over the sanctity of wedlock, watch this movie; however, director/writer (with Stuart Blumberg) Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon, High Art) doesn’t rest there. Thanks to another great Mark Ruffalo characterization, paradise gets bent when the kid’s sperm donor, Paul, arrives, charming everyone but Nic and unintentionally unhinging the matriarchy.  Ruffalo possesses just the right boyish charm to spin a girl’s sexual compass. The results are sad but wise and left wiser, the correctly ambiguous ending of a serious adult comedy.

Life On The Bottom - - Midnight Cowboy (1969) - - 6 January 2011

An essential. The historical place of Midnight Cowboy is undisputable. If you want to find the point at which the Catholic League of Decency became irrelevant (along with any other stop on our cultural organ) it was Oscar night 1970, when this masterpiece won Best Movie.  The first and only X-rated movie to so arrive. Then there’s that iconic final bus trip to Miami, Dustin Hoffman’s “I’m walkin’ here!”, the John Barry (Goldfinger) score - - legendary. But perhaps it’s the scene between Barnard Hughes and Jon Voight that really won Midnight Cowboy both the X and the Oscar, a fifteen-minute sketch of pre-Stonewall self-loathing that still can horrify. At the end, though, this movie is about the triumph of idiosyncratic compassion over apathy, a testimony we may always need. Well-deserved Oscars went to the script by the blacklisted Waldo Salt (Serpico, Coming Home) and direction by John Schlesinger (Darling, Marathon Man).