Dogs Bark

So This Is What Happened To Randolph Scott - - Cowboys & Aliens (2011) - - 29 July 2011

Recommended. I like peanut butter. I like chocolate. So why, unlike many, do I loathe peanut butter and chocolate?  Inquiring minds will never know and I can’t explain why I liked Cowboys & Aliens, again bucking the critical consensus.  Obviously, this is a Snakes On A Plane exercise . . . you get it or not. Such an effort must retain goofiness but be seriously entertaining. James Bond and Indiana Jones gathering a posse to shoot at insects in spacecraft could easily crash and burn. The path that director Jon Faverau successfully clings to is the cliff edge of irony - - a lesson Tim Burton learned between the unsuccessful Mars Attacks! and Planet Of The Apes. Love interest Olivia Wilde (Tron: Legacy) is adequately wry and stunning. Gunsmoke’s Buck Taylor, Keith Carradine, and the Ghost Ranch round up the twang. Note how Faverau’s opening pays homage to Budd Boetticher. Very cool!

Is That A Webley Mk IV In Your Pocket? - - Gun Crazy (1950) - - 21 July 2011

Recommended. Gun Crazy, aka Deadly Is the Female, was a letdown for me despite several highly attractive features. First, it was the admitted inspiration for Bonnie and Clyde, one of my personal favorites (no duh . . .) Second, it’s an widely applauded film noir. But mostly, John Dall (The Corn Is Green, Spartacus), who played the creepier of the gay blades in Hitchcock’s Rope, should've been better. If TV helmster Joseph H. Lewis (Branded, The Rifleman) had recycled the delectable craziness that Hitch drew forth, Dall would've been a better match for the fuse of loony Peggy Cummins (Night of the Demon). I thought their pyro-chemistry to be a dud. The screenwriter was blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, using Millard Kaufman as his front. The sweet camera work was by six-time Oscar bridesmaid Russell Harlan (Red River, To Kill A Mockingbird). In balance, the sum of all this is at least worth a viewing.

Mumbai Gumbo - - Mississippi Masala (1991) - - 15 July 2011

Strongly recommended. Mississippi Masala is the movie that elevated director Mira Nair (Amelia, The Namesake) from an interesting Indian movie maker to an true auteur, a person with a unique vision and voice for culture and human longing, as effective in this as any modern Scheherazade.  The razzle dazzle of Salaam Bombay is here tightly constrained into clear, but complex, narrative about love between an young Indian, née Uganda, woman (Sarita Choudhury, Kama Sutra) and a fully-dimensional, American black man (Denzel Washington).  What a joy it is to see race handled so deliberately without a hint of condescension or cliché. I particular like the father, Roshan Seth (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), who expresses all the pain of losing his African home, yet in the end, seems to transcend all this once he is allowed to return. His final smile provides a perfect coda to this lovely tale.

A Bug’s Life - - Barney’s Version (2010) - - 14 July 2011

Not recommended.  Barney’s Version won a bunch of Canadian Genie awards and almost all the American critic’s hearts.  I guess I’m a hoser. I didn’t hate Barney’s Version and only occasionally felt the urge to nod off.  It’s technically well-made and the acting is superb. I may have to lay this at the feet of Mordecai Richler, who wrote the short story; however, I expect he has invested Barney Panovsky (Paul Giamatti) with things beyond the ken of director Richard J. Lewis and screenwriter Michael Konyves - - principally, a reason to give a damn.  But Barney is a cockroach, a pig in every sense of the word. Both he and his cop father (Dustin Hoffman) are offered as the kind of lovable rogues that beautiful girls swoon over. First, Rachelle Lefevre . . . then Minnie Driver . . . finally Rosamund Pike. Right . . . So if you don’t buy this crusty bag of doorknobs, the movie doesn’t work. 

ET, Get Over It - - Super 8 (2011) - - 9 July 2011

Recommended. Way too much is going on here and, like the train wreck that propels the plot, it’s spectacular but misdirected. There’s a better, 100-minute movie lurking in here. Having said that, and in disagreement with conventional wisdom, I liked Super 8 enough to recommend it. J.J. Abrams is a spotty director; I was an early adapter - - and abandoner - - of Lost. But forget that, Super 8 is pure Spielberg, primarily Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET. When does homage turn to boot-licking? This time out all the kids are raised by distracted, single parents (Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard) but there is, thankfully, no substitute nurturing by the alien. Super 8 is saved by these kid actors, who are splendid (Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, primarily). Ms Fanning shows the prodigy-ous ability for which she’s famous. Maybe she should have taken the helm.