...Keeps On Giving

I allow people to get the impression that I'm some kind of cinephile, but it's really not true. I've never seen a movie by Fellini, Truffaut or Bergman. I saw Citizen Kane but it was on broadcast television, all edited up and pan-and-scan square, with commercials in. I can't talk at all intelligently about The Bicycle Thief and I can't put Birth of a Nation in any kind of context for you. I have no idea what it means when someone insists on letting me know how many millimeters the film is measured in, why an aspect ratio is something I need to spend time considering and, most importantly, I've never either smoked nor owned a beret.

And I'm not really all that good about talking about movies themselves either. It often takes me days to figure out if I've even liked something I've just seen.* I've written about films on this blog and in my previous blog life, but if you look closely enough (and by that I mean "have read any of it at all") it's clear that a lot of that stuff is mostly a dodge. I'm not apologizing as I think I've been pretty upfront with you people thus far in letting you know that, above and beyond anything edifying or truthful, my first and highest service in writing this is to find a vehicle to work in a decent dick joke. Sometimes that means talking about movies. Sometimes that means talking about politics. Sometimes that means making a list of things that bananas remind me of.** It's all a means to a very socially necessary end.

All those caveats aside, I will say that during my days of girlfriend-non-proximity, amongst all the other totally true things I outlined last week, I went on something of a movie bender. This is not because I was alone and I've convinced myself that the Screen People are my friends, but because all of my real friends were occupied and the Screen People are never too busy "cleaning out the garage" or "driving to a youth soccer tournament" or "taking their mother to dialysis" or whatever other bullshit people say they have going on.

Free time at this time of year usually means a lot of driving around to find art-houses away from the cultural rain-shadow that is Inland SoCal, where the same five movies are playing on the hour, every hour, at every MovieArk Palace-O-Rama in mine and every adjacent ZIP code. It borders on compulsion, but look, the preview I saw for it said some critic somewhere called it "a revelation" and some kind of foreign film festival gave it a prize in the shape of some kind of leaf. How am I not supposed to go right out and see that?

If you find yourself not living in LA or New York, I thought I would take the opportunity to spare you the drive and recap the three films I saw.

I. Philomena
starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan
directed by Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen)

Plot: Dame Judi plays an old person for once. She's Irish I think and remembers about having this baby back when she was younger and played by someone else. She ends up left at a convent and working in the Magdalene laundry until her baby is adopted away. Steve Coogan is a washed-out political PR guy who picks up her story as a freelance journalist and traces the fate of her child, adopted by Americans, demonstrating a lot of market savvy and crossover potential. For the movie I mean, not the child. They track him down, it's too late and all tragic because he was also looking for her, but the nuns wouldn't help.

Good: Judi Dench is a surprisingly light touch in what could have been dreary and leaden. Steve Coogan is a genius at playing people who are just-tolerable complete assholes.

Bad: It's based on a true story, so if you read ahead, you know how it ends. Also the mom lady from Game of Thrones is in it and not wearing old-timey clothes or being in a war, which I found surprisingly upsetting and disorienting.

The Takeaway: Catholics are bad people.

II. Nebraska
starring Bruce Dern, Will Forte, Bob Odenkirk, lots of other white people
directed by Alexander Payne (The Descendants, Sideways, Election)

Plot: Bruce Dern is really old. I mean really old. And drunk. He thinks he's won a million dollars from some Publisher's Clearing House bullshit and keeps trying to walk to Nebraska from Montana until his doofy son MacGruber decides to drive him there just so he'll shut the fuck up about it. There's some mishap and they end up detouring to the old man's home town so he can gather himself. Everyone who lives there is a terrible human being. Will Forte sucker-punches a geriatric. Nobody wins a million dollars. We learn valuable lessons about family. In black and white.

Good: Bruce Dern. He should be in more stuff. I totally believed he was old.

Bad: Bruce Dern was so good, then Mr. Payne hired a bunch of non-professional actors to fill small roles, making them all look even worse by comparison. Even Will Forte was clearly outmatched and could not keep up.

The Takeaway: Indulge your drunken and neglectful parents in their dotage. The reliable parent is not worth your time.


III. Inside Llewyn Davis
starring Some Guy, also Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman
directed by one or both of the Coen Brothers

Plot: This guy Llewyn Davis is a folk singer in 1961 Greenwich Village. Also he is an asshole. Some very minor and barely worth mentioning stuff happens to him, some of which involve a cat/some cats. Also he is caught in the causality loop from the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect" guest starring Kelsey Grammer? The episode guest starred Kelsey Grammer I mean, not this movie. This movie has enough people in it.

Good: It's a Coen Brothers movie, so it's impeccable to look at, beautifully directed, quiet and self-assured, popping with character moments. The music, by people like T-Bone Burnett, is stunningly good.

Bad: It's about dirty folkies who don't know they're going to become dirty hippies. Fuck all these people, really. The Coen Brothers do caper films or films about guys to whom a bunch of shit happens. This is the latter, but the themes and connections between events are even less clear than in, say, A Serious Man.

The Takeaway: You get to hear a folk musician call somebody else "square." Also, it used to be possible to hitchhike and not be immediately murdered. Unless you are a cat.

Happy Christmas. You are welcome. The end.

Sorry, just realized I should have said: spoilers!


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*Or, depending on the toxicology of the moment, if I've even seen a film. It's amazing what you can convince yourself is happening on unpainted sheetrock for the better part of a day.

**Wireless telephone receivers. Railroad spikes. Sort of bendy cucumbers. Penises.