Sundance - Day Eight

Today was a day for great performances in less than great movies. More or less.

The day started out with Boiler Room, a New Line release that is here in the snowless land of snow looking for a jump-start. I went to it knowing that the very buzzy Love and Sex was starting before the film would end, so I made a deal with myself. If there was any reason to stick with Boiler Room, I would and I would skip Love and Sex.

Love and Sex is a romantic comedy about a woman who can't seem to find a relationship that works. The film starts with her delivering, to the dismay of her editor, a treatise on oral sex. The idea of this is tough and painful and funny and raw. And the movie never achieves that again. Which is a shame, because Famke Janssen, after years of taking small thankless roles in indies following her Bond breakout, finally has an opportunity to show what a good actress she is and can be. Jon Favreau, who we all knew could act, also gives a nice performance as the man who she is with for most of the picture. But the charms of the actors do not overtake the simplicity of the picture as often as they should. I'm not saying that the movie is a dog…It certainly isn't. But the pacing is never quite right. Some of the tricks writer/director Valerie Breiman uses are charming, but others just seem gimmicky. And at times, the screenplay seems to have characters doing things just to develop narrative structure. For instance, in one sequence it is crystal clear that one romance is over. Then, five minutes later, there is a sequence that covers the evolution of the same romance from obsession to disinterest. The sequence was clever, but we were so far ahead of the action that it was just filling time after a while.

Oops…did I forget to write about Boiler Room? See, I really don't think it's fair to review a movie negatively if you've only seen part of it. If it's good, sometimes it's worth some praise…

The Tao of Steve is another of the buzz movies here. And after seeing it, it's clear that the Donal Logue bandwagon, which has been getting fuller and fuller these last few years, has found a good stop for the actor. Were it only that the movie was as good as Logue's performance. Jenniphr Goodman (does that name smell of a publicist?) wrote and directed the film to very mixed results. The acting, other than Logue's, isn't bad…but it isn’t stellar either. The images are fine, but nothing great. And the film is enjoyable. But my big problem is that the film never really digs deeper than a quarter-inch into the very premise it sets up. The movie is constantly talking about this guy's weight and how thin he was in college, yet never really gets into what has turned him into a lazy, skirt-chasing fat guy. The film never deals with the price of being a single guy when all your old buddies have become married and settled down. The film never even really explains why the particular woman who may change his life in the film is so different than all the others. I'm not saying that she isn't physically and spiritually attractive, but why her? And so again, great performance, so-so movie.

Okay, maybe I can tell you a little bit about Boiler Room. Hmm…how to start? When I was a screenwriter of crappy low-budget movies, one of my favorite tricks was that when I had to do something that was screamingly obvious, I would have a character point out how screamingly obvious it was. So, instead of just stealing mercilessly from Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room has its characters quoting both movies. When Ben Affleck shamelessly appears in what had to be sold to him as a two-days-worth-of-work opportunity to have a legendary filmic moment like the one that Alec Baldwin had in his five minute Glengarry "Second prize, steak knives" speech, they were clever enough to have Affleck appear in more than one scene, so the theft could be excused. But what about a movie that has one black person in it who happens to start the movie just having slept with her boss and who will fall into bed with another Jewish white guy after less than a date, but has a soundtrack made of house music? If the movie had anything in it about starched white bread men trying to be black, that would be one thing… this one only has the music that might sell some soundtracks.

But enough about that...

Two Family House, More Boiling & ROTD

Two Family House is a nice movie. Michael Rispoli and Kelly Macdonald both give glorious performances. In fact, the film is wonderfully cast across the board. There is a delightful visual texture that brings the Staten Island of the '50s to vivid life. But where is the magic? There has to be magic. The movie seems to be aiming for the magic of Big Night or Diner, but you have all the fighting and none of the eating. The story of a man facing himself and his life in the mirror and having to make hard choices is a great one. Yet, screenwriter/director Raymond DeFelitta allows the moment of ultimate personal transition is one of the blandest beats in the whole movie, as though he was afraid to pull the trigger on the gun he loaded just a scene before. (For those who have seen the film, think "renounce.") I certainly enjoyed Two Family House, even though the title makes no sense. But this is the kind of movie whose memory you want to keep your whole body warm at night. Instead, I got a nightlight.

Of course, all the bulbs were burnt out in Boiler Room. Note to screenwriter/director Ben Younger: Salesmen do not act like frat boys. They do not share. They are competitive, distrusting, angry f**ks. Almost as bad as entertainment writers. If you want to see how real salesmen smile while they slice each other up, sit in on a press screening and listen closely. And watch your Achilles tendons.

READER OF THE DAY: From RKWhoa!: "First about the sweater -- people got out of the habit of wearing shirts under sweaters during the turtleneck phase, I think, and now we're back to an "Anyone for tennis?" mentality that demands a shirt underneath. I never realized this had begun to look weird until a man in the habit of shirtless-sweater-wearing joined my seminary class. I myself have been wearing sweaters w/o shirts for years, and probably look weird, too, now. I remember in the early '60s when we girls started wearing cardigans backwards (buttoned up, natch!) so we would look like the "hood" girls (Grease LIVES!). The tighter, the better. And capri pants! I thought I looked great. And then miniskirts! Oh God...I can't imagine you would look BAD, though, unless your sweater maybe had egg on it, or holes in the armpits. But then again, I am a DOL (dirty old lady)...hoho...so maybe even holes would be ok.

Re: getting too old to rave -- don't do it! I did that starting when I was about 25, and now that I'm in my 50s and know what it really means to be distanced by age, I wish I hadn't set myself apart that way, that fast. The crazy thing is that we may FEEL beyond the zeitgeist sometimes, but we aren't, until the people of the moment force us out. And the truly crazy thing is that men aren't forced out until they're at least in their 60s, but women are MADE old by the young by 40, while their hearts still feel 17, and there's no going back then, despite the ads that show the grandparents frolicking at Disneyworld, especially if you have no grandpa to frolic with. So, as the song says, "Do it 'til you're satisfied."

Thanks for mentioning Thank God It's Friday -- I've tried to describe that movie for eons and no one I talk to remembers it at all. I was beginning to think no one ever saw it but me and the guy with whom I went to it (but it was a drive-in, so maybe he wasn't really watching, despite having driven there, and besides, he's dead.) I couldn't remember the title, or who directed it, or any of the actors except for those who were singers. I was surprised at Donna Summer's performance, and remember the pyrotechnics during Earth Wind and Fire's number. I had been impressed by the editing and lighting of the scenes, and used it as a comparison to the inadequacy of the club scenes, scenes in and on the cars and in the parking lots in Wayne's World to show how lame WW was visually, but my comments didn't have any force since I couldn't remember the title of TGIF. At least, now, I know I wasn't in some timewarp.

Re: taste, criticism, etc. -- obviously PB&J watches the movie for the story while somehow trying to ignore the visual aspects and emulsifying the dialogue into plot-points and dispensable words. Symbols and suchlike are beyond someone like that. That he could lump Matrix, Three Kings, and BJM together shows that clearly. I am continually astounded by your ability to "get" the importance of vastly different films and talk about them in their terms, rather in some critic-ese that dumps on a film that doesn't contain all your favorite things. As an example -- we have a critic here in Buffalo who is no dummy, but he will say a movie is great if it has anywhere in it a blonde with huge gazongas DOING ANYTHING. Sometimes he will say a movie is ok if it has another hair-colored beauty with even larger breasts, but the same basic movie w/ no chicks at all, or a Calista Flockhart type, and all of a sudden the movie is irredeemable trash. (The exception to this rule is Sigourney Weaver -- I think she scares him into liking her movies...) This is not criticism, in my opinion. It's a proclivity, or at worst, an obsession. I'm astounded over and over when people fail to recognize satire of this kind of reviewing in commentary by folks like Joe Bob Briggs. Oh well. All I can say for now is, "Thank God Dave likes Pop-Tarts AND Melba toast -- and can tell the difference."

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E ME: Lapdance is coming! How much does one tip a stripper in Utah dollars?