Masoo Reviews

Bullitt (1968)

Which 1968 are we talking about here?

[6/10 · 19 July 2005]

The car chase scene is fine, but the whole movie is pretty pointless. The plot must have been the boilerplate for subsequent Quinn Martin TV productions in the 70s, and in fact the movie could have been 50 minutes long and been just as good.

The best thing about the movie is seeing San Francisco in 1968. The weirdest thing about the movie is that it takes place in San Francisco in 1968, and there is no sense that anything different was happening, in San Francisco or anywhere else in the world, in 1968. Dirty Harry in 1971 was clearly of its time and place, a response to what had happened in 1968 and the rest of the 60s. Bullitt, which takes place in that time and place, could have been filmed ten years earlier or ten years later. There is no larger sense of politics ... the district attorney is ambitious, but that pales against what was actually happening in San Francisco, and Paris, and Chicago, doesn't it? It was only a year after the Summer of Love, but there's not a hippie in sight. If it wasn't for the hills and the landmarks, you'd think the movie was made in Omaha in 1974.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Moore's best film is his least entertaining

[8/10 · 29 July 2004]

I wouldn't complain so much about Michael Moore if 1) he wasn't so crummy to people who don't deserve it (I don't mind when he picks on the head of GM or Charlton Heston), and 2) if he didn't have the disturbing ability to insert himself into touching private moments that don't need Michael Moore's presence.

Happily, both of these tendencies are mostly absent from Fahrenheit 9/11. Republicans and Democrats take it on the chin, but the "average Americans" are offered up without condescension, a rarity in the past for Moore. (He does get a few cheap shots at small countries like Costa Rica and Iceland, though.)

As for my second point above, it might be useful to compare two scenes. In Bowling for Columbine, we get a scene where Moore comforts a woman on camera. The woman needs comforting; Moore is there; he comforts her. But there's something smarmy about the event ... it's not clear why we have to see Moore with his arm around the woman, except to point out that Michael Moore cares. In Fahrenheit 9/11, however, there are several emotional scenes, particularly those with the woman whose son was killed in Iraq. Moore remains mostly off-camera for those scenes ... he lets us see the woman's grief, it's powerful and important to what Moore is trying to say, but he leaves it be, he doesn't insert himself for no reason.

As usual, Spinsanity takes on Moore's cavalier attitude towards facts, and there's plenty to kvetch about, but even here, Moore is improving. As Spinsanity notes, the film "appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work." They do go on to note that the movie "is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up," but to be honest, that doesn't bother me much ... I have no objection to Moore the rabblerouser, editing his footage for maximum impact, I just don't like it when he lies. And there would appear to be very few lies in Fahrenheit 9/11.

I'd have to say there's some irony in the fact that Fahrenheit 9/11 is Moore's most successful film at the box office, and also the least "entertaining." Perhaps Moore should have been trusting his audience all along to get his arguments, without the cheap stuff. Eight on a scale of ten.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Perhaps perhaps perhaps

[10/10 · 15 November 2002]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

What a perfect title! The two main characters are most definitely in the mood; they also don't ever get beyond being in the mood. Repressed emotions have rarely been so charged as they are in this movie ... probably the best comparison would be those British films where a couple of stiff-upper-lip types lust for each other in socially-acceptable silence. While on one level, "nothing really happens" in the film, Wong Kar-Wai does a great job of making us anticipate what is about to happen. Of course, our expectations are shattered repeatedly, or rather, they go unfulfilled ("shattered" is far too showy and emotional for what we see on the screen, which is quiet and, well, repressed). A Nat King Cole song that turns up late in the film (sung in Spanish!) says it all: "perhaps, perhaps, perhaps."

Maggie Cheung is as beautiful as any actress ever, and it's always nice to see her when she's not being wasted. Tony Leung isn't exactly chopped liver in the looks department either, and both of them give exquisitely moderated performances.

The DVD is terrific as well (Criterion strikes again).

Windtalkers (2002)

John Woo's second-worst American movie

[5/10 · 21 October 2002]

The sad thing about Windtalkers is how utterly ordinary and conventional it is. It's not good, it's not bad, it's not interesting but neither is it boring, it's got an interesting idea for a plot, it doesn't make much use of that idea. It's the definition of a five on a scale of ten. It's better than Mission Impossible 2, still John Woo's worst American movie, but it's so much worse than Woo's greatest Hong Kong films that it's depressing.

You can mark off all the items on your John Woo Checklist (birds flying? check! two guys pointing guns at each other? check! male bonding? check! Catholic imagery? check!) but they mean nothing beyond the checklist. He takes the fascinating concept of Navajo Marines using their native language as an unbreakable-to-the-Japanese code during WWII, and then barely uses that code during the 2+ hours of the film. He takes a movie ostensibly about those Navajos, and turns it into a movie about Nicolas Cage. Perhaps most unfortunate, this great Asian filmmaker turns every Japanese character into a faceless, killing nonentity. Windtalkers isn't a disappointment ... how could it be after the disaster that was MI2? It's just a hollow dud.

Insomnia (2002)

Al Can't Sleep

[8/10 · 19 October 2002]

Insomnia shows us what Touch of Evil might have been like if Orson Welles' character wasn't such a bad guy after all. Al Pacino is perfectly cast as a guy who can't sleep; Al has pretty much looked exhausted since sometime back in the early 90s, so you could argue he's tailor-made for the title role in this picture. Longtime viewers of Pacino movies know there's two ways he can go with a role, the subtle way or the over-the-top way. Thankfully, in Insomnia he's underplaying, and it works wonderfully. His ever-so-sleepy face does most of the acting for him; like Benito Santiago's, it's a face that tells a hundred tales before he even opens his mouth. Apparently following Pacino's lead, co-star Robin Williams also tones down the outrageous mugging. His face, too, does the work, his entire character seemingly explained by the way his long nose and chin struggle to meet each other somewhere in the vicinity of the mouth. Hilary Swank's role was clearly intended, at least initially, to be the "we better stick a gurl in this movie, too" character, but then, surprisingly, she does a lot with the part, no distracting "romance" takes place, and the movie is the better for her participation in it. I haven't seen the original film, so I can't compare this remake in that regard, but I can say I found this a more satisfying film than director Christopher Nolan's earlier Memento. I give it an 8 on a scale of 10.

Gandhi (1982)

Murphy Brown and President Bartlet meet up with history

[6/10 · 20 September 2002]

Gandhi the movie won 8 Oscars. It might be interesting to know what Gandhi himself would have made of all those awards. There's no telling from the movie, of course, since Gandhi the man never actually makes an appearance in the film. Ben Kingsley, though, does a better job playing Jesus than Max Von Sydow did in The Greatest Story Ever Told, and it's nice to see Murphy Brown stopping by late in the picture.

Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

Nice try, almost but not quite great

[7/10 · 19 September 2002]

Kissing Jessica Stein isn't exactly a perfect movie, but it had me rooting for it. It's treatment of "let's try being gay" sexuality isn't as messy as, say, Chasing Amy ... this movie knows what it wants to say and it says it. Jessica and Helen are straight women who decide to try out a relationship with a woman because, well, just because. Everyone is simultaneously right and wrong; the film doesn't pass negative judgment on either of the main characters. The movie takes an unbelievable relationship based mostly on the kinds of things that only happen in movies, and actually makes you believe in it.

Diva (1981)

Godard + Touch of Evil + Smiles = Diva

[9/10 · 13 August 2002]

Diva is a wonderful, lovely movie. As you watch it, you are reminded of many other movies, some of them classics, and yet you rarely wish you were watching those other films, because Diva is delightful enough on its own. If the Godard of the 60s had made Touch of Evil in a good mood, he might have come up with Diva. I give it a nine on a scale of ten.

Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)

The Pool Is Empty

[5/10 · 10 August 2002]

This documentary ain't exactly Sorrow and the Pity. I don't know much about skateboarding, and so I found some of this movie informative, and some of the footage from the 1970s was fairly cool to watch. But ... the movie was twice as long as it needed to be (and it was only 90 minutes long), the self-congratulatory tone was off-putting, and there's just only so much I can take of middle-aged guys talking about how rad they were back in the day. Ultimately, this thing is as much a promo film for Vans as it is a serious consideration of skate culture. I'd give it a five on a scale of ten. For most of the film, the best thing about it is the soundtrack of hard rock classics, but even that falls apart at the end, when the music suddenly switches to what sounds suspiciously like porn-film music outtakes.

Waking Life (2001)

Smart and potentially accessible

[8/10 · 11 May 2002]

Waking Life is too long and too short at the same time. At times while you're watching it, you wish a particular character would shut the hell up, but you're not really antsy, because you know someone else will come along in a minute or two, and maybe you'll find them interesting, and maybe they'll be gone before you've had enough. I usually mistrust films that beg to be seen again, movies that as soon as they're over you need to watch them from the beginning in order to actually understand them. But Waking Life makes you want to watch it again because it's such an intelligent, heady mix of ideas that you want to hear them again, to mull over the best ones and reconsider the worst ones. The movie is both elitist and populist; actually, it's neither, it just stands those terms on their heads and makes them irrelevant. You have a bunch of people talking about deep philosophical topics, and some of the people are among the elite of their field and some are just average Joes or Janes, and some of them are on target and some are full of bull, but there's no direct correlation between a character's standing in their field and their level of bull. Some of the sharpest characters are Joe/Jane Average; some of the most overblown are "professionals." And some pros are sharp, and some Joe-Janes are loony. Categories are worthless in this film.

As for the look of the film, it is one of the best visual approximations I've ever seen of tripping ... OK, of dream states. The world under the influence of LSD looks and feels a lot like the imagery in the movie. It gets that "weirder than real yet somehow more real than real" feeling down perfectly.

This is a very smart movie that has the potential for broad appeal. That's a good thing. I give it an 8 on a scale of 10.

The Deep End (2001)

It stars Tilda Swinton, but the movie isn't weird

[7/10 · 19 April 2002]

The Deep End is melodrama, and that might be all you need to know in order to decide not to see it. But it's a pretty good movie; only a couple of the necessary plot twists are too clunky, and the gradual building of, not suspense exactly but interest in what might happen next works well. Ultimately, though, what you've got is Tilda Swinton. Swinton's been in a lot of weird movies, like Orlando where her character lived 400 years and changed genders every so often, and Female Perversions, based on a non-fiction book of feminist theory, where Swinton had hot sex with Karen Sillas that was a match for what you see in Mulholland Drive. The Deep End isn't weird, but by now when we see Swinton we assume weird; between the baggage she brings from her earlier movies and her oft-noted skin tones, she's like a high-end European version of Rose McGowan (if McGowan were about 8 inches taller). Swinton is the main reason to see this movie; ok, Swinton and that Croatian hunk from ER.

Blade Runner (1982)

I Don't Like It; I Watch It Anyway

[7/10 · 18 April 2002]

I've seen Blade Runner many, many times. It may hold the record for Most Times I Have Seen a Movie I Don't Actually Like. Like most people, I admire the look of the film. I don't know that I appreciate the look as much as others; while I admit it was very influential on the look of subsequent movies, its style-over-substance nature has also been influential, and I don't think that's a good thing. And, again like most people, I am intrigued by the subject matter (what is human?).

That's about it for the things I like. As for what I don't like, well, first off, I'm one of those Philip K. Dick fans. There is a lot more going on in the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? than shows up in the movie (and yes, I know that's the standard complaint of book lovers, but it's true here). The most important missing element in the movie is "Mercerism," a semi-religion that is v.important in the book's philosophy. In any event, I don't think Blade Runner does a good job of getting at much essential Dickworld. For me, the best example of that world on film remains the scene in Total Recall when the bad guys try to convince Arnold in the hotel room that he is actually sitting back home in a chair enjoying a virtual, rather than real, experience.

As for the non-Dickian aspects of the movie, well, if you've heard from the legions of Blade Runner fans what a classic it is, you'll likely be surprised on first viewing to find out that it's kinda boring. Apparently to help make the point that the emotional lives of humans and replicants are too similar to tell apart, director Ridley Scott instructs the actors playing humans (or supposed humans) to underplay, to make them seem more mechanical, then lets King of the Replicants Rutger Hauer overact oddly, as if he was a leftover from Kubrick's Clockwork Orange (another so-called classic with crappy acting from everyone not named Malcolm McDowell). I guess Hauer's bogus emoting is supposed to make him seem more human than the humans, but this is only true if humans are scenery-chewers.

Ultimately, it's hard to care about any of the characters in the film. I suppose that could be one of the "points" it's trying to make; I suspect it's more what happens when you cast dull-as-nails Sean Young in a leading role. Again, I'm aware that this distancing-from-humanity feel could be on purpose. That doesn't make it any more enjoyable. The movie gets everything right except the people. As usual, Pauline Kael hit it on the head: "It hasn't been thought out in human terms. If anybody comes around with a test to detect humanoids, maybe Ridley Scott and his associates should hide."

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Begging for Oscars

[6/10 · 11 March 2002]

Russell Crowe seemed to be chasing an Oscar as much as he was chasing anything insightful in the character of John Nash. And it's a crying shame when Jennifer Connolly, one of the most naturally voluptuous actresses in an era where rail-thin breast-enhanced women are the norm, looks so startlingly skinny in this movie. She does a good job, but her character degenerates into awfulness. When we first meet her, she's a bright grad student in mathematics who paints on the side, but once her life with Nash begins, she exists solely as The Wife, leaving us to wonder what ever happened to her math, her painting. Not that the movie cares, of course.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Very clever; so what?

[6/10 · 23 February 2002]

The Royal Tenenbaums is a clever movie with a fine performance from one of my favorite actors, Gene Hackman. Other than saying it's clever, though, I'm not sure what else I can add. It's not a movie about people with quirks; it's a movie about quirks masquerading as people. When Gene Hackman's character is redeemed, it's not so much unbelievable as un-earned. The film might have been better if Bill Murray, relatively subdued in his minor part, had played Hackman's character and rejected redemption.

As an example of how director Wes Anderson is clever to no apparent purpose, I point to the soundtrack, which is a wonderful melange of mostly-60s buried treasures like "These Days" by Nico and "She Smiled Sweetly" by the Stones. (He even throws in a cut from Dylan's Self Portrait; what is this s***, indeed.) While each song is welcome in my house any time, their purpose in the movie is never clear. They're good songs, and their lyrics generally fit the scenes in which they appear, but why a movie taking place in 2001 would use minor classics of the 60s is left unexplained. It does show Anderson's good taste in music, and perhaps that's it: everything about The Royal Tenenbaums demonstrates the excellence of the filmmakers, but precious little convinces me I'm watching a movie that lives up to that excellence.

Pearl Harbor (2001)

Not exactly From Here to Eternity

[3/10 · 15 February 2002]

Wow, Pearl Harbor is a really terrible movie. First off, it's three hours long, and the first hour and a half breaks down about like this: 5 minutes showing the Japanese preparing the attack, 5 minutes showing the U.S. not preparing for the attack, 80 minutes of a generic love triangle. Ah yes, the love triangle. It's not exactly Jules and Jim; heck, it's not even Willie and Phil.

Then comes the attack. It's impressively filmed. You might ask yourself, though, why in a three-hour movie where two hours are wasted on an insipid love story, the film makers only really come to life when they can trot out a half-hour of Impressive Film Making dedicated to showing a lot of people dying.

Just another piece of crap from the guy who gave us the even bigger piece of crap, Top Gun. I'd give it a three on a scale of ten. Go watch From Here to Eternity instead.

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

Saturday Night Fever of Its Day

[6/10 · 7 February 2002]

My son explained to me that he didn't exactly approve of this movie, his argument being that if you make a film about an aspect of Asian-American culture, it wouldn't hurt to put a coupla Asian-American actors in the lead roles. (There are Asians in the movie, of course, but they're bad guys.) To be honest, I have no idea if street racing is an Asian-American thing, but if my son is right, then this movie becomes the Saturday Night Fever of its day, Fever also being a movie based on a magazine article, where the subculture in question (in SNF's case, gay disco) is homogenized for mainstream consumption (goodbye, gay disco boys or Asian speed fanatics, hello Italian-Americans and Vin Diesel, who may be of unknown ethnicity but who is probably not of Asian descent). I give it a 6 on a scale of 10.

The Princess and the Warrior (2000)

The Princess, the Warrior, and a Straw

[7/10 · 5 February 2002]

The Princess and the Warrior is the next film from Run Lola Run director Tom Twyker and star Franka Potente. It's not much like the earlier film, which is fine, even though Lola is about my favorite movie of the last several years. Franka Potente has become a favorite of mine; she was an icon in Lola, v.good in the mostly ghastly Blow, and terrific here. I'm not one for posting spoilers, but everyone who sees this movie is going to want to talk about one scene in particular, having to do with the princess, the warrior, and a straw. It's a stunning scene, better than anything else in the movie. Overall, the movie is too long (as most are these days), but engaging and interesting, and Potente is wonderful and That Scene is gold. I'd give it a seven on a scale of ten.

Shaolin Soccer (2001)

Not Your Father's Soccer

[7/10 · 31 January 2002]

Not too hard to describe, really: guy who is a practitioner of Shaolin Kung Fu wants to promote it to the rest of the world, and ends up putting together a soccer team that uses Kung Fu to play and win. It's supposed to be partly a comedy, but most of that went right over my head. What remains is pretty amazing, though ... you've never seen soccer like this before.

Freebird: The Movie (1996)

Music=Good, Visuals=Bad

[6/10 · 31 January 2002]

The movie isn't much ... some nice home movie footage, and lots of fine performances by the band (esp. "Freebird," of course), but for whatever reason (original footage or eventual editing) the choice of camera shots is v.frustrating. Whichever guitarist is playing a solo, the camera inevitably shows someone else; even "Freebird" has as many shots of the crowd as it does of the band. I'd give it a six on a scale of ten; play a CD, you'll be just as happy.

Diner (1982)

What Happened to Mickey Rourke?

[7/10 · 31 January 2002]

Not sure what to make of this movie. It's sweet, it feels real, it's nostalgic but not merely nostalgic, it's a Guy Movie where the guys are complex and not always presented in the best light. On the other hand, one central female character never shows her face on screen, so little importance is placed on her. Meanwhile, of all the young actors who went on to big success, Mickey Rourke is the one who makes you wonder whatever happened. He's excellent here, he seems poised to take on the world, but instead he turned into, well, into Mickey Rourke. I guess I'd give it a seven on a scale of ten; in my memories, at least, Avalon is a better movie.

Divine Madness (1980)

Hedwig Before Hedwig

[5/10 · 31 January 2002]

I wanted to like it, because Bette Midler circa 1980 was someone you'd like to like. And you can see previews of future acts from Madonna to Hedwig (one of the Harlettes is even named "Hedwig"). But ... well, there's no nice way to say it, and her fans would disagree, but Bette Midler's a kinda awful singer, goes flat on a regular basis, not flat like when Lucinda Williams lets her twang get the best of her, but flat as in missing the note. And while I admire Midler's desire to sing rock, and she's better at it than Barbra Streisand, "Fire Down Below" is mostly awful, and this Bruce fan cringed when she threw in a bit of "E Street Shuffle." Kael loved Midler, and I can see why, but I give it a 5 on a scale of 10.

The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

The Greatest Documentary Film Ever Made

[10/10 · 31 January 2002]

The Sorrow and the Pity is not only the greatest documentary film ever made, but also one of the greatest films of any kind. A straightforward description of the film seems to promise limitless boredom: more than four hours of talking-head interviews in at least three different languages, blended with old wartime footage and occasional clips from the likes of Maurice Chevalier. But Ophüls' mastery of film technique allows him to create a thinking-person's masterpiece from these seemingly mundane parts. He interviews people who experienced the Occupation (in the late 60s, when the film was being made, many of them were still alive). Some are famous "big names" of history, such as Pierre Mendes-France, imprisoned during the war, Premier of France later in life, and Sir Anthony Eden, a British prime minister in the mid-50s. But even these men are noteworthy more for their actions as "regular" folks than as statesmen, and the true "stars" of the movie are the various "common men" who tell their personal stories. The Grave brothers, for instance, local farmers who fought in the Resistance, are as far as one might get from Jean-Paul Belmondo, but their pleasure with life and their remembrances of friends and foes during the Occupation establish them as real life heroes.

Thirty years down the road, Ophüls' methodology is as interesting as the history he tells. Merely claiming that Ophüls had an argument seems to work against the surface of his film, for he disguises his point of view, his argument, behind the reminiscing of his interview subjects. The film is a classic of humanist culture in large part because Ophüls, in giving the people the chance to say their piece, apparently puts his faith in those people (and in the audience that watches them) to impart "truth." However, the filmmaker is much cannier than this; he is not artless. The editing of the various perspectives in the movie allows the viewer to form conclusions of their own that don't always match those of the people who are doing the talking in the film. In fact, The Sorrow and the Pity makes great demands on the viewer, not just because of the film's length: Ophüls assumes you are processing the information he's providing, and so the film gets better as it progresses, with the viewer's attention being rewarded in direct correlation with the effort you put in.

And Ophüls is himself the primary interviewer in the film; you don't often actually see him, but he's there, asking the questions, leading on his subjects and his audience, only partly hidden (visually and philosophically) from view. The movie might look easy; there are none of the showy flourishes of a Kubrick or Stone here (or of Max Ophüls, for that matter). But the viewer is advised to remember that Ophüls' guiding hand is always in the background, constructing the film's version of the truth just as the characters do in their stories.

The Grand Illusion (1937)

A Humanist Classic

[10/10 · 31 January 2002]

Grand Illusion is a movie about class that doesn't hate anyone. How often does that happen? Yes, there are namby-pamby movies that "show all sides" and bore everyone with their non-existent point-of-view, but that's not what I mean. And, of course, there are plenty of movies about class that reveal their biases from the start; I'm rather fond of Eat the Rich movies, myself. But Grand Illusion is about class without dismissing any of its characters. The aristocrats whose world is disappearing are presented as tragic figures, stuck in a code of life that is rapidly becoming meaningless. Both aristocrats know their time is past; the French one accepts this as probably a good thing, the German one doesn't (and blames the French one's sentiments on the French Revolution), but they both know their way of life is soon to be forgotten. And it would be easy for Renoir, when he made the film in the mid-30s a French communist with proletarian sympathies, to demonize these two. But he doesn't; he allows them their humanity, which is the most characteristic feature of Renoir movies in any event (he is the great humanist of movie history).

Nor does he show the collapse of the old way as an unfortunate preface to chaos. The bourgeois characters are good people. The world might be safe in their hands, as safe as in any other hands at least (except for the propensity among nations for war). All of the middle and lower-class characters in the movie are presented as people, not stereotypes. But Renoir doesn't accomplish this by collapsing all class boundaries into some homogenous universalism. These characters remain trapped within their class, and their class is clear to the viewer. The movie is not about the absence of class but about the crushing ironies of the very real existence of class in the lives of the characters. To show all classes without condescension, while retaining a particular point of view (that while people are good, it's best that the aristocratic world is in decline), is pretty amazing.

In Grand Illusion, the nominal hero is working/middle-class, but the upper class isn't evil and the lower class isn't romanticized or dismissed. And it's all accomplished in such a seamless way that many, if not most, first-time viewers might easily think it was a fine movie but something less than great. It sneaks up on you, and more than just about any film you can name, rewards multiple viewings.