Pic of the Week, 3/28 edition

One day early! Woo-hoo!

One recent Saturday, I spent – literally – all day at the movies, just catching up. It’s nice to do that every now and then. Clear the day, hit some matinees, smuggle in some fruit or a wrap (I actually did this once) in your giant purse – hey, it’s either that or the $6 hot dogs. But anyway, I saw some new releases that I’ve been putting off for awhile.

“Juno” (2007)
Yes, I became the last person in America to see the little movie that could. By now, everybody knows the story – courtesy of stripper-turned Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody* – about this preternaturally together teenager who gets knocked up thanks to first-time sex with her BF, whose voice doesn’t seem to have finished changing. (And he sleeps in a bed shaped like a race car.) “Juno” is unique in the pregnant teenager genre because the conflict doesn’t stem from Juno debating what to do about her situation – she decides pretty quickly to give the baby up for adoption to a nice suburban couple (Jennifer Garner and that cute guy from “Arrested Development”). Instead, it’s about a girl with all the external trappings of maturity (oodles of cynical witticisms) thrown into the actual adult world. Juno may be able to wax hipster about Iggy Pop, but she’s still clueless when it comes to adult motives.
Overall, a very touching, human film with an excellent cast. I hope Ellen Page (nominated for an Oscar) doesn’t get pigeonholed into playing Juno for her entire career. My only quibble is with the insanely long closing shot, which takes approximately all day to pull back – but that was mainly because “Juno” was the middle flick in my triple-feature, and I was stressing about missing the beginning of…

“Vantage Point” (2007)
…which is the kind of movie that I usually wait to see on video. But, it was there, it was still good for the matinee cost, so I said, what the hell? And “Vantage Point” doesn’t suck, exactly…it reminded me of “Phone Booth,” in that it’s a movie that really should have been a 45-minute short, and that it’s too obsessed with its own cleverness for me to really buy into it. Unless you haven’t watched TV since Thanksgiving, you’ve seen the trailer for “Vantage Point” about 795 times, which means you’ve pretty much seen the entire movie, minus some third-act twists that I didn’t really care about because I was invested not one bit in any of these characters. So basically, someone sets off a bomb at a rally where the U.S. President is appearing in Spain, and we see a little more of the action as the perspective shifts from character to character. It wants to be “Rashomon” meets “Run, Lola, Run,” but it’s got no heart. And don’t tell me that it’s just a dumb action movie. Plenty of quote-unquote dumb action movies have a soul – the “Terminator” movies, “Die Hard,” “The Matrix” – the heart is what keeps people watching, what makes even the explosions timeless. No one’s going to be watching “Vantage Point” in 20 years. Also, it majorly suffers from the "What on Earth is this A-List Actor Doing in This Thankless Role?" Syndrome.

“Breathless” (1960)
I’m still on my French/Italian New Wave kick. I have a pretty short attention span, so films like “The 400 Blows” or Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” are definitely an acquired taste for me. When I get bored, I remind myself that “Breathless” came out the same year as “Operation Petticoat.” (To be fair, that year’s Best Picture was “The Apartment” – hardly a slouch, but still a very different film from “Breathless.”) This story about a small-time thief/gigolo who holes up with his American sometime-girlfriend in Paris after shooting a cop may be short on traditional plot, but it’s still the kind of film that took another decade to take hold in America. And yes, if every film were done in French New Wave style, I’d probably beg Bruce Willis to shoot me in the head – but there’s a lot to learn here. If nothing else, Godard, Truffaut et al. are largely the guys that got us off the back-lot and on location.
The ending is just beautiful – a dual monologue of sorts between guy and girl that loses some of its impact in the subtitles (I knew I should’ve stuck with French class…), followed by the world’s coolest guy-running-up-the-street-about-to-die shot. I also love the use of jump-cuts, loooooo-ong tracking shots and other existential-moodish stuff we see all the time now, but that was revolutionary 50 years ago.
(Subtitles still frustrate me. I want to know who’s interpreting this stuff. And, I know just enough Spanish and French to know that they’re leaving stuff out, but not enough so that I know what. Grrrr…..)

“Enchanted” (2007)
Kudos to Disney for showing a little sense of humor in this somehow-not-snarky send-up of the formula that made it: fairy tales. “Enchanted” starts off in a magical cartoon world where a happy woodland nymph named Giselle (Amy Adams) summons a Prince Charming type (Cyclops, who’s way cuter without those death-ray eyes) with the sound of her voice. (How do those cartoon woodland fairies come by their fabulous digs, anyway? How do they eat? Where are their parents?) Anyway, before they can get married/live happily ever after, Charming Cyclops’ evil stepmother (*sigh* one stereotype Disney can’t kick) banishes Amy to a world with no magic – Times Square. Luckily, even the live-action Giselle/Amy retains her princess gowns, goofy charm and ability to get animals to do her bidding (and to compose songs on the fly). Even luckier, she encounters a princess-starved little girl whose divorced dad (Patrick Dempsey) gets suckered into helping her get home.
For me, this movie doesn’t work without Adams, high concept or no high concept. She’s got those overwrought Disney princess mannerisms nailed, and she just looks like someone drawn in an animation studio – she’s just that flawless. She’s got this great spirit that just leaps off of the screen (seriously, who else could have made that speech in “Talladega Nights” work?). Did you see her singing “Happy Working Song” at the Oscars, when the sadists put her on an empty friggin’ stage and she still sold it?
The ending goes on a little long. But other than that, it’s a sweet film.

“M” (1931)
Another of Sara’s must-see-if-you-want-to-call-yourself-a-film-geek classics, this one by German director Fritz Lang (co-written with his wife) is Exhibit A in the defense against the film-geek-wannabe argument that every film released before, say, “Reservoir Dogs” was a happy-fest. Peter Lorre, who most Americans know from “Casablanca,” plays a serial killer who preys on children, hunted simultaneously by the police and the criminal underworld, who feel his spree is bad for business. Interestingly, Lorre was pretty much a comic actor before “M,” but was typecast as a baddie after. I was pleasantly surprised by Lang’s restraint in this, his first “talking picture.” So many early talkies go buck-wild with their new-found ability to match dialogue and effects with scenes, but Lang uses sound in a very modern way. For instance, his killer’s presence is always accompanied by a certain whistled piece of music.
My favorite sequence is the one you always read about in your Intro to Film class – Killer buys a little girl a balloon; girl’s mom wanders the streets looking for her; oh, look, there’s the balloon, floating off all by itself. Even when you know it’s going to happen, it’s still cool. Plus, it’s the earliest example of lapped sound I’ve ever seen. (Sorry, more film-geekness.)

Pic of the Week: Tough call. But I think I have to go with “M,” just because even so many of my fellow film-geeks haven’t seen it.

*Interesting that so many, including myself, note Diablo Cody’s former line of work. Is it just a Hollywood marketing angle, or are we seeing something more sinister? Aw look, the stripper has a brain! I can’t tell. But WTF was she wearing to the Oscars?