Unintelligible Crime

Film: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.


So here I am, stuck in a motel for the night with nothing to do. I considered watching The Shining but decided that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to watch a film where a guy goes crazy while snowed in at a hotel while I am spending a night at a motel because of the snow. Too close for comfort. Instead, I’m relishing in the joy of the resurgence of the British crime comedy with Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Prior to this, my exposure to Guy Ritchie is Snatch, which a part of me thinks should be on this list. The two movies are similar in a lot of ways. Ritchie’s films, at least as concerns my experience with them, include a lot of seemingly unrelated plots coming together in one place, sudden violence a la film noir, extensive and creative use of expletives, and shady underworld characters with great names. In this case, we have Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty), who is both a porn king and the man in charge of a crooked card game designed to pour additional funds into his pocket.

Wandering into this crooked game is Eddy (Nick Moran), a born card player and the sucker of the moment. Hatchet Harry’s game is accessible only to those who can ratchet up the entrance purse of 100,000 pounds. Eddy does so by being funded in part by his three friends Tom (Jason Flemyng), Soap (Dexter Fletcher, called “Soap” because he has a legitimate job and likes to avoid criminal pursuits), and Bacon (Jason Statham).

Of course, since Eddy is in a crooked card game, he loses, and he loses big. Now he and his friends owe a massive amount of money to Hatchet Harry and his associates, Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean, and called “the Baptist” because of his penchant for drowning his victims) and Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) and have just a week to pay them back. Meanwhile, a couple of low rent thieves are sent by Barry to heist some extremely valuable antique shotguns from a down-on-his-luck Lord. We also have a collection of bombed out pot growers and a collection of thugs who like to rob drug pushers. This group is led by Dog (Frank Harper) who, like many of the characters in this film and in Guy Ritchie films in general, is crazy, focused almost exclusively on causing pain in others, and has a nasty reputation.

So how do these plots come together? The four card playing losers end up purchasing the two valuable shotguns by way of a fence and the thieves, who know no better. Now, the four buddies need to pull heists to come up with the money to save their skins, the thieves need to get the guns back to save theirs, and everyone is looking for everyone else. To get the money, they’re going to rob the thugs, who happen to live next door to Eddy, using the antique shotguns that were originally stolen at the behest of Harry the Hatchet. Eddy’s dad (Sting) gets involved because as part of the debt, Harry wants his bar. Guns and expletives fly, and ultimately, no matter who comes out on top, it’s going to be someone on the wrong side of the law.

Our four heroes line up a deal with Nick the Greek (Stephen Marcus) to unload any marijuana they get in their heist of the thieves, and Nick arranges to sell the weed to Rory Breaker (Vas Blackwood), not knowing that the growers are actually working for him, and he’ll be buying back his own product. That’s not going to go well, because in addition to being a drug lord, Rory Breaker is also a sociopath. How do we know Rory is a sociopath? Well, when Eddy goes to the card game, the other three guys hang out at a nearby pub, and are greeted on arrival by a guy running out of the pub covered in flames. After we are formally introduced to Rory, we hear the story of exactly how that guy got lit up in the first place, complete with subtitles since it’s told in British criminal rhyming slang.

Ultimately, everybody is looking for everybody else, the money and drugs change hands time and time again, the body count (and f-bomb count) rises continuously, and the fate of Eddy, Tom, Soap, and Bacon comes down to the value of the two shotguns.

Is it complicated? Of course it is. That’s part of the fun here. All of the plots tumble into each other in interesting ways, and you can bet that any time someone new shows up, he will eventually be a part of the main action, even if the connection appears to be tangential. After all, all of these characters are essentially stealing from each other, chasing each other, owe each other money, or want to kill each other. Sometimes, all of that at once.

The real difficulty, though, is following the dialogue. As an American, I can pick up on some of the stranger accents in the Americas because I’m used to hearing them now and again. In this film, many of the characters have such a thick regional British patois that subtitles would have been helpful for more than just the criminal slang. (It’s worth noting that this was one of the bigger criticisms of the film, and Ritchie responded in Snatch by giving the Brad Pitt character a completely unintelligible speech pattern.)

The joy of a film like this is seeing the plot wound into a Gordian knot and then seeing it all come unraveled. Like the knot of legend, the only way to get everything untied in the end is by cutting it in half, which means a lot of guns are going to get fired and a lot of people are going to end up as bodies. And that’s part of the fun, too, because almost all of these people really deserve that fate. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is not something I’d put in front of my kids, but there’s a particular charm to British gangland thugs, pushers, and mobsters. It’s a particular brand of cold-blooded viciousness that, as a member of the audience, makes me break into a broad grin. It’s just so damned British that I can’t help but like it.

Why to watch Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: Modern British crime comedy as good as it gets.
Why not to watch: Don’t be surprised if you resort to subtitles.

Marriage Before and After

Films: Kramer vs. Kramer, The Hangover
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Kramer), DVD from NetFlix on big ol’ television (Hangover).


Around the time my parents were divorced, my sister said something to the effect that no matter how old you are, you’re essentially two years old when your parents split. That’s pretty accurate. It’s also the subject of Kramer vs. Kramer, which means it’s the happiest damn movie I’ve seen in a long time. Yes, that’s sarcasm.

We start with Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman), who works for a high profile advertising agency. Because of his hard work and skill, he’s landed a massive account and is on the fast track. He goes home to share the good news with his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) and their son Billy (Justin Henry). He’s greeted with some bad news, though: Joanna is leaving him, and she does so, leaving their son as well.

This creates a huge problem for the fast-track Ted, since he now has a young child to deal with on his own. Like a typical late-‘70s father, he’s not really aware of how to care for his son. He muddles through the best he can, but this also creates a number of problems for him at work. His attention to detail begins to slip. Ted begins to draw a little closer to his divorced neighbor Margaret (Jane Alexander), has a one night stand with a coworker (JoBeth Williams), and starts to figure out how to be a father to his son.

That’s too easy, though. Joanna returns from her soul-searching sojourn in California and decides she wants custody of Billy. Ted decides to fight it regardless of consequence. The first consequence turns out to be his job, which of course is to his detriment when it comes to the court battle.

I’m not going to spoil this movie, so I’m going to leave the results of that trial out of this write up. I’m also to leave out the actual ending, which is sweet, touching, and completely unrealistic. We’re not going to go there.

There are a couple of parts of this movie I do want to talk about, though. First, I want to go into the relationship between Ted and Billy. I was impressed mainly with how real the relationship came across. This was a real father and son doing real father and son things, having real father and son troubles. There’s joy when Ted teaches Billy how to ride a bike. Ted is excited to see his son ride off, and then shouts after him not to go too far. The Salisbury steak scene, where Billy decides he’s tired of TV dinners and instead grabs the ice cream from the freezer, leading to a huge fight is also very real. I don’t have sons; I have daughters. Still, these scenes felt completely genuine to me, and I bought them completely.

The film lives and dies in the courtroom, though, and these scenes are very hard to watch. Both Joanna and Ted are destroyed on the stand by each other’s lawyers. It’s painful to see, and much more painful to watch Ted go through it, because by the time we get to the actual custody hearing, we’ve spent so much time with Ted and watched his relationship with his son grow that we want him to come out on top. Everything is brought up—Ted losing his job despite the fact that he did so because of his son; the accident at the playground that gave Billy stitches comes out, too. It’s painful to witness.

This is not a film designed to give any sort of sympathy for the women in this position. We’re supposed to like Ted and see that he has become a real father. We’re supposed to see Joanna as a cruel, selfish, manipulative bitch. In part, we do see that because that’s the character. We also see that, though, because by the time she shows back up in the film, we’re looking at everything from Ted’s point of view.

I know the film is manipulating me and I don’t really care. It works. It absolutely goes right for the gut and it scores, and it does this even while I realize what it’s doing. I can no more stop myself from caring about this guy and his kid than I can stop myself from breathing.

The big problem? The ending ruins everything the film tries to build up. After a whole film of what we get here, to have that ending and coda is a slap in the face to the audience. Shame on the filmmakers.

If Kramer vs. Kramer is the story of the end of a marriage and the aftermath, The Hangover is the story of the beginnings of a marriage. Sort of. In reality, The Hangover is about an aftermath as well, in this case, the aftermath of an epic bachelor party in Las Vegas. This is all well and good, but there's a touch of resentment on my part. The Hangover is one of the new additions to the book, and one of the movies kicked out is Amelie. That's not right.

Doug Billings (Justin Bartha) is getting married. Before he does, his two best friends, school teacher Phil (Bradley Cooper) and dentist Stu (Ed Helms) as well as his fiancée’s socially backward and inappropriate brother Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are taking him to Vegas for a last night of partying and freedom. We discover that Doug is a decent guy, Alan is disturbing (but funny) and may have a seriously checkered past, Stu is completely under the thumb of his testicle shrinking girlfriend, and Phil pretty much despises his life. The four check in to Caesar’s Palace and sneak up to the roof for a toast before hitting the town.

What wasn’t planned was the additional ingredient in their drinks. Alan bought what he thought were tabs of Ecstasy and slipped them into everyone’s drinks. Instead, he spiked everyone’s drinks with roofies, and now no one has any memory of the bachelor party. That’s bad enough, but when the group wakes up, they discover a number of even more troubling developments. There are chickens in their suite, there’s a live, full-grown tiger in their bathroom, Stu is missing a tooth and the ring he was planning on using to propose to his evil girlfriend, Phil has a hospital bracelet on one wrist, they've stolen a police car, and there’s an infant tucked away in one of the rooms. Oh, and Doug is missing.

The rest of the film consists of the three guys backtracking through what they can discover to figure out what they did, where they went, what happened to them, and the location of Doug. Of course, since this is a comedy, things get far, far worse before they get better. The group discovers in short order that Stu married a prostitute named Jade (Heather Graham), the tiger was stolen from Mike Tyson’s house (Tyson makes a funny cameo as well), and that there is a naked, effeminate, Chinese mafia type (Ken Jeong, who is staggeringly funny) in the trunk of their car, who claims to have Doug in his possession and wants the $80,000 the group stole from him.

Of course, this is a comedy, so everything is going to turn out fine in the end. It’s the getting there that makes the film worth watching. The characters, for the most part, are caricatures, of course. Phil is far too smooth in the face of all of the problems to be a school teacher, and Alan is far too much of an idiot to be anything other than a film character. Ed Helms, though, as Stu really sells this for me. He’s funny, panicky, and has extreme mood swings that strike a needed note of realism. He reacts to all of this in the way most of us would.

This movie is funny. I can’t deny that. It’s also crude, disturbing, and isn’t going to be a film I enjoy watching around my parents or my children any time in the next, say, 60 years. Don’t take that to be an insult, though—this film really is funny all the way through. It’s screwball comedy taken to a strip club, and that’s okay. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Why to watch Kramer vs. Kramer: A lesson in the real victims of divorce.
Why not to watch: The ending undoes the entire movie.

Why to watch The Hangover: It's brutally funny.
Why not to watch: Amelie got taken out of the book for this.

What Tarantino Dreams of

Film: Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.


Quentin Tarantino tends to provoke two reactions: unbridled adulation or equally unbridled disdain. Strangely, I fall somewhere in the middle. I appreciate some of his films. When Pulp Fiction was shiny and new, I loved it, although I love it less now. Reservoir Dogs is still one of the best films of its decade. But I soured on Mr. Tarantino, in no small part because it seemed like he made a huge name for himself and then did nothing as a director for years. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is his fourth complete film, made 11 years after his first full-length feature.

In short, while I think the man had and possibly still has some real chops (I’ve yet to see Inglourious Basterds, his fourth film on the list along with the other three mentioned), it seems to me that he believes his own press. One of the reasons I like his first two films as much as I do is because he’s obviously a smart guy who can make reference to film culture both well-known and obscure. I appreciate that. However, it seems also that he can’t not make reference to such things and enjoys showing his audience exactly how much he knows all the time. Characters in his films are hyper-aware of pieces of pop culture—a band, a film, a whatever—and this seems to be to make us as audience aware that Tarantino knows all about those bits of pop culture. He’s often in love with his dialogue to the detriment of his films. That’s my opinion, of course.

Until tonight, I’ve avoided Kill Bill: Vol. 1 for the simple reason that I didn’t want to spend two hours watching what looked to be Quentin Tarantino’s masturbation fantasies. Again, my opinion. And really, what do I know? After all, he’s the one making movies and I’m the one teaching English.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is a revenge picture, pure and simple. We open with a fight between a character known only as The Bride (Uma Thurman…and the character’s real name is evidently revealed in the second film as Beatrix Kiddo. If you look quickly and carefully, though, you can see it on her plane tickets a couple of times) and a woman named Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox). They destroy the hell out of Vernita’s house until her daughter comes home, and then the two talk civilly, planning a fight for later that evening. When Vernita goes for the double-cross and tries to take out the Bride with a gun, she ends up dead. The Bride leaves, crossing a name off the list, and we can see that she’s already scratched off the name O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu).

The rest of the film to the very end is told in flashback. We start with where the revenge starts—the Bride is known by this name because she was attacked by a collection of assassins on her wedding day. The entire wedding party, as well as her unborn child, were killed. It’s also made evident that the Bride was once a member of this group, led by the Bill (David Carradine, who does not appear in the flesh aside from his hands in this film) of the title.

The Bride is comatose for four years, during which she is evidently repeatedly raped by a sadistic hospital worker, who also sells out her services. We discover this when she comes to just before another rape and annihilates the rapist as well as the hospital worker. While she’s working on getting her legs to function again, she relates the story of O-Ren’s rise to power in the Tokyo underworld. And then we get the story of her getting a kick-ass sword from a retired swordmaker (Sonny Chiba) and the giant battle scene against O-Ren and her minions including schoolgirl assassin Gogo Yubari. And the rest of the story presumably happens in the second film, which I did not watch.

Kill Bill is all about spurting blood, violent death, and 1970’s-style wire work. It’s as much a modern action/revenge movie as it is an homage to the Shaw Brothers films and the martial arts classics of that era. This is undoubtedly intentional on Tarantino’s part. Averaged out, there’s a dead body for almost every minute of the film here. Blood sprays in geysers from severed limbs and heads, fountaining as if arteries were high-pressure hoses. The giant battle takes place mainly in black and white, apparently in homage to the old martial arts flicks that did it to avoid television censorship. That which isn’t in black and white is in monochromatic blue and shown in shadow pantomime.

It’s extreme. I’ve never let a bit of gore or a good bloodletting stop me from liking a film, but this was simply too damn much. I fully understand why people like this movie, why people look at this as a continuation of Tarantino’s promise. I demur. It’s too much, too extreme.

Again, in a Tarantino film, there are no innocents. The Bride can’t wake up from her coma and escape the hospital—it has to happen as a part of a rape scene that we as viewers are led to believe has happened over and over in the four years she has been comatose. That’s the sort of thing that makes me wonder where Tarantino’s head is at. Why the hell was that necessary? To show that the Bride can kick ass? We already know that from the opening sequence. To up the revenge? Also not really necessary. To add another layer of depravity in the film and show us again that Tarantino has a thing for female characters who can kick his ass? Yep.

I know I’m in the minority here, but so much of the violence here seems to be nothing but violence for its own sake. It does nothing for me. Will I watch the sequel? Probably not.

*EDIT*
Thanks to some excellent comments and a little more thought, I've finally come up with the way to describe this film: it's like a video game. "Soulless" is a great description (thanks, fellow 1001 blogger Edward Boe for that observation). The film reads like nothing so much as a stream of combats in an effort to get to the boss fight. This may be the reason the film is so popular and highly regarded.

I worked in the video game industry for about 12 years, first as a journalist and then as a hint book author. I haven't played a video game in seven years because I burned out and burned out hard. This may well be the reason this film holds no magic for me.

Why to watch Kill Bill Vol. 1: Ass-kicking on the grandest scale.
Why not to watch: Violence for the sake of violence on the grandest scale.

Gotta Dance

Film: Singin’ in the Rain
Format: DVD from Rasmussen College Library on middlin’-sized living room television.


When the conversation turns to great movies, as with “The List,” there’s often (or at least should be) an effort made to hit every genre of film. I know far too many people who hate a particular genre and write off everything from that genre regardless of quality. I try very hard not to do that. I admit that even some of the best musicals pass over my head, but I do try to be aware of what makes a great one, and what separates the great from the good and the mediocre.

This makes Singin’ in the Rain a dodgy proposition for someone like me, who does have a bias against musicals. Further, this is a film that is steeped in the tradition of musicals that irks me. I can willingly suspend my disbelief for any number of strange ideas and plot points. If you tell me that the film takes place in a world with robots and faster-than-light space travel, I’ll buy into it provided that the film itself stays true to that and contains a level of internal reality. Musicals don’t do that. They propose to be the real world, but people break off into orchestrated song and fully-realized and choreographed dance numbers. That doesn’t happen in the real world, and it throws me.

So, a warning: this happens frequently in Singin’ in the Rain. And for once (and for a wonder), I don’t really care that much. This film is simply too damn good. The numbers are great, the dancing is fantastic, and the story is entertaining and fun enough that I can actually ignore the whole “orchestra and choreography” thing that bothers me so much.

We start at a movie premiere of the latest silent film starring Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lena Lamont (Jean Hagen). We get a short biography of Lockwood and his best friend Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor), which covers their misspent youth and early days in Vaudeville, and the wow number “Fit as a Fiddle,” which really is a hell of a dance, and on a real stage would have people in the aisles instead of the poor reception we get here. We also learn of Lockwood’s early film career as a stuntman and his promotion to leading man by studio producer R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell).

What we also learn right away is that Lena Lamont has a grating voice and is dumber than a sack of hammers. In Lena’s world, anything the tabloids print is the truth, so when she and her co-star are romantically linked in the movies, they must be romantically linked in real life. Lockwood actually despises her, and becomes enamored of a young actress named Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) when fate brings them together twice, each one getting embarrassed in front of the other.

Everyone’s world changes with the release of The Jazz Singer and the public demand for talkies. The latest Lockwood/Lamont film is turned into a talkie with disastrous results in the test screening. Thinking it over, Don, Cosmo, and Kathy decide that maybe it should play as a musical, with Kathy doing the voice work for Lena. Eventually, Lena finds out and flexes her muscle in the studio, leading to the climax of the film’s debut as a musical picture and a happy ending all around.

The plot is a fun one, but it’s not really the reason to watch this film. The reason to watch is the song and dance numbers, and yes, I feel very strange saying that. The painful (to me) truth is that virtually every number here is one that would be the focus of a lesser film. They’re all great. Whenever I see this film, I’m curious as to why O’Connor isn’t better known than he is, because he tears the hell out of the floor. He manages to keep pace with Kelly in their numbers together, and crushes the “Make ‘em Laugh” number in one of the high points of not just this film, but film.

Of course, the big deal number is the “Gotta Dance” piece toward the end, which is a long dance sequence that is being inserted into the revamped version of the original talkie. Oddly, I find it to be the one that is the least compelling. Sure, the sequence with Cyd Charisse wearing the short green number is great, but the sequence goes on too long for my tastes, and really exists only to give Kelly another number to hoof in. Admittedly, though, he hoofs better than pretty much anyone ever, and he is something magical to watch on the screen.

Kelly is always compelling, and he’s a joy to watch. The thing I have always liked about Gene Kelly is that he could act as well as dance—Inherit the Wind proved that. Donald O’Connor was badly underrated, or isn’t famous enough, or something and makes for great comic relief. Debbie Reynolds earned every role she got after this one with this performance. The unsung hero here, though, is Jean Hagen in the thankless role of a wicked, vindictive idiot. She’s as good as everyone else, even though she doesn’t get to sing or dance.

What can I tell you? I’m a sucker for Gene Kelly (and Fred Astaire—we’ll get to him eventually), and Singin’ in the Rain has everything and more. This is a hell of a picture; even a die-hard musical hater like me walks away from it humming a tune.

Why to watch Singin’ in the Rain: The most flawless musical comedy/dance film ever made.
Why not to watch: Your personal bias won’t let you enjoy it.

Obscure Spongebob Reference Not Intended

Film: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

Our NetFlix subscription has been a boon in finding a lot of movies, but NetFlix doesn’t have everything. There are probably 100 or more films not in the NetFlix library that might show up eventually and might not. One of these is Albert Lewin’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, which has been sitting in my NetFlix queue at the bottom in the “not available” category for months. What a treat to find it at a public library!

Like many films of the day, this one starts at the end. A collection of Spanish fishermen dredge up something horrible—a pair of bodies intertwined. We don’t see them; we see only their hands clasped together in death on the beach. The story is then picked up by a professor of archaeology named Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender), who relates the tale of Pandora (Ava Gardner).

Pandora is a beautiful but selfish and self-centered woman. Every man who knows her, even in some respects Fielding, is infatuated with her, and she uses this knowledge to force men to act in the way she wants. She’s a tease, and in our opening scene with her, she teases a man named Reggie (Marius Goring) into suicide. Since he can’t have her, he poisons himself. She also teases Stephen (Nigel Patrick), the object of Janet’s affection. Stephen is a driver, and has spent two years building a car to break the land speed record. Pandora promises to marry him if he pushes his car into the sea. He does. She tells him since it is the ninth day of the third month, she will marry him on the third day of the ninth month.

Unbeknownst to Pandora is the presence of Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason), who has shown up in the small Spanish port. Pandora swims out to his ship and meets him, surprised that he is alone. He is in the middle of painting a portrait, quite coincidentally of the Greek myth Pandora, and the face on the portrait is Pandora’s. She becomes quite interested in him as a result, and he joins her group of friends and suitors on the Spanish coast.

What we (and Fielding) learn is that van der Zee is truly the Flying Dutchman of legend. He killed his wife, convinced that she had been unfaithful, and declares a curse on himself at his trial. He escapes his jail cell and returns to his ship only to discover that the curse has come true. He cannot die. He is forced to roam the Earth alone and eternally. Every seven years, he can come ashore for six months to find a woman and convince her to love him so much that she will give up her life for him.

Into this mix, we add a matador named Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabre), who is also infatuated with Pandora. He schemes against the other men (especially van der Zee), Stephen rescues his car from the ocean and attempts to set the land speed record a few days before the wedding, and everything comes to a head, leading back to the beginning. Honestly, it’s impossible to spoil the ending of this movie. If you’ve seen the first five minutes, you know how it’s going to end.

The question is the movie’s place on the list. Does it belong? I’m not really sure. It’s a nice story and an interesting one because of the supernatural elements in the story. I’ll be blunt here: I like James Mason a lot. I think he was almost always great and it’s impossible not to watch him when he’s on the screen. Ava Gardner, though, does nothing for me. I’m not sure why.

While the film is about the romance, it’s also about the growth of the Pandora character. She’s nasty for quite a bit of the film. It’s evident that van der Zee is enamored with her because she is the very image of his murdered wife. She’s mean, though, through a good part of the movie. This is entirely intentional, of course, because if there is no real growth in the character, there’s no real purpose behind the film. As the film goes on, she learns that her own desire to hurt others comes from her own unhappiness, and by the end of the film, rather than goading Montalvo, she seeks only to calm him and send him on his way.

The supernatural elements seem to be an attempt to add weight to the film, but I don’t know if there’s enough there. It’s a sweet movie, and a tearjerker of sorts, but all in all, it doesn’t belong with the greatest of the great.

Why to watch Pandora and the Flying Dutchman: Because James Mason kicks ass.
Why not to watch: Too fluffy to be anything more than a curiousity.

Alone in a Sea of Humanity

Film: Lost in Translation
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.


Suffering from jealousy is not one of my problems when it comes to actors on the big screen. It would be cool to be in a movie once—I’d love to be horribly killed in a film, either by zombies or as a zombie, but beyond that, I have no ill feelings toward the people on the screen. The main reason for that is that I am not an actor. The last time I acted seriously was 1988, and I gave it up for good immediately following that. I’d make a fool of myself in a movie.

The money would be nice, though. I could certainly handle the lifestyle. Or could I? Bob Harris (Bill Murray) would appear to suggest that the same things that the rest of us go through are gone through by those at the top end of the fame and money spectrum. Life is a series of boring events, being pushed and prodded by others, and drinking away the pain. Such is the tale of Lost in Translation.

Harris is an aging action movie star well past his prime who has shown up in Tokyo to film a few commercials for whiskey, and the fact that he’s being paid $2 million is the only thing that is comforting him. He feels lost, not just in Tokyo but also in his life. His marriage is stable, but boring; while he is in Tokyo away from his family, his wife constantly harangues him about carpet samples, which she sends him. He spends his evenings in the bar trying to drink away his jet lag and boredom.

Also staying in his hotel is Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), the wife of a photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) in Tokyo for a photo shoot. He doesn’t have a lot of time for her, and she spends her day being bored and lonely and completely out of place in a city in which she understands nothing and no one understands her.

The two find each other and gravitate toward each other. This is an age difference that we have been taught to expect in movies, the much older man and the very young woman, but this is not the typical romance. Their mutual attraction, while it certainly contains something physical, remains almost platonic. They become not romantic love for each other, but a center of calm and a place of normality. In a city where the language is completely unintelligible and the customs and current fads are strange and unfathomable, they each become a place of comfort for each other. This is what is central to their relationship—not sex, but peace of mind.

Bob continues to live out the absurdities of his existence, appearing on a Japanese talk show. The show is almost unexplainable, a sort of video madhouse that could only make sense for those fluent in the language—he is as out of place here as he is everywhere else in Tokyo except for at the side of Charlotte. That night, after dealing with more carpet samples, he finds himself alone and falls into the arms of the hotel lounge singer (Catherine Lambert, who evidently was the actual lounge singer at the real hotel in Tokyo). This causes a minor rift between him and Charlotte, almost as if he was unfaithful to her instead of his wife.

There is a sweetness to this film in which the romance is made more real by the fact that it isn’t consummated. Right around the middle of the film, the two are lying on her hotel room bed fully clothed after watching La Dolce Vita, and they talk about his life and hers. Both of them are lost in their lives. He is bored with his existence, tired of constant attention and being fussed over by people he can’t understand and doesn’t want to understand. He’s adrift. She hasn’t discovered yet what she wants and has lost any will to do anything. It’s a touching scene with real intimacy despite the fact that they barely touch. Their physical contact is limited to his patting her feet near the end of the scene, but it is such a comforting and natural gesture that it resonates with a real affection.

There is an opposite to Bob in the film; this is Kelly (Anna Faris) who is in Tokyo promoting her new film. Kelly is everything that Bob and Charlotte are not. She is vain, stupid, arrogant, and unable to see her own ridiculousness and idiocy. There is no indication that Bob was anything like this at the start of his career, but I like to think that he was. Kelly is too unaware to realize that she’s nothing more than a pretty face—she thinks that people love her because she is special and talented. Bob, world-weary, has grown up enough to realize his own irrelevance while Charlotte appears convinced that she never had any relevance in the first place.

Typically with a romance—and this is a romance despite the almost complete absence of sex and the total absence of it between our two main characters—the desire of the audience is to have the couple end up together. I don’t think that’s ever on the table here. I don’t want these two to run off together, and really, I don’t think either of them wants it. They do, of course, the same way everyone thinks “if only” at certain times in their lives, but there is no real danger that each will abandon his or her spouse and stay in Tokyo. Their parting is inevitable. And yet even though that parting is tender, sweet, and sad, there is a sense of joy in it as well—if nothing else, they’ve found someone who can always be a friend when a friend is needed.

This is a pretty film. Coppola’s idea to not subtitle the Japanese is the right one—it places us in the audience in the same position as the characters, who smile and nod like many people do when confronted with a language they cannot possibly fathom.

While all of the roles are well acted, this is Bill Murray’s movie. It shows exactly where he has come in terms of presenting a character on the screen. Bob is a real person. He makes jokes that only he understands and finds funny. There is a part of him that appears to revel in the bizarre circumstances he finds himself in. He plays this role with complete resignation of his life being what it is and nothing more or different that Charlotte becomes something he needs to attain. He’s finally found something worth striving for, and there’s a real sense of ache in him, of utter confusion and frustration and bewilderment, that the scenes with her are real treasures.

This is a spectacular film, and I’m happy I watched it, and happier now that I own a copy and can watch it again whenever I want. It feels like reality, like a few days sliced from someone’s life. I can give it no higher compliment.

Why to watch Lost in Translation: Proof that Bill Murray has grown up. His comedy is tinged with tragedy.
Why not to watch: Ennui, pain, and desperate loneliness

The Oddest Flower in the Bouquet of Love

Film: Midnight Cowboy
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.


What will you do to survive? How far will you go? In John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, we discover exactly how for our putative hero Joe Buck (Jon Voight) will go to live another day in New York City in pursuit of a sad little dream.

Joe is a cowboy, not a “for-real cowboy,” as he tells people throughout the film, but the closest thing to a cowboy in New York City. At the start of the film, Joe is a dishwasher in the Podunk ass-end of Texas who decides that life would be better if he were having a lot more sex. While that’s a career option for women with little moral standing, there’s not really a huge market for guys looking to get paid to have sex with women in the Podunk ass-end of Texas, so Joe collects his last paycheck, buys himself some slick cowboy duds, and hops a bus for New York City.

Sadly for Joe, New York doesn’t operate in the same way that he’s used to. He’s a rube, and he’s also an obvious victim and target. It’s apparent immediately that Joe is either going to need a lot of good luck or a very good teacher if he’s going to survive, let alone thrive in the city. He starts his “career” as a hustler by propositioning women on the street, asking if they can show him to the Statue of Liberty. This gets him into the penthouse of Cass (Sylvia Miles), and it appears that his career is off to a rollicking start.

Sadly, though, Cass is offended by his asking her for cash, and ends up demanding money from him. The cycle continues when Joe meets Enrico Salvatore “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a crippled no-account who fashions himself as a con man but is too well known by the downtrodden to hustle anyone but a rube like Joe. Ratso hustles Joe for $20, telling him that he’ll take him to a “manager” but instead dropping him off with a religious fanatic (John McGiver, a classic “that guy”).

Eventually, Joe finds Ratso again, and shakes him down for his money, but naturally it’s all been spent. In a rare moment of conscience, Ratso takes in the big stranger, inviting him back to his place, which is a condemned building that the two squat in. They become petty criminals, scamming people for change, ripping off grocers for food, and trying to find a way to get Joe’s stud career started. It finally happens when Joe receives an invitation to a party hosted by some Andy Warhol wannabees, and the pair manages to entice Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro) to pay $20 to spend the night with Joe. However, Ratso takes a tumble down the stairs, and his health takes a drastic turn for the worse. He becomes convinced that the only thing that will solve his health problems is getting to Florida.

That’s the rough outline. Contained within is a series of some of the most tragic and sad events I’ve seen in a movie for a long time. Joe is a complete innocent, good only for lovin’ as he tells us at one point. Through a series of flashbacks, we see the life he spent with his grandmother, who frequently abandoned him. We also see his relationship with his girlfriend Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt), a relationship that ends in a gang rape and Annie in an institution.

It’s evident pretty quickly after Joe hits New York that his dream is doomed. Flat broke and kicked out of his hotel, Joe scams crackers off tables in restaurants. Desperate at one point, he allows a young gay man (Bob Balaban) to take him into a movie theater and perform oral sex on him, a low he didn’t think he was capable of reaching. In this world, though, nothing can go right for Joe, and the young man doesn’t have any money to pay him, leaving Joe still broke and, by his own code, defiled. By the end of the film, Joe is willing to do almost anything to get Ratso to Florida, pleasuring men being fair game.

There are definite homosexual and homoerotic undertones throughout the film, particularly in the relationship between Joe and Ratso. Are they gay? It’s hard to tell. There are certainly tender moments between the two of them. While we see flashbacks of Joe’s past, when we enter Ratso’s mind, it’s to envision his magical future in Florida, generally with a shirtless, attractive Joe. It’s not too hard to read this as homoerotic, but I don’t think it is. That these two men come to love each other, but I don’t gather a sexual thing between the two of them. They’re merely devoted to each other. Still, that’s been a common read. This is further enforced by the constant gaybashing the two of them do. This is further indicated by Joe’s inability to perform with Shirley until she accuses him of being gay, which suddenly changes everything. Of course, this is merely my opinion, and the reading that the two men are closeted is certainly one that can be justified.

What stays with me from the film is the plight of these two men, desperate for anything to get them out of their situation and unable to do anything that works, never getting ahead. At one point, Joe pawns his little battery operated radio for $5. This doesn’t sound like much except that the radio is virtually the only thing he has left from his life in Texas. It’s been his constant companion, the only thing he has for entertainment. To see it go, and go so quickly is a tragic moment in the film. It’s evident to anyone watching that there’s no chance in hell of him getting his radio back. They freeze in their squat, barely able to cook a meal, and at almost every turn, their life together disintegrates.

Midnight Cowboy is celebrated in no small part because it was originally released with an X rating, a rating that was subsequently dropped to R without any changes or cuts. Why did it get an X initially? I have no idea. It’s certainly got enough troubling material in it that I wouldn’t let anyone under 17 watch it, but it’s hardly explicit.

Despite the fact that this film is almost as old as I am, very little in it has aged. This is still a masterful film worth watching, worth studying.

Why to watch Midnight Cowboy: The strangest love this side of Martha Ivers.
Why not to watch: You can’t get past the X rating