School of Rock

Lots of people like Jack Black. His turn as a record store clerk in High Fidelity stole the show and launched him into stardom. I don't know anything about his music, and I haven't seen his interim films, but I'd heard so much about this flick that I had to see it for myself. Black plays someone desperate to earn money so he becomes a substitute teacher at an elementary prep school...without credentials. He hasn't the faintest clue what to do with his students until he hits upon the idea of forming a rock band (because he's a rock musician) and teaching them the history of rock. It's a sweet film with some messages (do what you love to do, don't worry about being fat, etc.), and it feels like it's the story of the life of Black himself. Which makes it seem more real and down-to-earth than you might expect. For Black fans, you're going to love this, because his antics are front and center. For those of us who get slightly embarrassed watching him, like we do when Jim Carrey goes round the bend, I think you'll still enjoy the film for its tone. I would consider it a great film to take your kids to see. And for me, I really wanted to see Joan Cusack belt out Stevie Nicks while slightly toasted. They hint at it but never give it to us. What did they think, that she'd upstage Black?

year: 2003
length: 108 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332379/combined

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Maybe this should be classified as a horror film. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor play a university professor and his wife who are constantly at each other's throats. They invite two others home from a faculty party at 2am, they all get drunk, and the truth starts to come out. Except that you can't tell what's truth and what's just a game. Up until the end and possibly after it's over. Definitely don't watch this film if you're depressed about your marriage or your partnership. You might end up seeing elements of your interaction in the performances. Although I doubt many wives are as braying as Taylor makes hers. She won an Oscar for her performance, and it's deserved, but I think Burton should have won a parallel Oscar as well. Where would one be without the other?

year: 1966
length: 134 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061184/combined

The Man Who Would Be King

You realize this film is comedic about 15 minutes in. Michael Caine and Sean Connery are blackmailing a military official but so obtusely that it takes a moment to realize that you're being kidded with. And yet it's more than a comedy. It's also a serious story about a very close friendship between two British soldiers, bored with their life, who decide to take off to a remote Asian (Middle Eastern? Soviet?) country to try their hand at becoming kings. Perhaps a better description of the film is that it is full of humor, while at the same time delving into the nature of greed, power and fortune. John Huston in all his glory. The DVD has a short documentary released at the time the film came out, and shows the horrifying stunt that Connery had to perform while on a rope ladder across a chasm. He's singing at the time, and if his voice isn't shaking, it should be. Didn't they have stuntmen back then?!

year: 1975
length: 129 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073341/combined

The Civil War

There's one point in this documentary series, I believe at the end of the first episode, in which a letter is read from a soldier (it makes no difference what side he's on) to his wife a few days before his death in battle. It's read against a beautiful Southern landscape and it'll bring you to tears. It says everything about The Civil War that you'll need to know. But stick around to watch the other 8 episodes because Ken Burns knows how to give you a story and a history lesson and entertain you all at once. He shows you the good, the bad, and the worst. The most odious character in the whole war was General George McClellan, as he tells it, who sat on his rear end for so much of his tenure that he was personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of men. He, believe it or not, went on to become the governor of New Jersey, and even made a try to oust the presidency away from Lincoln before that. The man we should all revere is General Robert E. Lee. I knew next to nothing about him before the documentary, but came away believing he was a great and honorable man, beloved by even his enemies. In his dying hours, he went back to the battlefield, and his last words were "strike the tent," which are probably the most perfect last words spoken. The interviews are stellar, and without the different voice talents, it wouldn't be nearly as powerful a series. Particularly Morgan Freeman speaking the lines of civil rights activist Frederick Douglass. One great orator speaking another great orator's lines. It's enough to give you shivers.

year: 1990
length: 680 min. (9 episodes)
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098769/combined

Lost in Translation

Papa Coppola must be very proud. His daughter is all grown up and making movies that are as superb as his, albeit in a very different genre. Plot first: Bill Murray stars as a star in Tokyo doing a liquor commercial who meets a young, bored woman whose husband is there on business, played by Scarlett Johansson. It's definitely a vehicle for Murray, who does his comic schtick throughout the film, but it's much more than that. Every frame of the movie is about the title. Americans stranded in Tokyo, not understanding the language. A man mis-communicating with his wife. A woman mis-communicating with her husband. Jet lag. Pachinko parlors. Steroid-enhanced TV shows. And, ultimately, what the two characters feel for each other but don't know how to express. And yet layered on top of that is the sense of connection we get when we meet a kindred spirit. And how incredibly beautiful Tokyo is while still being completely alien. And the joie de vivre evident at a loud party, whether it's in Japan, America or the West Indies. I don't know if I got the full effect of the film, because at least in the beginning I was laughing so hard that I probably missed a lot of Coppola's subtlety. This one is definitely a keeper, one that needs to be watched again.

year: 2003
length: 105 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/combined

Hard Eight

This isn't Paul Thomas Anderson's first film, but you may think it is because it's so spare. I gather that this was a Sundance Institute film, developed at the Lab and endorsed by the Institute (where filmmakers learn tricks of the trade and make necessary contacts). And while there's no glitz or glamour to the film, it's not needed. Anderson consistently tells us stories about down-on-their-luck characters who make wrong moves, but he loads his films with hope and honesty and enlightenment. This one tells the tale of a man who's lost all his money and is taken in by a kind-hearted professional gambler. There's a love story and a twist, and all the actors are faboo. Probably the best role each of them has had, except maybe Gywneth Paltrow, whose best role to date was in Flesh and Bone. If you haven't seen an Anderson film, I would start here and move chronologically through Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. The last one might be too overly weird for you, and I still vacillate between loving it and hating it, even though it's been a year since I saw it.

year: 1996
length: 102 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119256/combined

Matchstick Men

I've gotta wonder sometimes why so many modern films are about the characters, and not about the story. I know, it's the common gripe about how story doesn't seem to matter to Hollywood anymore, but hey, they're doing the same thing in Britain and India, too. I'm beginning to think it's universal. Not that this film doesn't have a fun storyline, because it does -- a fun, funny grifter flick that's not ultra-snide or ultra-deep -- it's just that you're meant to focus on the stars. Nicolas Cage, Alison Lohman, the incomparable, but sadly one-note Sam Rockwell (where are roles for him like in Lawn Dogs or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind?). What could be better!? I guess that's what the public wants now, a little bit more royalty to ooh and aah over, but we're giving up substance for flash. The characterizations are great (Lohman, who is 24, plays a 14-year-old with conviction with a capital C), but that ends up being what the film is based on. Pity.

year: 2003
length: 116 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325805/combined

Falling Down

Having seen Phone Booth and having liked it very much, I wanted to check out this earlier film of Joel Schumacher's, which I gathered had a similar theme. And it does -- a mis-understood man with a secret, in this case pissed off at the world -- but I found it lacking quite a bit of what I liked in Phone Booth. It could be that I like Colin Farrell over Michael Douglas (although he does a nice enough job). It could be that I preferred a film set in New York instead of L.A. (which is just too rambling to connect with). But, I think the crux of it is that I simply empathized with Farrell's character while I didn't at all empathize with Douglas'. Granted, Douglas has to play a character whom we're supposed to see pieces of ourselves in (just as Farrell's character) while at the same time gradually making it clear that he's gone round the bend. That's a lot for one character to handle. And yet, while I recognized the feelings Douglas' character had, I never felt that I would ever act on them as he did. Smashing up a grocery store just because you're peeved at the prices? Threatening a fast food clerk because they won't serve you breakfast 2 minutes after 11:30? Just plain hitting someone because you're mad at them? That's why he's insane and we're not.

year: 1993
length: 113 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/combined

I Love You to Death

The only way to watch this film is by setting aside any notion that it's going to be enlightening or deep or purposeful. This is broad humor at its best. Because it's based on a true story, that makes it all the more entertaining. A philandering husband is caught by his wife, so she, her mother and some friends decide to shoot him with his own teeny .22 caliber gun. It's just like watching a Weekly World News article in action. Kevin Kline plays the husband -- a loud, hard-working, Italian pizza store owner. Tracey Ullman is his wife, and to round out the cast of characters you have River Phoenix, William Hurt, Keanu Reeves (he's excellent, no, really!) and Joan Plowright as the mother. I own this and always giggle madly through the entire film. I'm sure others think it isn't worth their time, but again, you just need to have the correct frame of reference to watch it. Otherwise, you're missing out.

year: 1990
length: 96 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099819/combined

Rabbit-Proof Fence

I haven't seen many of Phillip Noyce's films. Only Dead Calm, which I loved, although The Quiet American is on my list of "to see" films. So, I don't have much to compare this film to within his oeuvre. My first thought was that it was going to be a heavy-duty weeper, since he'd chosen a subject that few in this day and age would not find abhorrent. In the 1930s (actually, from the 1910s through the 1970s), Australian officials were legally allowed to remove half-caste (white and aboriginal mix) children from their families and put them in camps to teach them the "ways of the white men." Three girls escape and walk back home -- over 1500 miles -- along Australia's rabbit-proof fence. There are places in the film where you feel like weeping, that's true, but the arc of the story gives you many more opportunities to cheer and smile than to weep. The child actors are phenomenal. They'd never acted before, but the lead is entrancing. And, I wonder whether Noyce was channelling Peter Weir in some of his sequences. The music is based on Australian aboriginal instruments and in many instances it's as haunting as that never-will-forget throbbing from Picnic at Hanging Rock.

year: 2002
length: 94 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252444/combined