Some movie capsules to contemplate.

Next time, I’ll do my “best of the year”. Spoiler: It’s Hundreds of Beavers.

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We did, in fact, manage to catch one of the Israeli Film Festival movies, and it turned out to be the most gripping drama/thriller of the year (and based on a true story)!

Yair is a young man in Jerusalem not suited to the religious life who decides to open an electronics store. The opening points of drama come from this: It’s far more respected in his community to study the torah all day than to engage in commerce. So, with a little bit of dissembling,  he scores himself a sweet trad wife—and when I say “trad”, I mean “ultra-orthodox Jewish” tradition—and after a year of her supporting him (as a schoolteacher) decides the study life isn’t for him.

This trope astonishes me however often I see it, and the culture shock is one of the reasons I love seeing these movies. “Of course, it’s more respectable to make your wife support you!” Her parents are wealthy, too, and would support them, but the whole concept is anathema to Yair.

At some point, after mastering the Talmud, you’re apparently good to go on a secular life. But Yair’s got a problem with authority and so he keeps getting hung up on the contradiction of “listen to the Voice of God” and “the Rabbi knows the Voice of God, so what he says goes.”

So he opens a little shop. He sells Kosher computers. (These are computers that can’t be hooked up to the Internet.) He does great, but he’s limited in the capital he can borrow by the size of his shop. But he has a great idea: He’s going to sell Kosher MP3 players to the neighborhood kids. To really launch, though, he needs to get a big shop on Geula’s main drag.

Geula is the hub of orthodox activity and the shopping…uh…mecca, and a very nice store just burned up and will be available shortly. See, the store that was there sold provocative dresses, and refused to stop, and after a campaign of terror, was just burned out.

All Yair has to do is convince the rabbinical council that runs Geula that what he plans to sell isn’t Satanic, and he’s good as gold. He sells them on the MP3 player idea and before you know it, he’s opened HOME (after the keyboard key), and selling his MP3s like hotcakes.

What could go wrong?

Well, a week later, the council could call him in and tell him they’ve changed their mind. The new MP3 players are distracting the children from their studies, so they’re now the work of the Devil and must be stopped.

Yair, who’s more than a little bit of a jerk to begin with, doesn’t feel like dumping the $4M of inventory he’s bought on credit, and we are off to the races. The rabbinical goon squad terrorizes him just like they terrorized the last shop. And it’s just a matter of time before we get to the burn-un-ing.

Will that time coincide with his pregnant wife going into labor, and the Jerusalem “we-don’t-want-cell-tower” riots? You better believe it.

A really tense, exciting movie, which The Boy didn’t like as much as I because he thought the actor playing Yair was unlikable. He’s definitely belligerent, to everyone’s detriment, and has tendency to listen to things he doesn’t like with his mouth hanging open.

I kind of liked it for the same reasons: We’re never led to believe Yair is perfect, and his character arc is subtle, reflecting only a slight (but definite) reduction of his efforts to make life hard for everyone.

The movie ends with an American Graffiti style “Where are they now?” and it’s nice to know that Yair’s doing fine with a shop outside Geula, and a lot of the worst thugs went to prison.

The Glassworker

Here’s something you see…never. A Pakistani animated feature! In Urdu. (I think something’s happening with the Pakistani film industry: I’m seeing Urdu films pop up more and more.) There’s a little English in there, too, for some reason. I think “foreigners” speak it.

It’s vague, because the whole movie is basically “What if Studio Ghibli had a Pakistani branch?” So we’re in some vaguely turn of the 20th century European(?) country and “a war” is going on the whole time, and our hero is the son of a glassworker, who’s a pacifist. He’s going to get pressed into making vital power widgets for the country’s war zeppelins by The General. (Could it be any more Miyazaki?)

The General, who is not presented as a villain, but a man trying to protect his country, has a beautiful red-headed daughter who has a crush on our hero, which is reciprocated even though both fathers have an antagonistic relationship. (This aspect feels more Takahata than Miyazaki to me.)

Very good film. The Boy cited a few very minor weak points in the animation, but was enthusiastic.

The Sacrifice (1986)

I’m normally up for hours and hours of Andrei Tarkovsky’s static, brooding, ever-so-meaningful shots, but this, his last movie, just struck me as sort of dumb. A bunch of Swedes having a birthday party out in the countryside find their revelry interrupted by nuclear war.

Alexander, a well-respected actor and literary critic who retired from the active London scene to contemplate things on a barren and isolated Swedish island, where some of his friends come to visit for his birthday. The war happens, and is apparently enough to rock the ground in their isolated location, though we don’t see any effect of it.

Alexander is desperate to undo the damage, which he can only do by having sex with the town witch and sacrificing everything (of his own). And so he does.

The Boy liked it a lot. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get into it. It was sort of the reverse of our The Burmese Harp viewing on election night.

Conclave

I am not a Catholic, but I found myself being outraged on their behalf during this modestly competent film with terrific performances. Based on a Robert Harris novel from 2017, this story manages to hit nearly every cliché you’d expect from a Hollywood-based film about a traditional Christian organization.

Ralph Fiennes plays a cardinal who has to hold a conclave after the Pope dies. Stanley Tucci—my mom likes Tucci so that’s why we were there—is a progressive cardinal who is trying to keep the papacy out of the hands of two conservative bishops. The only unexpected twist in the movie (for me) was Tucci, who claims to not want the papacy, being revealed as really wanting the papacy.

Everything else was so predictable, down to the denouement, which is somebody’s idea of a “gotcha” for Catholics. Maybe Harris, I don’t know. Beyond that, the movie is better as a drama than a mystery/thriller, so it never quite moves in such a way as to let you overlook its flaws.

My mom didn’t think much of it, but she liked Tucci, Fiennes and Lithgow, and that’s why we went.

Anora

Sean Baker has a niche: He explores the seedy side of life in a curiously non-judgmental way. He’s sympathetic toward the sex trades but since he portrays them as they are, without glamorizing, you can walk away being as judgmental as you like. In Starlet, he features a young woman becoming a pornographic performer (with hardcore scenes) . In Tangerine (which also has a very explicit, if not actually hardcore scene), he gives us a slice of life of a trans prostitute in L.A. The Florida Project shows the effect on a little girl of her mother’s dissoluteness (prostitution and drug use).

These are good films. But you do have to be willing to sit in squalor for an hour-and-a-half to two hours.

Anora is perfectly in keeping with his oeuvre, except that it runs about two-and-a-quarter. This 140 minutes moves, though.

Annie is a Brooklyn stripper who gets called to a table because she happens to speak Russian. She and the Russian hit it off and soon they’re “dating” at his place. As the son of an oligarch, “his place” is a mansion. Soon they’re spending an entire week together, including jetting off to a Vegas hotel (where he has a palatial suite I’m not convinced wasn’t a set).

Oh, he laments, if only they were married, he wouldn’t have to go back to Russia. So they get married.

It’s like Pretty Woman, right? No, not really. Because what happens next is his Russian Oligarch parents find out he married a stripper. They have no intentions of letting him do that, or even stay in America where, it must be admitted, he’s doing nothing but drugs and strippers. Reality, in other words, impinges on this little fantasy.

So, once again, we have really fine film from Mr. Baker on a really seamy subject. I think this one will win some awards.

Hundreds of Beavers

It came around again! And the Barbarienne wanted to see it again, which wasn’t that easy because it was sold out again!

My original review is here. Does it hold up on a second viewing? Yes, it does. If it’s not as hilarious—because some of the surprise is gone—I also found it hadn’t worn out its welcome at all. (First time, I thought certain parts went on too long, but didn’t have that issue this viewing.)

The thing I noticed most of all this time? The story is a classic “hero’s tale” of riches to rags and back to riches again, training at the hand of a wise mentor, seeing success snatched away at the last second. Better written, storywise than just about anything else this year.

Hands down my number one pick for movie of the year. And I’m not alone. I assume I’m going to love Nosferatu, but I don’t expect to see a challenger in the next two weeks.

A Real Pain

Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in this movie about David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) touring Poland after the death of their Polish grandmother. Apparently, the two were close growing up but have drifted apart, especially since the old woman’s death.

At first, you might get a kind of Planes, Trains and Automobiles feel off this, as David is update and Benji’s a lovable slob. But Benji’s also aimless and a narcissist and given to strident emotional protests.

The Boy and I were surprised: It was funny, it was dramatic, it avoided a lot of clichés. Culkin is great. Eisenberg, who used to almost always come off as a jerk (at least until Zombieland) is brittle without being unsympathetic. In the end, remarkably similar to another movie released this year, the Stephen Fry/Lena Dunham vehicle Treasure.

If I were to point out something with the recent Hollywood selections we’ve seen (Juror #2, Anora and this), the shocking thing is just that you have people humaning like we haven’t seen much of in the Woke Era.

Heretics

I have no excuse. This one is totally on me. I was stuck in Glendale and had just missed the only showing of Invisible Raptor, and this cheap horror film—a clear attempt to cash in on the very good Heretic—was playing. I should’ve checked the website and I would’ve seen that this was an Asylum film.

Asylum’s greatest contribution to society is Sharknado. (I’ve known people who worked there and it’s a pretty crazy place, I’m told.)

This is a “found footage” film. There were no end credits.

This movie starts with about 30 minutes of teens at a high school senior pizza party. The teens are good-looking and not immediately death-worthy, but the girls were all brunettes wearing very similar outfits which  made them difficult to distinguish. It also might’ve struck me as being very ’90s if not for the fact that they’re recording everything on their cell phones.

You can skip this first half-hour because next to nothing mentioned here will have any significance later on in the film.

They spend the next 30 minutes wandering around a “haunted house”. At first this looked to me like an abandoned 1100sqft tract house, but later we see some tunnels and graffiti, which made me think they filmed it in an actual haunted maze. The set designers probably only added one thing: A recurring symbol (Baphomet, maybe?) that is never explained.

You can skip this part, too, because next to nothing here matters or makes sense. Some of the characters are going to die here, but you’re not going to remember or care who they were, because who they are doesn’t matter. (You know from the opening scene who the “final girl” is going to be.)

We close with twenty-minutes of everyone dying. Oh, and Eric Roberts shows up.

Eric Roberts. Nice “found footage” movie, guys, you’re really selling it. I’m sure all this really happened to Eric Roberts and sorry for the Roberts’ family’s losses after his recent, tragic de—

Wait, he’s still alive? Not only is he still alive, he has ONE HUNDRED upcoming movies?

Are people really scrolling through Tubi horror movies and going, “No. No. No. Ooh, Eric Roberts! Sign me up!”? I guess they must be.

So, anyway, yeah, you can skip this last twenty minutes, too.

I realized I’d made a mistake when they started playing “Never Have I Ever” and “Truth or Dare” at the senior party. I literally thought at the director, “Have you no shame? No shame at all?” Turns out: Nope. They may have just turned on the cell phones and improvised the whole thing, only that might’ve turned up something slightly novel.

Back in my day, at least one of the girls would’ve popped her top. Pfeh. These nonbinary types don’t know how to make movies!

See you next time!

The Los Angeles-Israeli Film Festive kind of snuck up on us this year, and it doesn’t look like The Boy and I will be able to catch any of them, but we still managed to see a half-dozen good-to-great films this fortnight-and-a-half.

Let’s get started.

Heretic

In what some (not me) are calling the best horror movie of the year, Hugh Grant plays a maniac atheist who lures a couple of young LDS missionaries into his house to test their faith. Top notch acting with Grant avoiding his famous and easily-impersonated acting twitches and stammers, and the two girls (Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East) giving surprisingly nuanced performances.

The major surprise of this film is how it avoids many of the expected tropes. The two girls are presented in veritably clichéd ways at first, but as the movie goes on, we’re surprised by how they respond to the various challenges they face. Hugh Grant gives a lecture on how Christianity mirrors dozens of faiths in the past—there’s a theme here of imitation which touches both metaphysical and literal aspects of the story—and his big reveal is that it’s all just a control mechanism.

But he’s a literal maniac, a cruel monster beyond even what we see right away, and at no point is he admirable. He’s basically the stereotypical Internet atheist, only more energetic.

There’s a reference here to something called “The Great Prayer Experiment” which purportedly showed that prayer didn’t work. I found that fascinating since as I was growing up, I remember reading studies that shower prayer did work. Looking it up it seems like the current “science” is that prayer actually makes things worse. Heh.

Saturday Night

I generally avoid biopics, as they tend to reduce people’s lives into very formulaic cartoons, but the Barbarienne wanted to see this—she’s a big Jim Henson fan—and it’s very entertaining, and absurd. It takes a lot of vignettes (mostly from the first generation Saturday Night run) and shoves them into the two hours before the premiere took place.

Chevy Chase is shown as an insufferable egomaniac who loses his girlfriend to an overly endowed Uncle Milty, and his future disastrous late night talk show career is presaged. John Belushi is a fragile, barely sane, self-imagined Marlon Brando who quits because Polaroid is going to sponsor the show. Dan Aykroyd is a smooth-talking lothario. Jane Curtin is skilled but clear-eyed about what’s going on while Laraine Newman is more of a wide-eyed naïf being seduced by Aykroyd. Gilda is kind of low-key and whimsical. Garrett Morris has no idea why he’s there.

First host George Carlin hates everything and everyone.

When they’re “on”, the not-ready-for-prime-time players are pretty good, though lacking even a fraction of the original cast’s charisma. When they’re in the background and to the side, it’s easy to forget who’s who.

That’s okay, though, because it’s really the Lorne Michaels story. Will he be able to get the show on the air or will they end up re-running Carson? Will he figure out what his relationship is with his sort-of wife? (They try to make a thing out of what name she’s going to use, but it’s not really a strong part of the film, just kind of ’70s weirdness.) What even is this show? Nobody can answer!

I’m sitting there going “It’s a variety show with an emphasis on comedy, a perfectly ordinary thing for 1975, just a little saucier.”

As surviving cast members have commented, while not strictly accurate, it captures the feel of the era, and I can buy that. The pace makes it such that it’s a very lively (real time) watch.

The Burmese Harp (1956)

Ever hear of it? Me, neither. The Boy and I saw this on Election Day and, while it’s a great movie, The Boy was too stressed to enjoy it much. It’s very low-key: A Japanese troop in Burma at the end of WWII has one soldier, Mizushima, who has learned to play the Burmese harp, and dresses in Burmese clothes, so he can act as a scout.

The harp ends up alerting them to danger, saving them from a deadly firefight, and identifying Mizushima at various points in the movie.

The plot is that, after trying to save a bunch of holdouts from getting shelled by the British, Mizushima is separated from his troop and has to cross Burma on foot to rejoin them, which he does in the stolen robes of the monk who saved his life. And on the journey he is treated with the tremendous respect accorded to Burmese monks, and also a witness to the mountains of Japanese corpses who died in the jungle.

The journey changes him and he’s torn between wanting to go home and feeling a need to bury his dead countrymen.

Really interesting and moving film, but probably not the best to watch if you’re biting your nails over election results. (I wasn’t but, as mentioned, the Boy was.) My two random observations were: 1) That doesn’t sound like a Burmese harp. It sounds like a western harp. 2) I wonder if all those gorgeous Buddha monuments are the ones the Muslims destroyed?

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

I wasn’t actually expecting that much from this, Maggie Smith’s breakout film, beyond a great performance from the late Ms. Smith herself, and was actually pretty bowled over. It was nuanced in a way I can’t imagine a modern film being (and by 1969, the grossly simplistic Boomer world-view was being ensconced).

It’s 1930s England, and Miss Jean Brodie (Smith, duh) is teaching her class at the all-girl school where she proudly announces she’s “in her prime”. The sole source of this is her own heart, which is the source of almost everything she does, much to the annoyance of the school staff and faculty.

So, you think “Oh, free-thinking woman sticking it to the stuffed shirts”—but, no! She’s basically loathed at her school by everyone but her students and the two men wooing her. Her professed love of her students is a weirdly narcissistic fantasy with dire consequences. She decides their fates, incorrectly, and spends a large amount of time lavishing adoration on Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini.

Meanwhile, she’s in love with the school’s art teacher. They had a fling which she broke off, and he’s been chasing her ever since. (He’s a married Catholic man with an increasing number of children as the movie goes on.) There’s a staid, dependable, wealthy guy who adores her, but she’s strongly resisting his proposals. (Although I do think they canoodle.)

And the camera is showing us all the time: This is not this woman’s prime. She’s 35 (which is ancient for a single woman in 1969) and Dame Maggie looks at least that old. (She aged rapidly, I think, and even in her 20s didn’t look that young.)

And still, for all her ridiculousness and narcissism, we still like her. We’re rooting for her. It’s a tragedy, in that sense, as she has no capability to self-correct. One can hardly imagine what lies in her future. In today’s world, we’d suspect lots of white wine and cats.

Smith won a well-deserved Oscar. Rod McKuen was nominated for the title song, which is loathsome, but his ham-handed romantic score actually works in the film proper because it’s basically white-hot irony (whether McKuen knew it or not).

(We played guess the rating after watching this, with Pamela Franklin being fully nude in this movie that features a middle-age man in an affair with a 16-17 year-old girl. It was and remains rated PG.)

Juror #2

Clint Eastwood’s (maybe) last film is a solid morality tale which I probably rate higher than most, because it’s a real movie from Hollywood, where the characters have believable motivations and are driven to desperate, even evil actions, such that the sort of happy ending crowds like just can’t happen without some sort of deus ex machina, and that ain’t the way Eastwood rolls.

Nicholas Hoult finds himself as the titular juror in a case that Toni Collette is trying. She’s trying put away a guy who allegedly killed his girlfriend and dumped her body in a ditch during a rainstorm the previous fall. Except the more Justin (Hoult) hears, the more convinced he becomes that he was the one who killed the girl.

Justin, who’s expecting a child (after losing twins on the night of the death), tries to figure out all possible ways he can of getting the accused off, but Collette is running for D.A., so she needs to put someone away for the crime. If he can’t get the jurors to acquit, if he hangs the jury, they’ll just hold the trial again. But the more he tries to get the falsely accused off, the more he risks implicating himself.

So we start with a 12 Angry Men type premise, and go into an almost “Columbo”-style reverse engineering of a crime we already know all about, and then end up with the moral dilemma.

Very solid flick. Not a crowd-pleaser, but nowhere near as dark as, say, Mystic River. It’s a shame that WB seems to have buried it. It was amusing to see Hoult and Collette reunited. (They played son and mother in About A Boy, speaking of Hugh Grant.)

Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes

I naturally adored this biography of Humphrey Bogart, which leans heavily on Bogie’s own writings (read by someone doing a mild impression of Bogart). Lots of fun and interesting vignettes detailing his struggle as an actor, as an already thrice-married man whose last wife was literally insane and shooting at him—and whom he told the already smitten Lauren Bacall he had to give another chance since she said she had given up drinking.

He seems like a decent, hard-working guy who never believed his own press.

Biographies usually tend to linger too long after the deaths of their subjects, and I appreciated that this one didn’t. (It didn’t dwell overmuch on his death, though it was a horrible one.) I thought it spent too much time on things that weren’t particularly relevant (like his mother being a suffragette and Prohibition) or which have been overdone and which weren’t enlightening. Like, Bogie and Bacall objected to the HUAC and because Bogie was that famous, both the Communists and the anti-Communists decided he was a Red.

Meh. I would’ve liked to hear more about how the Hollywood power couple started the Rat Pack, and more about Bogie’s lifetime friendships with John Huston, Leslie Howard, Hepburn and Tracy, and so on.

Still, if you’re a Golden Age of Hollywood fan, it’s a must see.