Scott's Movie Comments

H3

This being the second feature film on the IRA hunger strike seen in a 72-hour period, I have to ask again, why would anybody want to tackle the subject in a fictionalized film after Terry George and Jim Sheridan did such a good job in Some Mother’s Son? At least Silent Grace had a new angle on the topic, focusing on the little-known women prisoners. But H3 could fairly be described as Some Mother’s Son without the bits that took place outside of prison. That omission is critical since the earlier film put things into some sort of perspective by showing us how the young men got to be prisoners in the first place (like killing people). In H3 the prisoners are simply victims of an authoritarian and sometimes abusive British prison system. Full stop. At one point we get a flashback showing the arrest of Seamus, the main character, and we think we might get some explanation of why he was arrested. But no, we simply see the arrest, keeping Seamy firmly in the victim role. Director Les Blair has made a fairly powerful film, and it got an extremely enthusiastic reception at its screening at the Galway Film Fleadh (although this actually may be because most of the people in audience worked on the film or were friends and relatives of people who worked on the film). But because of the selective way it tells its story, the movie is more manipulative than inspiring. What was more thrilling was to see the actors who played the prisoners and the guards chumming it up on stage afterwards. When will someone make a movie about the heroes who took great risks to reach a peace agreement in Northern Ireland? (Seen 15 July 2001)

Hable con ella (Talk to Her)

As America agonizes and argues over the rights and wrongs of prolonging the life of a person in a vegetative state, let us not forget, as Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar reminds with this 2002 film, that there can also be entertainment value in the plight of people who are comatose or in a persistent vegetative state. Almodóvar picked up an Academy Award for his creepy original screenplay about two men and the unconscious women with whom they are emotionally involved. As we expect from an important European film, there is a fair amount of allegory and symmetry. The story concerns two couples. One pair is rather macho. The man is an Argentine reporter who does not flinch from killing a snake. Twice. (Hmmm. Killing snakes. Nothing Freudian there.) She is a bullfighter. The other couple is more... feminine. He is a nurse who has spent most of his adult life minding his bedridden mother. She is a dance enthusiast. Both relationships become more than a little one-sided due to devastating injuries sustained by the women. How will this all work itself out? Only one thing is sure. No serious movie about romantic obsession can be complete without a visit from the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock, and that is true here, as the nurse character (the one with the mother) invades his love object’s home while she takes a shower. As befits Sir Alfred, there is a wicked sense of humor underneath the surface of this ostensible melodrama. When Benigno and Marco discuss their respective romantic relationships in the hospital, they don’t seem the least bit concerned that the women under discussion don’t have a clue about any of it. Is this a metaphor for male-female relationships or what? (Seen 19 March 2005)

The Hallelujah Trail

Eight years after John Sturges directed Burt Lancaster in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and two years after he directed Donald Pleasance in The Great Escape, Sturges teamed up with both of them for this ambitiously wild comedy western. The words “western” and “madcap” don’t frequently go together, but they both describe this 1965 movie, which makes ample use of majestic New Mexico locations. I have fond childhood memories of enjoying this rousing entertainment in my hometown’s local cinema (when it still had one), but I am not sure it has stood the tests of time and personal maturity. Lancaster is the apoplectic cavalry colonel bedeviled by temperance crusaders, led by spunky Lee Remick. Jim Hutton and Pamela Tiffin are the perfunctory romantic interest. Brian Keith is the (again) apoplectic businessman delivering whiskey to Denver miners, led by Dub Taylor, ahead of the impending winter. And Pleasance plays one Oracle Jones, whose word, for reasons that are never really made clear, is considered unassailable on virtually every topic. My personal favorite ethnic caricature in this sprawling enterprise is Tom Stern’s perpetually aggrieved Irish labor leader, although most people’s attention will certainly be drawn to the turn by Martin Landau(!) as a comic relief injun called Chief Walks-Stooped-Over. (Seen 26 May 2006)

The Halo Effect

It sounds like it could be a sitcom. A dingy late-night Dublin chip shop is staffed by a wacky and varied crew, and a wide array of strange characters come and go, with faces that will be quite familiar to Irish audiences. Some of them actually order food. There is a Damon Runyon feel to this greasy slice of Dublin night life, chronicling a week in the lives of the city’s denizens. As an eatery, Fatso’s has little to recommend it. Fatso regularly flips the burgers onto the floor. Jean spends more time taking snaps with her camera than working. And a night doesn’t go by without an emergency visit from the fire brigades or the police or both. Fatso (a name he inherited along with the chip shop) is played by Stephen Rea, and I can’t think of another actor whose face can project world-weary, end-of-the-tether, had-it-up-to-here, can’t-take-any-more exasperation so effectively. Fatso is the author of his own frustration, however, because, despite his gruff exterior, he is a soft touch, not only to his staff but also to the neighborhood street people. And there is also the little matter of his gambling problem. As with so many movies these days, the tone of the film sways from one extreme to another. One moment we think we are watching a slapstick comedy. In the next, things get grim and violent. Ultimately, this flick will appeal to the same people who liked Intermission, although you probably couldn’t have paid for one day’s catering on that movie with the total budget of this one. Writer/director Lance Daly, who previously made Last Days of Dublin, was inspired by his own nighttime pizza delivering experience. (Seen 14 October 2004)

Hamlet [1996]

If you search the title Hamlet in The Internet Movie Database, you get no fewer than 39 links. And, in this latest version (adapted by, directed by, and starring career Shakespeare freak Kenneth Branagh), virtually every British actor—not to mention more than a few of their Hollywood friends—has scrambled aboard, even if for just a few seconds of screen time and no speaking part. Branagh’s Hamlet is the one for people who 1) like their Shakespeare on a grand and epic cinematic scale and 2) resent all those other versions that condense the original text down to a mere two or three hours. (An abridged Branagh version is scheduled to follow.) Why does this play yield such unequaled fascination for audiences and actors alike? Think about it. Prince Hamlet is a celebrity who is driven to violence by perceived betrayal, a grieving man searching for justice and, not least, a flamboyant showman. In other words, he is O.J., Fred Goldman, and Johnnie Cochran all rolled into one! (Seen 12 February 1997)

Hamlet [2000]

A few years ago Baz Luhrmann directed an exciting update of Romeo and Juliet, using all kinds of modern pop culture touches and music to give the story relevance to today’s audience. Michael Almereyda, who made the 1988 cult mis-functional family flick Twister (definitely not to be confused with the 1996 tornado extravaganza of the same name) and the goofily weird 1994 vampire movie Nadja, has attempted something similar with Shakespeare’s melancholy prince. The setting, appropriately enough, is Wall Street. The problem is that, while R&J is full of plot and action and so the dialog could withstand being overshadowed by imagery, Hamlet is mostly a bunch of speeches and so the text needs to be treated a bit more respectfully than it is here. Still, bits of this strange experiment are fascinating. The main character is something of a depressed sort, and if star Ethan Hawke excels at anything, it is definitely brooding and moping. When he yells, “Good night, mother!” to Diane Venora in the midst of his homicidal rage, we begin to see the character for what he really is: an early forerunner of Norman Bates. And a few clips of James Dean, whose brief career was all about angry young men with serious father issues, further puts a modern perspective on the character. Other nice touches include the eclectic casting, which includes the likes of Kyle MacLachlan, Sam Shepard, Bill Murray, Steve Zahn, the late Paul Bartel, and a respected former TV newscaster. (Seen 17 July 2000)

The Hamster Cage

A man and a woman are admiring British Columbia’s magnificent scenery. “B.C. is God’s country,” he exults. “Yeah,” his sister agrees, somewhat wistfully. “Too bad so much weird sh** happens here.” Indeed. These two are on their way to their parents’ house for a family dinner to celebrate their father’s being awarded a Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, Uncle Stan is coming as well, with his girlfriend Candy, who is 22 going on 12. The result is a black comedy about a family that is so screwed up that, if Sigmund Freud had lived to see this movie, it might have sent him running to seek therapy. Adultery, pedophilia, murder, incest, you name it and it’s here—all being played for nervous laughs. The cast is uniformly fine, particularly deep-voiced Alan Scarfe, as the condescending intellectual patriarch. Directed by Larry Kent, who has explored family dynamics in previous Canadian films, this movie is an outrageous comedy. But it is also a scathing indictment on the state of the family in North America. (Seen 10 October 2006)

Hanging Up

How can this possibly be?! A manly, macho guy like myself giving three stars to an out-and-out chick flick? Yeah, I know that the characters aren’t all that relate-able to most people (one’s a Helen Gurley Brown-type magazine publisher, another is a soap star). Yeah, I know that Diane Keaton is way too old for her character. (It’s probably no coincidence that she is also the director.) And, sure, I know that Meg Ryan is basically playing the same exact wacky/adorable character she’s played in a bunch of other movies, notably You’ve Got Mail. But despite all this, there is something very real and true in Delia and Nora Ephron’s story about relationships between sisters and the trauma of dealing with not only the loss of a parent but of a very problematic one. You’ve been warned: bring tissues. The movie deserves credit, also, for a title that sounds fluffy enough but which actually works well on three levels. 1) There’s the obvious telephone reference. Everyone is constantly on the phone in this flick, almost more than one of my all-time favorite satires, Denise Calls Up. Indeed, we know we have entered a flashback less because of fashion or hairstyles than because of the fact that the phones have cords. 2) There is the pop psychology angle, and there are definitely plenty of hang-ups in evidence. 3) And finally, there is the very real sense of ending a conversation that has been going on for a very long time. (Seen 27 February 2000)

Happiness

About midway through this disconcertingly black comedy, Lara Flynn Boyle explains that she lives “in a state of irony” and that state is New Jersey. A veteran of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, she should know something about irony. (And nothing, by the way, is more ironic than this film’s title.) Writer/director Todd Solondz’s follow-up to his deliciously bitter Welcome to the Dollhouse is firmly in ironic Lynch territory as it explores the perversions that lurk just below the surface of normal, wholesome middle American life. But the tone is more like a latter-day Woody Allen romantic comedy. It tells the story of three sisters: one has the perfect marriage, one has the perfect career, and one is perfectly miserable. (Ironically, her name is Joy.) To their surprise, however, the men in their lives are dealing with such issues as suicide, compulsively making obscene phone calls, and being a predatory pedophile. If Lolita made you uncomfortable, then a Ward Cleaver clone’s obsession with an 11-year-old boy will either send you running to the exit or at least make you feel indecently complicit for watching. It’s a twisted testimony to Solondz’s brazenness that the bit that seemed shocking in There’s Something About Mary seems ironically mundane when it shows up here (twice). The real irony, however, is how strange you will feel when you find yourself laughing at much of this stuff. (Seen 15 October 1998)

Happy Feet

When I wasn’t thrilling to the intermittent scenes of whooshing down ice slides or being pursued by marine predators or falling off sheer heights or being amused by much (if not all) of Robin Williams’s usual vocal shtick, my mind kept wondering what the first story meeting for this movie must have been like. “G’day, mates. Let me tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to remake that documentary March of the Penguins. But we’re going to do it as a musical. And we’ll make it with CGI.” “Bloody brilliant, George! Hey, you know what, while we’re at it, why don’t we turn it into bloody Billy Elliot!” “That’s a smashing idea! Yes, Billy Elliot as a penguin. I love it!” “And, you know how all those conservative commentators thought that March of the Penguins was some sort of a testament to traditional religious values? In our movie, we’ll make it clear that that fundamental religious leaders are the real problem.” “I love it! Instead, we’ll show that artists have the solutions to the world’s problems. Because, like, through their art they, like, communicate, you know, through their art.” “Even better, we’ll show the world’s problems being saved by the United Nations!” “Yeah, yeah. And then we’ll have the world unite into a one-world government and solve every problem in the world forever!” Awkward silence. “Well, now you’re just going too bloody far. We’ll save that one for the sequel.” (Seen 23 December 2006)

Happy, Texas

This completely goofy movie clearly aims to be the Some Like It Hot of the 90s—with a bit of The Music Man thrown in for good measure. But, since this is still (for a while anyway) the 90s, our heroes don’t dress up as women but instead find themselves obliged to go along with a small Texas town’s presumption that they are a gay couple. In the Jack Lemmon role is Steve Zahn, an actor that inspires laughter by his mere appearance and demeanor. He has provided many humorous moments in such films as Out of Sight and Freak Talks About Sex, and here he shows a flair for physical comedy that makes him seem like some sort of drugged-out, redneck Jim Carrey. The unlikely choice for the Tony Curtis figure is Cambridge-born Englishman Jeremy Northam, who is more often seen in refined period pieces like Emma, The Winslow Boy and An Ideal Husband. As a scruffy American con man, he is magically transformed into something like the lost Baldwin brother or a finer-featured George Clooney. Ally Walker looks and sounds strangely like Brett Butler (but in a real babe sort of way) in what would be the Marilyn Monroe part. Illeana Douglas looks oddly like Shelley Duvall. And William H. Macy is surprisingly touching in the Joe E. Brown role. (Seen 16 September 1999)

Hard asfalt

The title is Norwegian for “hard asphalt” which suggests to me that Norwegian may not be that difficult a language after all. The film is basically a fun-filled travelogue of Oslo as seen through the eyes of two of its most upstanding citizens. Knut and Ida are your basic Norwegian fun couple. He’s an alcoholic, who goes crazy every once in a while and beats up Ida. She’s a junkie, who walks the street part-time to make ends meet. They’re young, they’re in love, and they’re depressing. They get by through scams, petty thievery, and whoring. They try to make a go of it by getting real jobs and going to school and all that stuff that never works in movies like this. In the end, you think that Ida has finally got her act together because she walks out on Knut. But at the final fadeout we see her listing her services and prices to some john in a car. This movie is even more depressing because it is based on someone’s actual autobiography. But at least it is well done. (Seen 5 June 1987)

Hard Core Logo

Bruce McDonald is a Canadian filmmaker who has made some enjoyable, offbeat movies like Highway 61 and Dance Me Outside. With Hard Core Logo he has turned out a “mockumentary” (there’s that word again) which seems calculated to be the anti-Spinal Tap. As in the Rob Reiner classic, we have a band that has lived well beyond its reason for existence and two main members who have a longtime Butch-and-Sundance friendship that may be coming to an end. But where Reiner’s send-up was mainly affectionate and ultimately sentimental, McDonald’s film is dark and scary and infused with the up-yours spirit of the titular fictional band. There are some darkly funny moments in this story of long-in-the-tooth punk rockers and the voyeuristic film team that relentlessly records their every move. But if the film is intended as critique of these sorts of docmentaries, most viewers will probably miss the point. And, as an entertainment, it is hard pressed to compete with the real thing. (Seen 19 May 1997)

Hari Om

This is essentially an Indian version of It Happened One Night. In the Clark Gable role we have the titlular Hari Om (played by Vijay Raaz, who was the wedding planner in Monsoon Wedding), a taxi driver who has been suckered into piling up a huge gambling debt to the local street boss and needs to disappear fast. At that moment, an attractive young Parisian woman named Isa steps into his cab. (He calls it a rickshaw. It is more like a golf cart.) This latter-day Claudette Colbert is passionate about seeing everything she can in Rajasthan, so she has split for the day from her impeccably tailored boyfriend Benoît, who is spending all his time in long, tedious business meetings. As their jaunt extends into days, the film becomes a virtual travelogue of this part of India, and such is the beauty and charm of the land, buildings and people that we can’t help but get caught up in Isa’s passion for it all. Early on, a computerized weighing scale warns Isa against following the false love and missing the true love. A very wise and elderly man later tells her a poignant tale with a similar theme. Will Isa’s adventure with Hari Om turn out to be a similar story? Or is it all really just a holiday? (Seen 11 October 2005)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

As we’ve noted several times before, the point of any good sequel is to remake the original movie, but even bigger and better. Director Chris Columbus has at least got the first half of that right. He certainly showed that he understood the point of sequel making when he followed up his Home Alone with Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. But this movie follows the first one so closely, not only in narrative but in scale, that inattentive viewers might be forgiven for thinking that they are sitting through the same movie again. The only thing fresh and new is really a nicely done flying car—although that only serves to remind baby boomers of the original Nutty Professor. Otherwise, the film is getting by on good feelings generated by the first film and, of course, the source novels—which seem even more indispensable for understanding what is going on. Despite all the clever special effects (many of which seem borrowed from the haunted house at Disneyland), the movie gets a bit tedious with its constant sense of persecution and victimization and political allegory, involving Nazi wizards. (Seeing Harry’s adoptive Surrey family through his resentful eyes is a bit reminiscent of the creepy David Cronenberg film Spider.) Sadly, most of the heart we get from this movie is in having our last onscreen look at Richard Harris. For a few minutes, he takes the proceedings to a whole new level, as he muses over the ashes of his pet phoenix and the mystery of death and life. (Seen 14 November 2002)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Boy, and you thought your school was tough! At Hogwarts, it seems that not only are teachers allowed to strike the students but the school participates in a tournament, in which student deaths seem not only possible but quite likely. I guess wizard parents just aren’t as litigious as their muggle counterparts. Coming out of the cinema, I could not help thinking that those of us who have praised George Lucas in the past may yet come to rue his long-term influence on the movies. And I’m not just talking about the last three Star Wars movies. Or maybe I am. Lucas has set the gold standard (in terms of profit, if not literature) for blockbusters for the youth market. Dazzle us with amazing images, mix in what passes for drama for adolescents and then cut to the computer-generated scenes for ultra-videogame thrills. In fairness, the dragons do seem quite real, and it also seems real when Harry confesses that he would rather fight another dragon than deal with asking a girl to the dance. Make no mistake, this is movie youth literature of the highest order. But it still feels like we’re following a formula and glossing up an underlying story that doesn’t seem all that complex. At least we don’t have to have the opening sequence showing how awful Harry’s adoptive parents are anymore. But, just as James Bond always has to say, at some point, “Bond. James Bond,” someone always has to sneer the words, “The great Harry Potter!” Refreshingly, there is something even more authentically English about the characters and the proceedings this time than usual. (Maybe because the series finally has, in Mike Newell, its first English director?) Personally, the best scene to see in an Irish cinema was when deatheaters disrupted the quidditch world cup, and the English lads’ first reaction was to ask, “Is it the Irish?” As usual, there is so much English and Irish talent on display (Brendan Gleeson steals the show) in the teeming cast that it is difficult to keep track of everyone. But do not overlook David Tennant as Lord Valdemort’s weasely henchman, Barty Crouch Jr. He will be making his debut as the eleventh Doctor Who on BBC television on Christmas day. (Seen 30 November 2005)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I’ve pretty much decided that these movies cannot be seen in isolation from their source novels—even though that is the way I insist on sizing up films. There is just too much detail in the novels to pack into the movies, but the filmmakers have clearly opted to make the movies for the books’ fans rather than attempt to “cinema-tize” them to make them work properly in the different medium. So what we have is the film equivalent of, say, the Twin Peaks TV series or, to a lesser extent Babylon 5, where to fully appreciate it you pretty much had to study ancillary data—mainly on the internet in those cases, by reading the novels in the case of Harry Potter. In another way, the movies have become like more recent TV offerings (X-Files, Lost, Smallville, etc.), inspired by Lynch’s work, which have an over-arcing storyline, which is incrementally advanced with each new installment. Consequently, we get this movie, taken from the longest of the novels to be adapted to date, but which has the shortest running time (138 minutes). The result is a story that seems strangely sparse on incident (for a series of books crammed with so many characters and details) and fairly incoherent to those who have not read the books or who do not live with someone who has. It is tempting to look for a political message in this story of government repression in a hoary institution of education. For example, is Imelda Staunton’s poisonously autocratic administrative meddler meant to be Margaret Thatcher? It’s not out of the question, but it’s not really a good fit. Staunton’s Delores Umbridge is every bureaucrat, who ever got carried away with her own sense of power. The obvious target is fascism or McCarthyism. But, when you think about it, the fictional political context of a government that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge or deal with an accumulating external threat looks like an indictment of politicians who refuse to buy into the war on terror. One particular bonus: we get to see exactly what Tim Burton sees in Helena Bonham Carter. (Seen 16 November 2007)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

You’ve probably already seen this, so you know that director Chris Columbus pretty much got everything right. And even Hollywood would have to work pretty hard to mess up a story that so perfectly expresses the fantasies of most 11-year-olds, i.e. to find out that you really are more important and talented than the rest of your boring and mean family. HP&tSS is pretty much an ideal children’s movie, which makes it very suitable for former children as well. Not that you or I won’t quibble with certain aspects since, after all, that is part of the fun of watching an Event Movie like this, particularly one based on a wildly popular set of novels. The character of Harry is a bit problematic since, he has to do double duty as the hero and the point-of-view character. That works okay in books but it makes for a hero who has to do an awful lot of reacting to what everyone else is doing on the screen. And it doesn’t help that, as a superior being, he isn’t quite real, while his two closest chums are very real and winningly played by two great young actors (Emma Watson and Rupert Grint). But no actor of any age, let alone a child, would have an easy time going up against the array of British (and Irish) acting immortals assembled here. What a feast for a film buff! In the end, we have to be swept up with the magic. After all, Harry is every young legendary hero braving danger to seek his destiny. He’s Arthur, he’s Frodo, he’s Luke Skywalker. And what an Olympian host of Merlins/Gandalfs/Obi-Wans he has to guide him! (Seen 6 December 2001)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

¿Y tu muggle también? When I first heard that Alfonso Cuarón would take over the directing helm from Christopher Columbus in the Harry Potter franchise, I was intrigued. We would be going from the American guy who gave us Macauley Culkin in two Home Alone movies to the Mexican filmmaker who had given us Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna as two randy teenagers on the road with a sexy older woman. Was Harry about to grow up really, really fast? But Cuarón had also given us the movies A Little Princess and a updated version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. With that last film, the good news was that Cuarón had shown that he can do gothic. The bad news was that he can get a bit silly about it. In the end, the characters and settings from the first two Harry Potter movies are so well established and the general formula for the story lines so familiar that I’m not sure that it makes that much difference who is directing the movies. Still, as the critics have noted, this movie is “darker” than the first two, and Cuarón has succeeded in putting his mark on the series. Familiarity and repetition are the gravest problems for a series of sequels, but this film manages the happy accomplishment of raising our interest in the latter half with a few genuine surprises and a nifty time travel sequence that explains a number of odd events that, at first, seem like sloppy storytelling. Otherwise, the main interest in these movies, for those of us who are not already rabid fans of the books, is keeping track of which major British stars have not yet made an appearance and how much screen time the likes of Maggie Smith and Emma Thompson will actually get. As Gary Oldman makes his exit toward the end, he says something we all know to be true, raising the question of why the movies are about Harry at all and not about the much more interesting Hermione. (Seen 3 August 2004)

Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (With a Friend Like Harry)

An isolated house and an unshakable new acquaintance who really, really wants you to get back to your writing. All you need is a big snowstorm and you really would have the Gallic version of Misery. This is the sort of slowly building suspense story, springing out of ordinary enough events that inevitably has to be labeled “Hitchcockian.” But since it is French, the resolution isn’t nearly as neat or immediately comprehensible as American audiences might prefer. Still, this tale of old schoolmates having a chance meeting in a lavatory that leads to strange events indeed does have its moments. It also has a perverse attitude that can be either disconcerting or darkly funny, depending on your bent. After it is all over, there is really only one real question left to ponder: was that a monkey or a gibbon with a propeller on its head? (Seen 14 May 2001)

Hasards ou Coïncidence (Chance or Coincidence)

With a title like Chance or Coincidence and a poignant story of ill-fated lovers—not to mention the sudden appearance of a snowbound plane wreck—can this be anything other than the Gallic equivalent of The Lovers of the Arctic Circle? But the writer and director here is Claude Lelouche, who has been at this sort of thing for four decades—as far back as his 1966 international hit A Man and a Woman and more recently with the 1995 update of Les Miserables. This time we have a relentlessly cheery tale of loss and sorrow, with a globetrotting dancer heroine who takes us from Italy to France, Hudson Bay, New York City, Mexico, and Turkey. In pursuit of her is a man she has never met, a somewhat wacky perspectiviste (“futurologist”) who is reminiscent of Pierre Richard in all those old Francis Veber comedies. Somehow it all works, and we are swept away on this journey, even during the slow and sad bits in the second half. In that way, this film is like life itself, but with the good fortune to have an optimistic guide to show us the way. (Seen 20 May 1999)

The Haunting

Question: If you wanted make (or remake) a spooky, atmospheric, unbearably suspenseful ghost story, would you A) give a few thousand dollars to a couple of guys in their 20s who have never made a movie before or B) give millions of dollars to a Dutch guy mainly known for making one movie about a speeding bus that can’t stop and another one about a bunch of tornadoes in Oklahoma? If you have trouble with that one, you just haven’t been paying attention this summer. Jan De Bont’s The Haunting is best appreciated if 1) you haven’t seen, or through some miracle, can’t remember having seen Robert Wise’s 1963 version and 2) you have never taken the Disneyland haunted house ride which is every bit as good as this computer-effects-laden spectacle. The main problems with this film are that it isn’t particularly scary (a bad thing for a haunted house movie) and that it just doesn’t deliver on the expectations that it sets up for at least some really imaginative effects based on our introduction to Hill House and its strange rooms and its odd artifacts. But at least the house itself is really cool. And some amusement can be derived from the brief turns by the housekeeper and her husband (a barely seen Bruce Dern, by far the creepiest thing in the movie), the insistence of Liam Neeson’s clueless psychologist on continuing to scribble notes even as all hell is breaking loose around him, and the notion that someone would actually build the gates of hell into their house. (Seen 2 August 1999)

He Liu (The River)

Definitely not based on a Bruce Springsteen song, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s The River barrels along at the pace of an Indiana Jones action adventure. But only when compared to Tsai’s last movie, Vive l’Amour. Compared to any other movie, it moves at the speed of molasses in January. Within the Arctic Circle. Tsai’s minimalist filmmaking approach worked to fascinating effect in Vive l’Amour, but here it mostly seems tedious. At one point a character (who perhaps has consumed a gallon of coffee off-camera?) urinates for five minutes straight, prompting scattered applause from the audience. The story is about a young man who takes a brief role in a movie as a dead body floating in a polluted river. He subsequently begins suffering a horrible pain in his neck. As before, Tsai’s intent is not exactly (or even inexactly) clear. Is this meant to be an environmental cautionary tale à la Todd Haynes’s Safe? Or is Hsiao-kang’s debilitating disease meant to be a metaphor for homosexuality? Or for AIDS? Or is it about something totally different? Whatever the intent, when you walk out of the theater, your neck will hurt. (Seen 28 May 1997)

Head On

I’d say that this movie wants to be the Greek-Australian gay Trainspotting. Based on a novel called Loaded, it covers a 24-hour period in the life of a fairly troubled 19-year-old in Melbourne. Ari is not the least bit interested in looking for a job, insisting that there is no work to be had. He has a serious drug problem. He has a huge appetite for sex, mainly on the spur-of-the-moment with male strangers, but he doesn’t want to be seen as gay. And he is completely at odds with his immigrant Greek parents, who are as controlling as they are hotheaded. In other words, he is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Underlying this powder keg of emotion is a persistent sense of hostility between just about every ethnic group in the country. The one potential positive note in Ari’s depressing life is a new blond acquaintance who seems to be interested in striking up some sort of relationship. Ari is played by the strikingly handsome Alex Dimitriades, who was previously in The Heartbreak Kid. While fairly provocative, I’m afraid however that, as an alienated youth film, Head On doesn’t have half the style of Trainspotting and, as a modern immigrant saga, it isn’t nearly as enlightening as My Son the Fanatic. (Seen 25 May 1999)

Headless Body in Topless Bar

This film has such a good title that it is actually trademarked! (The filmmakers explained to me that you can trademark words in a logo, but you can’t copyright a title. That’s why we have more than one movie called The Heartbreak Kid, Bad Boys, etc.) Headless Body in Topless Bar was an actual headline in The New York Post in the 1980s. Screenwriter Peter Koper and director James Bruce took the basic events from the news article and embellished them to make a movie that is part black comedy and part psychological drama. Basically, a man comes into a topless bar on a slow night near closing and ineptly tries to rob the place. (The robber is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, if you know what I mean.) When the robbery goes awry, he has to figure out what to do with the customers who are now all witnesses. Naturally, he does what any master criminal would do in this situation. He makes them take turns telling their innermost secrets. It seems he had some therapy in prison and now he wants to try it out on others. (“An encounter session from hell,” the program notes aptly call it.) The whole thing feels like a play, and in fact Bruce and Koper had planned to do it as a play first until movie financing suddenly came through. The stuff can be quite entertaining at times, but the problem is that this sort of thing relies a lot on the shock value of the personal revelations. In an age where fathers regularly go on Oprah to talk about how they sleep with the daughters’ boyfriends, how are we supposed to be shocked anymore? The stripper turns out to be a lesbian. (Yawn.) The corporate lawyer has kinky sex toys in his brief case. (Zzzzzz.) The only real emotional involvement comes at the end when it’s time to find out if any hostages survive the experience. The cast includes Paul Williams (Phantom of the Paradise, Smokey and the Bandit) as a man in a wheelchair and David Selby (forever remembered by some of us as Quentin Collins on the original Babylon 5 series) as the lawyer. (Seen 11 June 1995)

Headrush

For those who felt that, as an examination of the Dublin drug scene, Veronica Guerin just what wasn’t light-hearted enough, there is this alternative by first-time feature director Shimmy Marcus. Of course, it’s not meant to be taken seriously, but still it takes a bit of courage to make a fun-loving comedy about drugs in Dublin these days. At heart, this is a buddy caper comedy, the antecedents of which are older than Hope and Crosby. But the humor here derives more from the school of Cheech and Chong, in which the audience is to find lads under the (continual) influence endlessly funny. Sometimes it’s genuinely funny, and sometimes you just figure that you are meant to be on drugs yourself to appreciate it. As a movie, it wants to veer (as so many do these days) from laughs to fright and back. But, despite a couple of bloody scenes, there is no palpable tension or sense of menace here. Steven Berkoff is on hand as the drug lord, who is meant to do for this flick what Gerard McSorley did for Veronica Guerin. Unfortunately, he reminds us too much of the blustering bald guy on Coronation Street. In the end, much as we would like to share the film’s desire to have some good harmful fun, this has been done better before. My advice: hold out for the good stuff. (Seen 16 October 2003)

The Heartbreak Kid

This film has no overt connection to the 1972 U.S. movie by Elaine May (with Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd) of the same title. Rather, it is an Australian film which centers on an ethnic Greek community. The film opens with an engagement party. But as the camera draws back, we see Christina enclosed in her parents house, surrounded by family while a teenager full of energy and life runs down the street setting off car alarms. This sets up the essential conflict of the story. Christina, a high school teacher who is smothered by her family and by her fiancé (Greek Australian men generally come off as pigs in this flick), winds up having an affair with that teenager, who just happens to be her student. The end of the story is much more upbeat and uplifting than is probably justfiable by reality, but hey it does let you leave the theater feeling pretty good about things. (Seen 19 May 1995)

Heaven’s a Drag (To Die For)

This is the fourth movie I have seen in the 1995 Seattle film festival which deals with the loss of a loved one to AIDS. And it is the third one which is at least partly a comedy. Heaven’s a Drag is from Britain and for a while it seems to be a gay version of Blithe Spirit. By the end, however, it has more in common with Ghost. When Simon’s lover Mark dies, he all too easily puts him out of his life. We learn that this is because Simon has learned to shut off his emotions due to the way his father rejected him when Simon came out to him. But Mark’s ghost will not leave Simon alone. While the situation is played for laughs, the ending of the story is actually quite touching. It is marred, however, by a couple of details. One is an all-too-convenient letter that Simon’s father wrote on his deathbed and which his mother was saving for just the right moment. The other is Mark’s final ascent into heaven which is visualized as Mark had always thought it would be while he was alive—complete with homoerotic angels. In any event, the film clearly had a powerful effect on the audience. This is the only screening I can remember when there were absolutely no questions for the director after the movie. (Seen 4 June 1995)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

At one point in the course of this gender-bender glam-rock musical, the title character exclaims, “Tommy, can you hear me?” Hedwig, who can best be described as a German-American quasi-transsexual who bears an eerie resemblance to Rachel Griffiths and who has hair that is sometimes like Farrah Fawcett’s and sometimes like Suzanne Somers’s, is invoking the name of her erstwhile love object and bane of her professional career: Tommy Gnosis. But the line is also a nod to the granddaddy of all rock operas, The Who’s Tommy, which was also about one of life’s victims looking for mass adulation when what was really needed was some measure of inner peace. The film’s clever parodying of pop music trends may remind some of This Is Spinal Tap, while its gossipy take on glam pop stars’ foibles and love lives may put others in mind of the more recent Velvet Goldmine. Still others, thanks to its encouragement for audience sing-along with some catchy tunes, may see it as a successor to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The talent behind this paean to androgyny is director/co-writer/star John Cameron Mitchell who played Hedwig for years off-Broadway. The most familiar face in the cast is SCTV alum Andrea Martin’s, and it’s great to see her again, if only in a small role. (Seen 26 October 2001)

Heist

This movie is about a... well, I guess the title gives it away. Since this is written (and directed) by David Mamet, we expect to be misled and confused and surprised, and we are. We also expect characters to do a lot of repeating of what someone else has just said, kind of like a Dr. Seuss book, and that happens too, although not so much that it gets annoying. And, as we expect, there are cons and double-crosses and triple-crosses, and in the end, after all the cons have been revealed, we aren’t sure if there isn’t one last con and it just may be on us. Gene Hackman’s character has reached the end of his useful criminal life, and we know that Mamet can infuse this theme with heat and emotion because of his play (and screenplay) for Glengarry Glen Ross. But Hackman and his gang, since they are con artists, are strangely subdued and inscrutable. It’s up to Danny DeVito and Sam Rockwell, as DeVito’s itchy-trigger-fingered nephew, to provide the histrionics. The one actor to actually come up with a real, identifiable, sympathetic character is Patti LuPone in a small role as (and the flying public won’t be reassured by this) an alcoholic supervisor of security at an airport. But the best speeches are reserved for Delroy Lindo, who gets to tell some very amusing anecdotes, especially one about a Bible that stops a bullet. (Seen 3 December 2001)

Un Héros Très Discret (A Self Made Hero)

Don’t you just hate it when the war is suddenly over and you say to yourself, damn, I forgot to join the Resistance! That is the dilemma facing young Albert at the end of World War II. Un Héros Très Discret is a bit reminiscent of Preston Sturges’s 1944 classic Hail the Conquering Hero, but with two key differences. First, Mathieu Kassovitz’s nebbish doesn’t stumble into his false hero persona unwittingly like Eddie Bracken but rather plots it deliberately, inserting himself expertly among Resistance veterans, like Woody Allen in Zelig. Second, this movie is French, which makes the joke more deliciously cynical than in the American version. After all, real-life French politicians—no need to mention anyone (like François Mitterrand) by name here—have been known to conveniently re-invent their wartime experiences. Director Jacques Audiard pushes that point by telling the story in a pseudo-documentary format, oddly using Jean-Louis Trintignant as the present-day Albert even though he bears not the slightest resemblance to Kassovitz (who, incidentally, directed La Haine). 20th century French angst aside, the film wittily validates our suspicion that in politics, work, and life in general, image counts for more than substance and that history belongs to the best spin doctors. (Seen 15 April 1997)

Hey Babu Riba

This is a bittersweet, nostalgic story from Yugoslavia. Four teenage boys and the girl they are all in love with (and who happens to be their coxswain) are in a rowing race on the Adriatic Sea. But the rowers don’t stop at the finish line. They keep right on going to Italy, so that their friend can be reunited with her exiled father. But it turns out that the young lady is pregnant. Whodunnit? Switch to the present day. The four boys are middle-aged men and spread out all over Europe. On the occasion of their girl friend’s funeral, they come back to Yugoslavia for a reunion. After reminiscing and briefly meeting the daughter of their departed friend, we go back to the 1950s to see How It All Began. The picture painted is one of a Yugoslavia casting off the ugly overcoat of Stalinism. The young protagonists have a continual love affair with American culture. The girl is nicknamed Esther, after Esther Williams. The musician is called Glenn after Glenn Miller. They covet blue jeans and American cigarettes. In the course of the movie, we see all of them lose their virginity, start smoking, and generally grow up. On the whole, wry and humorous. (Seen 29 May 1987)

The Hi-Lo Country

Non-Americans (e.g. Sergio Leone, Wim Wenders) have turned out some of the best westerns, but so far Stephen Frears doesn’t have anything over the home guys. Based on a novel by Max Evans, The Hi-Lo Country is an elegy for a dying era. Its protagonists, Billy Crudup (looking strangely like a young Tommy Lee Jones) and Woody Harrelson (looking, as usual, half-crazed), are meant to evoke a dying breed of cowboys in post-World War II New Mexico. In fairness, the current political climate probably isn’t exactly right for getting nostalgic about a time when arguments were settled by drawing a gun and no social situation couldn’t be improved by taking a few swigs of whiskey before, during or after. I just don’t think that many people these days are asking themselves, hey, whatever happened to the good old days when you could pee all over someone you didn’t like in a bar or when a guy’s principles wouldn’t let him get involved with a married woman because his best friend is already having an affair with her (unless, of course, he got good and drunk first)? The film’s main problem is that it hinges on the relationship between Crudup and Harrelson and their friendship is described way more than shown, so we don’t really buy into this huge bond they are supposed to have. Anyway, Sam Elliott makes a dandy villain, James Gammon has one of the best western character faces in the movies, and Penélope Cruz is way too foxy to believe that Crudup would actually prefer Patricia Arquette (looking strangely like a young Karen Black) over her. (Seen 19 August 1999)

High Art

Sort of a lesbian variation on A Star Is Born, this film debut by Lisa Cholodenko purports to explore the worlds of art, photography, publishing, and drugged-out bohemianism. Radha Mitchell (who looks a bit like a young Mariel Hemingway) plays a woman on the next-to-bottom rung of the corporate ladder at a snobby photography magazine. Everyone keeps talking about how obsessed she is with her career, but mostly we see her meekly fetching coffee for a jerk male editor. She has a major life-changing awakening when she meets her upstairs neighbors who, unlike her boring yuppie boyfriend who merely makes cocktails with alcohol, do serious quantities of heroin while lounging around 24 hours a day. Her main object of fascination is Ally Sheedy who, as she gets older, looks strangely like Tammy Grimes. Which is weird because Grimes (where did she go anyway?) actually shows up as Sheedy’s Jewish, German-hating mother. Anyway, the movie should please fans of soap opera as well as people who are turned on by love scenes between women. (Seen 28 August 1998)

High Fidelity

One of the British TV programs I’ve enjoyed most during our sojourns in Ireland is called Cold Feet. Sort of a cross between Thirtysomething and Men Behaving Badly, this comedy cum soap opera about three couples coping respectively with commitment, marriage and children has never failed to crack me up. Last autumn I happened to catch a few minutes of the Americanized version and it left me completely, uh, cold. Maybe it’s because I had already seen the scene where they got arrested making love in the bed in the shop window. Maybe I’m just an anglophile snob. But I suspect that it truly lost something in the translation. The reason for mentioning this, of course, is that High Fidelity is a popular novel by Englishman Nick Hornby (whose other novel, Fever Pitch, dealt similarly with obsessive hobbies and male relationship problems) which has been transplanted by his fellow Brit Stephen Frears to Chicago and made into a John Cusack vehicle. The movie truly does have its moments, most of which revolve around the manic discussions between Cusack and his hired help in his eclectic, funky record shop. And lots of guys in (or who remember) their 20s will relate to the bleak sense of going nowhere romantically or career-wise. But there’s way too much of Cusack talking to the camera, and the romantic plot never achieves the same level of emotional climax as the film version of Fever Pitch. But the cast is strong and easy to watch. The standout is Jack Black, who seems to be a younger Meat Loaf clone. (Seen 14 April 2000)

High Heels and Low Lifes

The title is calculated to bring a bit of a smile to the face, not unlike that of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, another British caper film. This movie is aimed squarely at the funny bone, which shouldn’t be surprising since the director is comic actor Mel Smith (Not the Nine O’Clock News, etc.), who has previously helmed The Tall Guy and the Mr. Bean movie. Wearing the high heels of the title are the American Mary McCormack and the Briton Minnie Driver, who by now has totally erased any memory we might have still had about the weight she put on for her first film role in Circle of Friends. A running gag has this pair described time after time as “attractive,” and that they are. Driver plays a nurse, and another running gag has her repeatedly administering first aid to people who are shot as a result of the girls’ lamebrain schemes. You see, they decide to take matters into their own hands when they overhear a safe deposit robbery in progress. And, given the incompetence of the London police in this film (one of the cops on the case is much more into real estate than crime-solving), they are wise to do so. Also on hand is Michael Gambon as a crime boss referred to not so affectionately by his gang as “the old poof.” (Seen 13 July 2001)

High Season

There’ll always be an England. Even if all of England is in Greece on holiday. This amiable, pleasant comedy is one of those delightful, low-key British comedies that seem so urbane and witty because everybody is talking with those neat accents, and just asking for a glass of Scotch sounds like a gem from Noel Coward. The movie stars Jacqueline Bisset, and it’s nice to see her doing some respectable (and very nice) work after all the trash she has done over the years. She plays a photographer who lives on the isle of Rhodes with her adolescent daughter. She has an off-and-on estrangement with her sculptor husband with whom she has irreconcilable artistic differences. Add to the mix a nice old art historian with a nasty little secret, a bumbling, young British agent and his ditsy wife, an energetic young Greek entrepreneur who worships British tourists as the source of his livelihood, and Irene Pappas who is great is his mother: a perpetually mourning widow of a Greek war hero (he died from a fall off a cliff while dancing drunk) who resents all foreign invaders. The characters meet, mix, misunderstand, change partners, and get totally confused in a series of events that are too complicated to explain but which unfold simply and naturally on the screen. It’s sort of a Mediterranean Night’s Comedy. Beautiful scenery, some pretty good laughs, and a touching moment or two. (Seen 27 May 1987)

Highway of Heartache

There is a reason why some movies are shown at midnight. This not-ready-for-primetime flick is the first (and maybe only?) movie by Canadian Gregory Wild. It is a campy, kitschy soap opera which, he proudly says, has something to offend everyone. Well, I suppose there are people out there who would be offended by this flamboyant musical (like when his big-haired country singer heroine Wynona-Sue Turnpike lights her cigarette on the male member of a man who has just been electrocuted), but few if any of those people will even be aware that this film exists. About ten or fifteen minutes of this John-Waters-on-steroids stuff would have been amusing, but 86 minutes was way too long. The sad thing is that in his comments after the screening (yes, I stayed), Wild indicated that he thinks he has made a great statement against oppression and bigotry. I’m afraid that any such message lives purely in Wild’s own mind. If his intended broadside on country-western culture had been anywhere near the mark, then he might have at most succeeded in pushing his own sort of bigotry. As it is, I mainly just came away with the feeling that I should have gone to bed earlier. (Seen 28 May 1995)

El Hijo de la novia (Son of the Bride)

The title suggests that we might be in for a story of late-in-life romance, and that is accurate, but not in the way you might be thinking. The bride is a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and whose husband is finally planning to give her the church wedding she has wanted for decades. (She is played radiantly by Norma Aleandro, who starred in 1985’s The Official Story.) The love story about that pair is secondary and in deliberate contrast to the life of the true protagonist, their 42-year-old son who, in all-too-modern fashion, is burning the candle on both ends trying to keep the family restaurant going in one of the worst economies on the planet, Argentina’s. Constantly barking at suppliers, creditors and staff in person and on his mobile phone, Rafael barely keeps the restaurant running, let alone giving due attention to his daughter, his ex-wife or his lover. His pressure-cooker lifestyle compares sadly to the unabashedly romantic life his father has led. Will he straighten out his life and get his priorities straight? Probably, with some help from a newly returned childhood friend who looks and acts eerily like Roberto Benigni. Juan José Campanella directed the film, which is loosely based on personal experiences. (Seen 13 July 2003)

Hilary and Jackie

I like Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench just fine, but it’s really criminal that the Academy Awards didn’t reward the fine performances of either Emily Watson or Rachel Griffiths in this extremely well-made film. Being about classical music and about a disease, this flick may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but you can’t help but be mesmerized by Watson’s and Giffiths’s acting gifts. As a composition, the film is like a fine-tuned musical work, dividing itself into movements and building a structure that spirals back on itself, finally meeting itself where it began. While its two-sisters-and-a-husband subplot may put you in mind of John Boorman’s The General, its spirit and appeal is more similar (and superior) to another musical biography, Shine. In addition to being a fine movie, Hilary and Jackie may even be somewhat accurate. For what it’s worth, Hilary and her husband seemed to think so when I caught them on an Irish chat show a while back. (Seen 31 March 1999)

Hill 16

After the film festival screening of his impressive no-budget debut movie, writer/director Dermot Doyle gobsmacked me by mentioning that that his original cut was something like 4 hours long. He described how much work it took to get it down to the current running time of 2 hours 5 minutes. The bad news is that it is still too long by quite a bit. The film is an impressive demonstration of how current technology makes it possible to produce a completely professional-looking feature film for peanuts, as long as the filmmaker can produce crisp writing, competent actors and skillful editing. Hill 16 really looks and feels like a multi-million-dollar/euro movie. Part teen comedy, part film noir, part suspense thriller, this movie about a 16-year-old who finds an attractive teacher taking an interest in him is nothing but entertaining and engaging. Sure, the actors, led by Conor Ryan in the lead role, are too old to be playing secondary students, but we’ve gotten used to that over the years. The problem is that there is a long build-up to a climax built around a revelation that is meant to be startling, but the twist is way too easy to see early on and (here’s where the running time is a problem) we have way too much time to think about it. Still, the writing and execution are adroit enough that we will definitely want to give Doyle’s next film a look. (Seen 8 July 2005)

Hîrtia va fi albastrã (The Paper Will Be Blue)

This compelling movie by Radu Muntean has the feel of certain films that have come out of the Balkans. As with those films, the immediate theme is the chaos and sometimes random violence that came as knock-on effects of the fall of the Soviet Union. But the larger theme is one that has been noted before on these pages—the absurdity that arises in the heat of war. It is fascinating to see this theme cast through the events in Bucharest in December 1989 since, to those of us who didn’t live through it personally, the Roman revolution seemed a relatively quick and painless affair. But, as this film makes clear, nothing ever happens quickly or painlessly enough when guns are involved and confusion reigns. Those of us who weren’t there can only take it on faith that these events were as confusing and maddening as portrayed here. But it feels absolutely authentic and I tend to give it the benefit of the doubt. The story is told mainly from the point of view of young Costi, a militia member, who is gung-ho to support the revolution. His commander, Lt. Neagu, is more cautious and concerned with following protocol. In the course of a long night, Costi embarks on an odyssey that causes his path to cross with that of both free-lance fighters and the regular military, as well as ordinary citizens. The sense of menace laced with dark humor reminds us of nothing so much as Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. In the end, we learn that one has less to fear from one’s fellow Romanians than from bureaucratic confusion. (Seen 13 July 2007)

The History Boys

Now that U.S. Congressman Mark Foley is unemployed, he might want to consider a teaching job in a secondary school in northern England. He would seemingly fit right in, according to this exhilarating adaptation by Alan Bennett of his own prize-winning play. Set in 1983, the film presents a fairly idealized version of an institution of learning and of English society. The setup is a demographically correct class of precocious male students, anointed as “the Oxbridge set,” who cram for an exam (and subsequent interviews) that will determine whether they will be admitted to Oxford or Cambridge. At one point, one teacher posits to another that the transmission of knowledge is an erotic act, and in this school it very nearly always is. There is all kinds of longing (and, occasionally, consummation) between and/or among the staff and the, um, student body. The chief transmitter of knowledge is played by corpulent Richard Griffiths (most widely known as Harry Potter’s obtuse Muggle uncle and, before that, as amorous Uncle Monty in Withnail & I), and he represents an old-fashioned love of general knowledge and well-roundedness for their own sakes. His nemesis is the young, flashy and pragmatic teacher played by Stephen Campbell Moore. In its sentimental stretches, the movie plays like an update to Goodbye, Mr. Chips. At its most freewheeling, it is like a highbrow version of Welcome Back, Kotter, with the charismatic Dominic Cooper as a slick, ultra-confident version of the John Travolta character. I loved this movie—for its dialogue, for its performances, for its celebration of the exuberance of youth and for its sheer love of the process of learning, along with the occasional fatuousness that comes with it. This movie will arrive in U.S. cinemas at an interesting time, shortly after a national election which may be, at least partly, determined by a sex scandal. How will American audiences react to a film nostalgic for a time (that may or may not ever have existed) in which schoolboys bemusedly tolerate the groping of a beloved teacher and brush it off as part of their education? (Seen 10 October 2006)

The Hitch-Hiker (The Persuader)

For much of my life Ida Lupino was that woman who guest-starred on the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour with her husband, Howard Duff. But in addition to a long acting career in movies and television, she was one of the first women to break through the Hollywood glass ceiling and sit in the director’s chair. It is therefore entirely appropriate that one of her films be shown at the Women in Cinema film festival. The Hitch-Hiker (1953) could well be the reason your mother always warned you never to pick up strangers. The title character (played by William Talman in a scruffier, pre-Hamilton Burger phase) is a frightening fellow indeed. Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy are the unlucky stiffs who give him a lift. Forty-five years later the film seems crude compared to the slick and intense action/suspense fare that Hollywood routinely churns out today. But The Hitch-Hiker still has the power in places to make your squirm. And it features many fine examples of that old movie cliché/convention: television and radio news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at that precise moment. (Seen 27 January 1998)

Hitchcock, Selznick and the End of Hollywood

Of course this isn’t really about the end of Hollywood. I think we all know it is still there. But this PBS documentary by Michael Epstein (who previously made the more riveting The Battle Over Citizen Kane) is about the end of a Hollywood system, where the producer was king and the director was just a hired hand. As a historical document, this is fascinating stuff to watch, especially early footage of Alfred Hitchcock (there isn’t so much on David Selznick), and in a way it’s like a double episode of Biography. This pair make a good contrast, with Selznick being raised in America as a virtual princeling by his movie tycoon father and Hitchcock being repressed in England by a stern father and a strict Catholic upbringing. Epstein’s narrative (read by Gene Hackman) is rather one-sided. Selznick is portrayed as a controlling meddler with little innate talent (despite having produced Gone With the Wind) who was a chronic womanizer on the side. Hitchcock, on the other hand, is just an artist who wants to create and is a devoted husband. Epstein doesn’t have Hitchcock’s assistants spill dirt on him the way he has Selznick’s do. But Eptstein’s premise is valid. The struggle between these two men represented a major sea change in power in Hollywood from producers to directors. Particularly fun are the tales of intrigue behind the making of Rebecca, Spellbound and Notorious and humorous speculation on Raymond Burr’s character in Rear Window. (Seen 28 May 1999)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

It is, of course, not the least bit unusual that a popular book or television show should be adapted for the big screen. A familiar title is a huge advantage in marketing a movie. But this time things are different. Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was both a popular series of books and a television series and also a radio play. This story was always intended to move from medium to medium. So, this isn’t a case of an old favorite being appropriated for a standard popcorn action flick (like S.W.A.T.) or a satiric comedy (like Starsky & Hutch). Adams himself was involved in this movie until his all-too-untimely death four years ago this month, and the Hammer & Tongs duo of director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith seem well suited to the task. Still, a lot of time has gone by since the story first sprang into our consciousness in the 1980s. How to update a story extremely familiar to millions of its fans? Early on, things seem to be going the Gus Van Sant-style shot-by-shot remake route. Different actors but the same dialog. Two or three main characters have become Americans. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop makes some truly wonderful Vogons. By the second half, however, we see how things have really been updated. New (earth) technology has obviously been taken into account. In a nod to current events, Sam Rockwell seems to be playing Zaphod Beeblebrox (the clueless president of the galaxy) as George W. Bush. The scenes in which Bill Nighy, as a spaced-out Slartibartfast, shows Arthur Dent the planet-making shop are exhilarating in a way that BBC series couldn’t be. And we find that Arthur Dent’s story has become an old-fashioned love story. Would I trade this movie for the original series starring Simon Jones, who will always be the one and only real Arthur Dent (and who makes a ghostly cameo here)? Not for a nanosecond. Will I buy the DVD of this movie when it comes out? Of course, I will. It’s part of the family now. (Seen 12 May 2005)

Hollow Man

First of all, the special effects in this movie are super-cool. The scenes where Kevin Bacon and a gorilla “shift” are exactly the sort of stuff that computers were made for. Changing the title from The Invisible Man to Hollow Man suggests (to the naïve anyway) that perhaps this will be more character study than thriller. And Bacon’s brilliant but arrogant and morally vacant jerk of a character, as well as the general atmosphere of secret Pentagon research and animal experiments, certainly makes things feel creepy and full of foreboding from the get-go. The fact that Bacon likes to watch an attractive neighbor, whose apartment windows conveniently face his own (plus a later shower scene) strongly suggests that this is going to be a Brian De Palma-style Hitchock homage. But director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Showgirls, Starship Troopers) isn’t settling for just that. By the time this flick is through, it will remind you of any number of trapped-people-playing-cat-and-mouse-with-a-monster movies, notably Ridley Scott’s Alien. And then it will remind you of any number of monster-that-refuses-to-die thrillers, notably James Cameron’s The Terminator. But, on the other hand, did I mention that the special effects are super cool? (Seen 7 August 2000)

Hollywoodland

For much of its running time, this schizophrenic movie, built around the Hollywood career and death of George Reeves, plays like Chinatown meets JFK. Clearly, director Allen Coulter and writer/producer Paul Bernbaum were right to expand the narrative beyond merely Reeves’s life which, on its own, would have been suitable fodder for maybe a quickie TV movie. But the result is that the movie feels a lot like (pre-World Trade Center) Oliver Stone: lots of spinning of conspiracy insinuations where the obvious version of events is almost certainly the right one. And, after a series of Rashomon-like visions on the part of Adrien Brody’s private investigator, the filmmakers pretty much lead us to that conclusion. The movie has a nice feel for the time and place, but the story of Brody’s character feels like a mostly unrelated appendage. Sure, I guess it serves to draw comparisons between real folk and the beautiful people, and it sort of allows the film to explore what happens to us when our myths die. But it all seems rather forced. The real revelation is that beefed-up Ben Affleck can convincingly play a shallow but ambitious pretty boy. He’s actually quite good, and his association with the comic-book-infused oeuvre of Kevin Smith and one bona fide superhero movie (2003’s Daredevil) bring an unexpected resonance to the man who never really wanted to be Superman. (Seen 10 October 2006)

A Home at the End of the World

I just hope that President Bush doesn’t see this movie because he will right away want to try to pass another constitutional amendment. Actually, this movie about an attempt to create an alternative kind of family doesn’t fit comfortably into anyone’s political agenda, and that’s just as well. The film focuses mainly on characters and relationships, rather than plot points. That fact, plus a whimper of an ending, means the story worked better as a novel (by Michael Cunningham, who also wrote the screenplay) than it does as a movie. As with the book, the early scenes of the movie are the best part. The character of Bobby Morrow is certainly a haunting one. It is a bit jarring that Erik Smith’s portrayal of the teenaged Bobby seems way more centered and confident than Colin Farrell’s adult version, which nearly seems to have been lobotomized. Farrell also has the unfortunate task of working to maintain a straight face as he tells Robin Wright Penn that he has never before been with a woman. Since the 1960s, there has been a small virtual sub-genre of movies about two men and a woman, with a complicated set of romantic attractions among them, trying work out some sort of three-way relationship. Notable previous entries in this sub-genre would be Rob Cohen’s A Small Circle of Friends and Andrew Fleming’s Threesome. At the risk of damning with faint praise, so far A Home at the End of the World is the best of the lot. (Seen 14 October 2004)

Home for the Holidays

What is there about family holiday get-togethers that make us dread them for weeks, grit our teeth during the whole experience, and then feel incredibly sad when suddenly it is time for us to go home to our “real” lives? Jodie Foster’s second film, Home for the Holidays, catches these emotional contradictions nicely while exaggerating the tics and quirks of familiar relative types (in this case, the, ahem, Larson family of Baltimore) just enough to be humorous and entertaining. The large and talented cast includes lots of familiar faces, including the too-seldom-seen Geraldine Chaplin as an eccentric aunt. The main drawback is a too-good-to-be-true romantic subplot which probably wasn’t even necessary for the movie’s shameless feel-good ending. But, hey, it’s the holidays. And over-indulging is a time-honored holiday tradition. (Seen 8 November 1995)

Home Is the Hero

The Cork Film Festival has been so kind as to give me a useful primer on life in the west of Ireland, in the form of an archival screening of this rare 1959 Irish film. According to Home Is the Hero, I can look forward to emotional family rows, neighbor children peeking in the windows, lots of drinking and silliness in the pub, and the occasional case of manslaughter when things get out of hand. Swell. Can I go home now? Directed by and starring Yanks (Fielder Cook and Arthur Kennedy, respectively), the rest of the cast is made up of players from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. The film is adapted from a piece by Galway playwright Walter Macken, who plays the title role of Paddo O’Reilly. Paddo is a tragic figure in the vein of Lennie in Of Mice and Men. The lads in the pub love him because he can perform just about any silly feat of strength he is asked to, e.g. breaking off the neck of a beer bottle with only his two hands. He is less adept at simple math puzzles, which is where the trouble starts. Time has dated this story, which is essentially a soap opera, but it still has some power. It takes a while to sort out the family members, in part because Macken and Kennedy, who play father and son, are practically the same exact age. (Seen 9 October 2002)

Homo Heights

You either get drag queen humor or you don’t. If you are an aficionado, 92 minutes of it is barely enough. If you’re not really into it, five minutes could be more than sufficient. To the extent that drag queen movies seem to be a de facto sub-genre of gay cinema, Homo Heights is a cut above most examples I have seen. But it still mostly seems (to me) to be the same joke over and over. What stands out here is 1) the fact that lesbians for once get equal screen time with the queens, 2) the opening title sequence is inventive and fun, and 3) Quentin Crisp. Eighty-seven-year-old Crisp is the best thing in the movie as he methodically reads his lines with the aplomb of a doddering Noel Coward. To the credit of writer/director Sara Moore, Crisp’s lines sound as if he had written them himself when only one of them was. In addition to Women in Cinema, Homo Heights is also slated to play at the 1998 Seattle International Film Festival, I’m guessing at midnight. (Seen 25 January 1998)

The Honeymooners

No, this isn’t another big-screen update of an old TV situation comedy. It is, in fact, what the filmmaker Karl Golden calls the first Irish dogma film, although it is unclear whether this is for aesthetic artistic reasons or out of financial necessity. Shot on video, this flick looks way better than a home movie, which is the minimum threshold movies shot on video have to get over. The plot is as old (and timeless) as It Happened One Night. It’s our hero’s wedding day, and things are not going as he had planned. It also happens to be the birthday of a waitress at Dublin Airport, and that isn’t going the way she would have hoped either. It is no shock to dyed-in-the-wool movie buffs that these two wind up meeting and fighting with each other over a period of a few days. Will they finally get fed up with each other and go their separate ways? If you believe that even for a moment, well, then I have a real live little leprechaun I would like to sell you! While very familiar in its material, the movie does have its moments. It is particularly notable for its unusually harsh view of rural Irish people, specifically in Donegal. The locals come off as a cross between Ma and Pa Kettle and those backwoods fellows in Deliverance. (Seen 12 July 2003)

Hong Meigui, Bai Meigui (Red Rose, White Rose)

Winston Chao (The Wedding Banquet) plays such a jerk in Hong Kong’s Red Rose, White Rose that one irate audience member started badmouthing him out loud until the rest of the audience hushed her. Chao plays a “respectable” Chinese man who has been British educated. One thing he has learned is to put women in one of two categories. The “red rose” is more fun but you wouldn’t want to marry her. The “white rose” is, well, the opposite. But Chao is not only a jerk; he is just plain dumb because in his case the red rose is the lovely Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Twin Peaks), who decides to end her marriage after he has initiated an affair with her. But he dumps her and marries a woman who is more “respectable” but also so neurotic (thanks largely to him) that she spends entire days sitting on the toilet. As Stanley Kwan’s film so colorfully puts it, the red rose winds up emotionally like the red stain left after a mosquito has been killed. (Seen 27 May 1996)

Hongfen (Blush)

In some ways Blush is kind of like a Chinese Gone with the Wind. It involves two very different women (who both come to love the same man) and how they cope when their whole world is turned upside down by political and military events. Having said that, I have to add that Qiuyi and Xiao’e are not exactly Scarlett and Melanie. They are prostitutes who generally have a good life in a high-class brothel. That all changes after the Communists come to power in 1949 and the pair are forced to become true “working girls.” Tough, streetwise Qiuyi slips out of the rehabilitation center and takes refuge with one of her best former customers, the young idly rich Lao. Unfortunately for both of them, Lao’s family is about to lose everything they have. Meanwhile, Xiao’e goes through re-education and becomes a textile worker. We follow the characters’ paths which intersect over the years in true soap opera fashion until they reach a bitter conclusion. The material is based on a story by Su Tong whose writing also formed the basis for Raise the Red Lantern. (Seen 9 June 1995)

Hope Springs

Colin Firth is so stereotyped in the role of the uptight, repressed, romantic-object Englishman that he might as well just be done with it and have his name legally changed to “Mr. Darcy.” The character he plays here is largely indistinguishable from the one he played (much better) in Love Actually and, when we see his character’s artistic rendering of the fiancée who jilted him, we would not be surprised if it was Bridget Jones. Still, there is nothing wrong with one more romantic comedy, where the tightly-wound Brit gets warmed up by a free-spirited American girl. I’m speaking generally, of course, since there is plenty wrong with this particular one. We really do want to root for Firth and the comely Heather Graham to get together, and we really do want to like the quirky small-town residents, and we even really do want to hiss at Minnie Driver as the fiancée who shows up to try to wreck everything. But it’s not fair that we should have to put in more emotional effort than the filmmakers did. The director is Mark Herman, who seems to do romantic comedy better when it is a subplot to a story about aspiring musical performers. (His c.v. includes the enjoyable Brassed Off and the intriguing Little Voice.). While the cultural clash between down-home America and the English is a rich lode to mine for humor, I ended up amusing myself at the spectacle of a British Columbia town festooned with the stars and stripes everywhere and pretending to be New England. (Seen 27 November 2004)

The Hot Chick

Here’s another movie I’m embarrassed to say I have seen. It’s essentially a teen comedy version of Prelude to a Kiss. Body exchange and gender-bending comedies like this often provide a comic actor a chance to stretch his or her acting muscles and impress the audience with genuine thespian skills. Like Tom Hanks in Big. Or Steve Martin in All of Me. Or Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire. It comes as no surprise that Saturday Night Live alum Rob Schneider doesn’t quite measure up to those performances. He deserves credit for at least playing his role (as a high-spirited teenage girl who improbably winds up with the body of a vulgar thief who is so inept that the word “petty” would be a compliment) straight—although that’s probably not the best word choice. Anyway, we don’t believe for a minute that there is really a nymphet inside Schneider’s disheveled frame. But that’s probably part of the joke. Which is the point here. This isn’t a movie movie. It’s a joke movie. Viewers who try to take the film seriously will have to somehow reconcile conundrums like why the heroine’s nubile best friend, her father and her mother would all be attracted to Schneider. Or what girl has (seemingly) changed bodies with her weepy, overly sensitive quarterback boyfriend. He, of all of people, is no stranger to gender-bending situations, since he is played by Matthew Lawrence, who played Robin Williams’s son in Mrs. Doubtfire. That film is definitely a class act next to this one, which takes the idea of bathroom humor extremely literally. (Seen 15 December 2002)

The Hours

What could be more depressing than a movie where everyone is depressed? It speaks volumes about the magic of movies that a film, in which depression is a constantly running theme, could be exhilarating—certainly not because of the subject matter but just from seeing an extremely well-made film. In other words, there’s no reason to be afraid of Virginia Woolf—or a movie about her and her writing. As one character explains, Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway was about a woman’s entire life summed up in a single day. Novelist Michael Cunningham, screenwriter David Hare and director Stephen Daldry (displaying the same sensitivity and love of art he demonstrated with Billy Elliot) play off this idea by giving us the lives of three women (including Woolf herself) in three single days, but woven together to make one whole experience. This isn’t just about mental illness; it’s about how life keeps repeating itself and how literature gives us awareness and appreciation for it all—and maybe even sometimes provide a bit of salvation. The standout here is Nicole Kidman as Woolf. Her performance is more than a great makeup job. No other role of hers prepares us for the level of work she does here. Ed Harris does his usual fine job in a part that seems calculated for getting an Oscar, and Jeff Daniels is surprisingly good as his former partner. As for the ubiquitous John C. Reilly (The Good Girl, Chicago), let’s hope that someday he will get a movie wife who doesn’t cruelly disappoint him. But, as with most movies that feature Philip Glass’s music, one of the main stars is the music. The Hours is clearly a “woman’s movie,” but it is the best possible kind of woman’s movie—one that anyone and everyone can enjoy. (Seen 17 March 2003)

House of Dark Shadows

As much as possible, I try to judge motion pictures on their own merits and not primarily as an adaptation of some book, stage production, comic book, video game, theme park ride or, as in this case, serialized daytime gothic drama. But it’s really hard with this flick because, frankly, it would not exist but for the legion of fans that the Babylon 5 series garnered during its five-year run on ABC. As I watched it again for the first time in decades, I tried to see it as if I were a DS virgin, but it’s really impossible. I suspect that, objectively, the film is fairly mediocre. While the production standards are light years away from the television source (no muffed lines, no cardboard-like sets, actually seeing police cars speed to the vampire’s house, watching the Collins family gather around the dining table, etc. etc.), it’s still a pretty cheap film. The story is essentially a rehash of the Dracula story, but with the twist that we actually get to see things from the vampire’s view and even hope for his salvation. But it’s neither scary enough nor emotionally involving enough to be very satisfying as a movie. What it does satisfy is the fan’s desire to see a favorite story redone in a tidy and compact form for posterity. But our favorite elements from the TV series (the alluring enchantress Angelique and the emergence of Barnabas and Dr. Hoffman as time-traveling supernatural mystery-solving duo) were, necessarily, omitted. Moreover, there is the disconcerting fact that, in the movie, all the old familiar characters are killed off. I have to wonder, after all these years, if a movie that was in narrative consistency with the series (rather than alternative telling) would not have been better. Anyway, the movie (for which most DS fans are ultimately grateful) comes with a couple of cinematic footnotes. It was the penultimate big screen appearance of Hollywood veteran Joan Bennett (1933’s Little Women, 1950’s Father of the Bride, 1960’s Desire in the Dust). Her last feature film appearance would be in the Dario Argento thriller Suspiria. It was also the second-to-last time that Oscar nominee Grayson Hall’s face would be seen on the big screen. Her last on-screen role would be this movie’s sequel Night of Dark Shadows, and she would lend her voice to the rather strange 1975 flick Pick-up. (Seen 11 May 2007)

How Harry Became a Tree

What we have here is a Chinese story adapted into a film directed by a Serbian and filmed in Ireland with an Irish cast. And there is a temptation to look for an allegory in this fable about rural life. Is it saying something about Irish history? (It is set in 1924, soon after partition, civil war and the establishment of the Free State. But there is barely a reference to any of that.) Or is it really about director Goran Paskaljevic’s native Balkans? In fact, it’s not hard to see Colm Meaney, in the title role, as a tin pot, small town Slobodan Milosevic, trying to stir up animosities among various people to enhance his own importance. While the comparisons are valid, the story is universal. There is something very Irish about the characters and setting, but it is not hard at all to imagine the story taking place in any other rural place in the world. While its message about the senseless of violence and the violence of senselessness sounds heavy, the film is mostly wryly funny. And it is quite a bit less violent than a lot of movies out there, particularly Paskaljevic’s own absurdist look at Belgrade, Powder Keg (a.k.a. Cabaret Balkan). The cast, which also includes Adrian Dunbar and Cillian Murphy, are uniformly fine. And happily, it is not nearly as dreary as other films on similar topics. (Cathal Black’s Korea comes to mind.) But make no mistake, this tale of small town life is definitely not Ballykissangel or Waking Ned Devine. (Seen 7 March 2002)

How the West Was Won

If for no other reason, the courts should show at least some leniency for Microsoft because co-founder Paul Allen used some of his stock riches to restore Seattle’s Cinerama Theater. One of this treasure’s features is the ability to show movies in the original Cinerama format, a three-camera/giant curved screen process that presaged Imax and, arguably, the whole virtual reality thing. The clear highlight of a day of true Cinerama movies at the Seattle film festival was the clearly the 1962 Hollywood mega-blockbuster How the West Was Won. While the first screening was not without its glitches (a third of the screen suddenly went blank about an hour into the movie, followed by an unscheduled intermission), the technology holds up rather well. Mountain aerial shots are still thrilling, and this film (which boasted no fewer than three top-tier directors: John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall) exploited the medium to its fullest. Other thrills include a white water rapids ride, a buffalo stampede, a quiet horse-and-cart ride through magnificent Monument Valley, and the moving-train gunfight to end of all of them, involving George Peppard, as a High Noon style marshal, and Eli Wallach, foreshadowing his role in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Film-wise, however, this flick is pretty darn corny. Other than a chance to see a lot of great Hollywood stars in their prime (Peppard and Debby Reynolds have big roles; John Wayne has a cameo), it is interesting from a historical/sociological point of view to see how mid-20th-century Hollywood mythologized 19th-century America. Interestingly, a lot of these archetypes are still around: the wilderness survivalists (James Stewart, Henry Fonda), the religious zealot (Karl Malden), the high-stakes gambler (Gregory Peck), the unstoppable force of corporate expansion (Richard Widmark), and the family man (Peppard) who doesn’t trust the government to protect him from society’s more menacing elements. (Seen 2 June 2000)

How to Cheat in the Leaving Certificate

The dreaded “leaving cert” is the grueling series of three-hour exams that one has to take to successfully complete secondary education in Ireland. Like similar exams all over the world, they can be quite traumatizing, and Graham Jones, an Irish film student in London, decided to make a subversive movie on the subject. His original idea was to actually engineer an elaborate plot to cheat in the exam and make a documentary about it, but in the end he settled (probably wisely) for making a fictional psuedo-documentary about such a plot. Shot in grainy black and white, the film builds slowly but gradually takes on a quasi-Mission: Impossible intensity as the student conspirators build their team and plot their strategy to steal copies of the exam from a fortress-like warehouse. The appeal of this story is universal, but adding to the fun for Irish viewers are cameos by some well-known figures, including singer Chris De Burgh (who provided part of the financing) as a filling station attendant. The film has been a success in that it has been denounced by the Department of Education. Also, the government has recently announced that there will be jail time for anyone caught cheating in the leaving cert. (Seen 29 May 1998)

Høyere enn himmelen (Beyond the Sky)

Remember Harriet Andersson who used to be in all those old gloomy black-and-white Ingmar Bergman movies? Well, she’s back. Her persona’s outlook isn’t a whole lot brighter than before, but she’s in a much more fun movie (Beyond the Sky from Norway). Twelve-year-old Mari has a bad case of adolescence. Everything and everyone bugs her. She has no friends. And her seemingly angelic little brother may just actually be the Anti-Christ. When retiring teacher Miss Kjaer (Andersson) rudely snubs the principal at her official farewell, Mari senses that she has found a soul mate. They strike up a friendship—or at least as much of a friendship as you can have between two people who treat everyone like dirt. Mari learns that Miss Kjaer has secrets in her past, which explain how she got to be a temperamental spinster. The two undertake a journey that results in Miss Kjaer finding her old love and Mari discovering her first one. But just when you think this strange film is headed for Disney territory, it confounds you. I liked it. (Seen 23 May 1995)

8 femmes (Eight Women)

A snowbound house. The phone line has been cut. And the head of the house is lying in his bed with a knife in his back. Five, no, make that six family members and two household staff (all female) are stuck in the house for the duration. There’s nothing else to do but to start drinking copious amounts of alcohol, spilling a seemingly endless number of family secrets, and pointing fingers at one another. Oh yeah, and frequently break out into song. That’s right, this is your basic French Agatha Christie bitchfest musical. “Liberally” adapted from a play by Robert Thomas, this film by François Ozon boasts the most amazing collection of French female actors we have seen in one movie. Where else can you see Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart and Danielle Darrieux chewing the scenery (and belting out songs) together? Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Deneuve sing onscreen. Our earliest memories of her include 1964’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and at one point this film actually suggests that this could be a twisted sequel to that classic. Guys, you in particular should see this movie for at least two very good reasons: 1) we get to see two of France’s greatest female actors wrestle on the ground and kiss, and 2) I’m still trying (but not very hard) to get the image of Béart undoing her cute little maid’s uniform out of my head. (Seen 8 October 2002)

Hukkle

This is hardly fair. The film festival program described this debut Hungarian feature as a cross between Twin Peaks and Microcosmos! How can you not go see something when it’s described that way? Well, if you also noted that there was no dialog in the whole movie, that might put you off. Fortunately, the film (which is actually Gyorgy Palfi’s film school thesis) is quite watchable. No dialog, fortunately, doesn’t mean no sound. The soundtrack is filled with all kinds of sound effects, notably the titular sound (hukkle is Hungarian for “hiccup”) which emanates at regular intervals from an old man sitting on a bench by his house, as a sort of metronome for the film’s myriad proceedings. (Actually, we also get a bit of background voices from a television, as well as one or two mumbled conversations and a song at the film’s end.) There is definitely something Lynchian about the film, which focuses on a small, isolated town that seems perfectly normal but has a dark secret lying beneath the surface. There is, in particular, a fascination with insect life, which may be mirroring what is going on in the human world. Visually, the film looks like a documentary. As a narrative, its style can best be described as elliptical. But if you hang in there and pay attention, you will discern a strange tale not unlike a creepy movie like The Wicker Man. (Seen 10 July 2003)

Hulk

So, why did so many people not like this putative summer blockbuster? After all, die-hard Marvel comic book fans can’t fault the portrayal of the title character. This isn’t the Lou Ferrigno Hulk, whose big trick was lifting the backend of a car. This is the original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Hulk who explodes through massive walls and leaps over the desert in a powerful bound. This film is nothing if not faithful to the original comic book version of the “jolly green giant.” I suppose what people didn’t like was the film’s apparent pretentiousness. Instead of Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk through a freak accident, in this incarnation he is actually born the Hulk, setting up a dark oedipal tragedy as he confronts the father who made him what he is. In a strange way, Ang Lee has married the emotional drama of The Ice Storm to the fanciful action of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So, what’s not to like about that? Isn’t that a bit like what Tim Burton did with his Batman? The Hulk was always a creature derived from the movies. He was a strange combination of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde crossed with King Kong. The comic book’s original sensibility was that of a 1950s sci-fi movie about the U.S. army fighting giant creatures marauding in the desert. (The timing of the film’s negative portrayal of the U.S. military may not have helped this movie either.) So, it is a bit jarring to see the Hulk as some sort of southern Gothic family drama. But, hey, it works for me. After all, you can only watch so many tanks getting thrown through the air. The cast is great. Eric Bana is eerily like a young Harrison Ford. Jennifer Connelly has great eyes, although she may be getting typecast as an academic involved with brilliant men with complicated medical histories. No one plays military guys better than Sam Elliott. And Nick Nolte didn’t even need makeup or wardrobe playing the father who, in one of several nods to the Bill Bixby TV series, is called David. (Seen 30 July 2003)

The Hurricane

Canadian director Norman Jewison has a very impressive list of films on his résumé. It includes everything from the original Thomas Crown Affair to Jesus Christ Superstar to Moonstruck. And he has already established firmly his insights into America’s racial tensions with In the Heat of the Night and A Soldier’s Story (also starring Denzel Washington). His impressive new film takes us back to a quainter time when a professional athlete could not only get arrested for a serious crime but might also be innocent of the charges. You could argue that the story of Ruben “Hurricane” Carter’s false arrest and imprisonment should do for American justice what Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father did for British rule in Northern Ireland. But the harrowing aspect of Sheridan’s film was the sense that what happened to Gerry Conlon could have happened to any Irishman in England. The Hurricane has so many Oliver Stone-style paranoid conspiracy touches (emphasized by Dan Hedaya’s obsessed Inspector Javert/Lt. Gerard-style cop) that the unintended effect is the sense that this injustice could have happened only to Carter and not necessarily to any other African-American in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what elevates the movie above well-intentioned moralizing are Washington’s amazing performance, in which he makes yet another icon (cf. Cry Freedom and Malcolm X) a flesh-and-blood human being, and the moving story of his developing relationship with a young admirer who was inspired to pull off a virtual miracle. (Seen 4 February 2000)

Le Hussard sur le Toit (The Horseman on the Roof)

This is a pretty movie. It has pretty scenery, pretty stars, and pretty photography. Its swashbuckling young star Olivier Martinez is sort of a kinder, gentler Antonio Banderas. He plays an Italian ex-patriate in Provence who is pursued by Austrian assassins because he is plotting to free his homeland. Juliette Binoche is the enigmatic noblewoman whose path keeps crossing his. More worrisome than the Austrians, however, is the cholera plague that is killing people everywhere they go. Crows are flocking everywhere to poke at the corpses (yuck!), and we see them so often I have to wonder if the director (Jean-Paul Rappeneau who did the 1990 Cyrano de Bergerac) never got over seeing Hitchcock’s The Birds. (Seen 17 May 1996)

Hustruer III (Wives III)

If you are one of those people who got frustrated waiting since 1977 for sequels to Star Wars, pity the poor hard-core fans of Anja Breien’s 1975 film Wives. They had to wait a decade for Wives II: Ten Years Later and then eleven more years for Wives III. On the other hand, the latest film doesn’t have to resort to tacky makeup effects to do flashbacks, since the principal cast is still intact from the first film. This final(?) installment of the Norwegian trilogy follows the three childhood friends as they reunite once again, this time to celebrate a 50th birthday. There are some predictable developments (a parent with Altzheimers, a cancer scare), but there are also some wonderfully goofy misadventures. This trio has a nice chemistry, not unlike the three leads in The First Wives Club. And there is definitely something touching in catching glimpses of these women at 30 with long straight hair in the disco 1970s (Downtown playing in the background) and then seeing their current incarnations, looking (but not acting) matronly and wistfully singing “September Song.” (Seen 21 May 1997)

Hype!

Doug Pray’s documentary Hype! serves at least three functions that I can see. It provides more than enough footage of Seattle grunge bands to please devotees of the music. It also provides a chronicle of the rise and decline of Seattle’s grunge scene. And it explores how the music industry and the mass media exploit, package, and commercialize a “new” music trend. The film deftly follows the evolution of punk to grunge in the 1980s and the rise of Sub Pop Records. Just when lots of people thought the grunge thing had crested, Nirvana released their breakout hit album Nevermind and the phenomenon kicked into an even higher orbit. One of the film’s best sequences is when it shows an array of high-priced grunge fashion wear (accompanied by a Muzak version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”) aping the cheapo clothing the grungers were buying at places like Valu Village. If you are patient enough to sit through all the closing credits, you will be rewarded with the ominous warning: “Your town is next.” Shown on the same program with Hype! was John Kiester’s (of Almost Live) short That Night which is only mildly amusing as it chronicles a woman’s realization that maybe she has outgrown her friends and Seattle’s party scene. The Seattle audience displayed its hometown pride, if not objectivity, in voting Golden Space Needles to Hype! and That Night for Best Documentary and Best Short, respectively. (Seen 9 June 1996)

Hysteria

My friend Michael and I decided that Hysteria is what might have resulted if Roger Corman had been the one to make King of Hearts. We are set up for a classic style horror movie, complete with spooky mansion and mad scientist, but what we get is something more weird than scary. The director of this Canadian/UK production is The Netherlands’s Rene Daalder, who made Massacre at Central High two decades ago. The mad scientist is none other than Patrick McGoohan of The Prisoner fame with gray, frizzy hair. And, of course, since this is a really weird movie full of bizarre characters, Amanda Plummer is on board (as McGoohan’s Igor). The premise is that McGoohan’s renegade psychologist has set up an illegal asylum/cult to work on his own aberrant psychotherapy experiments. He is aided immensely by cuts in state support for public health institutions, so I suppose this can be seen as a worst-case scenario for private managed health care. This is the first movie where someone has escaped from a scary house and then has turned around and gone back in for no good reason where it didn’t really bother me. (Seen 7 June 1997)