Scott's Movie Comments

Moebius

From the first frame of this movie, you know that you are in the hands of a master. The mood and music and fluidity of the photography sweep you up and keep you spellbound until the last credit has rolled by. The structure of the movie is that of a suspense mystery or even possibly a horror movie. A Buenos Aires subway train and its passengers have vanished into thin air, just like those schoolgirls in Picnic at Hanging Rock. A young topographer from the company that built the subway system is called in to help solve the mystery. By the time he passes a (fictional) subway station called Borges (as in José Luis), we know just whose labyrinth this underground really is. (The movie isn’t actually based on a Borges story, however, but on one by A.J. Deutsch.) In other words, this mystery is metaphysical rather than conventional. What is truly amazing about this movie is that, contrary to all appearances, it is not the product of an experienced auteur but a class project of Argentina’s Universidad del Cine. One can only wish that they could keep all the students together to make more films! (Seen 21 May 1997)

La Moitié gauche du frigo (The Left Side of the Fridge)

The title refers to the division that platonic roommates often make of their respective refrigerated grocery items, since this is essentially a story about friends and roommates. In fact, this French language Canadian film by Philippe Falardeau more or less does for job hunting what This Is Spinal Tap did for rock bands. That’s right, this is another mockumentary, one of those low-budget films that pretend to be a documentary in order to 1) save money and 2) juice up an otherwise unremarkable story with an innovative narrative structure. One of the roommates is documenting the other’s job hunt. Christophe is fairly amusing to watch as he somewhat haplessly seeks unemployment benefits (he voluntarily quit his mechanical engineering position), goes on job interviews, and courts a supermarket cashier. He looks a bit like a young Roman Polanski and wanders through the movie with a clueless amiability that develops into resentment at the interference of Stéphane, who along the way keeps acquiring more grant money to professionalize his filmmaking project. Stéphane means to be another Michael Moore (one of his targets actually says so) and he does a lot of attacking of the companies where Christophe seeks work. Its hard to know if the real filmmaker feels this way as well or if this is merely a gambit for humorous effect. In the end, the film turns serious (as did Spinal Tap), which tends to weaken its overall impact. (Seen 31 May 2001)

Moll Flanders

As I learned, the best way to approach this new adaptation of Daniel Dafoe’s novel is with no thoughts whatsoever of the 1965 version starring Kim Novak. While that one was a bawdy, swashbuckling comedy, this version is a period tear-jerker about an independent woman and devoted mother. It is lent considerable class by the presence of Morgan Freeman, as Moll’s friend and sometime co-worker, and John Lynch (Angel Baby), as Moll’s one true love. Robin Wright (Forrest Gump, The Princess Bride) is fine in the title role which requires her to go from cockiness to desperation. Stockard Channing gets to do some mild hamming as the main villain, and the late Jeremy Brett makes his last appearance in small but powerful role. Moll Flanders is an okay movie, although you can see its “surprise” ending coming already in the very first reel. (Seen 6 June 1996)

Monster House

Concerned readers will have noticed that I am doing a much better job of keeping up with the summer releases aimed at the pre-teen market than I am with what passes for the “grown up” market, which in reality usually turns out to be just on the other side of puberty. And speaking of puberty, that word figures in a couple of this movie’s best lines. Those bits and numerous others are liable to go right over the heads of younger viewers, but they will definitely be able to appreciate the scares and thrills (or not, depending on their age and temperament), as well as numerous other gags—a notable one involving a bottle of urine. The suburban setting will be familiar to viewers of movies by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, who figure among the film’s executive producers. (Gil Kenan directed.) But there is also a bit of a feel of Stand By Me, enhanced by the fact that the main hero, D.J., as rendered by CGI, bears something of a resemblance to the young Wil Wheaton. But that is by no means the only element that makes this something of a junior Stephen King-esque exercise. The movie’s unabashed childhood fascination with the macabre also suggests a toned-down Tim Burton animation. Older viewers will best appreciate the sundry supporting characters, particularly a no-nonsense babysitter (voiced by Maggie Gyllenhaal), who dates beneath herself, and a video game/comic book/fantasy guru (voiced by Jon Heder), who is mostly a legend in his own mind. (Seen 12 August 2006)

Monster-in-Law

You may have heard that Jennifer Lopez is in this movie. You may even have heard that Jane Fonda is in it too. But here’s the really exciting thing. Did you know that Elaine Stritch is in it? Of course, she doesn’t get nearly enough screen time, but it’s good to see her in a high-profile movie, since we don’t get to see her on the big screen that often or in parts that match her potential. Her appearance in the final act is more than welcome, although we can’t help but wish that she had even better lines. In fact, that’s how we feel about this whole movie. It’s meant to be a delicious, over-the-top bitchfest, but maybe it’s a sign of my age that, as much as I kept trying to get into it, I consistently longed for the piercing wit of a Dorothy Parker or a Noel Coward or whoever used to write Joan Collins’s dialog on Dynasty. Don’t know if this bodes well for the new movie version of Dallas, since the director of this movie, Australian Robert Luketic (who previously gave us Legally Blonde and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!), is set to helm it. Kudos to Fonda for giving her all to a potentially great role that can have done nothing for her own ego. As the flamboyant mother trying to keep her son from marrying a girl she sees as beneath him, she is Auntie Mame gone totally wrong. J-Lo, playing the saintly young woman who learns that nice girls finish last, also deserves respect for good-naturedly working with a script that makes regular references to certain of her well-publicized, healthy-proportioned body parts. My newest challenge: figuring out how to tell the difference between Michael Vartan and Josh Lucas. (Seen 25 May 2005)

Moon Over Broadway

You couldn’t set out to script or cast a funnier comedy/melodrama than this documentary by the husband-wife team of D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (The War Room). Either the filmmakers found some miraculous way to turn themselves invisible during filming or else the producers, writer, director and cast of the Broadway play Moon Over Buffalo somehow managed to totally forget that they had allowed the crew an incredible degree of access to the behind-the-scenes labor in rehearsing and polishing the play. In a way, the film is a whodunit: who is responsible for making this play a moderate disaster that should have been much better than it turned out to be? Is it the star (Carol Burnett), who is more accustomed to TV than the stage? Is it the director (Tom Moore, who directed Grease for the stage), who seems to be enduring a perpetual anxiety attack? Or is it the writer (Ken Ludwig), who is clearly much more obsessed with his own self-image rather than with actually making the play funny. The backstage antics are quite entertaining to watch, but Moon Over Broadway definitely proves that old axiom: there is nothing funny about (making) comedy. (Seen 24 August 1998)

Moondance

Officially, this film is an Irish-German co-production, and its director is German Dagmar Hirtz, who has edited several of Margarethe von Trotta’s films. But the movie itself is pure Irish. Which is to say: there is a family, there is conflict, there is some gorgeous scenery, and there is more than a little bit of alcohol consumption. Based on The White Hare by Francis Stuart, Moondance tells the story of two young brothers and how they lose their innocence. Patrick and Dominic have lived on their own since their father died and their mother (Marianne Faithfull, whose singing graces the closing credits) went off to Africa to be a missionary. The lads have a grand time, doing crazy things like acting out the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and generally behaving, as their disapproving aunt observes, “like savages.” Then things begin to change. The free-spirited German student Anya comes into their lives. Then Mom comes home, and soon the lads leave behind the picturesque west coast of Ireland for the urban world of Dublin and more trials and changes. As a family drama, it falls somewhere between Cathal Black’s dark, brooding Korea and Mike Newell’s fanciful Into the West (with which this film shares producers). Van Morrison provides several songs for the soundtrack but not his own vocals. Moondance was part of the Seattle International Film Festival’s Women in Cinema series. (Seen 28 January 1996)

Moonlight Mile

I had been wanting to see this movie ever since it came out two years ago. The idea of pairing Jake Gyllenhaal, who is arguably this generation’s Dustin Hoffman, with the real Dustin Hoffman seemed inspired. And there are definitely nods to Hoffman’s seminal debut film, The Graduate. Like the way the characters watch The Newlywed Game on TV, or the fact that Hoffman’s character has the same first name in both movies. Early on, I even thought perhaps that Hoffman was playing the same character, Ben Braddock, as an older man, but that was before I realized that Moonlight Mile is actually set in roughly the same era as The Graduate. In this film, as in Mike Nichols’s 1967 film, we have a somewhat passive young man, teetering at that frightening point where his entire future is looming before him and he doesn’t know which way to go. But Gyllenhaal’s character, Joe Nast, has way more to contend with than did Ben Braddock. Hoffman and his wife Susan Sarandon have more or less adopted him and planned his future for him, trying to fill a gap left by the murder of their daughter, who was Joe’s fiancée. The subject matter is not theoretical for writer/director Brad Silberling (Casper, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events). He was the boyfriend of TV sitcom star Rebecca Schaeffer, who was murdered in 1989. The story is so unusual (for a feature film) and so compelling that we are immediately drawn in. So, it is a bit of a letdown when the latter part of the film turns out to be somewhat predictable and things sort themselves out so neatly. Also, its New England small-town setting and its coping-with-the-murder-of-a-child theme echo the previous year’s In the Bedroom. That film makes an even more interesting contrast with this one than does The Graduate. In the Bedroom was about justice and retribution. Moonlight Mile is about acceptance and moving on. (Seen 4 December 2004)

Moonstruck

Back in the 1980s, somewhere between A Soldier’s Story and Other People’s Money, Norman Jewison made this unexpectedly pleasing comedy. And, somewhere in between Mask and Mermaids, Cher confirmed that she was really a pretty good actor. And somewhere between Peggy Sue Got Married and Vampire’s Kiss, Nicolas Cage demonstrated that he could put his trademark weirdness to good comedic use in a conventional romantic comedy. It’s hard to remember now exactly what was going on in the cinemas in 1987 that made this movie such a breath of fresh air. It comes dangerously close to being an ethnic cartoon, but somehow its Brooklyn denizens (the borough seems to be home exclusively to Italian-Americans) transcend their exaggerations to become figures that have sprung, Fellini-like, out of someone’s hazy memory. Cher goes miraculously from mousy (that’s the miraculous part) to drop-dead gorgeous, and Olympia Dukakis stares sidelong at life through her martini with enough wisdom to make us wish that we could sit across from her. (They both got Oscars for their roles.) Most of all, the film is infused with a giddy sense of romance. The kind of romance that finds you when you are doing everything you can to keep it at bay. And that somehow keeps going years after the initial passion has cooled. (Seen 29 December 2006)

The More Things Change...

No blood or violence or on-screen sex or car chases or anything like that. Just a warm-hearted Australian drama about a yuppie couple trying to cope with marriage, parenthood, and personal dreams in the you-can-have-it-all eighties. Connie and Lex buy their dream farm out in the beautiful countryside, but it is a two-hour commute to Connie’s publishing job in the city. They hire a babysitter to look after their little boy while Connie’s at work and Lex is tending the farm. And no, Lex doesn’t have an affair with the babysitter. Get your mind out of the gutter! (Seen 23 May 1987)

Mortel transfert (Mortal Transfer)

This isn’t so much like a Hitchcock film as like a Brian De Palma homage to a Hitchcock film, perhaps to the psychological suspense/thriller Spellbound. But the narrative isn’t quite like something either of those directors would do. The story doesn’t so much build up to a big final climax as wind itself up and then wind itself down again. The director is Jean-Jacques Beineix, who burst on the scene with the ultra-cool thriller Diva in 1981 and followed up with The Moon in the Gutter and Betty Blue. The central plot here is a psychiatrist’s worst nightmare: falling asleep during a session with a client only to wake up and find her strangled and not being sure you aren’t the one who killed her. But the film is interested in a whole lot more than just whodunnit. There is a lot of psyche exploration going on, as well as more than a bit of ribbing of psychiatrists who, in this movie, are even more screwed up than Frasier and Niles. The star is Jean-Hugues Anglade (Betty Blue, La Femme Nikita), who seems to have aged into some sort of cross-cloning of Roy Scheider and Martin Short. Extra bonus: we find out what really goes on at Paris’s Père La Chaise cemetery late at night. (Seen 7 June 2001)

Morvern Callar

Samantha Morton gets a few more words of dialog here than she did in Sweet and Lowdown and Minority Report, but not many. As the title character, she does her best to get on with her life after her boyfriend commits suicide. But you would think that she would call the police or somebody first. Oh well, I guess we all have our different ways of handling these things. There is sort of a plot here. The boyfriend has written a novel and his posthumous request is for Morvern to send it to a publisher. She does, but first she puts her own name on it. (His other request is for a funeral, but she disregards that as well.) This Scottish movie isn’t exactly what you would call watchable. Maybe it helps to have read the novel that director Lynne Ramsay based this on. Or maybe it helps to be a young woman who is into clubbing. Anyway, it seems much longer than its 97-minute running time. (Seen 12 October 2002)

The Most Fertile Man in Ireland

It’s official. The Troubles in Northern Ireland are over, and we can now laugh about them. And laugh we do in this satire on sex and politics by Belfast filmmaker Dudi Appleton. This is a different Belfast than we have ever seen in a feature film before. Its outrageous colors and comical characters are like nothing so much as a John Waters movie. And, as Appleton attests, the soundtrack was dredged up from the cheesiest LPs he could find in anybody’s old record collection. It’s hard to know what to make of the film’s snickering humor in the first reel, but by the time we encounter the hilarious Pauline McLynn (the housekeeper of Father Ted) as a woman desperate to be impregnated and James Nesbitt (Susan Lynch’s pig farmer suitor in Waking Ned Devine) as a wacko Loyalist, we know we are in for quite a, uh, ride. The central gag is so obvious that we don’t know why we didn’t see it coming: What would happen if one man were so fecund that he could single-handedly shift the increasingly close population parity between Ulster’s Unionist/Protestant and Nationalist/Catholic communities? Answer: Things would get very amusing. Memorable line: “Women are like microwaves. You need them to heat your noodles, but you don’t know how they work.” (Seen 10 March 2001)

Mother

We think we might have an idea of what Debbie Reynolds is like as a mother because her daughter wrote a novel called Postcards from the Edge and we saw Shirley MacLaine do a tour de force in the film version. But Mother is not about what kind of mother Debbie Reynolds is. It’s about what kind of mother Albert Brooks’s mother is. Got that? In this flick, Brooks plays a guy (apparently based on himself) who clearly never listens to Dr. Laura Schlesinger on the radio because he thinks that he can solve all his current problems by dwelling on his past relationship with his mother. This movie isn’t so much as a guffaw kind of comedy as a chuckle and snicker kind of comedy. After a winking nod to The Graduate, Brooks knowingly points out many of the cultural differences between the Depression and baby boom generations in ways that are familiar to many of us. One of the biggest laughs is the too-good-to-be-true feel-good ending. Presumably, here as in most of the movie, Brooks has his tongue firmly in his cheek. (Seen 18 February 1997)

Mouhim Wong (Dr. Wai in “The Scripture with No Words”)

This movie is just pure good old escapist entertainment. Part Indiana Jones movie, part Walter Mitty fantasy, and part romantic comedy, the film alternately amuses with its goofy humor and thrills with its special effects. The director is Ching Siu-tung, who helmed the Chinese Ghost Story movies, so you know you are in for a wild roller-coaster ride with breathtaking stunts and how’d-they-do-that? special effects. (I particularly liked a giant mechanical ox that crushes gobs of people under its studded rollers.) I am convinced that the English subtitles in Hong Kong movies are deliberately botched for the entertainment value. (At one point a woman enthuses, “Oh, good, he is jealousing!”) Whether by accident or design, some elements in the film seem ripped from recent headlines: Japanese villains use poison gas on victims, and an elegant party at a Japanese embassy is the scene of sabotage. (Seen 26 May 1997)

Moulin Rouge!

What to make of Baz Luhrmann’s last movie? If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to ask myself that question, I’d have, well, I’d have 15 cents. But the point is that all three of Luhrmann’s movies leave us shaking our heads. The first one, Strictly Ballroom, left us shaking our heads in delight and amazement at a silly story that somehow turned exhilarating. The second one, Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, left us shaking our heads over outlandish imagery and a familiar story made totally new and relevant. This one (the last of what Luhrmann calls his “red curtain trilogy”) leaves us shaking our heads over what was the precise point of this exercise. Luhrmann’s normal gig is doing operas in Australia, and in some ways this is a rock opera in the Andrew Lloyd Weber vein. It is also a fond homage to old movies, particularly all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood musicals, as well as a tribute to a slew of popular songs. Indeed, much of the fun of watching the movie comes from trying to identify all the song quotes. (“Smells Like Teen Spirit” has lyrics? Who knew?) Nicole Kidman’s starring role seems almost tailor-made for Madonna, an impression heightened by prominent use of two of her songs, “Material Girl” and “Like a Virgin” (hilariously rendered by a clearly delighted Jim Broadbent). More fun is derived from watching the mugging of John Leguizamo (as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, invariably called by his friends simply “Toulouse”) and the villain played by Richard Roxburgh, looking eerily like David Spade. (Seen 15 October 2001)

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Those dealmakers in Hollywood are getting cleverer and cleverer. Every once in a while they try to put together one of those sophisticated romantic comedies with lots of verbal sparring between powerful screen presences like Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth or Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. But those movies soared on the sharp writing and the actors’ precision-aimed delivery. Contemporary Hollywood is either unable or (more likely, thanks to the lucrative youth market it targets) unwilling to let writing and acting alone carry such a film. So, they come up with ways to give the experience of a sophisticated rom com but with plenty of distraction to placate viewers’ presumably short attention spans. For instance, this movie marries its sparring-spouses plot to a special-effects-laded action thriller. Director Doug Liman—whose eclectic c.v. includes Swingers, Go and The Bourne Identity—working from screenwriter Simon Kinberg’s master thesis, has actually crafted a frequently amusing metaphor for modern marriage in this tale of two yuppies cohabitating in a tastefully antiseptic suburban home, neither one ever leaving his or her own space long enough to really know the other. The main characters never become human enough to care about, but at least we do occasionally get some really good lines when the sparring switches from weaponry to dialog. Not as many good lines as we got from Cary Grant, of course, but hey, we will take whatever we can get. Apparent moral of the story: there’s a lot less stress on a marriage if you can just blow up your house. Or if you are not a major star married to a major star. (Seen 23 July 2005)

Mr. Bean’s Holiday

I’ll confess to not having been overly excited about the prospect of another movie about Mr. Bean. I have always found that a little bit of this classic character, incarnated by the very talented Rowan Atkinson, goes a long way. The prospect of 90 minutes watching this near-mute epitome of the quintessential English twit seemed daunting. But there is actually something interesting going on here. The title is an obvious reference to Jacques Tati’s 1953 classic Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, and it is true that Mr. Bean legitimately lays claim to a long tradition of slapstick clowns that includes such geniuses as Chaplin, Keaton and Sellers. And, while Atkinson and his collaborators may not be doing themselves any favors by inviting comparisons to these gentlemen or to Tati, the movie eventually does win over the film buff through its loving homages to this cinematic tradition as well as to cinema itself. It turns out that Mr. Bean is headed to Cannes at the very time that the celebrated film festival is going on. And, happily, his path crosses those of characters played by extremely engaging actors: young Max Baldry, as a Russian film director’s son, and Emma de Caunes, who enchanted, well, at least me anyway in the quirky Irish musical Short Order. Various vignettes along the way evoke any number of movies, particularly those about journeys on the road. At one point, when we get fleeting glimpses of strangers at the end of a series of random phone calls, it even seems like a nod to Chantal Akerman. And the ending could be seen as a tribute to Jacques Demy. But the best bits by far are the performance by Willem Dafoe, as an American director, and his hilarious film within a film that raises pretentiousness and self-absorption to whole new levels. (Seen 20 April 2007)

Mr. Deeds

Just as well Frank Capra didn’t live to see this. This isn’t really a remake of the 1936 Gary Cooper/Jean Arthur classic. It’s a Saturday Night Live-style parody of it. That means that there are quite a few laughs, but it is essentially empty of any heart or soul. Oh sure, it pays lip service to Capra’s original view of social inequality, a theme that is ripe for these post-Enron cynical-about-the-capitalist-system times. But when it comes time to make the big speech at the end, summing up the right and the wrong of it all, it is played strictly for awkward laughs. And that’s fine, because the movie is at least smart enough to know that it isn’t clever enough to fake sincerity. Sandler’s Longfellow Deeds is a strange character. He’s touchy-feely enough to hug men when he first meets them, but he doesn’t mind knocking a few heads when he feels slighted. Convicted klepto Winona Ryder is strangely appropriate for the woman who means to take advantage of him, and she’s genuinely funny in a fight scene with Conchata Ferrell. In the film’s funniest bit, she stumbles her way through a situation in which her improbably named and supposedly fictitious Iowa hometown actually turns out to exist. But the movie reveals where its heart really is at the end, when this 21st century Mr. Deeds gladly takes a cool billion in cash as a gift from a friend. As a public, we revile people who get rich too quick, but mainly because it’s not us. (Seen 27 November 2002)

Mr. Holland’s Opus

I saw this on an airplane, so I’m probably not giving it a fair shake. The makers of this film have spared no expense to make you shed tears. Not satisfied with having Goodbye, Mr. Chips, they also have to play the Mickey-and-Judy-let’s-put-on-a-show card, the Forrest Gump nostalgic soundtrack and Vietnam card, and the It’s a Wonderful Life card. You may well cry upon watching this movie, but it’s likely to be a Pavlovian response conditioned by many previous movies. (Seen 7 May 1996)

Mrs. Brown

Billy Connolly is an outrageous Scottish comic who sometimes gets into trouble for going over the line on British TV. But he does a fine and sincere acting turn in this movie, essentially playing a restrained version of himself in the 19th century. The title Mrs. Brown refers to a sarcastic nickname applied to Queen Victoria (Dame Judi Dench, James Bond’s new M in Goldeneye) for her reliance on a Scottish commoner aide/friend/confidant, John Brown. The movie follows their relationship over many years and recounts how Brown helped the queen deal with her grief over the death of her husband, mainly because he was the only person in her circle who didn’t fear or patronize her. As he evolved into a cross between Sir Walter Raleigh and Rasputin, he became a political target. The direction of this Masterpiece Theatre production by John Madden (Ethan Frome) is handsome but low-key—sort of like Remains of the Day but without the cumulative impact. With Connolly’s toned-down performance, the real scenery chewing is left to Anthony Sher (the duped psychiatrist in The Young Poisoner’s Handbook) as a delightfully smarmy and ironic Prime Minister Disraeli. (Seen 8 June 1997)

Mrs. Dalloway

A British production directed by a Dutch Oscar winner (Marleen Gorris, who got her trophy for the popular Antonia’s Line), Mrs. Dalloway is the quintessential “art house movie.” That is, it consists mainly of a lot of stuffy English people at the height of empire doing a lot of talking. Things start slowly. Vanessa Redgrave, radiant in the title role, goes about preparing for a party. We see lots of flashbacks to her youth. And there is a seemingly unrelated side plot involving Rupert Graves as a shell-shocked war veteran. By the time we get to the end of the film, however, we have a culminating and wonderful sense of the passage of time, the trivialities of middle and upper class existence, and the weight of choices we make in our lives. This is clearly Redgrave’s movie. In addition to a lovely performance, her friend Eileen Atkins wrote the script from Virginia Woolf’s novel. Unlike the previous Woolf adaptation Orlando, this one makes its points powerfully by using a beguiling subtlety. (Seen 23 January 1998)

Mrs. Munck

Mrs. Munck is essentially a vanity film by Diane Ladd. Ladd has had roles in such films as Chinatown, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Rambling Rose, but this is her first directing effort. She also wrote the screenplay (adapted from a novel by Ella Leffland) and has the starring role. Before the screening, she gave an impassioned talk about how difficult it is for female actors to break into directing, and she said that Mrs. Munck was the biggest miracle in her life since the birth of her daughter, Laura Dern. (She then went on to describe the birth in intricate medical detail. I’ll never be able to think of Laura the same way again.) Her point about it being difficult for women in general, and female actors in particular, to get opportunities to direct is valid. But this film isn’t necessarily the best way to make her case. Mrs. Munck tells the story of a recently widowed woman who takes in her dead husband’s step-father, who is in poor mental and physical health and uses a wheelchair. She then sets about devising all sorts of mental tortures for him, and in flashbacks we learn why she hates him so much. None of this is as entertaining or involving as it is meant to be. (You can tell this isn’t a French movie, however, because no one gets tied to a radiator.) In fact, the most interesting thing about the movie is the fact that Ladd cast her ex-husband Bruce Dern (looking totally frazzled and bug-eyed) as the step-father. We are left to wonder how much of their real-life relationship found itself into this movie. This was the first public screening of the movie. Ladd is actively seeking a North American distributor. (Seen 8 June 1995)

Mulholland Drive

The touches are all there. The enthusiastic, innocent outsider landing in town. The odd, quirky locals. The red curtains. The strange revealing/confusing dreams. The buzzing/crackling light fixtures. The characters obsessed with coffee. The criminal mystery that turns out to really be a metaphysical mystery. That’s right, David Lynch is back, and this ain’t no Straight Story. This is essentially Los Angeles getting the Twin Peaks treatment. There is even a shadowy, malevolent figure in the style of TP’s Bob, as well as a brief appearance by a Log Lady-like character. Apparently, Mulholland Drive was originally conceived as another TV series, but that didn’t happen. Consequently, we get a complete story in two and a half hours with all the plot’s loose ends tied up nicely. Yeah, right! After an interesting enough setup that lasts about the length of a TV pilot, the narrative suddenly turns itself inside out and backwards similar to Lynch’s confounding Lost Highway. On the other hand, we also get some hot lesbian sex and some plot turns that make us think that in some strange way this movie is really about Anne Heche. (Seen 10 October 2001)

Multiplicity

In 1993 SCTV alum Harold Ramis made a cute little fable starring Bill Murray called Groundhog Day, and it was basically about how to get Andie MacDowell to fall in love with you. Now he’s back with a cute little fable starring Michael Keaton called Multiplicity, and it is basically about how to make your marriage with Andie MacDowell work. Who among us has not at one time or another said, “What I need is a clone!"? Well, Keaton’s character gets to do this literally. But, in the end, he learns some Important Lessons, including: if you’re not in control of your life, it doesn’t matter how many clones you have. And: if you’re not personally involved in your life, you will miss your life. The growth in Keaton’s character is nowhere near that of Murray’s character in the earlier film, so the overall effect is less impressive. On the other hand, Keaton so masterfully creates and interacts with his clone characters that Eddie Murphy should feel just plain embarrassed about his work in The Nutty Professor. (Seen 2 August 1996)

Mumford

This movie provides an excellent case study of how American towns portrayed in contemporary Hollywood movies differ from the real thing (and are really about Hollywood anyway). For example, the generally idyllic town of Mumford is easily able to support a psychiatrist, two psychologists and at least one criminal attorney. One of the town’s residents (nicely played by Jason Lee) is coping with finding himself a multi-billionaire and thinks it’s okay to pay someone to be his friend. And, a woman with a compulsion to buy mail-order products she doesn’t need is seen to have made a great breakthrough when she enters into an extra-marital affair. But, hey, it’s a movie, so just go with it. (Actually, it’s not clear just how small Mumford is, but it’s small enough for a disdainful Ted Danson—in a funny turn as jerk executive type—to dismiss it as “Mayberry RFD.”) Anyway, the film starts slowly, but there are enough intriguing things going on to keep you watching to see what happens next, and it’s a credit to writer/director Lawrence Kasdan (who has given us such quality stuff as Body Heat, The Big Chill and Silverado) that the path of his narrative is never completely obvious but in the end is worth following. Loren Dean is okay but a bit bland as the man everyone in town feels comfortable talking to, but that may be the point. As his love interest, Hope Davis looks unnervingly like Hillary Rodham Clinton. And, as Davis’s mother, Dana Ivey gives Helen Mirren’s Mrs. Tingle character a run for her money as the most frightening woman in a recent movie. (Seen 18 September 1999)

The Mummy

Just one question: if you wanted to punish someone who had just violated your society’s most serious laws, why on earth would you put a curse on him that would result in him coming back as an all-powerful being that could destroy the entire earth? Okay, I lied; here’s another question: why, if you were fighting such an all-powerful being and you found out that the only thing he feared was cats, would you not from that moment on go nowhere without at least four or five felines strapped to your body? Okay, I know that I’m not supposed to ask questions like these. I’m just supposed to sit back and enjoy the special effects and the humor and not worry too much about the verisimilitude of the plot. And that’s the best way to deal with this popcorn-chomping Saturday afternoon entertainment. It’s really a cartoon of a movie, but not one where the characters spring back from every misfortune that befalls them—at least not most of the supporting characters. But even when much of the cast is dispatched, there is still something cheerful about the whole business. As a horror/action movie, the tone falls somewhere between Indiana Jones and Abbott & Costello. And since all of the American characters seem to have stepped out of the Wild West, the tone is actually somewhat reminiscent of one of my most lamented TV series, the wholly under-appreciated Adventures of Brisco County Jr. Brendan Fraser is okay, but he’s no Bruce Campbell. John Hannah, who showed he could be extremely amusing in Sliding Doors, is moderately amusing here. (Seen 14 June 1999)

The Muppet Christmas Carol

What’s surprising about this 1992 Muppet outing is how faithful it stays to the original story. The most notable liberty—aside from making most of the characters non-human—is to give Jacob Marley a brother, so that those two hecklers from the balcony can play the duo. Sure, there is ample amount of the usual Muppet gags, but these are relegated to the periphery, mostly in the form of the Great Gonzo and Rizzo Rat, acting as some sort of Greek chorus in the form of Charles Dickens and, well, Rizzo the Rat. The human cast (consisting almost entirely of Michael Caine as Scrooge and Steven Mackintosh as his nephew), as well as many of the Muppets, play it completely straight. Caine actually gives an extremely respectable portrayal of old Ebenezer that stands up to comparison with any number of “serious” adaptations. The result is an unexpectedly useful annotated edition of the classic story that makes it very accessible to young viewers, without diluting the story or the message. (Seen 25 December 2006)

The Muppets Take Manhattan

One of the best reasons to have a four-year-old in your house is to have a pretext to watch movies like this, especially if you didn’t have a four-year-old handy twenty years ago, when the movie first came out. Of course, for years now lots of adults haven’t bothered with the cover of a child to enjoy the antics of Jim Henson’s creations on the small or big screen. Henson’s stable has always managed to pull off the neat trick of tickling children and adults simultaneously, so that parents don’t mind at all watching Sesame Street, while the wretched Barney should be covered by the Geneva conventions. (The worst part is that really young children really do love that purple dinosaur, perhaps because it is aimed at them exclusively.) Seeing this movie two decades on, one is struck by how leisurely the pace seems when compared with children’s fare these days. Attentions spans have definitely gotten shorter or, to put a more positive spin on it, toddlers these days seem to be able to process information a lot faster than they used to. Perhaps the most fun this flick provides for adults is the numerous celebrity cameos. How strange it is that Kermit and Miss Piggy haven’t aged at all, but look at how much younger the likes of Elliott Gould and Liza Minelli look. And, of course, there are bittersweet appearances by those who have gone on to the great beyond, i.e. Art Carney, Gregory Hines, Joan Rivers’s face. Watch for Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Gates McFadden (credited as Cheryl) as Dabney Coleman’s secretary. (Seen 12 September 2004)

Music of the Heart

What in the name of Freddy Krueger is going on here?! First, kinky and violent moviemaker David Lynch helms the gentle and touching The Straight Story. Now, slasher/horror master Wes Craven films this inspiring true-life story of a dedicated music teacher. What’s next? The George Romero remake of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? Anyway, whereas every frame of Lynch’s G-rated effort still has the unmistakable Lynch style, there’s not much in Music of the Heart that is uniquely Craven. And, though it is based on actual events, it has a predictability about it that Craven’s horror films (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream)—not to mention reality in general—usually do not. This movie is told completely from the self-mythologizing point of view of the undeniably admirable Roberta Guaspari. (And, since she is played by Meryl Streep, we know we are getting every nuance and tic of the real person.) Most of the other characters, particularly the apathetic senior music teacher and a couple of obnoxious parents, come off as completely two-dimensional so as to throw her into even bolder relief. Having said all this, however, I deny anyone not to get a lump in the throat or a tear in the eye by the film’s rousing finale, demonstrating its clear superiority over Stephen Herek’s similarly themed Mr. Holland’s Opus. (Seen 5 November 1999)

Mute Witness

The best rollercoaster ride of the 1995 Seattle film festival has to be Mute Witness which is a suspense thriller that doesn’t give you more than a moment or two to catch your breath—or loosen your grip on your seat’s edge—during its entire 90-minute running time. It is inevitably referred to as “Hitchcockian,” and it definitely follow’s Hitch’s formula of taking an ordinary person and thrusting them into extraordinary circumstances where their life is in extreme danger and no one believes them. But the pacing and relentless suspense and action make you feel as though you’ve been through an Indiana Jones movie. Fortunately, there are regular bits of humor along the way to keep it all from becoming too unrelenting. (And it’s just as well that you don’t have much time to think while it’s all going on or else you’d realize that some parts don’t quite make sense.) This impressive film debut by Anthony Waller is a British production filmed in Moscow. The cast, which does a uniformly fine job, was unknown to me with the exception of Alec Guinness who has an uncredited cameo. (Seen 6 June 1995)

My Best Friend’s Wedding

Ironically, many if not most of the Hollywood movies that we get nostalgic for because they are so quintessentially American... were actually the creative products of immigrants! The tradition continues even today. While so much of our native-born movie talent is preoccupied with spending big bucks on virtual reality thrill rides, the foreigners are still coming to Hollywood with fresh takes on our own mythology. If you want a good action movie, look for a director from Hong Kong (e.g. John Woo with Face/Off). If you want a wacky romantic comedy, get an Australian. In 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding, P.J. Hogan demonstrated that Aussie knack for mixing comedy with sentiment, unpredictable plot turns, and reprising old pop songs for camp effect. He does it all again for My Best Friend’s Wedding which, like the earlier film, is about getting married or, more to the point, not getting married. Rather than resort (exclusively) to romantic comedy clichés, Hogan actually has a story to tell and a point to make. Indeed, we actually learn something meaningful in the course of this romp, as we recognize ourselves in Julia Roberts’s frantic quest not to let her youth and her dreams slip away. (Seen 22 July 1997)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

By now, everyone in America has seen this movie. But not content to be the last American to see it, I waited to see it in Ireland after half of Ireland had seen it as well. Interestingly, the Irish seem to have taken to this simple but heartfelt story as much as the Yanks. To me, this is a quintessentially American story of the fabled melting pot and how it works. But its story line of how two products of extremely different families fall in love and have a wedding, with all its attendant nerve-wracking pressures, is universal. You don’t have to marry a Greek-American (or even a Greek) to identify with the hair-raising rituals of meeting the prospective in-laws and working out a whole bunch of new relationships with virtual strangers. The film, which is fairly cartoon-ish in its depiction of the Greek-American family as well as the bridegroom’s incredibly white-bread parents, is blessed with some deft casting. Especially good to see are Michael Constantine and Lanie Kazan as writer/star Nia Vardalos’s parents. Even more wonderful is watching Andrea Martin getting a chance to strut her stuff as the perpetually nagging Aunt Voula. But, as happy as the ending of this romantic romp is, I (myself a participant in my own cross-cultural marriage) found all its coziness more than a bit chilling. (Seen 28 September 2002)

My Family (Mi Familia)

Twelve years ago Gregory Nava made a film called El Norte which did (on a smaller scale) for Hispanic Americans what Roots did for African Americans. Now he has a made a multi-generational saga about a Mexican American family in East Los Angeles. The cast reads like a Who’s Who of Hispanic actors: Jimmy Smits, Edward James Olmos, Esai Morales, and many others. This is basically a sentimental soap opera, but it is also clearly a labor of love for all involved. And it provides a much different view of East LA than we usually get through movies and other media. Like most movies of this type, the main drawback is that we hardly have time to know a character before he or she vanishes or is subjected to aging makeup. But I think it is worth seeing just to be reminded that many Mexican Americans have deeper roots in this country than many of us European Americans. (One early member of the family was born in California while it was still part of Mexico.) (Seen 21 May 1995)

My First Mister

This movie, directed by the actor Christine Lahti, gives the impression early on that it is going to be a gender-reversed Harold and Maude for the new millenium. But, times being what they are, instead of the older person teaching the younger one how to enjoy life, it’s the other way around. The movie starts out fairly well, with Leelee Sobieski (who had a brief but memorable—and blonde—role in Eyes Wide Shut) doing a nice job as a totally alienated, death-obsessed, goth-appearing teenager. And who can blame her for her adolescent angst, since her parents are a cloying Carol Kane and an airhead Michael McKean in a bad rug? The unlikely object of her affection is a totally square Albert Brooks. (Think Mayberry’s Floyd the barber without the glasses.) The ending is a real tearjerker, but it is weakened by the liberal Hollywood tendency to make Death an occasion for a group hug and therapeutic benefits. (Seen 14 May 2001)

My Friend Joe

Chris Bould’s My Friend Joe could almost be a Disney film except that, since it takes place in Ireland, the language would probably merit an R rating. The story deals with 13-year-old Chris who lives in a beautiful spot on Ireland’s east coast. He is more or less ostracized by the other lads because he doesn’t have the nerve to jump from a cliff into the sea, which is their club’s initiation rite. Things change, however, when Chris meets an American kid named Joe who can seemingly do anything. But Joe has a few unhappy secrets. My Friend Joe is engaging and exciting, thanks largely to the daredevil stunts that Joe is called on to perform and to the fact that Schuyler Fisk is uniquely suited to this tricky role. Joel Grey has a supporting role as the father figure in whom Joe confides. (Seen 1 June 1996)

My Kingdom

Here is another movie that is interesting only because we happen to know that it is based on a play by Shakespeare. If somehow we didn’t know that, we would have to consider this a very bad film indeed. The source for this film is King Lear and director/co-writer Don Boyd has updated the story to modern-day Liverpool—an idea which does nothing for that city’s public image. Richard Harris plays a criminal godfather with three daughters, and the excesses of the story make it inevitable that this will become a black comedy. Boyd would have been better off making the film even funnier, since the main enjoyment we get from it is the cat fighting between the two bad daughters. As a Dynasty/Dallas-style bitchfest, the movie almost works. The highlight, which comes way too early, is a funeral scene that is intercut in classic Godfather style with a violent torture scene. The two daughters try to outdo each other in eulogizing their murdered mother, and one finally begins belting out, badly, a Barry Manilow song. (The mother’s name was Mandy.) In these twin tableaus, it’s too close to call as to where the greater torture is taking place. (Seen 7 October 2002)

My Little Girl

This one was a particularly keen disappointment. It comes from the Merchant-Ivory stable, which has turned out a whole string of tasteful, high-class films, like A Room with a View. And the cast looked so good. It stars Mary Stuart Masterson, who was the best thing (many would say the only good thing) in Some Kind of Wonderful. Also featured are James Earl Jones, the classy actor whose heavy breathing was immortalized in three Star Wars movies, and the excellent Geraldine Page (Oscar winner for The Trip to Bountiful). So, what could go wrong? Answer: the script and the supporting actors. Franny (Masterson) is a 16-year-old rich girl who, in place of parents, has a couple of caricatures of rich people. Mother plays tennis and has a brain the size of a photon. Father is an attorney who gives lip service to liberal ideas but is basically an elitist snob. Franny gets a summer job at The Children’s Center, a facility for female juveniles who are placed there because they are black or because they are white teen-age whores. In the best Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland tradition, Franny thinks she can make these kids’ lives better if they can just put on a show. Her boss is James Earl Jones, who is kind of at a loss. (Instead of asking the director, “What is my motivation here?” he probably kept asking, “How much am I getting paid again?”) Franny gets into serious trouble when a girl she is trying to help is sent to another institution that is so bad that Klaus Barbie would have moral qualms about being associated with it. In an incredible series of events, Franny springs and then gets abducted by a pimp who is the kind of dastardly fellow who drives teenage girls out to the airport and makes them find their own way home. Unfortunately, Geraldine Page, who plays Franny’s blue-haired grandmother, doesn’t get to do anything except look sympathetic and impart some pearls of wisdom now and then. Probably the best thing in the movie is when Franny’s father hands her that old line about him being the one who puts a roof over her head and the clothes on her back. Franny then takes off her clothes and stomps out. (Seen 27 May 1987)

My Son the Fanatic

The title suggests that this will be a comedy about a generational clash, and it is, sort of. There are definitely funny bits in this tale of a Pakistani immigrant in Britain, who has bought the values of his adopted country wholesale. But since this film is written by Hanif Kureishi, who also penned My Beautiful Launderette, we know that this mix of cultures will inevitably lead to conflict and self-questioning. Om Puri plays the middle-aged cab driver who has slaved for years to give his son a good life, indulging himself mainly with drinking whiskey and listening to jazz records in the basement. And having late night conversations with his friend and confidante, Rachel Griffiths (Hilary and Jackie), one of the prostitutes who frequent his cab. Puri’s world unravels when his son dumps his white, upper-class girlfriend and begins exploring his Islamic roots, leading to an inevitable and apparently irreconcilable split with his father. It’s a dilemma with no easy resolution, and director Udayan Prasad offers none. We are left to conclude that the bridge between two very different cultures passes through its own very special hell. (Seen 18 May 1999)

Mysterious Skin

I had begun to despair for Gregg Araki. After his promising early films, movies like The Doom Generation and Nowhere had their moments but they were awfully jokey and had nothing like the humanity and power of, say, his Totally F***ed Up. Well, the good news is that Mysterious Skin does have humanity and power in spades and it has a title that you can mention to your grandmother (or to your grandchild). That doesn’t mean, however, that you would actually want to bring your grandmother (or your grandchild) to see it. Artistically, it is simply Araki’s best film to date. Even though its X-Files-meets-Midnight Cowboy plot hangs on a mystery that we pretty much figure out from the first few frames, the journey it takes us on is compelling and packs a strong punch at the end. The cast is great. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who knows a thing or two about extraterrestrial subject matter from his TV sitcom gig) has definitely left childhood roles behind, and Brady Corbett obliterates any memories of the Thunderbirds debacle. Araki also gets points for including the iconic face of veteran western actor Billy Drago. The movie is not, however, without moral baggage. Like Todd Solondz’s Happiness and Michael Cuesta’s L.I.E., this film takes an uncomfortably close and not completely judgmental look at child molestation. Presumably, Araki has reconciled himself in his own mind to the fact that his film will titillate the wrong sorts of people. The artist’s legitimate defense is that such people, especially in this day and age, will find greater titillation from many other sources and even from much more wholesome fare. For the rest (and vast majority) of us, much of the movie will make us feel creepy and uncomfortable. And it should. (Seen 7 July 2005)

Mystery Men

It’s a tricky business transferring comic book superheroes from the printed page (where the artist is limited only by his or her imagination) to the big screen (where bothersome reality becomes more of a factor). The result is usually an elaborate exercise in art design and/or pure camp. First-time feature director Kinka Usher’s adaptation of Bob Burden’s Dark Horse comic goes both ways and meets itself somewhere in the middle. The set design aspires to something like Tim Burton’s Batman but comes off closer in spirit to Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element. Since its source material is essentially a parody, naturally enough so is the movie, and it tends feel like an extended skit on Saturday Night Live—or maybe even Ben Stiller’s short-lived comedy sketch series, which is natural enough since Stiller has more or less the most prominent role as the erratic Mr Furious. This flick’s main rewards are a few good laughs (best appreciated by anyone who has read as many comic books as I have), several funny acting turns (notably by Stiller and Janeane Garofalo), and a has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed performance by Geoffrey Rush as the Alice Cooper-like villain, Casanova Frankenstein. (Seen 8 November 1999)

Mystics

There’s an easy litmus test for deciding if you will like this amiable comedy. If you liked Waking Ned Devine, then you will probably enjoy this. It’s the same sort of shaggy dog story, although with a more urban, Damon Runyonesque feel. It’s even got David Kelly, who starred in Ned, but this time his partner in shenanigans is Milo O’Shea (instead of the late Ian Bannen). Kelly and O’Shea’s main job in this film is to wring their hands and worry about all the trouble they are in, but they do it very well. There are a lot of other familiar Irish faces in this tale of two con men running a séance scam, who may have bit off more than they bargained for, when a Dublin gangster’s widow demands to talk to her late hubby so she can find his hidden loot. Part of the unintended humor (for me anyway) was in seeing a couple of the same faces that were also in Headrush, which is a similar kind of movie but aimed at a much younger audience. Notable among the supporting players are Maria Doyle Kennedy as Foxy, the gangster widow, and Liam Cunningham, as the detective who would like to investigate her further. (Seen 19 October 2003)

The Myth of Fingerprints

It’s Thanksgiving, and four children (plus two of their lovers) are coming home to New England to all be with their parents for the first time in three years. Since this is a movie, we can pretty much figure that things won’t go perfectly smoothly (cf. The War at Home, Home for the Holidays, etc.). As can be expected, there are frictions, resentments, arguments, and a couple of guilty revelations. In the end, this isn’t so much a story as a portrait. Happily writer/director Bart Freundlich keeps things fairly light with regular comic relief and mostly natural dialog. James Legros is a bright spot as a family acquaintance. Other cast members include Roy Scheider and Blythe Danner as Mom and Dad and Julianne Moore and Noah Wyle as two of the children. And, no, I haven’t a clue what the title means. (Seen 30 May 1997)