Scott's Movie Comments

Y tu mamá también (And Your Mother Too)

One old cynical line about Mexico goes roughly something like this: Mexicans are the children of a pillager (the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés) and a whore (the Aztec woman Malinche). This flick by Alfonso Cuarón (Great Expectations), which is essentially a raunchy teen road movie with slyly serious intentions, updates that image into a ménage à trois that includes a beautiful Spanish woman (Maribel Verdú) and two randy Mexican boys (Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal), one from the privileged class and one from the working class. Now, road movies about two pals and the woman who, um, comes between them are nothing new, but mostly these are French films starring (depending on the vintage) Jeanne Moreau or Gérard Depardieu. This film clearly makes a claim to that lineage, but its sensibility would not be out of place with the Porky’s or American Pie crowd. Indeed, at first the movie seems downright prurient, but as its story about a drive to beach that isn’t supposed to exist unfolds, interesting things happen. And I don’t just mean the way the film climaxes (so to speak) by making literal what most buddy movies merely keep in the subtext. We keep catching glimpses of Mexico, just out of the way of the main action. The journey takes in a society wedding that includes Mexico’s crème de la crème as a well as a tour through Oaxaca and Puebla where we witness rural life, picturesque traditional rituals, and aggressive law enforcement by the federales. This fascinating and revealing portrait of Mexico, seen on the periphery, is much more interesting than the somewhat predictable buddies-coming-of-age story at the film’s center. (Seen 15 July 2002)

Ya lyublu tebya (You I Love)

Modern Russia, in this film anyway, looks surprisingly similar to the West. Yuppies are stressed out in their high-pressure jobs, trying to fit in romance in their few spare hours. Timofei and Vera seem made for each other. She is a news reader on television. He makes TV commercials. They are both young and attractive and are immediately attracted to one another. Things couldn’t be better. But things go awry when a young homeless man named Uloomji falls on the hood of Timofei’s car, and he winds up bringing him home to make sure that he is okay. Soon we have a romantic triangle, as Timofei tries to figure out which way he really wants to swing. This movie by Olga Stolpovskaja and Dmitry Troitsky is a bona fide European sex comedy, and I don’t mean that in a good way. In the worst French tradition, it tries to mine humor by presenting awkward situations for us to laugh at without bothering to make them particularly funny. People’s exaggerated reactions alone are supposed to do the trick. One interesting thing we learn (but not from this movie, only from the film festival program notes) is that there is actually a Buddhist European nation. It is one of Russia’s autonomous republics, and Uloomji, a Kalmyk, is one of its citizens. Among the many tangents in this rambling story that don’t work is Uloomji’s family’s very non-Zen-like reaction to finding out he is gay. (Seen 6 July 2005)

The Year of My Japanese Cousin

The title The Year of My Japanese Cousin is really a bit too literate for this lively and entertaining flick. (Maybe that’s because it had funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, although it would be more appropriate for MTV.) It is essentially a grunge version of All About Eve with Seven Year Bitch’s Selene Vigil in the Bette Davis role. She is excellent as Stevie, the driving force behind a never-quite-made-it Seattle band called Scubaboy. She is pushing 30 and getting desperate to make the band a success. One day a distant cousin from Japan appears and, before Stevie knows it, Yukari has not only eclipsed her in the band but also with her boyfriend and just about every other aspect of her life. This film was made on the cheap, and it shows. But it is a lot of fun and to my mind portrays a much more authentic view of twentysomething life on Capitol Hill than did Singles. It doesn’t have a distributor yet, but it could eventually show up on PBS. (Seen 20 May 1995)

Ying Xiong (Hero)

I wonder what it means that Asians seem to be so much better than westerners at portraying their myths and legends on screen. In saying that, I am comparing this Chinese visual tour de force by Yimou Zhang (Raise the Red Lantern, Lumière and Company) to Wolfgang Petersen’s less-than-inspiring Troy, although I suppose I could make a more favorable comparison with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy which, while not strictly based on age-old western myths and legends, is based on a work that is certainly steeped in them. But another type of western film comes to mind as we watch the poetic spectacle of this movie. Think about it. The harsh desert landscapes marked with towering stone monuments. The man with no name. The quest. The deadly duels. The uneasy alliances. The turnabouts and double crosses. Yes, this is a spaghetti western. Sergio Leone himself couldn’t have done it better. Americans have embraced this movie, despite a somewhat confusing Rashomon-like story and a heavy dose of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo and intricately convoluted logic and codes of honor. But I suppose three Matrix movies helped grease the skids in the States for all that, as well as for the ballet-like aerial sequences, which are gorgeous to watch but seem strange to Yankee eyes. Never have these flying stunts seemed so graceful and dream-like. Like so many things in this movie, they are so beautiful to watch that it hurts. (Seen 11 October 2004)

You Can Count on Me

One of the least hyped but best reviewed films of last year was this little gem by actor/writer Kenneth Lonergan in his directing debut. There is of course a plot to the film, but it is mainly a portrait of a sister and brother whose lives and relationship with each other have been defined by one horrible event: the death of their parents in a road accident when Sammy and Terry were children. The characters are so real that it makes you hurt to watch them. This is particularly true of Terry, as played by Mark Ruffalo, who is the classic younger brother who uses humor and bad behavior to mask his serious lack of self-esteem. Oscar-nominated Laura Linney (who nearly seems to be maturing into Meryl Streep), as Sammy, is his opposite number: the older sister saddled with too much responsibility at too young an age who can’t stop trying to look after her baby brother. Neither one of these people is a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but they are both good people in their own way, and their complicated, loving and sometimes painful relationship has such a ring of truth that we can’t help get involved. (Seen 11 July 2001)

You Kill Me

This was the first screenplay written by the team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who saw the first of their string of screenplays for the Chronicles of Narnia produced before this made it to the screen. The director is John Dahl, who is more known for witty but tense suspense thrillers like Red Rock West and The Last Seduction than for a comedy (albeit a black one) like this. An amazing amount of the humor derives from simple reaction shots, often when the central character (Ben Kingsley, as a somewhat less wound-up and ultimately more sentimental version of the gangster he portrayed in Sexy Beast) uses the off-the-record confidentiality of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to talk about his job as a hit man. More amusement flows from learning about the previously un-remarked brutal gang wars between the Irish and the Poles in Buffalo. Dahl has assembled a great cast, with the likes of Luke Wilson and Bill Pullman in low-key supporting roles. And no cockeyed comedy could fail to entertain when it features a trademark jaundiced performance by the wonderful Téa Leoni. The movie’s only bad luck is that its delay in getting to audiences, but even that is probably just as well. It probably wouldn’t have helped for it to be released too soon after the passingly similar Grosse Pointe Blank. (Seen 19 October 2007)

You’ve Got Mail

It’s all been said already. Cyber era update to The Shop Around the Corner. Sleepless in Seattle redux. Two-hour commercial for AOL. Actually, You’ve Got Mail was better than I thought it would be, but there is still something of a letdown about the (all-too-inevitable) ending. Maybe it’s because, whereas the finale of Nora Ephron’s 1993 hit made you focus on the classiness of An Affair to Remember, this time she just keeps reminding you of the formulaicness of Sleepless in Seattle. Or maybe it’s just too hard to swallow that Meg Ryan belongs with Tom Hanks because he’s a really nice guy despite the minor detail of his being a corporate predator. (A hotbed of product placements, the film heavily evokes the Borders/Barnes & Noble phenomenon but despite its quasi-cyber theme doesn’t go near the Amazon.com waters.) Anyway, it’s to the movie’s credit that it doesn’t try to “fix” the loss of Ryan’s small bookstore for the sake of an even happier ending. Indeed, the scenes where her shop slips into failure are the best in the flick. (Seen 28 February 1999)

The Young and the Dead

The title sounds more as though it could belong to an odd television soap opera than to this documentary about a Hollywood cemetery. But, on the other hand, the central subject Tyler Cassity has the flawless good looks, demeanor and boyishness (not to mention the perfect name) for a soap star. Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini tell the story of how Cassity bought the neglected Hollywood Memorial Park (bordering on the lot of Paramount Pictures) and revamped it into Hollywood Forever. Not content with a mere cleanup job, Cassity (a scion of a Missouri family in the funeral parlor business) paid special attention to the resting places of the many Hollywood legends, even belatedly granting Hattie McDaniel’s wish to be buried there. (The previous management had barred minorities.) They also instituted a high-tech system for making mini-documentaries of clients’ lives for viewing on terminals and on the Internet. The film is so uncritical of Cassity and his operation that it almost amounts to a promotional piece. And, while some of the devoted fans of the resident stars (in particular Rudolph Valentino) could have been an easy target for humor, the filmmakers go easy on them as well. In the end, this is as much an examination of evolving American attitudes toward death and death rituals as a portrait of an unusual cemetery. (Seen 1 June 2001)

The Young Poisoner’s Handbook

The title The Young Poisoner’s Handbook is a double entendre since the handbook is written by a fictionalized version of Graham Young, a notorious poisoner in Britain. Hugh O’Conor (My Left Foot) is perfect for the role of Graham. His eyes seem to scream “Psychopath!” even though no one seems to notice. This is a British black comedy in the tradition of Kind Hearts and Coronets although, since this is the 1990s, it is fashionably grosser by far. Some scenes, where a doctor tries to rehabilitate Graham are just a touch reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, the point being the vain smugness of psychiatry in its hope to master deviant human nature. Like Thallium-laced tea, this film may not be for every taste. But it will definitely make you pay more attention to the mustard in your sandwiches and think twice about using a mug with your name on it. (Seen 3 June 1996)

Yume No Ginga (Labyrinth of Dreams)

The title is appropriate because this film is infused with the slow-motion, claustrophobic, internal-logic-that-would-make-no-sense-in-the-real-world quality that dreams sometimes have. Nicely photographed in black and white, this Japanese film by Sogo Ishii will be best appreciated by viewers who are more into film technique than into escapist entertainment. The story involves a bus conductor who suspects that the handsome driver of her bus is a serial killer. Despite this, she is strangely attracted to him. Just in case we can’t see where things are headed, we get several shots of moths fluttering frantically about, well, not a flame but a humming electric light. Interesting to watch, Labyrinth of Dreams is more perplexing than satisfying. (Seen 28 May 1997)