And Everything is Going Fine (2010)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

And Everything is Going Fine (2010) – S. Soderbergh

You have to really like Spalding Gray (and to have seen some of his previous monologues) to appreciate Soderbergh’s masterly knitting together of excerpts from an array of Gray’s public appearances (monologues and otherwise).  And I do.  Watching this film was like revisiting a long lost but fondly remembered friend.  And he is telling all of his old stories and some new ones.  In fact, I was surprised at all the things that happened to Spalding Gray since I last checked in with him.  Despite having a family (and opening himself up to some dad humor), things took a turn for the sombre after a rough automobile accident in Ireland in 2001 and culminated in Gray’s (presumed) suicide in 2004 (from the Staten Island ferry).  He talks about death a lot over the years – or perhaps Soderbergh and his editor Susan Littenberg purposely chose death obsessed clips.  Nevertheless (and as always), the thing about Gray’s monologues is that they are so life affirming (and funny and neurotic and naked).  Listening to him talk about his life makes you want to pay more attention to your own – after all, we’ve all got plenty of fodder for monologues.  But, honestly, Gray created a poetic art-form that we are fortunate he shared with us even if the constant sharing itself (along with underlying mental illness) seems to have encouraged a desire for (what he may have sadly perceived to be) the perfect narrative closure.    

Like Someone in Love (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Like Someone in Love (2012) – A. Kiarostami

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s latest film was shot in Japan in Japanese with Japanese actors – does the director even know Japanese? If not, this just adds another layer of mind-bendingness to his legendary experiments with perception and reality (Close-Up, Through the Olive Trees, Taste of Cherry, etc.).  Not unlike his strategy with Certified Copy (his first film outside of Iran, with Juliette Binoche in French) in 2010, Kiarostami keeps viewers confused about the nature of the relationships between the key protagonists here.  Rin Takanashi is Akiko, a part-time escort/prostitute, who is assigned to visit retired Professor Watanabe (Tadashi Okuno) by her boss, a former student of his.  Viewers can’t quite guess what will happen as the hyper-realistic plot unfolds (Kiarostami loves shots of people driving and talking or reacting).  Perhaps the title is the key:  each character shows us one way that people might act “like someone in love” (sung by Ella Fitzgerald on the soundtrack).  Sexual love, jealous love, grandfatherly and grandmotherly love, marital love, friendship love, and other forms of affection all make an appearance.  However, violence may also be ever at bay as the inverse of love.  As always, Kiarostami refuses to spell things out – and thus love’s sweet mystery is ours to discover…in Japanese.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) – B. Wilder

That nagging feeling that I’d seen this before didn’t show up until very near the end of Witness for the Prosecution and I can’t genuinely be sure that it wasn’t because Billy Wilder purposefully tipped his hand about the final plot twists yet to come.  You see, this is one of those famous films that you are not supposed to talk about – but, you see, I’d forgotten that and probably you should too.  Charles Laughton is a famous barrister who has just suffered a heart attack but is lured back to the courtroom to defend Tyrone Power (in his last film role) who is accused of murder and confronting a damning amount of circumstantial evidence.  Marlene Dietrich plays his wife – the witness for the prosecution – who throws a monkey-wrench into the defense.  Laughton, Power, and Dietrich play to their strengths and the result is nothing less than gripping.  Even if you may have seen it before.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) – J. Jarmusch

With this contemporary vampire film (taking place in Detroit and Tangiers), it feels like Jarmusch has finally created the proper milieu in which to deposit all of his cultural touchstones and references.  His band SQÜRL even contributes some of the minor-key guitar-slab soundtrack music and there are plenty of fetishistic scenes of old guitars (and other equipment), important novels, and celebrity artist photos.  In fact, the film feels like part of a scene – the aging bohemian rocker scene, I guess (and perhaps I belong since I have a couple of White Hills CDs). Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are the titular lovers still alive as the centuries pass (and there are a fair few references to the damage that we “zombies”, aka humans, are doing to the planet and the culture).  John Hurt definitely looks dead or undead as Christopher Marlowe. Unlike some Jarmusch films this one does have a few discrete plot events that move the story forward or at least break up the flow of arthouse sensations.  But those sensations are assuredly the main point and this is one of Jarmusch’s best films.

Computer Chess (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Computer Chess (2013) – A. Bujalski

The genius of this film is in its smart-ass recreation of a weird period in American history, the very early 1980s when a new breed of computer nerds was programming now-archaic machines to challenge grandmasters (and each other) at chess.  Director Andrew Bujalski has lovingly used period videography (in black and white) to capture the period outfits (bad!), characters (not just nerds but swingers and members of an encounter group) and shabby hotel environs at this low-rent conference/chess match.  I think this is the first “mumblecore” film I’ve seen (I had to google the term) and if you aren’t ready for it, the non-acting, hapless and fragmented dialogue, amateurish production values, and relatively absent plot just might trick you into thinking you are watching the real thing.  Judging by the IMdB, this isn’t too everyone’s taste – but personally I love absurdity.

56 Up (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

56 Up (2012) – M. Apted

Well, perhaps the most interesting thing to be discovered here is that people just don’t change too much between age 49 and age 56.  However, that makes this latest instalment in the incredibly long running 7 Up series (that tracks the same 12 or so British children drawn from different socioeconomic backgrounds across time, checking in every seven years) somewhat anti-climactic.  After all, we’ve been waiting 7 years for this one!  The only real surprise is that Peter returns after being absent since 28 Up.  Of course, everyone does look older and their kids have grown up.  Some have been affected by the global economic crisis and the UK’s response.  A few comment on the ways that they’ve been portrayed in previous episodes and their response to the public’s response (basically, no one feels that they’ve been accurately portrayed as whole human beings).  A few people challenge the idea of economic determinism that guided the original program’s design (although it feels fairly apparent that SES status does affect opportunities in this small sample).  As always, the really impressive thing about this series is the way that it gets you to think about your own life and your particular developmental trajectory and the societal changes that impact on it.  So, where was I in 1974, 1981, 1988, 1995, 2002, and 2009? Turns out that that could be some very interesting television.  I bet it is the same for you.  I wonder if we will see the same continuity present if and when the series returns in 2019.

David Holzman’s Diary (1967)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

David Holzman’s Diary (1967) – J. McBride

Like a shot in the arm, this pseudo-cinema-verite experimental film from director Jim McBride is exhilerating and refreshing about the possibilities of the form.  The set-up is this:  David Holzman is confused about his life’s meaning and decides to record everything on film (not video, this is 1967) so he can rewatch it and work things out.  However, his girlfriend Penny is not so keen on this process.  Tackling all sorts of themes but primarily voyeurism (as you might suspect) and laced with a sly sense of humor, McBride and stand-in Kit Carson show us New York City life and some real characters.  For me, having been born in NYC in 1967, there’s an added relevance, but for all cinema devotees, it is great to see the various experiments with sound and vision (including a montage of every shot on a TV screen during one evening – with Star Trek prominent) and the various pokes in the eye that McBride offers up as he weaves together fiction and reality and experimentation (hello Kiarostami!).