Film Review: “The Foot Fist Way”

As a film reviewer for public radio, I keep aware of what’s upcoming in the world of films. To a fault. I check out advanced previews on the www. I read reviews and updates on films in progress. I listen to the buzz about projects.

All said and done, it’s not a good thing.

Like any human, my perspective, my predisposition about a movie, is swayed. I am inclined to look forward to a film, and thus my review will be skewed by those expectations. If it doesn’t hold up as I had hoped, I’m likely to dismiss it more than if I hadn’t any advanced feelings. And vice versa.

Like I said, it’s not a good thing. But it’s human nature.

Which is why I crave those situations when I can see a flick about which I know nothing at all. Every once in awhile one will open that I haven’t even heard of. I cherish the moments. They’re like cinematic blind dates.

Such was the case with “The Foot Fist Way.”

Movies I Love, Part VII: Woodstock

The other night out to dinner with friends we got to talking about films that changed people’s lives. Obviously the discussion was fostered by the Idea Festival’s summer endeavor, a film festival showing a number of such films submitted by the public. The chosen movies to be culled from suggestions submitted.

One of our dinner gang mentioned “The Harder They Come” and “Gandhi.” He thought both flicks taught him the same lesson about perseverance in the face of oppression. Legit topics which can be discussed at another time. That’s not my purpose here.

Another mentioned “Woodstock.”

The suggestion resonated. Since hearing of the Idea Festival’s challenge I hadn’t really come up with any movie that I could say with any legitimacy changed my life. ( I do remember being fascinated with Red Skelton in “Excuse My Dust,” saw it any number of times. But, hey, I was only six. And I don’t think it changed my life.) But the mention of Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary of the seminal music festival in upstate New York the summer before struck a chord.

Movies I Love, Part VI: “Galaxy Quest”

I ran into my buddy Will Russell the other day at Heine Brothers.

You gotta love a guy who, along with a pal or two, turned obsession with the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski into a reasonably lucrative cottage industry. Annual festivals across the country, paraphernalia, a book for heavens’ sakes. Such Achievers, those boys.

So while we were each waiting for our actual coffee companions to arrive, we shot the shit. I asked if any actors from the film have actually showed up at any of these festivals. Yes, several. And Will explained as how Jeff Bridges, who played The Dude himself,posted at a festival in L A. Brought his band too. “Really nice guy,” advises Will.

Which conversation got me to thinking about these types of gatherings which attract myriads of obsessed aficionados from hither and yon. I guess the biggest cult of these sorts involves Star Trek. But, given that Lebowski Fests are centered on bowling and White Russians, they’re obvious looser and more fun.

The Best Film You’ve Never Seen

I thought I read the words of my title — The Best Film You’ve Never Seen — in a review somewhere of Romance & Cigarettes.

But, after watching this incredible and incredibly unique masterpiece on DVD which the Film Babe got from NetFlix, I went back and read the reviews where I thought I’d viewed the line. Ebert perhaps. Stephen Holden in the New York Times. Salon maybe.

But no. They weren’t there. Though those salient film observers all agreed with each other. And me. That this film never got a serious studio release, that you’ve probably never heard of it, is a major travesty.

Movies I Love, Part V: “Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”

Stanley Kubrick is not especially known for his sense of humor. In fact, his resume is replete with ponderous works delving into the BIG issues without much dimming perspective. All of which makes Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb more remarkable.

It is at once one of the great films ever made, one of the funniest comedies ever made, one of the most incisive political indictments ever made, a satire most incisive and one of the more visually compelling films ever made. Black and white has never been more resonant.

Movies I Love, Part IV: “Brazil”

In Brazil, Katherine Helmond plays Jonathan Pryce’s mother. In one of the more incisive (and insightful) running gags in the film, she gets more and more plastic surgery as the movie progresses. Until her face falls off. Literally.

While that isn’t really what this invigorating film is about, it does underscore the cockamamie brilliance of Terry Gilliam’s vision of the future. Which, truth be told, is now. And that whole time warp is also part of the trip.

Review of “I’m Not There”

Even having lived it, it’s hard to describe the genesis of the Bob Dylan mythos in a way that could explain such obsessive observations as Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There.

I first heard Dylan — literally — while hauling my foot locker down the hall as I entered my freshman dorm in the fall of ‘63. My dorm counselor in the next room had that first eponymous album on the box. Being young, impressionable, inclined toward rebellion, ready to break out of my prepster malaise, I grabbed hold of the guy who was to be the bard of my generation.

I wasn’t alone. Far from it.

Movies I Love, Part III: “The In-Laws”

Frankly I love everything about The In-Laws. (Do not be confused. I am most certainly talking about the 1979 original, not the deplorable, unnecessary, heretical remake of a year of so ago.) It is among a handful of my favorite flicks of all time.

As much as anything I love the hook behind the film. Alan Arkin and Peter Falk were/ are major buddies They simply wanted to make a movie where the premise would be that Falk annoys Arkin all the time. From that idea the cockamamie plot evolved.

Falk is Vince Ricardo, a renegade, appreciably off kilter CIA operative. He was, he says, part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Arkin is Sheldon Kornpett, a nebbish New York city dentist. Falk’s son is to marry Arkin’s daughter. They meet for the first time a couple of days before the wedding. Falk shows up at Arkin’s office and asks him a small favor. At which point the movie flies.

Movies I Love, Part II: “The Year of Living Dangerously”

One of the most intriguing characters in all of film is that of Billy Kwan in Peter Weir’s 1982 masterpiece, The Year of Living Dangerously.

The film is set in the turmoil of Sukarno’s Indonesia in the mid 1960’s. The dictator is trying to hang on, while the forces of change and poverty have turned the exotic locale into a tempest. Kwan is a photographer/ liason/ fixer. Kwan knows everybody from government officials to drivers to those mired in the poverty of the political regime. He is everywhere in his Hawaiian print shirts.

Movies I Love, Part I: “Diva”

One guy’s opinion is that the character Gorodish (Richard Bohringer) is the coolest guy in all of film. His self-stated satori is the “art of toast.” He lives in a way cool, sparely furnished Paris loft with a bathtub in the middle, plenty of room for his muse — fetching Vietnamese ingenue/ kleptomaniac Alba (Thuy An Luu) — to blithely rollerskate about. He spends his days in a state of sublime existential sangfroid, piecing together an oversized crossword puzzle of a crashing wave. Or waxing on about the art of cutting a baguette. When he steps out of self-contained serenity, he drives a classic cream Citroen. He has more than one, a necessity you will discover near the end of the movie.

Gorodish is but one of the reasons why the film Diva is the first in a new regular series here — called “Movies I Love.” –heralding older films I, uh, well, uh, love. And you might too.

Review of “Dan In Real Life,” “Darjeeling Limited” & “Moliere”

It is not often that a contemplation of a relatively run of the mill — if entertaining — romantic comedy comes with a caveat about family life. Extrapolating one’s extended family situation from a comparison to the Burns clan in “Dan In Real Life” is fraught with peril.

Single father of three girls, Steve Carell, visits with ma and pa and sis and brothers and their kids over the holidays. Of course the patriarchs live a bucolic seaside manse in Rhode Island. And the family idles away their days in good humor and without any appreciable dysfunction, competing on crossword puzzles, doing jazzercize, having talent shows and playing touch football.

Who do they think they are, the Kennedys?

Review Of “Into The Wild” & “Gone Baby Gone”

Who among us when we were in our early twenties didn’t have questions about life, society, our parents, their values? I certainly did, as did most of my compadres.

Christopher McCandless did too. He graduated from Emory in the early 90’s. At which point, his intelligence and bubbling resentment toward his oft-warring parents manifested itself. Rather than going to Harvard Law School, as he might have done, he set out on the highway looking for adventure. And solace. And understanding. And escape. He seemed in search of the answer to the Big Question, though he probably couldn’t articulate the query.