No Country for Good Movies

That's not true, of course; this country produces a few great movies. For instance, recently I praised the films Waitress and Stardust. And my wife and I watched Enchanted on DVD a couple of days ago and loved it. It's the story of a cartoon princess who falls into the real world and has to cope with New York while she waits for her prince to rescue her. It's Disney winking; what is superficially self-parody is actually a defense of fairy tales.

We also watched No Country for Old Men. Yes, the acting is great, though I thought Tommy Lee Jones's performance was the more memorable one. Artistically the film is amazing. But the story is terrible. The theme, if there is one, is that there are vicious, brutal people in the world who do vicious, brutal things -- and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Yet that's one of the movies that got the Oscar attention. I guess it's just not culturally sophisticated to praise movies with a decent theme or a bright spirit.

I'll take the fairy tales.

Stay Out of the Wild

I made the dreadful mistake of wasting 2.5 hours of my life watching the film Into the Wild. I didn't realize it's based on a true story. I thought I was renting a movie about an Alaskan adventure. No, no, no. If you're interested in watching the film, you might first read the story of Christopher McCandless, on whose life the film is based.

This bit from Wiki should give you some idea of what you're in for:

He was last seen alive by Jim Gallien, who gave him a ride from Fairbanks to the Stampede Trail. Gallien was concerned about "Alex", who had little gear and no experience in the Alaskan bush. Gallien tried to persuade Alex to defer his trip, and even offered to drive him to Anchorage to buy suitable equipment. McCandless refused all assistance except for a pair of rubber boots, two tuna melts, and a bag of corn chips.

The outcome is predictable.

Wiki also notes that McCandless "dreamed about leaving society for a Thoreau-like period of solitary contemplation." Well, he succeeded in leaving society, all right.

The movie is a contradiction. At one point, the film shows McCandless burning his money; the film cost around $15 million to make and cleared that amount at the U.S. box office. McCandless shuns technology, but the cinematography is fairly good.

I grant that the performances of Kristen Stewart and Hal Holbrook, who portray two of McCandless's friends, are quite good.

But basically this is a movie about a guy who kills himself with self-induced stupidity masked by left-wing platitudes.

Waitress, Stardust Best Movies of '07

I spent Oscar night watching good movies on video. I didn't even know the Oscars were on television until I happened to check the news online and notice that some winners had already been announced.

Out of the 24 Oscar winners, I've seen only four of the movies. Of those, I didn't particularly like Golden Compass, and Bourne won only for technical achievements. I quite liked Ratatouille (even though I've never understood why "animated feature" gets its own category, given that there are so few decent animated movies in a given year), and Elizabeth: The Golden Age was okay. The only other winner that I have a particular interest in seeing is Juno. I do want to see No Country for Old Men, and I might watch Once, though I've already marked There Will Be Blood off of my "maybe" list. I don't care how good the acting is if the movie is fundamentally grotesque.

So what did I do while happily ignoring the Oscars? My wife and I watched Feast of Love, which we enjoyed despite some serious problems with the writing (such as the use of a psychic as a plot device), and then we discovered a very fine film: American Pastime.

I'd never heard of this latter film till we saw a preview on another rental. Both my wife and I loved this movie. Okay, part of the plot is somewhat contrived; the interracial romance, the father who just doesn't understand his daughter, the competition among brothers, and the miracle sports comeback all felt a bit obvious. But I'd rather watch an old-fashioned, heartfelt story than a play of some miserable moral monster. Oscar can stuff it, as far as I'm concerned (though I've rarely been much of a fan, as my notes from 2006 and 2004 suggest.) At least Michael Moore didn't win, which surprised me.

American Pastime is about a baseball team formed in a Japanese-American internment camp. But it's about much more than that. It's mostly about a young man's struggle to deal with racism and injustice. The main character loves jazz and baseball, but his pending college education (on a baseball scholarship) is interrupted by the war and his forced relocation to the camp. Understandably, he feels bitter about this. He and his brother clash -- until his brother joins the Army to fight in Germany. And the young man finds a romantic interest in a girl who just happens to be the piano-playing daughter of the camp's main guard, who just happens to be the star player on the local baseball team. As I mentioned, this sounds like a story-telling setup, but the characters are well developed and believable. The main actors are quite good.

Looking back at 2007, two movies stand out for me. Neither received a single Oscar nomination.

Waitress is a spectacular movie. The Oscar group committed something approaching a moral sin by failing to recognize Adrienne Shelly for screenplay, Keri Russell for best actress, and Andy Griffith for best supporting actor. Waitress is among the great films of the decade, not just of 2007.

Russell plays a waitress (big surprise) who is also a spectacular baker of pies, which reflect her moods. She works at a pie shop owned by Griffith's character, and Griffith is absolutely superb as the grumpy but perceptive proprietor. He nimbly tightropes between a cynical demeanor and a compassionate heart. The problem is that the waitress is married to a complete jerk -- and she is pregnant. This is a love story, but not between the characters of Russell and romantic interest Nathan Fillion, but between the woman and her child. It is a beautiful, gorgeously written story.

Stardust is my other favorite film of the year. I've already briefly summarized it:

A young man, trying to win the heart of the local beauty, sees a falling star and pledges to fetch it in exchange for the girl's hand. But to retrieve the star, our hero must cross the wall that separates England from the magical world beyond. In that world, a fallen star is not a hunk of metal and ash -- it is a lovely young lady, in this case portrayed by Claire Danes. Our hero must learn to become a man, save the star, and figure out whom he loves.

This coming-of-age story is a fantasy for grownups. Forget about how silly it sounds to make a star into a girl: it works. And Robert De Niro as the tough-talking (but eccentric dressing) pirate is both hilarious and touching.

Both Waitress and Stardust are such fabulous movies that, of course, neither won even a single nomination from Oscar. (In neither film is a despicable son of a bitch the main character.) But who cares what Oscar thinks: both films earn an Ari.

Heath Ledger, 1979 - 2008

I was saddened to read of the death of Heath Ledger, who had become one of my favorite actors.

On the very day of the Oscar nominations being announced for 2007, the Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead in a Manhattan apartment. Born in Perth, in Western Australia, Heathcliff Andrew Ledger would have been 29 this April 4th. First reports of his death mentioned drugs in evidence, but no one really knows enough yet to say anything except how great the loss is. Ever since he played Mel Gibson's son in The Patriot (2000), it was apparent that his striking handsomeness went hand-in-hand with high ambitions as an actor, courage in the roles he took and a fierce intelligence. He is likely now to be known forever for his cowboy, Ennis, in Brokeback Mountain... At his death he had just finished playing the Joker in a new version of Batman - The Dark Knight - and that may reveal fresh sides to what was a developing career.

A year and a half ago, I wrote:

Previously I predicted that I wouldn't think much of Brokeback Mountain, the gay cowboy movie. What I did not anticipate was Heath Ledger's hauntingly sorrowful performance. Yes, the movie is beautifully directed and the rest of the cast is very good, but it is Ledger who makes it a memorable movie. I've always enjoyed Ledger's movies, but his performance in Brokeback is amazing. ...

An aside. It occurred to me that, if somebody wanted to spend a lot of money and make even more, they'd hire a competent writer to turn Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead into a full season of television (roughly 22 episodes each 45 minutes in length), then hire Ledger to play Howard Roark...

I also enjoyed Ledger's Casanova, even though the story of the movie spins a bit out of control.

The movie I've been most looking forward to is Dark Knight. Judging from the previews, Ledger's performance is stunning. I'm still looking forward to the movie, but now I'll have to watch it with more than an undercurrent of sorrow.

The Wendell Baker Story

I've been thinking about The Wendell Baker Story, off and on, since I saw it yesterday. That confirms my thoughts that the movie, which few people have heard of, might be worth a second glance. On the whole, it's not a spectacular film (it earned a 45 percent fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes), but it shows flashes of poignancy and heart. After a slow beginning, the film introduces older characters played by Kris Kristofferson, Harry Dean Stanton, and Seymour Cassel. The relationships among these characters, and between them and the lead character of Luke Wilson, give the comedy a soul of benevolent dignity. I especially enjoyed the performance of Kristofferson. Wilson wrote the screenplay, and his brothers Owen and Andrew join the project.

Take a moment to get your mind off of that movie, because, while I'm discussing movies, I thought I'd warn readers about a repulsive, disgusting film, Year of the Dog. I regard it, along with I Heart Huckabees and The Butterfly Effect, as the three worst, most nihilistic films I've ever seen.