I have decided that as a New Year’s Resolution it is time to reinstate the Monday Movie Review. A few people were actually sad to see it go. A few never knew about it but wished I said more about the gazillion movies I see. I kind of miss it. Not the endless time it seems to take to write the reviews, since, yeah, I see a gazillion movies and it takes a gazillion hours to write a gazillion reviews. Still, it is good to get my thoughts out. And if people read them, hell, I’m doing a public service. It’s really more for me though. Sorry.

Anyway, I’ve decided to implement a new ratings system for those people who actually do read these things. My letter grades are entirely subjective, based entirely on my expectations on the movie I’m about to see and whether or not the movie lived up to those expectations. Actual quality of the film is then related to the grade. To simplify this explanation, uh, even I don’t really know what the hell they mean.

I could do the old “thumbs up, thumbs down” thing, but not only will that not say what I want to say, but I think that Ebert has all that copyrighted anyway. So here is my rating system, geared towards the people who are trying to make heads or tails of these maddening reviews:

(AVOID) : Short for Avoid at All Costs. I think this one says it all. If the guy who will see anything says there is a movie out there you should “Avoid at All Costs”, you best be saving your money. Don’t go see it. Don’t rent it. Don’t buy it. Hey, that’s what I’m here for.

(MISS) : The casual movie fan shouldn’t waste their time on this. There are so many good movies out in the world that you’ve got to be able to find something better to spend your time on. On the other hand, hardcore movie fans still might want to check this one out. But only if you still wanted to see it before I said something.

(SEE) : This is slightly different from the next rating. This is a movie I enjoyed, but not enough to heartily berate you for not having seen it yet. If you are into this type of movie, check it out. If not, well, there are other fish in the sea.

(MUST SEE) : I really fricken enjoyed this movie. And you should too. This is a well-made film well worth your time to go see it. So what are you waiting for? Go! Go!

(DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH) : This will be a rare grade I (hopefully) won’t give out much (hopefully in the sense that I hope I won’t go mad with power, not hopefully in that I hope I don’t see a lot of great movies). This is for that rare instance where a movie not only impresses you, but it far outreaches your expectations for it. This is for those, “holy shit, that movie was damn good” moments. As you can guess, these are the movies I talk about the most and the ones I feel you should see most of all.

With that said, let us see if I can actually keep up with the workload I’ve put upon myself. I’m hoping it won’t be that bad.

(January 1)

——Grizzly Man (2005)——

The first movie I decided to watch in 2006 was a doozy. I had heard great things about it during the year, but wasn’t all that into seeing it. I’m still not the biggest fan of the documentary. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love to learn new things, but how many times can you rewatch a documentary for entertainment? I saw a couple documentaries in 2005, a couple good ones at that, but I’m really not in a hurry to see them again any time soon. I only got this one because a friend really liked it and I needed something to put into my Amazon shopping cart the last week of December to qualify for free shipping (you starting to figure out my madness yet?)

I shouldn’t have doubted such a great filmmaker as Werner Herzog. Here’s the story: Timothy Treadwell spends 13 summers living unarmed with grizzly bears as their “protector”, getting closer to them than any human being should and taking footage of almost all of it, which he uses to make documentaries he shows at schools to teach kids about what grizzly bears are really like. Unsurprisingly, Timothy and his then girlfriend are eaten by a bear. Herzog takes an interest in the story, watches the hundreds of hours of footage, revisists the place where Timothy died, interviews the people who knew him and tells an amazing story not just about how he died, but on how how he lived might have led up to this death.

One of the really interesting things I loved about how Herzog directed the film was in how he presented the facts he uncovered. Most documentary films tend to have agendas, which the filmmaker then bends the story to. Herzog does all of the voice-overs, and at times gives us rather personal opinions on what he thinks of the story thus far. But what he skillfully then does is to spin the story right back to Timothy. Herzog may think one thing, but Timothy thinks another. The truth seems to lie somewhere in between. This technique forces us to come up with our own judgments and opinions. Was Timothy crazy for loving these bears so much? By the end of the movie I didn’t really know.

What’s truly startling about this film, though, is the footage Timothy shot himself. There is a certain cinema magic to some of it, while the other half will knot up your belly with tension. The foreshadowing of what is going to happen to him is evident throughout the whole movie, and even though Herzog opts to not actually play for us the audio recording of the bear attack, every time a bear comes close to Timothy or we see what one of them can do you see in your mind the worst for Timothy. It’s hypnotic. It’s mesmerizing. It’s great filmmaking.

(DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH)

——A Day at the Races (1937)——

This isn’t my favorite Marx Brothers movie by a long shot. Maybe I’m just tainted by the brilliance of the last Marx Brothers movie I saw before this, A Night at the Opera (1935), which I’m just about ready to name as the greatest of their films. But I didn’t think they were really at their peak with this one. The laughs were too few and far between. Which is not to say that there weren’t some great gags, because there were. My favorite involved Groucho repeating “Thank you” to a blonde he is wooing after every time she politely thanks him, mocking her high society manners. Harpo also had a really funny part where he breaks a piano through his poor skill at playing it after Chico has finished playing his piece, only for the main section of the piano fall apart and turn into a harp, which he then magnificently plays.

No, really the highlight of this film for me was actually Sam Wood’s direction (he, it also should be noted, directed a Night at the Opera). There are some great shots in the film, my two favorite sequences actually barely even involving the brothers. The first is the beautiful representation of the ballet midway through the film that the main characters are watching. The other is towards the end, where the black folk in a mildly racist sequence sing “colored” music outside of where the brothers are hiding. Hollywood might have given a slightly racist tint to the sequence, but that doesn’t mar Sam Wood’s magnificent handling of scene that seems to venerate the culture much more than it demeans it.

(SEE)

(January 2)

——The Innocents (1961)——

I had a hard time getting into this movie. The opening was pretty great. Black screen. Child singing a song. Singing continues over 20th Century Fox logo. Then we hear prayers from our main character, played by Deborah Kerr, over the main credits. The movie then went to shit for me for a while, because of some poor overacting by Kerr and the child actors. It isn’t until the last half-hour that the scares catch up with the camp and actually put us into a state of terror. That last half-hour really kicks some booty too. Definitely some great scares, great especially for fans of the creepy children possessed by dead people genre.

It was a little too little, too late for me though, unfortunately. Deborah Kerr really does ham it up. And after seeing Capote (2005) in the theater I had a little more hope for the script after I saw that he had a hand in writing it. The movie is competent, but not good enough for me, at least.

(MISS)

——Shoot the Piano Player (1960)——

Francois Truffaut’s follow-up to The 400 Blows (1959) wasn’t very well received when it first came out, probably because it was such a different experiment in cinema compared to his freshman triumph. 400 Blows is a very French film, whereas Shoot the Piano Player was Truffaut’s homage to American cinema, specifically the film noir genre, but also incorporating all sorts of different things. It’s actually quite good.

It might put you off at first, with its weird rambling narrative, but there comes a point in the story when you just get sucked in. No matter what point of the film that is, it almost definitely will be a scene that revolves around our interesting main character. Charlie the mild-mannered piano player is quite the different kind of noir hero. There are many times in the story where he wants to act and do the hero kind of thing, but more often than not he turns away from this opportunity for very human, if unromantic, reasons. He seems like a very realistic character, someone that is afraid of his own potential, much like most of us. The dimensions of his character come to us over time, most notably when his new girlfriend finds a poster from his previous life, where he had a wife and a career as a famous concert pianist, and we discover all sorts of things that completely change our opinion of him through this very extended flashback. And the ending, well, the ending is as tragic as it is beautiful as it is comic. A great film.

(MUST SEE)

(January 3)

——Brokeback Mountain (2005)——

This is that little gay cowboy movie that has been getting all of the hype lately. Indeed, when my sister and I saw it at the theater in Crossgates on a Tuesday matinee there was probably the biggest crowd there I have ever seen for the first showing of something in the middle of the week. The film didn’t disappoint. Ang Lee keeps the story tight and intimate, focusing on the quiet moments of this blossoming relationship between two men who insist they aren’t gay. And while it is hard to argue that their relationship isn’t of a gay nature, there is also something to be said about how things seem to lean more towards a kind of relationships the most intimate of two male friends can have, much like the homosexuality of the Ancient Greek. They love each other in ways their wives can’t understand. It’s a kind of male bonding (aside from the sex) most men worth their weight in testosterone won’t admit they’ve ever had. Ang Lee helps us understand it, but also keeps tragedy less than an arm’s length away. You’re drawn in, one with the story. And man, does it all look pretty while you wait for that inevitability to happen.

(SEE)

(January 4)

——Naked (1993)——

Criterion’s new amazing transfer of this film only improves on my impression of Naked, after first seeing it on crap VHS as part of my screenwriting class in college. Of course then we were focusing on the amazing writing of the film (we had read the screenplay before seeing the film), which still stands up as an incredible use of language, rhythm and wit to paint for the viewer an inspired and insightful study of each character. No matter how small the part, you feel like you’ve known that person for years. What wasn’t really known to me until I saw the new Criterion transfer was how impressive the direction was. The camera work does as much to tell the story as the writing does.

The story is about Johnny, a quick-witted, well read charmer alienated by his place in the England of the 1990’s. He builds relationships only to tear them apart through cruelty, usually towards women. While he is forced to accept the charity and kindness of others, something inside him won’t let others be above him, so he abuses or belittles them with a desperate need to be both a part of something, and against it. You are charmed by Johnny’s wit, but you never really love him as a protagonist. What follows though is an excellent film, which while uncomfortable to watch, ends up being extremely rewarding.

(MUST SEE)

(January 5)

——My Little Chickadee (1940)——

This W.C. Fields western/comedy starts out promising but is soon torpedoed by Mae West’s not-so-funny storyline. When she walks on the screen she definitely commands a presence (this was my first Mae West picture) but soon her lady of the world routine becomes just that, routine. I would have loved to have seen her pluck more comedy gold out of that persona, like in the first section of the film where she watches with bemusement as Indians attack the train and arrows fly right by her head, only to pick up the six-shooters of the fallen sheriff to kill every last Indian. The latter half of the movie revolves around a tepid love triangle she is caught in the middle of (she appears to be somewhere between aroused and bored during the whole thing) while it takes all Fields can do to act funny somewhere in the background. He gets in a few good laughs, but they are few and far between.

(MISS)

(January 6)

——Seven Men from Now (1956)——

This is a good (bordering awfully close on great) Western by John Wayne’s production company, about an ex-sheriff hunting down the seven men who robbed $20,000 from the freight station and in the process killed the teller. The teller just happened to be his wife, who got the job as teller after he lost his job as sheriff and wouldn’t humble himself to become deputy. During his quest he meets a pioneer couple, consisting of a softy husband and hottie wife, and a man he jailed as sheriff, played deliciously by Lee Marvin. Great acting and cinematography is hampered only by a script that doesn’t push itself hard enough (it reminded me of the very similar and much more fantastic The Bravados (1958), staring Gregory Peck). Still, it’s a fun ride, worth seeing for Western fans.

(SEE)

——Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)——

A very young Henry Ford stars with an older Claudette Colbert in this John Ford Technicolor take on surviving on the frontier during the Revolutionary War. Newlyweds Ford and Colbert just want to grow their crops and raise a family, but those darned Indians, led by the Torries and British, keep fucking things up. First Ford is off to war, then the whole community, as the Indians press their attack on the local fort. The movie was surprisingly dull with only a few brighter moments, the only great one being Ford’s monologue after coming back wounded from his first battle, a victory and massacre all at the same time. Ford’s dead eyes stare straight ahead as he pushes onward with his story, unfazed by Colbert hustling back and forth all around him trying to dress his wounds. After that, seeing the priest martial the troops just lacks punch.

(MISS)

(January 7)

——Big Bad Mama (1974)——

If you love tits and Depression era Bonnie and Clyde type violence, then this movie might be for you. A very hot Angie Dickinson plays Mama, the mother of two teenage girls who are so dumb and horny that Mama has to be constantly pulling them out of trouble, like when they both join a burlesque show, or when they both have group sex with one of Mama’s ex-boyfriends, only to have one of them get pregnant. Mama pulls more and more elaborate holdups to help out her girls so that, like in Gone with the Wind, “We’ll never be poor again.” It’s in those holdups that she meets Tom Skerritt and girly man William Shatner, sleeps with them, and all sorts of craziness unfolds. This is pure Roger Corman exploitation cinema, entertaining, but doesn’t really pull out all the punches that something like, say, Death Race 2000 does. There is no depth to this film, which is why I have to give it a:

(MISS)