Continuing October 2000. You can tell the Fall Movie Season has begun because the releases are all suddenly Thought-Provoking, from Name Auteurs, or premiered at Film Festivals. Well...among the usual blockbuster comedies and Halloween horrors, of course.
Bamboozled
release: October 6
dir/scr: Spike Lee
pr: Jon Kilik / Spike Lee
cin: Ellen Kuras
I remember Dave Chappelle said he left television because his 2003-2006 eponymous series, meant to satirize and comment on modern society, race relations, and stereotypes, was, he felt, being taken the wrong way, his example being that a white crew member laughed at a sketch using blackface in a way that, he felt, was not with the satire, but at the spectacle.
Three years prior, Spike Lee released this movie, about a frustrated Black television writer who decides to razz his white boss's desire for "authenticity" by presenting a variety show to be hosted by two young Black street performers ... in blackface, playing minstrel characters. It's offensive! It's tasteless! It's...a huge hit. Our creator tries to find the line between satire and selling out, his assistant tries to reconcile her shame with her ambition, and their two stars find themselves split between the comfort of success and the poverty of living and creating authentically. And, of course, there are complications involving a militant rap group willing to audition for the show but, upon being passed over for the gig, suddenly rededicate themselves to social justice terrorism; and there's the matter of the creator's past, his father a boozy comic of the old school, doing his own spin on stereotypes, sure, but for, to, and within his community.
That's just a summing-up of what happens, but you see all the balls Lee is juggling here. He's talking about representation in the media, he's talking about the necessity of code switching in white spheres (Damon Wayans, as our lead, puts on an insane, pretentious dialect), he's talking about the misuse of Black imagery in the media - the increasing "souvenirs" Wayans collects of mammies, sambos, lawn jockeys, etc.; the climactic montage of horrifying depictions of Black people in cartoons, Old Hollywood films, songs, etc. - and he's talking about the choices that Black entertainers like his leads, like Hattie McDaniel, like Mantan Moreland, like Stepin' Fetchit, like Sleep 'n' Eat, all had to make: do they make of a mockery of themselves and their community and their culture, or do they go to bed hungry? And even with the militant hip hop group the Mau Maus, he takes aim at the hypocrisy of those who would misuse radical and separatist rhetoric, not out of any deeply entrenched political feeling, but as a brand, a stage persona built on white expectations just as much as the minstrel show is - you know these kids aren't sincere because they don't target the white execs, they target the other Black people groping for work.
Does Lee succeed at juggling all this? Yeah, it's a pretty great movie! I think one's acceptance of the film hinges on (a) whether you can roll with Wayans' eccentric performance and accent, and (b) whether you find the violent finale "too much" - I don't, it's very much in the Network vein of human sacrifice as broad entertainment, in tune with the "viral" videos of the era, like the grizzly snuff videos of Rotten-dot-com and The Faces of Death video series, as well as those still to come, such as the 2002 execution of Daniel Pearl.
Dancer in the Dark
release: October 6
nominations: Best Original Song ("I've Seen It All")
dir: Lars Von Trier
pr: Vibeke Windeløv
scr: Lars Von Trier with Sjón Sigurdsson
cin: Robby Müller
Immigrant factory worker single mother with a degenerative eye disease escapes into musical fantasies.
Good songs, fine performances, haunting quality in the musical numbers, love the transitions into those, as Björk escapes her harsh reality by imagining the world around her as a (still down-to-earth, not lavish at all) musical. I will accept what appears to be the basic premise: America, the land of hope and opportunity, welcomes with open arms the cheap labor of immigrants and refugees, overworks them, drains them of their health and finances, and finally destroys them when they are no longer useful. I have more trouble accepting a character like Björk's exists or that, if she does, she is sympathetic. She keeps a friend's confidence, even when that friend betrays her, is killed, and she's charged with the murder; breaking the confidence could save her from the death penalty, but she clings to this principle because...why? Because it's better to make your son an orphan? It's silly. It is no use to be gentle as doves when you're not wise as serpents.
Get Carter
release: October 6
dir: Stephen Kay
pr: Mark Canton / Neil Canton / Elie Samaha
scr: David McKenna, from the novel Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis
cin: Mauro Fiore
Mob enforcer Jack Carter returns to Seattle to look into his brother's death.
Apparently, the twisty villain reveal did not happen until reshoots, after one character proved to be popular with test audiences. No wonder it feels like a last-minute decision! Don't mind the rest of it, does a solid job transferring the meanness of the original to the grime of modern America. I myself love the milieu of small-time organized crime, huge sacrifices and high stakes for such small potatoes. Decent. Edited and scored very poorly, calling to mind those ads for "Pure Moods", an odd fit for a gritty thriller.
Meet the Parents
release: October 6
nominations: Best Original Song ("A Fool in Love")
dir: Jay Roach
pr: Robert De Niro / Jay Roach / Jane Rosenthal / Nancy Tenenbaum
scr: Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg, story by Greg Glienna & Mary Ruth Clarke
cin: Peter James
A woman brings her boyfriend home to meet the parents for her sister's wedding weekend; things do not go well.
What a fun premise, setting up the conflict between a sensitive male nurse and his girlfriend's masculine former CIA father! Don't you love movies about men who love their grown-up daughters so much they hate every other man in their life? Isn't it hilarious when Greg's girlfriend sets him up to fail by signalling everything he does that she knows her dad will hate? Isn't it so relatable when he tells unnecessary fibs from the get-go, making it ever more difficult to bridge the already sizable gap of trust? Everyone openly mocks this guy - can you say awwwwwwwkwarrrrrrrrd? Humiliation as comedy, misanthropy as wit, a film for people who hate other people, but still find themselves obliged to marry and raise families. It's a charming cast, of course it's very often funny, it's just so sour, so false. Of course, it was a hit, Americans both uphold and despise the family unit.
Requiem for a Dream
release: October 6
nominations: Best Actress (Ellen Burstyn)
dir: Darren Aronofsky
pr: Eric Watson / Palmer West
scr: Hubert Selby Jr. and Darren Aronofsky, from the book by Selby
cin: Matthew Libatique
A young man, his girlfriend, his mother, and his best friend, all in the throes of addiction.
I refer to my Letterboxd:
"Harrowing and human, it does a great job showing how...dull an addict can be - and how addiction can start seemingly innocently, how it can be enabled unintentionally...or, rather, how certain addictions, or certain mindsets, are not openly discouraged by most people [here I was speaking of Ellen Burstyn's ppill addiction, encouraged because it's to lose weight for a television appearance]. I like how insanely beautiful the central quartet [Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans] are, getting away from the stereotype of the [hollowed-out] junkie lifer - it's early days yet for three of them, shockingly, with Burstyn speed-running hers in three seasons. I like the use of speed ramps and how [the] sets and cinematography create these dreamlike spaces, inconsistent in size and lighting, that reflect the gradually warped reality. I even like the barrage of cameo actor cameos that kind of unmoor things further - Dylan Baker appears just long enough for you to go, "Isn't that Dylan Baker?" but he doesn't even look up, so you're kind of at sea for a moment before remembering oh SHIT that's RIGHT the ARM! ...It's earnest and technically impressive and nothing rings false and it makes daring stylistic choices and yeah, this might just be a genuine masterpiece."
Yi Yi
release: October 6
dir/scr: Edward Yang
cin: Kai-Li Peng
A year with one family in Taipei.
I watched this movie July 18, 2000, hoping that having over a month with it would be enough to get my thoughts together, but so far all I've managed to consider is this: a sequence where the fmilay patiarch is the only one of his dying corporation to fully take in the Japanese businessman who may be their salvation communing with the birds, flapping his arms and cooing, a weirdo who, like our guy, sees a little more to the world than everyone else's immediacies. There's a sequence where this same patriarch visits Japan and has a night on the town - emotionally intense but physically innocent - with the love of his life, even though each have been wed to others for some time now, intercut with this man's daughter going on a date with her friend's ex-boyfriend, whom she has fallen for while delivering love letters between them - and I felt the joy of young love in both, felt the guilt of betrayal in both, felt that undefinable quality of the infinite, something we are only granted in cases of extreme joy, in both. There's a subplot where the grade-school son pursues photography as a way to show others the world as he sees it and is punished for it by a too-personal, vindictive teacher, and suddenly I was reminded of several such clashes in childhood and adulthood, personal pettiness weaponized to humiliate someone simply because. There are moments, and long interludes, of magic and frustration thoughout our lives, how does one movie see the whole of human experience so completely, so intimately?
Dr. T & the Women
release: October 13
dir: Robert Altman
pr: Robert Altman / James McLindon
scr: Anne Rapp
cin: Jan Kiesser
A Texas gynecologist juggles the women in his life.
The popular myth of Altman is that he was great and too daring in the 1970s, shruggably adapting off-Broadway plays in the 80s, came back in the early 90s, squandered it until Gosford Park, ended his career with a shrug (The Company), followed by a defying-the-odds, crowd-pleasing, career-summing capper (A Prairie Home Companion). Now, I for one have always felt Hollywood's greatest own maverick was under-appreciated, and his seemingly slighter efforts like Dr. T and the Women prove it, to me. Here is a study of a man in his community. He's a trustworthy gynecologist who women of all ages are willing to wait weeks of pushbacks for because he is the best: he isn't rapey, isn't creepy, compliments them sincerely, makes them feel heard and special when they come ot his clinic. And that is because Dr. T genuinely believes that, as he says, "every single woman...has got something special about her." He is a man who knows women from, excuse me, the inside out, and he still puts them on a pedestal - because he listens, he fancies that he understands them because he offers a sympathetic ear while examining their most intimate parts, and because he is a genuinely faithful husband who genuinely loves his wife and their two daughters and genuinely cares for his sister-in-law and nieces and genuinely, uh, cares.
Now, most summaries will focus on the fact that he has to juggle his one impending daughter's nuptials and secret lesbianism; his main assistant's crush on him; his over-full workload; his budding romance with a new golf pro at the country club (Helen Hunt's accent work is incredible, listen to her twang here and compare it to the Nevada one she uses in Pay It Forward and compare all that to her Manhattanite in What Women Want!); and then they also go, oh yeah, and his wife has a nervous breakdown. Like it's one of a number of things. This entire movie is about a man with little ot worry about suddenly finding himself at sea when the love of his life, his anchor, loses her mind, unmoors their world. She does not even recognize him as her husband, but as her brother. Her doctor, Lee Grant, says she's the victim of a new disease found among the privileged: she snapped because her life is too perfect. So now Richard Gere's doctor must try to be the good doctor, the good father, the attentive suitor, while in the back of his mind he knows that it's this very attentiveness, this very goodness, that may have destroyed his wife's life...and his, too. This is a story of a widower whose wife is alive, who can't fix things because the doctors, society, says it's unhealthy to care too much; but, too, he proves that while he doesn't subjugate or condescend to women, he still does not treat them as equals. Idolatry is not the same as equality, whatever excuse you make, you're still refusing to understand.
Ratcatcher
release: October 13
dir/scr: Lynne Ramsay
pr: Gavin Emerson
cin: Alwin H. Küchler
In the slums of Glasgow, a boy carries a dark secret while his family tries to keep its head above water.
I'm going to sound too dismissive of a movie many consider a masterpiece, but I thought it was repetitive and mostly dull, if occasionally interesting.
Bedazzled
release: October 20
dir: Harold Ramis
pr: Trevor Albert / Harold Ramis
scr: Larry Gelbart and Harold Ramis & Larry Tolan, from the 1967 film written by Peter Cook & Dudley Moore
cin: Bill Pope
A nebbish makes a deal with the Devil to get the girl he's attracted to.
Charming movie about temptation, and who better to lead you there than Elizabeth Hurley? Brendan Fraser manages to exude off-putting nerdiness while looking like Brendan Fraser, which should have been everyone's clue that he would win an Oscar one day. Questionable narrative and makeup choices aside (by which I mean the absolutely uncomfortable brownface and prosthetic noses in the sequence where everyone is Colombian), it's a fun, episodic flick, almost like one of those Monty Python sketch compilation films, with the loosest narrative holding it together. Never seen the original, can't compare it, just know this version did not upset me. It didn't wow me, but I didn't regret the time I spent.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
release: October 27
dir: Joe Berlinger
pr: Bill Carraro
scr: Dick Beebe and Joe Berlinger, from a mythos created by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez
cin: Nancy Schreiber
A Burkittsville tour group cashing in on the success of the Blair Witch legend becomes the center of supernatural occurrences and murder????
I remembered the TV spots for this, but more so, I remembered MAD TV doing a sketch of "overlooked original songs" for the Academy Awards in which they included "Theme from Book of Shadows" by Charlotte Church and Bob Dylan: "Book of shadows / let me open you," has been ringing in my head for two decades. I was satisfied to finally quiet the din by watching the purportedly shit film that inspired the sketch...and I got a standard horror film with interesting questions about its own existence. I didn't hate it! It's inconsistent in performances, filmmaking, and narrative, a result, no doubt, of the extensive reshoots. But I can't hate a cash-in to a low-bidget phenomenon that is about cashing in on a low-budget phenomenon and finding that there is no reward, only pain and guilt and mindless violence, your success only possible by strong-arming the competition and cannibalizing your own mythos. Director Berlinger may have objected to what the studio demanded, but I still sense the sneaky commentary.
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