Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Stan4dSteph]

Has anyone seen Tell No One? I'm thinking of seeing it this weekend. It has a good rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Alex]

Nope, never even heard of it. But momentarily I thought you were talking about Nobody Knows, an uber depressing Japanese movie from a couple years ago.

Don't see that one unless you want to test your anti-depressants.

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by Stan4dSteph

Has anyone seen Tell No One?

Can't say if I did. Can't say if I didn't. Them's the rules!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Stan4dSteph

Has anyone seen Tell No One? I'm thinking of seeing it this weekend. It has a good rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

My parents did and really enjoyed it.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

We saw it. It was pretty good. Not, you know, the most brilliant movie ever. But a solid one.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Finally, finally saw Oliver Stone's JFK. Wow.

Whether you've seen it before or not, now's a good time to visit it. The film hasn't aged at all and makes points that are just as important today, if not more so. I wonder how I would have reacted to it in 1991, or 1996, or 2000, or 2003...but today I see it as an especially timely, dire warning about militarization.

[CoasterMatt]

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is still such an awesome film.

[Alex]

Weekend movie watching:

Vicky Cristina Barcelona - One of the worst movie titles ever (especially now that I know just how mundane it is). Woody Allen has been somewhat resurgent since moving to Europe and this one is more good than bad. Good: Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Rebecca Hall. Bad: Scarlett Johanssen and arch narration. The narration is not done by Allen, but it just felt like him overtly imposing himself on things since he isn't in the movie. Johanssen wan't bad bad, she just suffered in comparison and I think I would have preferred she and Hall switch roles.

Babylon A.D. - Finally went to check out the new-ish drive-in out in Concord, which is much closer than our regular trip to Sacramento. We kind of have a Vin Diesel thing going with drive-ins. We saw both The Fast and the Furious and XXX at the drive-in. This movie sucked, so a perfect drive-in experience. I don't know if this is based on a comic book or graphic novel or something but the movie seemed to assume, like the worst of the Harry Potter movies, that the audience would be coming in intimately aware of the story so it isn't necessary to make sense and everybody just fills in the blanks with their pre-knowledge.

Being Ron Jeremy - I have no idea how this ended up on my Netflix queue but I had an hour to kill yesterday so this 40-minute short killed (quite literally) that time. A Cinemax-after-dark level hard-R spoof of Being John Malkovich. Exactly the level of humor you'd expect to get if you had a bunch 13-year-olds make a porn-themed spoof. I was hoping it would be the stupid-immature fun of something like Orgazmo but it is not. Just stupid.

[€uroMeinke]

I had a mini-Bardot fest;

Love on a Pillow - dark tale of Bardot, a rich heiress befriending an alcoholic who takes her down a path of debauchery. Fun scenes of 1960's Paris and Florence, Decadent parties with artists, jazz musicians, and wonton sexuality. This would be a great pairing with Vadim's Dangerous Liaisons 1962.

Two Weeks in September - Bardot as a model married to an older man, has an affair while working in London, great London mod scenes, full of new wave (French cinema Nouvelle Vague) photoshoots.

Both great films to sip a cognac to - and made me see again the persistance of architecture. Loved seeing the big city scenes and recognizing the places despite the 60's styles and automobiles that overlay them.

[flippyshark]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Finally, finally saw Oliver Stone's JFK. Wow.

Whether you've seen it before or not, now's a good time to visit it. The film hasn't aged at all and makes points that are just as important today, if not more so. I wonder how I would have reacted to it in 1991, or 1996, or 2000, or 2003...but today I see it as an especially timely, dire warning about militarization.

I was mightily impressed with JFK on first viewing, but I regard it with a leery eye these days. For a movie that shakes such a big moral finger about truth, it sure is chock full of bullsh!t, albeit brilliantly directed and edited.

I'm not about to launch a defense of the Warren Report here. Like Bull Durham (another memorable Costner role), I do think Oswald acted alone, but that isn't the main reason I find JFK galling. Instead, I think it makes its biggest mistake in turning Jim Garrison into a hero, and I believe it wrongly vilifies Clay Shaw. (As did Garrison.)

I'm no expert. I read, and found convincing, a book called False Witness by Patricia Lambert. She tells a fascinating story (one that would make a great movie!) about a very different Garrison, an out-of-control maverick who would stop at nothing to get a conviction on Shaw, even after it should have been clear that Shaw was innocent, and Garrison was chasing shadows. This book portrays Shaw as a respected New Orleans shop owner who was participating (as were most other shop owners) in government security programs, but he was no agent or CIA operative, or anything like it. (He was also a fairly successful and well regarded playwright, and of course, a closeted homosexual, which fact is presented as something Garrison knew about and hated Shaw for.) The main idea is that the jury in Shaw's trial was quite correct in quickly finding him not guilty, but his life was ruined by the suspicion just the same. Garrison was widely regarded as something of a paranoid loony at the time, and his investigations (and subsequent books about them) were a terrible place for Oliver Stone to turn to as a basis for his film.

As I said, I found this book quite convincing. Even if the assasination was part of a conspiracy, it doesn't seem as if Garrison was anywhere near the right answer. Garrison did not present the Zapruder film in court, (most of his talking points about it were actually first published in LOOK magazine) and his very weak case hinged on testimony from some absurdly unreliable witnesses.

One of the most dramatic head-slappers in the book, for me, was the revelation of a photo that, in Stone's film, shows Clay Shaw cavorting in drag alongside his gay pals. The actual photo that inspired this bit in the movie is, first of all, nothing like that, (no one is in drag) and secondly, Shaw isn't even in the picture. It's somebody else. It miffs me a bit that Stone engages in unsubtle homophobia to make Shaw look worse. (And Tommy lee Jones performance is pretty insulting, in light of what I learned from Lambert's book.) The historical Shaw was reportedly a staunch democrat, and an ardent fan of John F. Kennedy. He also rubbed elbows with Tenessee Williams and other notables. To the extent that this is true, I really detest what Stone has done to him.

It is certainly possible that my faith in Lambert's reporting is misplaced, but as I said, I found it compelling and recommend it to anyone who holds Garrison in high regard only on the basis of the Kevin Costner character in Stone's movie. I have read a couple of articles defending Garrison and poo-pooing Lambert's book, but I did not find them persuasive. I am sure mileage will vary for others, and of course, I am just as susceptible to persuasion as anyone else.

But, anyway, conspiracy or no (and I am willing to entertain evidence about it), False Witness has made it impossible for me to watch JFK without getting really angry.

On the whole, I generally like Oliver Stone as a filmmaker, fwiw.