What I'm Watching

The Hangover 

My daughter was surprised when I rented this one. It didn't seem like my kind of film, she said.  

Well, okay, I guess. [Feeling very old.] I mean, yeah, a lot of its humor is sexist and homophobic and a little bit racist. (The swishy Asian guy is both of the last two.) And I know I shouldn't endorse films that are all of those things because they only reinforce these attitudes in the younger generation at which such films are aimed. But sometimes you need to laugh at all those un-PC things even if you feel a little guilty for laughing at them. No need to go around clutching your pearls in indignation all the time.

So there were a lot of things I didn't like about it. But as for the things I did like: 

• Bradley Cooper is perfect as the kind of guy you hated in high school and college: the handsome douchebag. 
• It's great to see Ed Helms playing a different character from the clueless guys he played on "The Daily Show" and "The Office." 
• Zach Galifianakis brought an amazing sweetness to his role. 
• I love farce, and this one was beautifully paced, thanks to Todd Phillips' direction and Debra Neil-Fisher's editing. 
• They never did explain the chicken.
  

What I'm Watching

Star Trek

Now that's a movie. A smartly made movie, with an excellent cast of young actors who evoke the originals without undue mimicry or excessive tongue-in-cheek. J.J. Abrams knows that the original is camp, and he doesn't try to de-camp it -- he puts all the women crew members in those ridiculous minidress uniforms, for example. But he freshens it, too, with special effects that don't look too easy, that have rough edges, unlike a lot of the CGI stuff today. Compare the three most recent Star Wars movies, for example, in which everything has the lifelessness that comes from computerized effects. The extra on the making of the movie on the DVD shows the effort that went into using real locations and real sets, instead of green-screening everything.

What I'm Watching

Up

Like so many Pixar films, particularly WALL-E and Ratatouille, this one packs much of its charm and inventiveness in the beginning. The setup -- the life together of Carl and Ellie -- is enchantingly and touchingly done, and the initial scenes of the house escaping from the ground and soaring through the city are lovely. I particularly like the moment when the balloons cast their multicolored shadows on the walls of a room whose window it's passing. But when the story devolves into the usual hair's-breadth adventures, it feels a little routine. Still, I can't fault the imagination of writers Pete Docter, Bob Peterson and Thomas McCarthy, the voice work of Ed Asner, and the extraordinary animation.

What I'm Watching

Waltz With Bashir

When Ari Folman's film switches to live action at the very end, you can see clearly why he chose animation. It's not enough for a documentary to ... well, to document. With no sacrifice of truth, animation allows him to go places documentaries usually can't, not only into the midst of unfilmed battles, but also into the dreams of his interviewees -- the pursuing wild dogs, the giant nude woman swimming to the boat, the swimmers rising from the sea and walking onto the devastated beach. War, as Folman says in one of the DVD's interviews, is the creation of "men with small minds and big egos." Folman's ego, I dare say, is rather large, too, but he has created something more valuable.

What I'm Watching

Revolutionary Road

Sometimes it's hard to put your finger on exactly why a film doesn't work for you. Here's a well-acted, skillfully designed movie that doesn't make the impact it should, given all the talent on display. It seems disjointed, as if pieces of the plot and keys to the characters are missing. There's no faulting the performances. DiCaprio's boyishness is just right for Frank, who hasn't yet figured out what it is to be a man. And Winslet delivers April's comparative maturity with her accustomed brilliance. To its credit, the film doesn't devolve into a look-how-far-we've-come commentary on the fifties -- it doesn't put the era down, the way "Mad Men" sometimes condescends to the era in which it's set. Frank and April are acutely aware of the social and emotional limitations of the age in which they're living, but they haven't figured out how to rise above them. I'm currently reading the novel, which has all the depth and all the connective tissue that the film lacks, but more on that later. And all that said, one should be grateful for a movie that exhibits such raw power as this scene, which earned Michael Shannon an Oscar nomination:

What I'm Watching

My Neighbor Totoro

Now 21 years old, this Miyazaki film is enduringly fresh. It is brilliantly grounded in a real human story, that of the mother in hospital and the father struggling to raise their two daughters; the school-age Satsuki and the four-year-old Mei are beautifully contrasted characters. And then Miyazaki adds on the fantasy elements without sentimentalizing or sapping the force of either the real or the fantastic. As usual, the backgrounds are impossibly gorgeous. And unlike Kiki's Delivery Service or Howl's Moving Castle, the setting is recognizably Japanese, so there's less of an aura of Disneyfication. A small masterpiece.

What I'm Watching

Changeling

"True stories" are such a trap for a filmmaker, especially the "incredible but true" variety of stories like the one J. Michael Straczynski's screenplay tries to tell. Eventually any effort at a documentary-style film is going to get lost if you cast a superstar like Angelina Jolie, or even familiar faces like John Malkovich and Jeffrey Donovan. You stop believing in the characters and start evaluating their performances. Jolie is a good actress, but the makeup artist did her no service by making her plumped-up lips more emphatic with bright red lipstick -- she comes perilously close to being a caricature of herself. (If they ever, god forbid, remake Mommie Dearest, it's her turn to play Joan Crawford.) On the whole, Clint Eastwood's characteristic low-key touch works well with material like this, though I could have used a little less of his score, which only emphasizes the sentimental elements of the screenplay. And I wish he had reined in Jason Butler Harner, whose execution scene goes way over the top.

What I'm Watching

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Did Woody Allen find something new in himself by getting out of New York City? I haven't been a Woodyphile for many years, but this struck me as fresh and funny work. (I haven't seen the films he made in England.) Admittedly, it's the same old neuroses -- though incorporated in Rebecca Hall's Vicky instead an aging male worrywart. And there's nothing particularly new in playing off uptight Americans against volatile Europeans. But the handling of actors is masterly, especially Penélope Cruz, who deserved her Oscar. It's the best work by her I've seen outside of Almodóvar's films.

What I'm Watching

Kiki's Delivery Service
A charmer, more linear, less crowded with mysterious detail than other Miyazaki films such as Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. And hence, I guess, more suited for children -- although I certainly wouldn't want to deprive a kid of the wonders of the other films. I wonder, though, at the mittel-Europäisch detail of the streets and architecture of the city in the film (also found in Howl's Moving Castle for that matter), and the absence of Asian people in the crowds on the street. Why are Miyazaki's cities not identifiably Japanese? Is it the Disney influence, the feeling that a "storybook" film has to look like it was written by the Brothers Grimm?

What I'm Watching

Howl's Moving Castle
What is it about the Japanese imagination? I'm thinking not only about Hayao Miyazaki but also about Haruki Murakami, whose stories have that same random brilliance, that ability to take the story in unforeseen directions. Americans fret about coherence and continuity, about setting up gags and delivering the payoff, but there's something more free and unfettered about Miyazaki's narrative and visualizations. And the characters -- Howl, the Witch of the Waste, even Sophie -- have an unpredictability about them, an ambiguity in their motives and attitudes that would have been edited out of them in an American story conference.

What I'm Watching

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
This is what I call a "stunt film." It gets so caught up in its tricks that it forgets to be about anything. Granted, the tricks are good ones -- i.e., the aging/de-aging of Brad Pitt, and so on. But the premise of the film is merely a sterile conceit, and one that negates the emotions that it should have worked harder to elicit.