THE HELP – “What Went Wrong”

The Help – Tate Taylor, director, 2011

JOHN: The first half made me sick to my stomach. Even though I lived during the period depicted in the film, I didn’t know that the help in Southern homes were required to use separate bathrooms (of course I did know public facilities were segregated). What were people thinking. And the women dressed like mannequins, what was that all about (what would Freud have made of them and their treatment of women of a different color). We must never forget, even if it is difficult to watch.

GO, GO, GO (3 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: I agree about the beginning, but the second half of the movie turns this into a Lifetime Channel feature, with that soupy music and its pointing a finger at the especially contemptible women, which sort of lets the white audience off the hook. The “poop pie” is a nice ironic twist, but having the “Help” book be well received and the black maid going off at the end to be a writer like the white girl—all seem self-serving to make the early message more palatable for today’s viewers.

BARK (1 BARK out of 4)

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS – “Always Closing”

Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley, director, 2002

"And the third place prize in our contest is, you're fired!"

SPANKY: I loved the Reservoir Dogs previews on this old VHS (John, are we down to this; not a movie, not even a DVD, but a VHS cassette, for gods sake! What’s next? Reviewing old-time radio programs?)  And this film/play is actors being actors in a competition for their lives: both in terms of the characters’ jobs and the perfumers vying with each other for the audience’s attention.

MANHATTAN – “Rhapsody in Black & White”

Manhattan, Woody Allen, 1979

SPANKY: You probably remember the stark panarama shots of the New York skyline against a lush George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”  But wait. Looking at this movie with John all these years later, things aren’t quite what is remembered. The movie voice-over is of the central character writing a novel and several times reworking the first chapter–each version expressing a different emotion.

When the movie first came out

SCENT OF A WOMAN—“Who-Ha”

Scent of a Woman – Martin Brest, director, 1991

JOHN: Revisiting this classic, I was able to get beyond Pacino’s in-your-face theatrics and appreciate the movie’s plot structure and genuine, if not a bit corny, theme. At first it is hard to see what the blind, alcoholic, over-bearing retired army colonel and Chris O’Donnell, his weekend caretaker—a small town fish out of Eastern prep-school water—might have to offer each other, but eventually we do.

DRIVE – “Road Kill”

Drive – Nicolas Winding Refn, director, 2011

JOHN: There were noir themes worth exploring: the hero’s search for a father, loyalty to an attractive wife’s husband, saving a woman from evil, a man of honor walking the mean streets of LA and—best of all, from the opening sequence—the movies versus reality. Why this film chooses to not explore them is its real mystery.

DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK – “Dumb, dee, dumb, dumb!”

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – Troy Nixey, director, 2012

SPANKY: You hear people say, “Why don’t they make movies like they used to?” Then you see an old fashioned horror film like this one, and realize, you can’t get away with that for today’s audiences. Sure the acting is good, the special effects seamless, even the subtext (a young girl’s being bounced from her divorced mother to a father in a relationship with another woman) could prove interesting. The old mansion the father is restoring is rich in sinister mood, but instead of Turn of the Screw, we get screwed.

Exit Through The Gift Shop—“Punked”

Exit Through The Gift Shop,  Bansky, director, 2010 

JOHN: This is one of those maybe, maybe not film experiences. We are assaulted by street art (graffiti), then sold on a story of a guy documenting it on film who later becomes a graffiti maker himself ending up with a big show in Los Angeles, except… This legitimizing of his art is all a fake. The gallery is a fake, the movie is a fake. Anyone who thought they knew what was going on in the film, is a fake. This is certainly a film to argue about on the way home, even if you are driving by yourself. I can’t think of anything remotely like this, maybe The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. 

 GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of four) 

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS—“I Have Measured My Life in Woody Allen Films”

Midnight  In Paris – Woody Allen, writer/director, 2011

JOHN: The movie begins with a ten minute picture montage (with vintage jazz) of city scenes—morning, noon, rain, by the river, streets, intersections lit by streetlights at night. This is not Manhattan, but Paris. Paris today and the Paris of Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Dali, Gertrude Stein and Hemingway. And not only we, but Woody Allen has arrived. Oh, there were some unpleasant detours on the long journey—Stardust Memories, Interiors, Hollywood Ending. Self-conscious efforts to be serious, to be profound. But in the last few years there were also Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point.

Patricia Highsmith’s CRY OF THE OWL —“Why It Had to Go Wrong”

Cry of the Owl  –  Jamie Thraves, director, 2009

JOHN: I have read a lot of Highsmith’s books (including her Ripley novels) and including this one from about ten years ago. Hollywood has loved her things ever since Hitchcock’s Strangers on the Train, but I see a problem—not with the particular characters or plots—but rather in the difference between a book and a movie. This well executed, terrible movie is a perfect example. When I read her, I am the central character making, at first, very excusable choices that ultimately lead to a certain amorality. We are backed into a corner and hardly knew it was happening. “Thank God,” you say, “this was only a book.”

ANNIE HALL – “Breakthrough Movies”

ANNIE HALL, 1977

Director Woody Allen

JOHN: Given the state of modern films Spanky and I thought it might be interesting to look back over the last fifty years of movies and find some that were breakthroughs for directors, actors and/or audiences.

Before Annie Hall, Allen seemed to be caught between being a nerd among Playboy bunnies and a stand-up comedian popular with college intellectuals. But here there is more.