Midnight in Paris - 2011 - 3 Stars

Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Michael Fassbender

Director: Woody Allen

Midnight in Paris, the latest Woody Allen film, is about a Hollywood-screenwriter and Allen-surrogate played by Owen Wilson who has grand literary ambitions, but can't put them on paper. Wilson does a nice job of making the Allen-surrogate his own and provides his own unique gentile charm that is nice change of pace from the typical Woody characters. Like all late period Allen-surrogates Wilson has a gorgeous, shrew of a fiance, played by Rachel McAdams. McAdams is such a warm screen presence that she almost makes the character undetestable, but falls just short. Wilson travels around contemporary Paris with a rotating cast of his fiance, her parents and a pompous intellectual played perfectly by Michael Sheen. While some of the performances make this section of the film affable, the dialogue is very heavy handed, especially in a painful scene where Wilson brings up his father-in-law's support of the Tea Party.

One night while walking around Paris the clock strikes midnight and Wilson is transported into the 1920s where he is free to hobnob with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Luis Bunuel among others. Allen wisely avoids trying to explain any of the logistics behind the conceit; the film is a fantasy and creating strict rules would weigh down the film. If the fantasy above is one you have had before, you will love this movie, if not, you will still be mildly entertained. Once Wilson arrives in Paris, there are few surprises, he meets his heroes, gets to make 85 jokes where the punchline is predicated in historical irony and lives out the fantasy of being in "a golden era". The movie's climax is a "minor insight", so anyone expecting more than a trifle will be disappointed.

There is a scene in American Masters: Woody Allen where we see Woody rummaging through loose sheets of yellow legal pad on his bed, each piece of paper has a comedic premise like, "A man inherits all the magic tricks of a great magician". One quickly realizes that even a prolific worker like Woody will generate a lot more premises than actual movies. Woody ends this scene by saying "I'll spend an hour thinking of that and it'll go no place and i'll go onto the next one." Midnight in Paris is a charming daydream, but a minor movie; maybe Woody should have grabbed the next piece of paper from the pile.

California Split - 1974 - 4 1/2 Stars

Actors: George Segal and Elliot Gould

Director: Robert Altman

"Gambling is a disease, but it's the only disease where you can win lots of money!" - Norm Macdonald

There is a myth that people will like art about subjects they are experts about. I read a lot of Moneyball reviews that said "I loved it and I am not even a baseball fan!". For me those reviews missed the point because I disliked Moneyball and I am a baseball fan. My criticisms of the movie read like Bart Simpson's commentary on Aaahhh! Wilderness!, "The guys who wrote this show don't know squat. Itchy should have tied Scratchy's tongue with a taut-line hitch, not a sheet bend."

As someone who has spent a lot of time gambling and has had every gambling movie ever recommended to me; I tend to find gambling movies infuriating and as my expectations erode my pedantry remains fierce as ever. I decided to withhold my cynicism for California Split because of Altman's pedigree and fortunately my high expectations were met. The Hustler is the best movie about gambling I have seen, but California Split is the best gambling movie I have seen. The Hustler is about being cursed with a talent that forces you to live in a repugnant world; it didn't need to be about a gambler. California Split embraces the culture of gambling and gives a frank, non-judgmental portrayal of it that I haven't seen before.

Altman's films tend to deal with fringe characters; he casts non-traditional heroes and his overlapping dialogue makes the audience aware our heroes aren't the only people in the world. California Split uses both these techniques to great effect. George Segal and Elliot Gould are run of the mill recreational gambling addicts, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but regardless they are at the casino/fights/track on payday. They leave the grandstands as soon a race is finished, why stand around when you can get fresh bets in? I am so used to seeing Gould and Segal play elderly Jewish buffoons that I forgot how cool they once were; Gould's charm carries most of the film, which has a loose episodic structure, a wise choice that illustrates that most of the events of the film are run of the mill for our leads.

The loose structure allows Altman to show that gambling can actually be fun and gives the movie a lived in feel that accurately shows that when you live in a gambling culture any event, like a fight in the crowd during a boxing match, can bet bet on and every action from "Hit me!" to "I hope this gets her to sleep with me" is viewed as a gamble. Gambling is not the most tragic vice, but it is the most melancholy. Unlike other vices gambling is scalable; it's much easier to bet 10 times up as much, than smoke/drink/snort 10 times as much. Gambling's scalablity always creates a twinge of regret; even when one wins they wish they bet more or quit at their peak. California Split's strength is presenting gambling's melancholy insatiability in a film that make it seem so damn fun.

NB: I almost gave this 5 stars, but didn't want to kick off my blog with two 5 star reviews. I think California Split is a 4 star movie, but it deals with one of my favorite subjects in such a strong way that it's a 5 star movie for me. I decided to split the difference and give it 4 1/2. I hope Zombie Robert Altman will forgive me.

Certified Copy - 2010 - 5 Stars

Actors: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Spoilers Below - This is a movie that's plot is so light that it's almost impossible to talk about the movie without having seen it. Anyone reading this should trust me and see the movie immediately, it's on Netflix WI in Canada.

Certified Copy opens with William Shimell's character lecturing about his book, Certified Copy, which discusses replication and authenticity in art. Why is a counterfeit less valuable than an original? What is the difference between being inspired by someone and copying someone? These sorts of questions are constantly asked in visual art in exhibits like Sherrie Levine's "After Walker Evans". Personally I find those pieces of visual art to be smart-alecky and cold. At points Certified Copy feels like it might just be a formalist exercise, which can be intolerable over the course of a full length feature: once you understand the filmmaker's thesis you don't want to watch any more of the movie.

Fortunately CC is such a well executed film that it doesn't feel clever even though it is. This is my first Kiarostami film and he is an excellent technician, each shot is purposeful and showcases the themes of the movie, especially an early shot where the streets of Tuscany are reflected through the windshield of a car driven by Binoche. CC is so successful because the performances by Binoche and Shimell, the latter an opera singer who has never acted before brings the regal iciness one would expect from a British baritone, are so strong that you need to be made of stone to not emote during the film. As the film ends I thought to myself they are just people projected on a screen, why do you care what happens to them? Exactly.

Good News Everyone!

This blog is active again. My good friend at http://thewhat-have-you.blogspot.com/ made me realize that when you watch a lot of movies you tend to forget what you liked/disliked about them and creating a journal that captures your reaction to films is worthwhile.

I will be ranking films from 1-5 stars and will generally be reviewing whatever film I saw most recently, but occasionally digging back into my netflix queue to talk about movies i saw in the last year or two. Unfortunately the incredible TV allusion in the title of this blog is now useless; life is tough.

So you can get a general idea of my taste here are the movies with 5 stars of my netflix queue in no particular order.

La Pianiste (Haneke, 2002)

Monty Python's: Life of Brian (Jones, 1979)

Fitzcarraldo (Herzog,1982)

Toy Story 3 (Unkich, 2010)

The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)

Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)

Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993)

Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

Annie Hall (Allen, 1966)

The Incredibles (Bird, 2004)

Certified Copy (Kiarostamii, 2010)

The Wrestler (Aronofosky, 2008)

Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970)