"Accomplishments"
At home: Biopics are my least favorite film genre, but sometimes, they make a great one. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is right up my alley. It's funny, clever, heartfelt, and deals with a niche topic the lead character is ferociously passionate about. Hits all the right buttons for me. Mike Faist (Challengers) is would-be writer Roger Sharpe, and he's only ever been good at two things, grooming his giant moustache and playing pinball. But in New York and several other big cities, the machines have been categorized as gambling equipment and banned for decades (moustaches like that are legal though). Sharpe would weaponize his skills and knowledge of the game to eventually help overturn the laws, but this is also a love story, and perhaps MOSTLY a love story. Dennis Boutsikaris plays older Roger, sitting down for a documentary interview, and seemingly wasting the film maker's time by going back too far, focusing on his relationship to his potential future wife (Crystal Reed is someone to fall in love with whatever side of the screen you're on, what are ya waitin' for, Roger?), often cutting in and arguing with the movie tropes, plainly less interested in the thing he's best known for. The movie has a lot of fun setting things up comically, and you're well invested by the time you get to the more dramatic third act. And you'll probably learn something about pinball, too.
Robert Altman is a master at juggling a large cast in a particular setting and A Wedding (or its reception, at least) is a "place" where a lot of competing plots can vie for attention. Really depends what table you're sat at. In this case, it's a high society wedding where things go comically awry - the sick matriarch decides to die just before the reception, possibly out of spite; the wrong person is pregnant; affairs, both ongoing and new, bubble over; and various secrets come to light. A stingier director might have saved some of these subplots to hang a whole movie on, but not Altman, and there are hidden films inside A Wedding you can only really imagine. The two family crises, one triggered by death, the other by Mia Farrow as chaos agent, are the two thrusts of the film, with Carol Burnett's brush with infidelity as a strong (and most memorable) third prong, but what's happening with Geraldine Chaplin's wedding planner? What's Lauren Hutton's deal? Or Pam Dawber's? Who wouldn't want to see a whole film about the two bodyguards? Or the handsy doctor get his comeuppance? Heck, the uncredited extras at this wedding is a murderer's row of talent before they were stars, including John Malkovich, George Wendt, Joan Allen, Laurie Metcalf and Gary Sinise, all chasing their first credit. But in hindsight, they were probably having their own adventures during the reception. While I don't think A Wedding is Altman's best, it's still a great example of his controlled chaos, and you're sure to find at least a couple threads you want to follow in there.
I love Éric Rohmer's strong young women (the most famous of which is Pauline à la Plage) and Béatrice Romand in Le Beau Mariage (A Good Marriage) fits that bill. She's been playing teenagers for Rohmer since Claire's Knee, so it's kind of strange to see her looking much the same (despite her 30 years) as a promiscuous 25-year-old (Sabine) who up and decides she's done with short-term trysts and affairs with married men - she's going to get married. And then sets her sights on the first eligible bachelor she's introduced to by her best friend, a rather ambivalent figure of Edmond (André Dussollier), who keeps mum until the end of the film when his feelings are finally explored through Rohmer's usual conversational style. Did Sabine have it right, or is she just particularly adept at convincing herself of things? A rather fun comedy about needing two to tango, and perhaps it's a minor point, but I really like its electro-pop theme.
There are elements in Rohmer's Full Moon in Paris that echo Le Beau Mariage so much that I'd believe the lead of one or the other is dreaming the other film. Here, it's Pascale Ogier as Louise, in a live-in relationship with a possessive man in the suburbs. She decides to spend weekends at her own apartment in the city to live the life she's missing - going out, flirting with alternative lovers, all the things that cause rows in her relationship - but is this space healthy or does it breed new jealousies? While an interesting character piece, this isn't my favorite Rohmer. For one thing, its urban setting is incredibly drab, perhaps by design, compared to the more charming environments of his best-known films. They often have a "stolen season" aspect to them, a bubble about to pop where characters have to make something happen. Here, Louise is discovering that you can't steal a season yourself, you can't create a second life without it draining the first. But the real problem for me is that it seems rather predictable once you've read the proverb that serves as epigram. Still good, but it had a harder time keeping my interest than usual.
Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women stars Charles Denner as a modern Casanova (of sorts) who has just died, and dozens of women, perhaps lovingly, descend on his funeral, sparking a Proustian structure that eventually explains itself - flashbacks within flashbacks - before returning to this point and some of the best final words in any film. Denner's Betrand Morane is an ambivalent figure that some will find unsympathetic because his pursuit of certain women in the film is dated, "Playbook"-style trickery, others (and I could myself in that number) will have warmer feelings towards him because he's nevertheless a sincere, weirdly guileless sort. He's a love addict who's greatest sin is falling in and out of love at the sight of an exposed ankle, and it all seems quite beyond his control. And yet, he never forces himself on anyone, and the main thrust of the film is his writing a memoir that attempts to triangulate just why he is the way he is. The film is quite aware of the ambivalence - reactions to his book are mirrors of the audience's - but it's ultimately a loving portrayal, and I let myself be taken on a journey that flows in the opposite direction to my own relationship history.
There's something entrancing about the comedy-drama subgenre that involves a bunch of friends going on vacation or some retreat (The Big Chill subgenre), and I felt entranced by Little White Lies (Les Petits Mouchoirs), too. In no small part because of Marion Cotillard's complex and movie performance, but François Cluzet (Les Intouchables) is very funny as the timeshare owner who freaks out at the previous tenant's negligence. The twist, if we need one, is that one of the friend group has just been in a terrible traffic accident (a one-take wonder if I ever saw one), but they still go to the Southern France for their annual vacay while he's in intensive care. This proves a catalyst, an open wound that seems to push emotional situations to the brink - declarations of love, relationships dying or resurrecting, and in the absence of their group's usual clown, perhaps the need for others to step up and do the truth-telling. Some funny moments, some wrenching moments, and I was moved both ways. I know there's a sequel set years later, but it can't possibly be this good, so maybe it's better to just let things go here. A note about the very American soundtrack - what does director Guillaume Canet have against French music?
I've liked what I saw of Harriet Kemsley on British panel shows, so I was up for her pre-divorce stand-up, Woman Child, though I almost missed it because she doesn't resemble herself on the poster. Kemsley's 2023 show is a mile-a-second patter, largely relationship humor with the usual dose of "woman talks about sex disgracefully" one can expect from modern female comics, with very natural transitions between topics. It's very well constructed, and puts a lot of big name comedians to shame in terms of how packed it is. I've seen a lot of shows where the comic was just playing for time between bits, and if Kemsley used that rythm, the show would have been 90 minutes instead of 49. The energy may feel unpolished, but I think she leans into it on purpose to create a socially anxious (and dispraxic) stage persona that works for the material. People will ask me if I laughed, and I'll say, a couple of times, but don't go by me. Because of my background in improv, I'm not a big laugher - I just see the mechanics behind the joke-making too well, but I can say I appreciated those mechanics.
[1978] Jubilee: When it comes to art house political films, it's easy to feel divorced from the time period and political context of the place and time, and any film that requires a bit of reading to get that context is necessarily "dated". Derek Jarman's Jubilee, in which Queen Elizabeth the First is given an immersive vision or present-day Britain's punk/activist scene by occultist John Dee, is exactly the kind of movie I mean. Jarman has a certain disdain for punk, and paints it - and all anti-establishment movements - as just another fad that can be co-opted by Capitalism. Its punk artists are just copying their favorite pop stars, and are no more outlandish than the Elizabethans and their ruffled collars. Problem is, even though it's meant to be a critique of the anti-establishment, it does too good a job looking and feeling like it was made by an anti-establishment director, and though it's clear the queer rebels of the film are doomed to sell out by the end, it's takes a lot of angry performance art for us to get there and the message may be muddled. That said, I love Suzi Pinns's arrangements of Rule Britannia and Jerusalem, and there's a good Special Branch joke. It's just not enough to sit through again.
[1979] Rock'n'Roll High School: Inject some Airplane-style humor into a high school musical, and you've got a fun, anarchic flick that also acts as a Ramones concept concert. The band isn't just in it as the act everyone wants to see, but they eventually involve themselves in the action, and at least a dozen of their tracks are used on the soundtrack, often at length. It starts like Another Teen Movie and turns into American punk's answer to the Beatles's Help! P.J. Soles (Halloween) is the Ramones fan who wants to write for them, and Dey Young her demure best friend who crushes on the school's most boring overachiever, and both their ambitions intersect the Big Concert. That's if they can go after crossing the school's new fashy principal, Mary Woronov (and where she is, you know Paul Bartel can't be far behind - these guys are indie icons and I'm immediately on board when they show up in a movie). The humor is completely absurd, but go with it. The music is fun, so go with it. Clint Howard and Dick Miller are in it, too. Why haven't you gone with it yet?
Books: The Eighth Doctor has become apathetic as he hits the 1950s while on the "Slow Path" in Terrance Dicks's Endgame, a Cold War thriller featuring real-life spies of the era manipulating the amnesiac Doctor, and the manipulations of the Players (god-like beings who mess with world history and part of a trilogy by Dicks, this being the second chapter, but the last chronologically - we know he means to write the last as a Second Doctor story from a reference here). Despite the Doctor still being something of a blank slate, I was delighted by his starting to have flashes of memory evoking past adventures, and Dicks gives him the Third Doctor's martial arts to defend himself. His straightforward style provides globe-trotting action and a near-historical that recalls the First Doctor's adventures (I like that), but it often feels like it was written for television, with several repetitions, sometimes after a "commercial break". I can't really put this at Dicks's feet though, because in a thank you note to his editor Justin Richards, he says he delivered too thin a manuscript before having to leave the country (almost like his defecting characters), and Richards extending it to the proper format. But the quick pace hardly lets you feel the padding.
RPGs: In Torg Eternity this week... Still not synced to the Act structure, alas, but we had to start a little late, so there wasn't much of a chance we could "catch up". Half the night was spent in a giant battle in the Yucatan, which include a war blimp, dinosaurs, and zombies (well, gospogs)... That's kind of what Torg stands for. It might have lasted longer and been harder, but I think I rolled something like four Mishaps, like three of them when I was trying to soak damage. So the villain turned out to be a damp squib and his War Zeppelin never got to use its big anti-tank gun before it went down. The other half of the night was a Core Earth mission to an offshore oil platform off the Louisiana Coast as a hurricane bears down, and many more opportunities for non-combat stuff to balance the night. Of course - and I hadn't forgotten this - this group is filled with psycho killers and even when given a chance to parlay, well... I probably staged it wrong, but we'll see what happens to these unusual edeinos next time.
Best bits: The Super Wrestler grabs a raptor mount and charges into battle with it, flinging a dynamite stick at some shocktroopers before his beast takes a bite out of another. The War Zeppelin gets hit with the Cyber Apostate's lightning miracle, but it's actually the Aztec Demon Slayer who makes it crash with his magical blowgun darts! They're potent against all things armored like that blimp, and it starts to leak. A bit of hellfire later, and it explodes in a giant ball of flames right on the pyramid the PCs practically jumped off of, taking the zombies with it! Next Act, the Apostate blesses the Cajun tugboats just to put their minds at ease, not using any Miracle, mind you (so condescending!). And while the Realm Runner does all the mechanical stuff in the control room, the others run afoul of gun-totting edeinos hiding among the cargo crates. Then, a Drama card calls for a Setback, so a crane breaks in the violent winds and falls right down the line on the other PCs, which they manage to dodge, some barely.
Comments