This Week in Geek (5-11/11/23)

"Accomplishments"

In theaters: Sandra Hüller gives an amazing performance as a woman accused of murder in Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall, a film surely written with fans of True Crime podcasts in mind (though the case is a fiction). Looking at the husband's suspicious death from various angles, while keeping a necessary ambiguity throughout (no cheap "reveal" either way at the end), makes Anatomy absolutely engrossing from start to finish. It also reminds us that evidence can say what we want it to say in certain cases, and the film's "solution" is up to the audience. Anything put under a microscope out of context can distort reality until we're no longer sure what's true of not. Hüller plays a writer whose novels are just such a blend, adding a certain literary frisson to the affair. Most of the run time focuses on her trial, which made me realize that while I've seen many legal dramas, none of them have been set in contemporary France. As if imbued by the national character, a French trial is comparatively argumentative, with sarcastic lawyers hardly kept in check by the judge. The court itself feels cramped and claustrophobic, with the jury high up on the judge's bench. It's odd. The two main lawyers are excellent, with Antoine Reinartz, as prosecutor, a comic highlight (what a jerk!), but then everyone's good in this, from the young son to the dog. Immersive, thoughtful and touching, Anatomie d'une chute is a tour de force of story telling - never giving too much nor too little away.

At home: I watched the extended cut of Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical Almost Famous (some 35 minutes longer), and it on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it doesn't really feel like it's too long and it's hard to figure out what WASN'T in the original. This tribute to the rock'n'roll scene of the early 70s, using fictional band Stillwater as a composite group to hang other bands' stories on, has 15-year-old Crowe stand-in William Miller (Patrick Fugit) follow the group on tour to write an article for Rolling Stone while trying to avoid becoming friends with "the enemy". Fugit hits a ceiling when he's supposed to be angry, but he's very good at quieter emotional moments, and his wide-eyed, open-hearted observer persona is incredibly sympathetic. Other actors at the start of their careers here include Zooey Deschanel (not good), Jay Baruchel (amusing) and of course Kate Hudson, who go on to win an Academy Award and trade it for bad romcoms. She's lustrous as the band's super-groupie, but the people who steal the show for me are Billy Crudup whose rock god genius persona seems to be what he's recapturing on The Morning Show these days, and Frances McDormand as William's highly-educated but over-protective mom - she's hilarious and a force to be reckoned with. Almost Famous, in any edit, has a lot of memorable moments and obviously, a killer soundtrack, but it's sweet too. At the longer length, it's like living through a Behind the Music special and maybe the fabricated movie moments call more attention to themselves (like the plane crash scene), but I'm not complaining.

It's as true of its sexual politics as it is of its soundtrack to say American Pie is a time capsule of the late 90s. While the attitudes of the various teens (played by some of the period's hot young actors) is pretty retrograde by today's standards, my friend group was in its early 20s back then and their approach to sex was very much like this: competitive, crass, and pretty borderline in terms of what constituted consent. The four friends in the movie who make a pact to lose their virginity before graduation at least mention consent and by the end, have learned some lessons about some of worst behavior (as represented by Stiffler). Every generation has their teen sex comedy, so this may sound familiar to younger Superbad fans, or even younger fans of Booksmart (for older fans, I guess we have things like Animal House). American Pie is often dumb, but with four leads, it offers some variety as to the stories it can tell. AND it popularized the term Milf and gave the kids a new Mrs. Robinson in Stiffler's Mom. Unevolved though it sometimes is, it's still comes off as fairly harmless (which is a compliment, trust me).

Everyone returns for American PIe 2, taking place the summer after the characters' first year of college. They're still sex-starved, but simply popping their cherries has transitioned to experimentation, whether that's exploring (pretty tame) kink, or just getting technically better. So there's less of a thruline without the shared goal, and we're really just visiting with old friends. It's no Big Chill, but if you have any affection for the characters, it works. What doesn't is that its producers thought we needed more Stiffler. We did not. He's much too obnoxious to move from a supporting player to the front of the gang, no matter how often he's humiliated for his horndog schemes. Especially since a lot of that humiliation involves extended gay panic gags (pun not intended) and contrived slapstick situations. At least we get more Alyson Hannigan whose performance in the first film DOES support an expanded role here, and though a comedy character, she has more humanity than most of the cast. American Pie 2 is dumber than the original, but no less a time capsule for the summer of 2001 in terms of soundtrack and sexual politics around campus. As for the apple pie, blink and you'll miss it.

It's weird to think that Harold Ramis' Analyze This came out AFTER The Sopranos premiered that same year. What a strange coincidence (or example of studio espionage). Robert DeNiro is a mob boss whose panic attacks in the weeks leading up to a big (and dangerous) mob meet pushes him to get therapy from Biilly Crystal's hard-put-upon psychiatrist. Lisa Kudrow also stars as Crystal's fiancée, and Joe Viterelli is "Jelly", DeNiro's sympathetic goon. DeNiro is fairly amusing in the way he threatens everyone to get what he wants and is such a megalomaniac, he thinks he's cured at the end of every scene without having to do the work. He goes a bit over the top when he starts crying though, which is only slightly less believable than Crystal's big show-stopper where he acts like he's a mob guy at the meet (that's Crystal, not his character). Analyze This really needed some bigger laughs and tried to push it in those scenes. Ultimately likeable, it still seems to introduce elements without resolving them, like the whole thing between Crystal and HIS father. It's meant to mirror DeNiro's problems, but never really connects.

I love a good procedural, so why do I never speak of The Andromeda Strain in the same reverent tones I do other downbeat SF films of the 70s? I think part of it must be that what I like about procedurals is the window into a microverse where I don't understand everything the experts say, but it sounds true. I'm enraptured for however many hours in a world that is not my own, but is nevertheless satisfying. Andromeda, about a space virus that threatens humanity lest this one group of scientists figure out how to stop it has lots of tension and a few shocking moments (the dead town, whatever they did to that monkey with the Human Society apparently standing right there), but Michael Crichton isn't a writer I would go to for SCIENCE, so the whole enterprise comes off more as a dry Doctor Who plot (or by the look of it, Space: 1999) and progressively less interesting. Bob Wise may well propose that the film is derived from declassified documents, because it's often as dull as reading through those. I was ready to give it a better report though, at least until the anti-climactic ending, at which point I threw up my hands in surrender.

Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! A John Huston musical?! A lot of people will find it lacking because he's working well outside his genre, and well after his great classics, but Annie is a lot of fun and shows the kind of care one associates with a director of his reputation. Look at any production number in the film - and it really doesn't skimp on them, there's more singing than talking overall, and largely memorable - and you'll find lots of background gags and dancing tuned to comedy moments. The little girls doing big Broadway choreography is impressive too. Now of course, Annie is very much a kids' picture, with an engaging, spunky 10-year-old lead, a cute dog, and adult luminaries playing VERY broad caricatures. That doesn't bother me in a reality as heightened as a musical's, but what does is the weird political content peppered throughout. The movie keeps talking about Republicans and Democrats and Daddy Warbucks is, at least initially, a benign parody of a war profiteer, and I know some have levelled the criticism that the story's moral is that money (and therefore capitalism) solves everything. I don't think this is fair, since Annie (and Roosevelt) transform Warbucks into a philanthropist and money is shown to be the root of Hannigan and co.'s evil. It's just leaning into the Depression era's rags to riches fantasies, as per the movies of the era and of course, the Little Orphan Annie strip. At least, presumably. Maybe all this strange content was in the comic strip, I don't know. Regardless, where Annie fails, if it fails, is in the calibration of kid and adult moments (though you won't here me complain about Carol Burnett's performance of an unhinged horny drunk).

Thomas Vinterberg's Another Round (Druk, so if Swedish, literally Drunk; if in Danish, Binge Drinking) has a premise that, in some ways, feels like one of those 1950s B-movies', where some scientist experiments on himself. There's the elation of having it working until the consequences start happening. In this case, Mads Mikkelsen is a depressed history teacher who has become tedious in class and at home, until his friends convince him to try one famous thinker's contentions that man was born with an alcohol deficiency and therefore keeping a certain level up will make him a better, more adventurous, person. They all try it with various results, but it's Mikkelsen we care about - finding his mojo back, perhaps getting a shot a third act romance in his own marriage, while we fear the inevitable crash - social or physical - that comes with substance abuse. The film is surprisingly fair. Some people do better with a drink in them - this is no PSA - but the dangers are spelled out too, and buried in there is the notion that perhaps the characters only needed a bit of euphoria to get them back on course. Very original, I was fully, FULLY invested. Worth it ALONE for Mads dancing up a storm.

In Another Year, Mike Leigh sets up Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent as a contented older couple whose family home often receives guests, most of them pretty miserable, especially perennial third wheel Lesley Manville whose story this really is. She gives a poignant performance fuelled by a crushing loneliness, and we get the sense that her attraction to the couple's son is merely her wanting to be a part of this warm, cozy family. Over the course of four seasons (interestingly shot with different stock, though only the desaturated Winter called attention to itself), she shows up again and again, eventually testing her hosts' patience. Extremely relatable, as I grew up with a well-meaning mom who had friends with issues who used her as a refuge, and still see those dynamics in my more immediate circle. The happy couple has something others want, which can turn to desperation and threaten to destroy the friendships. Often funny, but mostly touching. But you're primed for it by Imelda Staunton's raw performance of one of Sheen's patients (she's a counsellor, professionally not just socially), who I wish had made a return at the end of the film, either better or worse.

The film that put OCD on the map, as far as the mainstream goes, As Good as It Gets has some well-drawn characters, strong dialog, and is generally well-put together Oscar bait. Which is to say, it's extremely manipulative. Jack Nicholson, who at this point seems to always play some version of the Joker, is an outspoken bigot the movie tries very hard to redeem in time for some romantic closure, but the truth is, the film is more interesting (and believable) when it's about some unusual friendships. I like Greg Kinnear's gay artist with Jack, and with the dog, and with Helen Hunt's strong-willed waitress, and I even like Jack with Hunt when he's not looking for love with her. But it all falls apart for me in the third act when the movie becomes a romcom. Forgiveness, and people's ability to change, yes, yes, I get it. But this seems like such a male fantasy of a film (like many before and after it), that you can spend your life barking abuse at people - and it's not all OCD or mental health related, he really is a mean a-hole - and yet still get the girl (one who has said no repeatedly at that). The clue is that the relationship has one of those egregious age gaps that male fantasy romances always seem to promote.

Depending on how close At First Sight hedges to the story it was inspired by, a lot of the film's weaknesses can probably be forgiven, but it's at its best as a romance between a burnt-out architect and a blind massage therapist. Mira Sorvino and Val Kilmer (who is blond only for a pun and not because it looks good on him) have natural chemistry and they seem like nice people. Her awkwardness is certainly endearing. Unfortunately, after 40 minutes it switches gears. There's this possible cure, see? And Sorvino's character becomes pretty insistent he give it a shot. And then we're into a recovery period where on the one hand, his lack of visual memory makes things difficult, and on the other, gives him sights of things he'd rather not see, like her more negative expressions. Of course, she wouldn't have them if not for the fact that he becomes rather dumb in the process. It's one thing not to know what things look like, and another not to have ever heard of them. At least, that's how it plays. If the actual person who had this procedure done had these experiences, then like I said, these things can be forgiven. But in a sentimental romance film, they seem a little too Hollywood to be real.

Americans have made very many World War I movies, but the British colonies, ah yes, we're there for it. Peter Weir's Gallipoli is Australia's big WWI opus, starring a young Mel Gibson who keeps losing important races, and Mark Lee, the actual main character, a country sprinter running to his fate in Turkey. It's interesting that the Australian military was sent to an arid battlefield - much, I suppose, as Canadians and Newfoundlanders were sent to miserably cold Northern Europe - but whether a Canuck, an Aussie, African or Indian, you can bet the Empire treated us as cannon fodder when their officers sipped tea on the beach. When the Colonies make war films, even if the Allies technically won the war, it's the story of a failure. Weir trades on young men's willingness to go on a big adventure so that he can better punch you in the gut in the third act. it's all fun and games, back home and in Egypt, until they make the crossing to the title region. After that, it's the terrible trenches and you're wondering why it matters whether the boys joined the infantry or the cavalry. But I suppose you don't waste horses the way you do men. Never forget.

By its third season, The Morning Show's stars aren't even on the Morning Show and forcing them back on there, or getting back to some of the ancillary cast that work on that program becomes more and more forced. It's become what it always threatened to - a glossy high-end soap. They've skipped ahead in time to after the pandemic, many fortunes have changed, but though real news events provide the background, it's now about who loves who, surviving further more scandals, and the kind of vague boardroom drama that used to feature in my mom's daytime soaps when I was growing up. The big arc of the season is a possible take-over of the network by a tech giant, and I'm still not sure how I feel about making John Hamm a handsome and smart stand-in for Elon Musk. Actually, I do know how I feel - edgy as hell. It makes me wince for all the reasons you can imagine, but it's one more departure into the realm of fantasy in a world where we're meant to explore real events. That the shows and networks are from an alternate universe is required, but when the world outside media starts looking like a distortion, verisimilitude starts to dissolve. Still fairly engaging drama, but it's gotten too far away from its original concept.