Category: Cinematically Speaking…

I’ve now run into about half the people I know on planet earth at screenings for the San Francisco International Film Festival. Suzan is volunteering this year which means I’ve procured a few tickets. And seen more than a few friends and acquaintences.

Just today, on my way out of a screening of the documentary Girl Hood, I ran into my buddies Jane and Doug. They had scored tickets to some Philip Seymour Hoffman movie whose name I’ve forgotten. Hence, they will both miss Monday Night at ‘Moklers, my monthly film evening and April’s feature film, Xanadu. Heckling is expected, which I plan to fill them in on.

By the way, if Girl Hood is passing through your town anytime soon, see it. This is a magnificant documentary about two teenagers passing through the juvenile justice system. Like Liz Garbus’s (my favorite kind of hero, a documentarian with a conscience) earlier film The Farm (about a Louisiana maximum security prison), it covers our creeking, failing justice system from the inside out, revealing just how empty promises of rehibilitation really are.

I just caught the trailer to Better Luck Tomorrow which opens in San Francisco today. Although I can’t see how it’s all that different than Boyz in the Hood (or worse, Billionaire Boys Club with Asian teenagers instead of bratty WASP twentysomethings), the ad still paints a compelling picture. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been too excited about what’s been in theaters lately. That’s not a tragedy since I spend the downtime with Netflix and whittling away at the AFI 400 (only 171 films to go) but nothing quite beats going to the theater, even a charming-as-an-airport-lounge cineplex like AMC 1000 Van Ness.

To the movies I go…

Another Oscar Night has come and gone. I mentioned earlier I wasn’t all that interested but Suzan insisted we watch together. I sat down and got sucked in.

I noticed this was the second year in a row the Best Picture winner was not the evening’s top story. Last year, the buzz was Halle Barry and Denzel Washington and African-American talent finally getting its due. There was also some stuff about September 11th, mostly bungled by Tom’s Cruise’s “Hooray for Hollywood” rotton egg of an opening speech and several more laid by the host Whoopi Goldberg.

Proceedings were again rather restrained this year, continuing a several year trend that has eased out fancy dance numbers and silly song and dance schtick by the host. The star wattage seemed positively dim as every third nominee was also a presenter. Richard Gere even presented Chicago, his own movie, as a Best Picture nominee. They couldn’t find one other star to read off a telepromter?

The highlights, for us at least, included Adrien Brody upsetting Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor. The Pianist, easily the best yet most depressing of the Best Picture Nominees, also brought home a Best Adapted Screenplay and a Best Director Oscar for Roman Polanski, who Hollywood effectively banished from the industry 25 years ago. Michael Moore amped up the anti-war sentiment of the evening by devoting his entire acceptance speech for Best Documentry to scolding the President. The audience, which gave him a standing ovation just seconds earlier, now started audibly booing. Huh? It’s Michael frick’n Moore. What did you expect him to do? Thank his agent?

So anyway Chicago won best people and nobody cared. It’s fun movie, creatively filmed, with some OK songs. In ten years, no one will remember Chicago, just as we are already starting to forget Driving Miss Daisy, The English Patient, and A Beautiful Mind, all movies that won Best Picture when vastly superior alternatives were nominated.

Panic Room (2002): If you buy a house with something called a “panic room”, you’ll end up inside it sooner than you think.

So the Oscar nominations have been announced and my buddy Dave pretty much nailed it. I’ve given up trying to guess these things long ago but stay fascinated with the piddling details of pagentry on the fridges of the awards.

Best example: The Academy always some third-tier has-been actor to announce the awards. I remember it was Laura-Flynn Boyle once and this year it was Marisa Tomei who won an Oscar an eternity ago for My Cousin Vinny and hasn’t done much of anything since.

Why this little bit of ceremony continue? Is it a way to offer someone pariciptation and then get out of inviting them to the show? Payback for some under-the-table Hollywood agreement? I’m baffled.

The Good Girl (2002): When you’re already dead inside, no one can revive you, although they’ll probably still try.

Catch Me If You Can (2002): It’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart but it’s probably better to be both.

Is it me or does the trailer for Quinten Tarantino’s new film Kill Bill look an ad for some martial arts soft drink?

By coincidence, soon after writing the last post, I viewed The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), a western about a group of cowboys who lynch three men accused of murder and cattle rustling only to later find out they were incident. Henry Fonda plays a taciturn drifter who gets swept into the posse then joins a group of objectors to the mob looking to punish someone, anyone. In the closing scene, Fonda reads a letter that the condemned man left to his wife. I reprint here verbeatim as a reminder of the times we are living in, in this country called America.

“A man just naturally can’t take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurtin’ everybody in the world, ’cause then he’s just not breaking one law but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody’s conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?”

My top ten films of the year. They’ll be posted at filmcritic.com at some point. Mind you, it’s only a list of what I’ve seen. I can’t speak to it otherwise. Okay? Here goes…

1. Sunshine State
2. Monsoon Wedding
3. Y Tu Mama Tambien
4. Far From Heaven
5. Bowling for Columbine
6. Frida
7. The Emperors Club
8. Minority Report
9. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
10. My Big Fat Greek Wedding