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MOVIES: JULY
We like movies. And we try to watch a lot of them. In this space, we will tell you about old and new movies we've liked—and loved. For movies we've hated, you'll have to read our diaries.
The Hoax (2006).
Directed by Lasse Hallström.
Not only do we detest the cutesy sentimentality of Pretty Woman, we draw a blank when trying to think of a memorable acting job by Richard Gere. (Not to be mean.) But as Clifford Irving, the literary con man in The Hoax, Gere shows a maturity and calm, and a playfulness, that, to our recollection, has so far eluded him in any other role. Irving, to remind you, was the fake who pretended to have collaborated with Howard Hughes on Hughes's autobiography. Gere's performance single-handedly gives this movie heft.
Bad Company (1972).
Directed by Robert Benton.
Starts off unpromisingly. In the first scene, young men are rounded up to fight for Union forces in the Civil War. Some of these conscripts attempted to disguise themselves in women's dresses. In the movie, the boys keep wearing the dresses long after they are caught—though they have on regular clothes underneath. Hollywood simply cannot resist a potent shot, like the one of the boys-in-dresses mournfully clutching the bars of a paddy-wagon. In real life, once the girlie disguises failed, the boys would have peeled them off—and fast.
Except for that misstep, though, this movie, about a naive group of young men headed for the wide-open West, is irresistible. A baby-faced Jeff Bridges, in playing a natural and approachable rascal, is already branding his easygoing acting style. His co-star, Barry Brown, is someone we don't recall seeing before, but his stiff, proper young man plays wonderfully against Bridges's earthiness. Director Benton, famous for writing Bonnie & Clyde and for directing Kramer vs. Kramer, deserves more credit for this pitch-perfect adventure story. Think Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer as young men, with a script by Charles Portis and Cormac McCarthy.
The Hit (1984).
Directed by Stephen Frears.
Movies about hit men, Hollywood's favorite anti-heroes, have become exaggerated bores. In striving maniacally to prop up this tiresome subject, Hollywood has lost not only its grip, but its mind. That's why we now get movies about husband-and-wife hit-men teams, movies about philosophers as hit men, movies about midgets, supermodels, and dogs as hit men, etc. It was only because a contrary mood overtook us—and a lingering interest in Director Frears—that we decided to take a chance on The Hit, a movie about, O Powerful Zeus spare us....
Because his wide interests make him hard to pin down (My Beautiful Laundrette, The Grifters, The Hi-Lo Country, Dangerous Liaisons), Frears is often thought of as a second-rate Every Man. But when he's on (see below), he's on like birthday candles. In this movie, John Hurt plays an Elite Hit Man out for revenge on Terence Stamp, a former Elite Hit Man who ratted out their mutual boss a few years earlier. Tim Roth plays Current Hit Man Hurt's overeager protégé.
You can almost touch the sparks that fly among Hurt, Stamp, and Roth, all clearly turned on by the excellent script. Hurt is like Frears in that, at his best, you wouldn't ask for anybody else. (We are still pining to revisit the 1979 PBS miniseries version of Crime and Punishment—we maintain a sharp memory of Hurt pulling off an authoritative Raskolnikov.) And then there is Stamp, who is relaxed and in utter command of his wry powers. Weeks after seeing The Hit, we couldn't stop thinking about Stamp's final scene in the movie—as unexpected and yet as believable a conclusion as we've ever seen. The potent dialogue and acting in this scene challenges us to guess how we ourselves, when all is said and done and promised, would behave in our last moments on Earth. We have our theories—and hopes—and pretenses—and then there is reality....
Prodigal Sons (2008).
A film by Kimberly Reed (Big Sky Film Productions, Inc.)
It's hard enough to face the parade of time and go to your high-school reunion, but imagine if you had left your small Montana hometown as "Paul" and were returning twenty years later as "Kim." Prodigal Sons opens with this bold premise, which seems ample enough material for a feature-length film, and then it takes some surprising turns (the title offers a clue of sorts) and becomes a sweeping family saga that spans the globe and uncovers disturbing secrets as well as some remarkable connections. Documentary film, at its best, inspires empathy with people we either would never meet or toward whom we wouldn't naturally incline. This film makes you 1) not only understand why someone would risk the physical and societal dangers involved in having a sex change but also wonder why more people don't do it; and 2) realize that some families have much more to deal with than a son's gender transformation. It helps that the filmmaker, Kimberly Reed, is warm and smart and utterly beguiling as she leads us through her family's sad and strange history, which gathers a Shakespearian momentum, and which could make even the stoniest among us weep. For more information, please visit: www.prodigalsonsfilm.com.
Trouble the Water (2008).
Directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (Zeitgeist Films).
Believe the hype—this film is Essential Viewing. Sure, a lot of big-hearted, compassionate folks went down to New Orleans after the storm to help and to document the chaos, but no one else stumbled upon the magnetic life force that is Kimberly Rivers Roberts, aka Black Kold Madina (pronounced as one word, no spaces), a confident twenty-four-year-old mother from the Ninth Ward, who knows a good hustle when she sees it raging toward her at 175 mph (her family didn't have "the wheels" to escape Katrina even if they wanted to). Her raw video footage combined with her decidedly unhysterical reporting on the street (where we get to experience the hood as it once was) and on her porch (as the wind starts howling around the shotgun houses) and from her attic (as the water engulfs the downstairs) and then finally as they escape (by means of a punching bag and a small boat) is precisely what we didn't get—and still haven't gotten—from the mainstream media outlets. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal masterfully pieced together Kimberly's humble footage with news clips (all the usual double-speaking suspects, such as Bush, Nagin, Fox News, etc.), a restrained and effective soundtrack, and their own footage from the aftermath—as Kimberly and her husband return home to a wasteland filled with death and try to figure out what they'll do next. Remarkably and without fanfare, this couple actually uses their experience to become better people and neighbors and citizens. Let's hope the local leaders—and anyone who has a hand in allocating state resources—watch the film and learn from their example. Kimberly's impromptu onscreen performance of her own rap song, "I'm Amazing," should win an award for best music video. For more information, please visit: www.troublethewaterfilm.com.
