Style Wars: 1983 Tony Silver documentary about early hip hop culture in New York, with an emphasis on graffiti. It’s AWESOME. Silver interviewed both well-known and unknown kids in the graffiti community, bboys, taggers, gallery owners, bystanders, and Ed Koch. Even Crazy Legs is in it briefly—you may remember him from such films as Flashdance (he was one of Jennifer Beale’s doubles in the final scene) and Beat Street. One of the best tidbits is a scene featuring the anti-graffiti PSA called “Make Your Mark.” The clothing is fantastic, the music is great, and I learned a lot. For example, the difference between graffiti artists and taggers, which seems obvious to me now but I didn’t know before I watched this.
The Thin Blue Line: 1988 Errol Morris documentary about Randall Adams, a man erroneously convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in Texas. Errol Morris is a weird guy. I’m working my way through all of his movies, and so far I’m 50/50: loved Gates of Heaven, didn’t care for Vernon, Florida. I’m lukewarm on this one. The story is interesting, but the reenactments of the murder were overly stylized and a little strange. He does this a bit in Mr. Death as well, but it annoys me more in this movie. Nothing about what happens to Mr. Adams was very surprising to me, but maybe in the late ‘80s this was way more scandalous. It was just okay.
Bubble: 2007 “improvised thriller,” directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Debbie Doebereiner, Dustin James Ashley, and Misty Dawn Wilkins. Martha (Doebereiner) and Kyle (Ashley) are friends who work together at a doll factory in a small town along the Ohio River. When a new coworker (Wilkins) is found dead they try to piece together what happened to her.
Wonderfully subtle. Soderbergh used non-actors from the town the movie is based in, and they improvised the entire script based on an outline only. Maybe I liked it more because I knew this about the film before I watched it. But that’s totally risky, right? Ashley and Wilkins are okay, and believable especially if you grew up in an area like this. But Doebereiner is the highlight, by far. Her performance is brilliant, all things considered. I really liked it.
Match Point: 2005 Woody Allen dramatic thriller, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, and Emily Mortimer. Chris (Meyers) is a former tennis pro who befriends a wealthy family, marries the sister, Chloe (Mortimer), and falls in love with the brother’s fiancé, Nola (Johansson). Torrid affair ensues, and becomes more intense as Chris’s marriage becomes more dull; but when Nola pressures him to leave his wife he balks at the thought of giving up his cushy lifestyle. It was decent, not what I was expecting. Better than Scoop, not as good as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, if you’d like to compare Allen films featuring ScarJo set in Europe.
Transsiberian: 2008 thriller directed by Brad Anderson and starring Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Kate Mara, and Ben Kingsley. Harrelson and Mortimer play Jessie and Roy, an American couple on a little adventure through Siberia. Because doesn’t that sound like fun? On the train they befriend Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Mara), a globetrotting couple that you instantly know will be trouble. Suddenly people go missing, there’s an accidental death, and everyone’s being chased by Russian narcotics officers. It was SO GOOD. Nice to see Mortimer less buttoned-up, like that episode of 30 Rock when she drops accent and freaks out on Liz Lemon. Lots of twists and turns. Also, I might love Woody Harrelson now. See it.
The Human Stain: 2003 romantic thriller based on the Philip Roth novel, directed by Robert Benton and starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris. Coleman (Hopkins) just got fired from his position at a New England university after being accused of making racist remarks. So he starts sleeping with a woman who’s at least 30 years his junior (Kidman) and has a crazy ex-husband (Harris).
I didn’t like it, but not for the reasons I thought I wouldn’t like it. If that even makes sense. There’s a lot of jumping back and forth in time, which at first seems utterly pointless, and by the time I realized why learning all this crap about Coleman’s past is relevant I’d stopped caring. And there are no real links between the possibly-racist-but-look-what-happened-to-him-in-the-past storyline, and that of the affair with the younger woman. It’s like two separate movies that are both boring. There is an adorable little dance scene with Sinise and Hopkins, and Anna Deavere Smith (Nancy from The West Wing) has a small role; but those things weren’t enough to keep me interested.
Hoop Dreams: 1994 documentary directed by Steven James, that follows the high school basketball careers of two boys living in Chicago. Arthur Agee and William Gates are recruited from Cabrini Green and West Garfield Park, respectively, to attend St. Joseph High School in the suburbs, a predominantly white Catholic private high school with a very successful basketball program. The fortunes of the two boys wax and wane in opposition; as one does well the other starts to slip. It’s LONG, but worth the nearly 3-hour time commitment. It’s sad and funny and heartwarming and heart-wrenching and one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen.
The Last House on the Left: 1972 Wes Craven horror movie starring Sandra Cassel and a bunch of other people. Who cares. I had been under the impression that the Torture Porn subgenre of horror movies was a relatively new thing. This is incorrect. Apparently I’d forgotten about movies like I Spit on Your Grave and Deliverance. An innocent young girl and her friend are held captive, raped, tortured, and killed by a group of weird people with unfortunate hairstyles. This group ends up staying at the house of one of the girls they just killed, the parents discover the murder, revenge is carried out. Super super gorey, not at all my cup of tea.
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