Movies By Month: September 2011, part 1

The Producers:  1968 satire written and directed by Mel Brooks, and starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Dick Shawn.  Max Bialystock (Mostel) is a Broadway shyster, taking money from elderly women to fund his terrible plays.  Enter Leo Bloom (Wilder), the adorably neurotic accountant who points out that if one were to oversell shares on a total flop, one could make scads of money.  They go into business together, find the most offensive play they can, and Springtime For Hiter is born.  Of course things don’t quite work out they way they planned.  Shawn is hysterical as the hippie actor who plays Hitler.  And who doesn’t love Gene Wilder?

Reservation Road:  2007 drama directed by Terry George and starring Mark Ruffalo, Mira Sorvino, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jennifer Connelly (or Weepy McCriesallthetime, as I like to call her).  Dwight (Ruffalo) is a divorced dad trying to keep his life on track, he kills a boy his son’s age in a hit-and-run accident, and while he’s trying to figure out whether and how to come forward, he’s hired by the boy’s family to investigate the accident.  That was his fault.  Phoenix and Sadface are totally believable as the grieving parents, because these kinds of movies are all they do.  They’ve had practice.  As Phoenix becomes more obsessed with finding his son’s killer, my sympathies almost switched to feel bad for Ruffalo’s character.  The ending is fairly predictable.  It was decent, not great.

Apocalypto:  2006 epic action movie directed by Mel-freaking-Gibson, starring Rudy Youngblood, Raoul Trujillo, Dalia Hernandez, and Gerardo Taracena.  In a jungle in 16^th century Mesoamerica, Jaguar Paw’s village is attacked by Mayan raiders, his people are mostly wiped out and the few survivors are taken hostage.  His pregnant wife manages to avoid capture by sneaking down into a pit with their young son, but the rope she used to climb down is cut.  So he must try to escape, run back through the jungle to their destroyed village with his captors in hot pursuit, and rescue his family before they starve or she goes into labor.

Holy shit this movie is so good.  I’m dead serious.  Mel Gibson.  I can kind of understand why it wasn’t a bigger success?  Mel Gibson.  Plus, the target demographic for this kind of film is the beer pong set, and I don’t think they like subtitles.  But honestly, it’s one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen.  Mel Gibson.  It’s interesting, good pacing, and the visuals are stunning.

Dogfight:  1991 drama directed by Nancy Savoca and starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor.  Eddie Birdlace (Phoenix) and a few of his fellow Marines are on 24-hour leave before heading to Vietnam.  The plan is to attend a “dogfight,” the premise being they each show up with the ugliest date they can find, and whoever succeeds in bringing the ugliest wins a prize.  The dates, of course, are not aware of the wager.  Sounds nice, right?  Eddie stumbles across an awkward waitress at a coffee shop and convinces her to go with him.  After she figures out what’s going on, Eddie spends the rest of the night trying to make it up to her.  It’s a little too predictable, and they show so little of ‘Nam at the end that it would have been better to leave it to the imagination.  But it’s still cute, and Phoenix and Taylor are great.

Red White & Blue:  2010 thriller directed by Simon Rumley and starring Amanda Fuller, Noah Taylor, and Marc Senter.  I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how to describe this without giving anything away.  It’s a brilliant, fucking scary thriller; it’s totally messed up, and if you like thrillers and scary movies then you should absolutely see it.  Just be prepared:  the music is really intense, and within the first ten minutes you’ll see the main character sleep with five guys and take two I-hate-myself showers (there’s a point to it, it perfectly sets the tone of the movie and the character, trust me).  It’s violent, but not overly gory . . . well, you’re spared the moment of impact anyway.  Until the climax.  No one is a good guy. 

The Fall:  2006 adventure fantasy directed by Tarsem Singh and starring Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru.  Roy Walker (Pace) is a heartbroken stuntman convalescing in a Los Angeles area hospital in the 1920s, and he befriends a little girl named Alexandria (Untaru), a migrant worker who broke her arm picking oranges at a local farm.  Walker bribes Alexandria to procure him morphine so he can commit suicide (obviously she doesn’t realize what he wants the drugs for) by telling her a story of five heroes seeking revenge against the great villain Odious.  The film goes back and forth between the fantasy world and real life.  It’s absolutely gorgeous--think The Cell, which was also directed by Singh.  The dynamic between Pace and girl is excellent; their dialogue is ad libbed at times, and their interactions seem very natural.  It’s heartwarming and funny and sad and the ending is perfect and I want to watch it over and over.

Twelve O’Clock High:  1949 action movie directed by Henry King and starring Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill, and Mr. Gregory Peck.  It’s early in the days of America’s involvement in World War II (are you totally shocked that I watched this?), and the 918^th Heavy Bombardment Group is suffering heavy losses.  So Gregory Peck shows up to kick some ass.  He plays Brigadier General Frank Savage, who gets the boys in shape through discipline and orderliness and training and paperwork and long dramatic stares.  It’s pretty good.  See it if you like the Peck or WWII movies.

The Legend of 1900:  1998 drama directed by Guiseppe Tornatore and starring Tim Roth and Pruitt Taylor Vince.  1900 (Roth) is abandoned as a baby on an ocean liner, raised by workers in the boiler room, is recognized as a musical prodigy and joins the ship’s orchestra.  Max Tooney (Vince) is a trumpet player who befriends 1900 and tries to convince him to leave the ship and see the outside world.  It’s just OK.  There are some really good moments, just not enough of them to keep me interested.  There’s a showdown between 1900 and Jelly Roll Morton (played by Clarence Williams III), and that’s definitely worth looking up on Youtube.  OK, and I know this is a nitpicky thing, and he obviously can’t help it, but Vince has pathologic nystagmus, which causes his eyes to move back and forth involuntarily.  At high speeds.  Dude has a lot of close-ups in this movie.  It’s near seizure-inducing.  I feel bad, but I found it really distracting.