Harold and Maude
I really enjoyed this. It's quite a difficult film to describe, though. But you know you're going to be in safe hands when the Harold character is filmed in a car, and there's the merest hint of curtain in the window. Only a few shots later do you see him drive off, and it's confirmed that he's driving a hearse. Which Maude fishtails outrageously through a few corners later in the film. If you think that's funny, you should watch this. And if you don't... Well. Maybe you'd better stick to eating egg sandwiches in front of ceefax.
This film is
good. I have no idea how or why it came about but that strangeness makes it enormously appealing.
Me and You and Everyone We Know
See, this film is written and directed by Miranda July. She stars in it as well. And, worst of all, she's a video installation artist. Oh dear, it is quite the rational thing to do to expect this to stink.
Bizarrely enough, it's actually quite
good, for a girl's film. I feel as if some insidious re-calibration of my internal aesthetic preferences might be going on. It's still fake, obviously (for instance, the shoe-guy, he's separated, but you never find out why he is), but it's moderately interesting and original too. There are kids and old people in it. And a goldfish, which was not harmed during the making of the movie.
It seems that you can't read a review of this film without someone calling it quirky. Call it twee, if you will, you should have guessed that from the poster. But quirky, well, that puzzles me, because what goes on in this picture clearly interacts, if only weakly, with the fucked-up world of real life. Compare this with Con Air, for instance. Nothing in Con Air would ever happen in real life. EVER. So I don't think Me and You and Everyone We Know is so terribly quirky after all.
Video installations in art galleries are still
shit though.
The Anniversary Party
Hitchcock said that actors are cattle. This film is directed by actors. It moos. There's only two things
really wrong with it. 1) the script, and 2) the direction. It's as if Jennifer Jason Leigh wanted to remake Peter's Friends, without the overwhelming comic genius of John Sessions.
There are serious reality issues throughout. Like, ok, how do you establish that a character is a novelist? Easy. Give him a brown jacket. Oh yeah. And I never realised that E's made you act like a constipated 30-something, shit, half of my friends must be on them
all the time. Also, the gayness of Alan Cumming's character is invisible to JJL, even when he thrusts it in her face by wearing a T-shirt with "BOY London" written on it. Memo to JJL: George Michael doesn't like ladies.
There's basic things in this film that JJL never even thought about, either. Like, the soundtrack. Can the characters hear it? Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. Often both in the same scene. People slag off pop-music directors but at least they can do that right. But she does like filming herself though. Bless.
My theory is that when you're making a film, and it starts going pear-shaped, the scriptwriter usually realises, but can't do anything about it. They are simply unable to cut the rope. And then they're unconsciously driven to insert a scene into the movie where a writer shakes his head over a blank page, while Barber's Adagio for Strings plays in the background. And what a surprise, you have just such a scene in this movie, with John C Reilly watching his videotapes, anguishing how he can't make them funny. Observe the relative paucity of scenes like this in the oeuvre of Kurosawa, and draw your own conclusions.
This film is
shit and my God don't they know it.
