Y Tu Mamá También
I've seen parts of this before, but it's necessary to sit and watch this all at once, as it plays just like the sex it portrays: scattered, rough, fast, ruthless in its insinuations, cheap when it's lying, slow and deliberate when realization approaches. Careful to step away once the drunken, naked truth bares its teeth. Jerking back when it hits. Simply told and beautifully presented, just enough detail so you don't get flooded by backstory. An appropriately unsatisfying conclusion. Perhaps a simplistic and overtold storyline, but the telling makes it gorgeous.
Matilda
Cute, cute, cute and I'll say it again, cute. The cutest movie I've seen in a long time, but cute in a thoroughly enjoyable, never grating, never annoying sort of way. Roald Dahl's books are magic themselves, and this movie kept things to just the scale they needed to be to retain their brilliant simplicity. Wonderful children's movie that I never expected to like so much.
The Philadelphia Story
For a movie that's made many of my friends' top five lists, I was unimpressed. Oh, I got the flutters watching Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant all in one movie (I mean, come ON!), you realize just how charming and gorgeous Grant is and what an amazing comic actor Stewart was, but it was thin and undramatic, and I just didn't care. It's one of those movies I'm very happy I saw - it's an 'x' off the must-see list - but not one I'll watch repeatedly.
And one more just because I'm in the mood:
Chicago
I never thought I'd see a musical movie that improved upon its stage equivalent. I've always felt the show resembled one of its key songs, "Razzle Dazzle" - all flash, no substance, how-can-they-see-with-sequins-in-their-eyes type fare. I didn't care a whit about Roxie, less about Velma, and honestly didn't remember the song "Mr. Cellophane." I saw Bebe Neuwirth do the second act and thought she was fine, but that if I had to commit her to a movie I'd never watch it more than once - no one on earth can make me sit through a Lilith marathon, and Neuwirth, as wonderful and brazen a hussy she was in the show, never divorces the idiosyncratic Lilith from her routine. Ann Reinking was just...fine...when I saw the whole show. What I keep saying about the movie is that it's like they took the show, turned a key, and fixed it. It has a plot I care about, characters I'm interested in and that music never sounded better, for I can't fully appreciate good music in a lackluster show. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger may not have top-grade diva voices, but they really don't have to. The point isn't that Roxie and Velma are amazing singers, the point is that they are passable singers who draw crowds with their personas, who get by on what they did, not what they can do. It's no secret that in "I Just Can't Do It Alone," Velma's half-act is pretty lame. If they were great performers, they would be stars without having to kill someone to shine. Their talent simmers just enough so that when you add a murder, they start to boil - and I have absolutely no problem believing that all Zeta-Jones has to do is stand on a stage to attract a crowd. As for Zellweger, she's pretty enough if so skin-and-bones it makes me ill. The point is, they're believable, and you care. And that's what's missing from the stage show - that and a plot that ties right together. That one trumpet that opens the movie is enough to make me start bouncing in my seat - a lone trumpet blast wavering just like the blinking, broken neon sign that says "Chicago," just like the seedy, sexy era, just like Roxie and Velma with all their inadequacies, Velma's heels pounding the pavement. And when the "All That Jazz" performance was tied to Velma's murder, I threw up my hands and said, 'Oh my god, they fixed it.' And fixed it and fixed it and fixed it, because the movie just does not let up. "Razzle Dazzle" indeed - but this time, when the sequins shift and fall and die, there's plenty left to blind you. Just wonderful.
Leave a comment