A friend was kind enough to bring me some groceries and stayed to watch this wonderful Barbara Streisand musical, which somehow I’d never seen before. Hello, Dolly! is a delightful movie based on the Broadway play by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart.

Unlike many stage dramas and comedies, musicals often move well to film since they can take advantage of the broader canvas. In Dolly, for example, we can actually see Yonkers and the contrast between it and Manhattan, something much more difficult to do on stage. Even more vivid, perhaps, is the contrast between Vandergelder’s Feed and Hay Store, which has made Walter Mathau’s character a rich man, and the Harmonia Gardens restaurant, where Vandergelder is simply one among many. Many great songs, especially the number by the waiters at Harmonia Gardens before Dolly enters and then right away, the showcase title song when Streisand comes into the restaurant. We even get Louis Armstrong as the bandleader there, in his last screen performance, doing a verse and chorus with Streisand. Of course all ends well.

Another reason to love the web: listen to Streisand sing a Dolly medley on the Ed Sullivan Show.

recommended

David Duchovny and Minnie Driver star in this movie that could have been a great romantic comedy. Writer/director Bonnie Hunt, who also plays Driver’s best friend even though she looks too old for the role, is to blame for not realizing the potential of Return To Me. Maybe its the influence of marketing focus groups impinging on director’s creativity because there are too many examples when this film attempts to crossover into slapstick.

Maybe it’s because the role of Duchovny’s mirror is split between the David Alan Grier and Jim Belushi characters, Driver’s mirror (Hunt) is not strong enough in that regards, and the script throws in an extra mirror for the two stars as a couple in the characters played by Marianne Muellerleile and William Bronder. A mirror is a supporting character who’s action and dialog are intended to point out important facets of the lead characters. Sometimes the antagonist will be a mirror of the protagonist, as in, say Superman and Lex Luthor, and other times it will be a supporting character as in this movie. But if the director spreads the mirror aspect too widely, as in this movie, the audience isn’t able to appreciate it.

When Hunt keeps the film focused on the romance (and by the way, she takes too long to get there), it’s great. To use a baseball analogy, this film is like a long fly ball that the outfielder has to climb the wall to catch.

almost recommended but not quite

Creepy Keanu Reeves (an odd thing to say, I know) is playing a game with sad and sick James Spader, a very nasty game, in The Watcher. See Reeves is a serial killer of pretty young (loner) women and Spader is the FBI Agent who was assigned to the case when it originated in LA. When things went too far in one instance, Spader went over the edge and moved to Chicago. Reuperating, barely, he sees psychiatrist Marisa Tomei and somehow continues to be employed by the agency even though he isn’t capable of working. Reeves, though, misses his ‘brother’ and moves to Chicago as well; he gets Spader involved by Fedexing him photos of the girls and finally by offering him a day to find the women before Reeves acts.

The first film directed by Joe Charbanic, The Watcher is full of stylish touches and has decent pacing. One of the weirder choices is that whenever the film shows us Reeves’ point of view, it does so through a grainy, frames-missing filter. Nice use of characterization, foreshadowing and visual cues. I would have liked a stronger plot, though, because we never get a real sense of why Spader fell apart. Still, a good flick for a cold winter night.

recommended

Director Barry Levinson recaptures his comedic touch in Bandits, a story of love, money, and brotherhood. Levinson blew me away with his debut film Diner, which he wroted and directed, following up with a string of majors: The Natural, Tin Men, Good Morning, Vietnam, and Rainman. Then he turned to mostly dramatic movies in the ’90s: Avalon, Bugsy, Disclosure, Sleepers, Sphere (why was Levinson directing an SF flick?) and Liberty Heights, and he was trying, I suppose, to be a serious filmmaker but he’s best at comedy. Even in the ’90s he slipped in Wag the Dog.

Bandits gives us Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton as escaped convicts who go on a bank robbery spree and pick up neglected but housewife Cate Blanchett, who falls in love with both of them, along the way. There’s a surprising ending. But the film was just hilarious. Willis is great at these adult comedies (as in The Whole Nine Yards), Thornton is swell as the smart hypochondriac, and Blanchett is funny and totally radiant, bringing nice depth to her character as the relationship between the three evolves. The first shot of her, as she screws in a blue light bulb, is gorgeous, amazingly well-suited to her coloring.

Bobby Slayton, one of the funnier standups around today, does a nice supporting turn as the host of a true crime TV show, which Levinson uses as a framing device for the movie.

recommended

Are you up for a powerful, nasty, angry movie? Then see Training Day, because Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke blow up the screen in it. Aside from having Washington continually call Hawke the n-word and dog, director Antoine Fuqua makes this a movie of eyes, lots of massive closeups on the two leads as they talk. Fuqua also directed The Replacement Killers (Chow-Yun Fat) and Bait (Jamie Foxx), so he’s pretty much three for three with movies I enjoyed. Washington is always good and Hawke, well he was great in Dead Poets Society.

recommended