Agent Smith, General Zod, and Leonard Shelby turn the conventions of the road movie upside down all across the Australian desert on a lavender bus in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Priscilla, of course, is the bus. The stars are Hugo Weaving (Smith), Terence Stamp (Zod),and Guy Pearce (Shelby) and they play a trio of drag queens who fix up an old bus in order to drive from Sydney to Alice Springs to perform their act at a casino theater run by Weaving’s lesbian wife.

Amazingly, the movie is even funnier than it sounds. For example, at one point they get lost on a shortcut out in the middle of nowhere–after all way back in 1993, when this movie was made, civilian GPS wasn’t available, was it?–and are rescued by a roving band of Aboriginals. To say thanks, they get out their full kit and perform. Then there is the late in life romance between Stamp and their auto mechanic, Bob. And I knew I’d seen the actor playing Bob before, Bill Hunter. Turns out he played Muriel’s sleazy politician father in that other 1994 Australian hit comedy, Muriel’s Wedding.

Acting is all about submerging the actor in the role and bringing the character to life, right? Well after seeing The Adventures of Priscilla, I have to say that Hugo Weaving is a terrific actor, just on the range of roles he’s pulled off. The drag queen here, Agent Smith in The Matrix, and Elrond (the Elven King) in Fellowship of the Ring. Someone needs to explain to me why he isn’t getting more big roles. Maybe after the Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions films come out next year he’ll get busy.

Heartily Recommended

Ethan and Joel Coen have made 10 movies together over the last 18 years, sharing writing, directing, and producing chores, even editing most of them under the screen name Roderick Jaynes. All of them, without exception, have been odd, outside the mainstream. Lots of visual quirks and extremely stylish cinematography. Most recently, The Man Who Wasn’t There and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the award-winning Fargo, the comic Raising Arizona. 1984’s Blood Simple was their first effort, written while Joel worked as an editor on Sam (Spider-Man) Raimi’s cult classic Evil Dead.

The story in Blood Simple is basic, mostly a framework on which to hang dialog and visuals, a cheating wife, a suspicious husband, a sleazy private eye, and the boyfriend. The story isn’t important and it mainly develops that people all too easily misunderstand based on assumptions they ought not have made. Frances McDormand, who married Joel Coen shortly after this film was made, is the cheating wife, very young, blonde and pretty, but with that unique combination of mouth and eyes that always seem older than she is. This was her first (credited) movie role though she has starred in many of the Coen films and won the Best Actress Oscar for her work in Fargo.

John Getz (yeah, I asked who he was too) gets his biggest part here as the boyfriend. Maybe its his gritty voice but in this film he shows a massive lack of emotional range, which works fine here but is probably less than advantageous in getting other parts. M. Emmet Walsh is the conniving, backstabbing private eye, a terrific character actor who’s made over 75 films in the last 30+ years. Dan Hedaya is the husband, another career character actor who mostly plays a sleaze; typical of his roles, on the comic side, was as Bette Midler’s ex-husband Morty in The First Wives Club. There are very few other roles in this movie, only a couple of which have lines, none of which matter.

Blood Simple can be viewed as the blueprint for almost all of the Coen brother films: tight, confusing plot with strong but (until lately) not big name actors playing odd, offbeat characters, lots of strong but often misdirecting visuals, and, whether comedy or drama, a nearly hallucinatory atmosphere.

Recommended

Because Friends is a successful TV show, the six stars get to make movies. David Schwimmer got to make The Pallbearer and somehow convinced not only Gwynneth Paltrow but also Barbara Hershey and Carol Kane to sign on. He gets to sleep with Gwynneth and Barbara. And while he’s still living at home with Mommy and unable to get a job yet. I mean, can you imagine a schlub like Schwimmer sleeping with such women? I can’t but that’s the magic of Hollywood I guess. Do I have to say it?

Not recommended

1988 Australia, a drunken backup singer finds herself unemployed and stranded in a backwater town where she runs across her daughter in Gillian Anderson’s High Tide. Judy Davis, who’s also done some work over here (last year she got an Emmy nomination for playing Judy Garland on Showtime), stars as the women who has to come to terms with her cowardice. Anderson has also directed some notable films–My Beautiful Career, Little Women, and last year’s Charlotte Gray–but this one doesn’t do much. The ending especially is a disappointment.

Not recommended

“You have a divine animal right to protect your own life and the life of your offspring.” Of course, a slutty waitress (played by Juliette Lewis) knows the philosophical laws of life, right? Anyway, Enough is a decent movie, especially for the female viewers–the women in the audience I saw it with applauded when J. Lo finally struck back. Given the epidemic of violence by idiotic (moronic) men against women in this country and others, I’m not at all surprised that this film was finally made and Jennifer Lopez was a good choice for the lead. Though I don’t get why so many people think she’s so sexy. Billy Campbell has no problem being the big, bad scary dude. And, yeah, once again we did not get into About a Boy.

Recommended.

About a Boy was sold out so we switched around the schedule and saw Insomnia instead. Make no mistake, this is an Al Pacino acting showcase. Hilary Swank is alright but has a fairly small role; Robin Williams’ part is bigger and he does a superb job, very understated and quite the opposite of his work in, for example, Death to Smoochy. But Pacino is the man here, in every scene, making every important move. His eyes, burdened with the weight of being awake, seem like they weigh half a ton by the end. Director Christopher Nolan (Memento) makes excellent use of the round the clock sunlight in Alaskan summers. And maybe it was just me but I thought the ending was ambiguous enough to give one some hope for Pacino’s detective.

Recommended

This was one of three landmark films Sidney Poitier made in 1967, along with In the Heat of the Night and To Sir, With Love, which changed Hollywood in sort of the same way that Jackie Robinson changed baseball. Not that he was the first black actor but he was the first black film star. This was also the last time Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn acted together, the last movie Tracy made before he passed away. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was a big box office hit and played straight into the changing attitudes of Americans at the time. No doubt about anybody’s character, though, with Hepburn and Tracy rich white San Francisco liberals, Poitier a world-famous philanthropist doctor, and Hepburn’s neice Katharine Houghton making her only major film appearance as the young, beautiful, willful daughter who brings him home.

The script does have some stilted dialog; the producers obviously had a message to deliver and weren’t worried about pushing it. The monsignor’s speeches and the scene were Hepburn fires her gallery manager are two good examples. One quibble: I know I was just a little kid and not too observant when this film was made but I know I don’t remember teenagers dancing around the suburban streets just because a radio was playing.

Stanley Kramer directed Guess with a strong touch, setting off the dramatics with comical scenes with Isabel Sanford (yes, she went on to move on up as Mrs. Jefferson), using strong, emotional colors to augment the tone. Every (major) character gets at least one significant monologue but Spencer Tracy’s speech, the film’s climax, is powerful yet understated, moving, and wonderful.

Recommended–duh!

I bet you never heard of this one either. But thanks to the magic of Tivo Suggests, I ended up with 1940’s The Earl of Chicago on my playlist and on a whim watched it. Robert Montgomery plays the title character, a Chicago mobster who becomes an English lord through an accident of birth, with a kind of Edward G. Robinson pseudo-impersonation and an odd little nervous laugh. Edward Arnold plays the lawyer who Montgomery framed and then befriends. Edmund Gwenn plays the perfect English butler. I thought this was a comedy, to be honest, until the ending.

Director Richard Thorpe, who started in mass-produced silent Westerns and went on to make some classics and some Elvis flicks, doesn’t do much in this movie at all but that’s not too surprising since Earl is one of three movies he directed in 1940. Lesser Samuels wrote the screenplay and he ought to get the blame, I suppose.

Not recommended

Heath Ledger goes a little over the top in this fictional biography called A Knight’s Tale. Gleefully filled with anachronisms, imagine one of the better teen flicks of recent years (such as Ledger’s own 10 Things I Hate About You) set eight or nine hundred years ago. The locals know the words to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and dance to Bowie’s “Golden Years.” The tournaments of knights go from town to town and lead up to a World Championship, sort of like a WWF without the scripting.

One of writer/director Brian Helgeland’s amusing creations is using Geoffrey Chaucer (yes, he of the Canterbury Tales) as a kind of PR flack/herald for Ledger’s character. Not to mention Chaucer (Paul Bettany) first appears to us nude after losing his clothes to a gambling addiction. Rufus Sewell is a very good baddie and Helgeland wisely makes no attempt to give him any redeeming qualities. Shannyn Sossamon makes her screen debut as the love interest and she is quite beautiful; not another generic blonde but also not too impressive in the, um, curves department.

The principals must have enjoyed working together quite a bit as Helgeland, Ledger, Sossamon, and Mark Addy (Ledger’s primary squire) have reteamed for The Sin Eater, a religious themed murder mystery due out later this year. Anyway, if you’re in the mood for something goofy, fluffy, and medieval, A Knight’s Tale is

recommended.

Back in 1979, when Apocalypse Now first came out, I saw it and loved it. Francis Ford Coppola made a masterpiece, simple as that. Saw it once straight and once, right in the front row, stoned out of our gourds. The beads of sweat standing out on Martin Sheen’s forehead in the cheap Hanoi hotel room. Robert Duvall walking on the beach without blinking while bullets and mortars whiz past. Laurence Fishburne, incredibly young, dancing on the patrol boat. Cynthia Wood, Colleen Camp, and Linda Carpenter as Playmates engulfed by the horny crowd.

The new version, retitled Apocalypse Now Redux, with an extra 50 minutes edited in started playing on Showtime so we watched it last night. Or tried to but fell asleep. The extra scenes were alright in themselves but they did nothing for the movie. Just stretched out Sheen’s river trip and delayed the riveting encounter with Brando. Why do directors always think longer is better?

not recommended