An Australian film from 1988, Rikky and Pete is a so-so tale of two grown siblings who flee their domineering father and an angry, semi-psychotic copper in Brisbane for the mining works far north in the Outback. The plot’s just whacked together, with bits and characters coming in and out without too much reasoning involved, and the sister (Nina Landis) keeps getting up onstage to sing. Overall it has a certain charm but that may just be my general enchantment with all things Aussie.

Watchable if nothing else is on the tube

Woody Allen made Bananas back in 1971 but the biting social commentary in it is as relevant today as then. Specifically I’m referring to the political humor and the way he puts his Fielding Melish character on trial for treason, with Miss America testifying that disagreeing with the President is wrong.

I’m a big Woody Allen fan, so take my opinion with a grain of salt if you’re not, but I think this is just a terrific movie. Look at it from one angle and you see a constant barrage of jokes as he barely let seconds go by without either visual, physical, or oral humor. The movie opens with Don Dunphy and Howard Cosell, popular at the time as boxing commentators for ABC’s Wide World of Sports, parodying themselves by doing the setup and play-by-play on the assasination of a banana republic dictator, and ending with the same two going ringside at the consummation of Melish’s wedding to Nancy (Louise Lasser), including post-coital interviews.

From the other side, Bananas is a movie with a really funny plot, that hangs together from start to finish with no obvious gaps in logic or motivation. One can see his thematic and visual styles begin to emerge in what is, after all, only the second film he made. He had a co-writer, Mickey Rose, and I’d be interested in knowing who put what into the shooting script, but overall the movie cannot be mistaken as anyone else’s work.

One interesting aspect is that this is the last time that an Allen film does not have at its core a relationship between him and a woman. His character, Melish, is essentially no different than all the others he’s written over the years, just younger, awkward, shy, hypersexual, goofy, bumbling but, in the end, the winner. Though there is Lasser’s character and the film does end with them together, it just isn’t about them as a couple. Compare this to, say, Annie Hall or Manhattan and you’ll understand what I mean.

Recommended for laughter

You’re 50 years old give or take, have a beautiful wife you’ve been married to for 25 years, two reasonably sane children, a job with your buddies building large farm vehicles and live in the Midwest. So what do you do for a change of pace? If you’re Roy in the HBO original film Normal, you announce to the world that you’ve known all your life you’re a woman in a man’s body. And no matter what, you’re finally going to fix that. Tom Wilkinson, so terrific in last year’s In the Bedroom, absolutely submerges himself in the struggle.

Jane Anderson has written and directed a compelling movie about a most unusual sequence of events. How should the people around Roy really react, especially given that this is taking place in a small rural community and not some urbane metropolis? His boss likes him and works to understand and keep him on the job. The pastor of their church attempts to be understanding and provide helpful counseling, though in the end the pastor is unable to reconcile himself to it. The daughter (played by Hayden Panettiere), uncomfortable with her own burgeoning femininity, is curious and accepting.

Jessica Lange plays Roy’s wife Irma and this is a role that could lead a lesser actress to simply chew up the scenery. Lange is far too good for that, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her get an Emmy nomination later this year. Doesn’t hurt at all that at age 53 Lange is just as beautiful as she was 20 years ago in Tootsie. She takes Irma through the entire emotional cycle, finally realizing that she loves Roy too deeply to give that up when Roy becomes Ruth.

I thought Wilkinson was overlooked in all the praise given to Sissy Spacek over In the Bedroom and he turns in an even better performance in a much meatier role. His transformation over the course of the film is so subtle from moment to moment that you watch the last few scenes, particularly where he says goodbye to his dying father and then when he fights with his disbelieving son, and wonder when he became a woman. Just outstanding.

Definitely recommended, another winner for HBO Films.

Steve McQueen or Pierce Brosnan? Faye Dunaway or Rene Russo? Norman Jewison or John McTiernan? Sometimes remakes cannot possibly live up to the original, but are just a combination of star indulgence and commerce, and that’s certainly the case with The Thomas Crown Affair. The 1968 version is stunningly creative while 1999’s is a pallid whitewash.

The key to me is that Jewison, director of the original, wanted to use the romantic caper at the heart of this movie as a framework on which to hang more interesting questions and choices and McTiernan was simply looking for a picture that was softer than his usual straight action fare. Amusingly, the very next film McTiernan made was also a sub-par remake of a Jewison film, Rollerball. But enough of that comparison.

I’d be very interested in seeing the screenplay Alan Trustman turned in and the one Jewison used for shooting because the movie goes for long stretches numerous times without a line of dialog. After an opening scene that establishes McQueen as wealthy, aggressive businessman, Affair moves into the bank robbery and goes a long for perhaps 15-20 minutes with barely a spoken word, just movement, gesture, expression, and a single gunshot. The score, by Michel Legrande, pulses and shouts, allowing Jewison and editor Hal Ashby to use brand new film techniques, split screens and composites, to dazzle us.

Later in the film, after a quiet dinner at his Boston mansion, McQueen and Dunaway play a game of chess. He, of course, expects an easy victory but since this game is a minature of the larger game the two are playing throughout the movie, he doesn’t get it. No dialog until after the game is finished but an intense sequence of facial expressions are exchanged but one can see McQueen buckling under the pressure of Dunaway’s seduction. Note that this scene is entirely missing from the remake!

Alan Trustman made his (produced) screenwriting debut with this film and followed it up with two more blockbusters, Bullitt and They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!. Each of these featured young, very strong, very different men as the leads, struggling with a system that has no place for them. All very ’60s hip philosophically, putting the question of one’s meaning as the underlying inner question wrapped around by a very stylish, entertainment.

No less than the reason for existence itself is the inner question addressed. Trustman and Jewison set us up with a protagonist, I won’t call Thomas Crown a hero, who seems to have everything in life. Money, a big house, hobbies, success! Yet this isn’t enough and he sets in motion a daring multimillion dollar bank heist to feed his craving for thrills. As otherwise demonstrated by flying a glider recklessly, playing polo aggressively, and driving a dunebuggy with no regard for the flora or fauna. I was a little disapointed that the best ending they could arrive at was to pair off Dunaway and McQueen, sort of, with the suggestion that two such people could give each other the desired thrills. Then again, who has ever come up with anything better?

Absolutely recommended

Racism: bad. Parents not loving their children: bad. Comfort sex: good. I think that about sums up 2001’s Monster’s Ball. This is the film in which Halle Berry acted so well she became the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress Oscar; I’m sure you remember her tears and acceptance speech. I actually thought Billy Bob Thornton had a more difficult role, though.

The script was also nominated for a lot of awards, including the original screenplay Oscar, but I just don’t see it that way. Written by Will Rokos and Milo Addica–the first produced script by either of them–the story is just missing too many important pieces, substituting set confrontational pieces and speeches instead. Big broad strokes abound: the final visit by Berry and Coronji Calhoun (playing their son) to death row inmate Sean (p. diddy) Combs, the final confrontation between Thornton and Heath Ledger (playing his son with a not altogether convincing accent), the final confrontation between Thornton and Peter Boyle (his dad).

The heart of the movie, though, is the relationship between Berry and Thornton. He essentially completely remakes his life for her but aside from what seems like a really amazing few minutes of sex the movie gives us absolutely no explanation of why. Thornton’s Hank Grotowski shows his racist spurs in an early scene chasing off two neighbor boys with a shotgun. He is the supervisor of the prison team responsible for Comb’s execution and carries the process out in as heartless, emotionless a manner as can be managed.

When Berry and Thornton finally meet there is no recognition of the other and later, as Berry realizes this fact, she simply cries and moves on, without a look of comprehension from Thornton or word of dialog between them. Certainly both of them have a better life, on any scale of measure, together than apart but we never are given a reason. Just circumstances, I suppose.

Director Marc Forster does pull some seriously good performances from the cast (other than Thornton) and interesting visuals but in the end, he has to be held responsible for the lack of cohesion. Thornton, I’m starting to think, for all his acclaim “has the [acting] range of a tetherball” as another commentor on IMDB put it. This worked well, indeed was eminently suited to, The Man Who Wasn’t There, which Thornton made just before this one.

Two scenes, far too obviously intended as a contrast of their characters, point out the most serious flaws of the film. Early on, Ledger visits the town hooker (Amber Rules) and has amazingly fast, unenthusiastic, unenjoyable sex. Later on, Thornton visits Rules–she’s wearing the same skirt and top, still no panties, same motel room–and as they’re about to get busy, just making conversation, Rules spoils the ignoble moment by asking about Ledger.

No doubt Monster’s Ball tries to make some serious, meaningful points but forgets that to be successful a movie must entertain. I was really struck by the contrast with the last movie I watched before this, Stickmen. That was another outside the mainstream movie, trying to show an interesting slice of life conflict but without forgetting this simple rule.

Not recommended although the two big sex scenes between Thornton and Berry are pretty hot.

From New Zealand, 2001’s Stickmen shows that no budget and no access to fancy digital effects doesn’t mean no movie. Like many an independent movie, it’s quite good even though it wasn’t made in Hollywood.

The central plot revolves around pub pool and a high stakes tournament sponsored by the local mobster. We know who Daddy is because he owns the escort service and because he cuts people up when they don’t repay the loans he’s made them. And Daddy isn’t too happy when Jack, Wayne, and Thomas, our heroes, turn out to be quite the players after the three are assigned long odds in the tournament.

In the middle of the movie, the two main female characters Karen and Sara are talking in a bar. Karen tells a story about a man and says, “The moral of the story is that men are stupid.” Sara responds, “That’s the moral to a million stories.” I suppose they’re right, though it was the accents that made it sound so hot. These two are quite integral to the ending, in a surprising way.

I was quite surprised to find that this is the first film Hamish Rothwell directed and the first screenplay Nick Ward wrote, not to mention the first starring/significant roles for most of the cast. The script has very few obvious flaws, coincidences, or bad choices–as I wrote this sentence I checked IMDB and found out, sure enough, that it won a bunch of the top prizes at the 2001 New Zealand Film and TV Awards: Scott Wills (as Wayne) for Best Actor, Ward for Best Screenplay, Rothwell for Best Director, and Luanne Gordon (as the honest prostitute Lulu) for Best Supporting Actress in her first feature film

According to the film’s website, Stickmen (the name under which our boys team for the tournament), was one of the half dozen most profitable movies made in NZ in the past 20 years, as well as one of the first NZ-produced films to merit a DVD release.

Definitely recommended, cheers for Tivo!

John Belushi. I remember driving on Sunset Boulevard the afternoon he passed away, hearing the news when I was only blocks from the hotel where it happened. He was amazing with physical comedy and wordplay. But romantic comedy was just too much of a stretch for him, in the years when he was still hitting the booze and drugs so hard; maybe if he’d lived another 15 or 20 years he would have grown into it but we’ll never know. I always think of Bill Murray’s film from the same period, The Razor’s Edge, when Continental Divide comes up.

So 1981’s Continental Divide was not the great leap forward he probably hope for. Blair Brown was beautiful and well-suited to the part of the nature nut love interest. Belushi played Ernie Souchak, a Chicago newspaper columnist, who needs to get out of town in a hurry and heads to the Rockies to try and get the inside story on Brown’s ornithologist. He goes nuts in the wild, misses his cigarettes, comes on to her to a negative reception, but then charms her by hurting his back and getting attacked by a mountain lion. They fall in love but his time on the mountain is up and he returns to the city. Boo hoo. She comes to the city for a lecture, they have wild sex and can’t say goodbye. Woo hoo. Neither can stand living where the other does but they get married anyway and then go home alone. Huh?

Mildly recommended

Roger Corman made many forgettable movies. Many. But some were worth watching and 1979’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was surely one of them. Corman films never have any budget to speak of but in RRHS he got a terrific mix of the Ramones (the concert scene has four of their songs alone), PJ Soles, Clint Howard, Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel in a 20 years behind the times story. By the late ’70s, adults were no longer trying to ban rock music but that doesn’t matter to the three directors and six writers who put this farce together.

Bartel and Woronov are most notable for the indie classic Eating Raoul. The Ramones, of course, went on to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Howard appears in many of his brother’s films, and Soles never got the stardom she deserved, though she has been happily married since 1984.

Recommended

Ice Cube and Mike Epps make an attempt to step up in class in last year’s All About The Benjamins. An action/comedy about a bounty hunter (Cube) hooking up with a small time con man (Epps) who get in the middle of a $20 million diamond heist while trying to retrieve the winning ticket for a $60 million lottery. Other than the fact that the leads here are Black, I don’t see how the movie is any better than your standard Brian Bosworth/Julie Strain straight to video effort. And with Strain at least viewers get to ogle her awesome body.

Not worth the 90 minutes

Roger Corman made many forgettable movies. Many. But some were worth watching and 1979’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was surely one of them. Corman films never have any budget to speak of but in RRHS he got a terrific mix of the Ramones (the concert scene has four of their songs alone), PJ Soles, Clint Howard, Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel in a 20 years behind the times story. By the late ’70s, adults were no longer trying to ban rock music but that doesn’t matter to the three directors and six writers who put this farce together.

Bartel and Woronov are most notable for the indie classic Eating Raoul. The Ramones, of course, went on to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Howard appears in many of his brother’s films, and Soles never got the stardom she deserved, though she has been happily married since 1984.

Recommended

Ice Cube and Mike Epps make an attempt to step up in class in last year’s All About The Benjamins. An action/comedy about a bounty hunter (Cube) hooking up with a small time con man (Epps) who get in the middle of a $20 million diamond heist while trying to retrieve the winning ticket for a $60 million lottery. Other than the fact that the leads here are Black, I don’t see how the movie is any better than your standard Brian Bosworth/Julie Strain straight to video effort. And with Strain at least viewers get to ogle her awesome body.

Not worth the 90 minutes