Netflix Frenzy

Netflix’s watched this week: Love in the Time of Cholera, the 1969 thriller Z, I am Curious (Yellow) and Melvin and Howard. I look forward to a better crop coming in a couple days when The Great McGinty and A Little Princess arrive.

I’m beginning to realize just how video-centric my blog has suddenly become. No point in nothing but film geekery and watching obscure movies just to write about them, sadly there’s been so little at the theaters really worth going to lately. Living in San Francisco there are some wonderful repertory theaters like the Castro, the Red Vic, the Roxie and sometimes the Lumiere that will show old films, but then I wish I was keeping up on contemporary movies for fear of losing my touched, devoted following of beloved readers.

April promises to be a much better month for it I think, there are releases like Leatherheads, My Blueberry Nights (whatta great title), Shine a Light, Street Kings, and yes… Harold and Kumar go to Guantanamo. A full slate of promising, top-rate entertainment. Right now the only movies in theaters quasi-worth seeing might be Run Fatboy Run and Stop-Loss, but so far the available batch of Iraq movies have yet to distinguish themselves from Vietnam movies. Both genres seem to be about what-the-hell-are-we-doing-here-in-this-war kind of movies, and Vietnam covered that pretty well. Politics aside, I think important issues get discussed and all but it seems like most of these movies exist just to prove that particular point. The horror… the horror.

So I’m stuck on Netflix until something worth $10 to see comes around. In sticking with my theme then, Love in the Time of Cholera was alright, passable entertainment but ultimately forgettable. Javier Bardem is great as always, but the film had the unmistakable feel of a “great book adaptation.” This means that a great work of literature is given the sumptuous treatment replete with beautiful, lyrical photography, exotic locations, expensive, detailed sets, and large amounts of extras swarming around in the background. However it also suffers from the syndrome of the same genre where the filmmakers try to cram every bit of story from a very detailed book from an extremely detail-oriented writer and stuff it all into two hours. This usually results in the book missing the heart and soul that the book contains, while also glossing over some of the more lewd details of the plot (e.g. the lovers of the central characters are often made about ten years older in order to circumvent certain statutory-rape taboos). A great adaptation is much more focused on finding and exploring this heart and soul while not fussing over the plot details. Try instead films like The Unbearable Lightness of Being or Trainspotting to understand more what I mean.

Z was a tightly woven thriller surrounding the possible assassination of a public revolutionary in what seems to be Greece in the 60’s. Not quite what I expected, I think I anticipated something more on the lines of The Battle of Algiers or something, but it was more a story of the investigation that followed and the consequences. Entertaining and thought-provoking. Based on true events it was a response to the assassination of a Greek doctor and activist whose subsequent investigation led to the downfall of the Democratic government in Greece and ushered in a new, modern era. “Z” in Greek means “He lives.”

Melvin and Howard was also not what I expected. Its based on the true story (supposedly) that a man named Melvin Dummar finds a decrepit man laying hurt in the desert and gives him a ride back to Las Vegas. Along the way he professes to be Howard Hughes. After Hughes died, an amount left in a Hughes will left the amount of $156 million to Melvin. I think I expected Howard to be in the movie more, where instead he’s almost completely done after the first ten minutes, and then tells Melvin’s story up until the will is discovered. I found him to be a pretty uninteresting character, someone who can’t hold a job, a wife, or just about anything he owns, and ultimately he received the full bounty of the American Dream for it. I think I was just expecting Jason Robards as Howard Hughes to be in the picture more. When you pay for Jason Robards and all you get is Paul le Mat its easy to feel a little cheated. Still, the story of the American Dream touching down anywhere at all is still very heartwarming.

I am Curious (Yellow) was the controversial 1967 Swedish import that was seized at US Customs for being obscene. It subsequently won a landmark case with the Supreme Court that helped  usher in a new age of filmmaking in the US. It tells the story of a 22 year old girl who is curious about everything around her to the point that she explores the things that incite the most passion in her, namely politics and sex. An interestingly told story, I read about this film while in film school and thought it was mostly going to be a sexual exploration. Its really mostly about politics. Swedish radicals who want their government to condemn the US in Vietnam, who want to close the borders between Sweden and Franco-era Spain, and who want to adopt the non-violence teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. (who is interviewed in the film) for use by their own country’s soldiers. The film combines film and documentary and bizarre social commentary in a very unique way, with the directory of the film Vilgot Sjoman showing up as himself directing the film as it progresses, and also showing jealousy towards the main actress during her affair with a man named Borje, after it shows Vilgot and the actress having an affair at the beginning of the film. A two-part film, the companion piece I am Curious (Blue)  should be arriving in a few weeks. I’ll write more about it then I think.