Steven Rubio's Online Life

what i watched last week

The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004). I never feel further behind the times then when I watch an animated feature that grossed $630 million worldwide and won two Oscars, and I’m just getting around to it nine years later. Especially since I tend to like Pixar movies. Bygones. This one is indeed good. I am usually hesitant about any animated feature not made my Miyazaki, because so many of them stink, no matter how popular they might be. But Pixar often manages to overcome my hesitancy. There’s the usual shout out to Emeryville, as real streets pop up during the opening chase scene (this is more exciting to those of us who often eat at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Café, which is kitty-corner to Pixar in Emeryville). Everything else I enjoyed is old news to all the people who spent that $630 million. I liked the regular allusions (and more) to James Bond. It occurred to me that turning Bond into an animated Mr. Incredible was rather fitting, considered how often Bond is treated like a super hero in his movies. (This came out two years before Casino Royale changed the formula a bit.) I was also reminded of Spy Kids, another obvious point I am making long after the fact. Get to the point: I liked it. #80 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 250 films of the 21st century. 8/10. (Favorite movies of 2004, in alphabetical order: Before Sunset, Control Room, Hotel Rwanda.)

Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005). 7/10. (Favorite movies of 2005, in alphabetical order: Good Night and Good Luck, A History of Violence, Murderball.)

by request: broken flowers (jim jarmusch, 2005)

This is on my list of requests … says Robert Gable requested it … but I can’t find the request anywhere. Well, I watched it anyway, so here goes.

Jim Jarmusch has made more than a dozen movies, but this is the first one I’ve ever seen. I remember when Stranger Than Paradise came out, the trailer showed up seemingly every time I went to the movies. I’ll never get the sound of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins out of my mind … whenever I hear “I Put a Spell on You”, I think of that damn trailer. And I think that’s why I never saw any of Jarmusch’s movies … the trailer irritated me.

Now I’ve seen one, but I have no idea how typical it is, how cleanly it fits into the Jarmusch oeuvre. I have to take it on its own.

Bill Murray has had an interesting career. In his early comedic roles, he was wild, even anarchic, a smart-ass even when he was playing dumb. As he has grown into dramatic roles, his style has done a complete flip. He is known for his silent, deadpan approach, and somehow, he manages to make us see emotion in his mostly unchanging face. (He once said, “I hate to give away my secrets but I do almost nothing. Being slightly lazy works for me.”) It definitely works in Broken Flowers, where he conveys an inner dissatisfaction without seeming to try. The structure of the film helps, as Murray is given the chance to work with various women who present wonderful contrasts to his blankness. Sharon Stone is charmingly hot, Frances Conroy allows an inward impishness to peek out from her serious demeanor (much like Murray does throughout), Jessica Lange makes us believe she is an “animal communicator”, and Tilda Swinton stuns in her brief scene … this most recognizable of actresses here wears makeup to darken her skin, adds a long-haired dark wig, and looks almost unrecognizable as what appears to be a biker chick. Toss in Julie Delpy, who I always love even when she is basically making a cameo, and Jeffrey Wright, solid as always, and you have acting that is a joy to watch.

Jarmusch’s style matches Murray’s underplaying. From what I understand of Jarmusch’s work, this is standard for him. Many noted that Murray was in fact a perfect match for Jarmusch. I felt that it was a bit much … it was never boring, and the basic narrative (Murray searching out old girlfriends) added a bit of propulsion, but too often, Broken Flowers just sits there. Charmingly, but uneventful. And the plot is something of a shaggy dog story, which throws attention back on the characters, and the actors are worthy of that attention, but ultimately, I found the film to be more an actor’s showcase than a movie I might love some day. 7/10.

what i watched last week

Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, 2008). I’m using this in a class I’m teaching, and so I watched it for the first time. It’s a low-budget sci-fi film set in Mexico that doesn’t worry about the money it doesn’t have. Rivera doesn’t offer anything lyrical in his cheapo special effects (compare it to Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, also set in Mexico with a budget 1/3 the size of Sleep Dealer, that manages a lovely finishing CGI touch). Sleep Dealer is more overt with its socio-political subtext, which makes it a good film for a college course essay assignment, and Rivera gets the job done efficiently. There aren’t many movies like this (that I know of), and I’m guessing in another decade or two, it will have the same relationship to its era as sci-fi monster movies of the 1950s did to theirs. The subtext will be foregrounded, the film’s flaws will be overlooked, and Sleep Dealer will be lauded for presenting issues of immigrant labor and Mexico-U.S. relations in a creative manner. (To be honest, it already gets these kinds of compliments.) I just wish it was a better movie. 6/10.

oakland first fridays

Last night I checked out a program of short films at the New Parkway, a theater which rose out of the ashes left by the original Parkway, which was the first theater I remember that had couches and easy chairs. A friend is part of a team presenting a monthly batch of shorts, and last night’s group included some very interesting productions. Here’s Hal the Robot:

Diaries of a Boom Operator closed the show:

The series is part of something called Oakland First Fridays, and even though Oakland is right next to my home town of Berkeley, I admit I’d never heard of this, which draws crowds of 20,000 for “an immersive art and community experience”. Amazing what I find when I actually go out of the house.

m (fritz lang, 1931)

I wrote about this in the first year of the blog:

I just watched M again, and as always, Peter Lorre is so magnificent. You want to make fun of him ... if you're of a certain age (like, for instance, MY age), you can do a Peter Lorre imitation, and he's mostly a joke. But he was a great actor, and in M, even when you know his big scene is coming, and even when you think you're going to laugh, once he starts in, you're taken in once again, with simultaneous pity and horror at this sick child murderer.

I read his bio on the IMDB, and found this anecdote especially good:

“During the Hayes Commission investigation of 'reds' in Hollywood during the late 40s, Lorre was interviewed by investigators and asked to name anyone suspicious he had met since coming to the United States. Lorre responded with a list of everyone he knew.”

Watching it again (it was #68 on my Facebook Fave Fifty list, i.e. it didn’t quite make it), I realized how it was an early example of a police procedural. I may be the last person to figure that out. The long sequence where Lang crosscuts between the police and the criminals as they plan their varying approaches to catch the murderer might be a bit of a cliché, except I don’t imagine it was one in 1931. By giving the criminals equal time with the police, Lang anticipates series like The Wire. Ultimately, though, it all goes back to Peter Lorre. The most recent Criterion Blu-ray includes the English-language version, which is mostly a mess, but Lorre did his own dialogue, so you can watch his big scene in English.

There’s an old-time radio show starring Lorre that fascinates me. It was called Mystery in the Air, and the version with Lorre aired in 1947. It featured Lorre narrating and starring in dramas based on classic works by Poe, Dostoyevsky, and the like. John Dunning, in his invaluable reference book On the Air, describes what a session of the show was like:

Lorre delivered intense, supercharged performances of men tortured and driven by dark impulses. He stood alone at a center microphone, raving and wildly gesticulating, while supporting players worked at a second mike facing him. By the end of the half-hour, he was sweat-drenched and drained. Costar Peggy Walker recalled that once, in the heat of the performance, Lorre threw his script into the air and watched helplessly as the pages fluttered to the stage. Some quick work by the cast and judicious ad-libbing by Lorre got them to the midway break, at which point the script was retrieved and put into order.

Here is the final segment of the Mystery in the Air version of “The Black Cat”:

Meanwhile, M is #46 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time. 10/10.

what i watched last week

Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978). I saw Badlands when it came out, and thought it was a nice first picture. I saw Days of Heaven when it came out, and thought I probably wouldn’t bother seeing any more of Malick’s films. He didn’t make another movie for twenty years, so it’s not like I was missing anything. Somehow, as time passed, I ended up seeing every movie Malick has directed (with the exception of his most recent). Watching Days of Heaven again, I saw that there was more to it than visual beauty, which is progress of a sort. In general, I admire Malick for his ability to make the movies he wants to make, but don’t much care for the final products. Since his first two films of the 21st century were my least favorites so far, I tend to think poorly of him, and it’s very annoying that people who love his movies act like anyone who doesn’t agree with them is a moron. One thing is indisputable: Malick’s 1970s movies ran just over 90 minutes, while his movies since his comeback have all been well over two hours (with The Thin Red Line approaching three hours). I’m of the opinion that a little Terrence Malick goes a long way, which may be why I feel kinder towards Days of Heaven than I do towards The New World or The Tree of Life. Still, The Thin Red Line was the longest of his movies, and I liked that one OK. I’m glad I took another look at Days of Heaven. There are a few breathtaking moments, Linda Manz is excellent, and Richard Gere is perfectly cast … he doesn’t do anything, so he doesn’t get in the way of Malick’s visual compositions. Obviously, a movie this gorgeous should be seen on the big screen, but it also serves as a great advertisement for Blu-ray … the Criterion disc does the film justice. #131 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time. 7/10.

life itself

Roger Ebert’s recent death prompted me to read his 2011 book, Life Itself: A Memoir. When it comes to film critics and memoirs, I’m with Pauline Kael, who is quoted at the top of this blog: “I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs. I think I have.” Roger Ebert reviewed thousands of films, and taking that enormous body of work alongside his television appearances, we might be forgiven for thinking we already know the man.

There is very little in Life Itself about specific movies; it’s not a compilation of reviews. He writes a lot about movies in general, though. There are chapters about Russ Meyer, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese, and Werner Herzog. These chapters are very much in the memoir tradition, in the way a traditional movie review is not.

But the majority of Life Itself goes beyond movies, offering a picture of Ebert that isn’t part of his film writing. It’s not that a Pauline Kael (or a Steven Rubio) had no life outside of her film writing. But she injected so much of her self into her reviews that over time we got to “know her”. Ebert certainly used a personal style in his reviews, but with Life Itself, he wants to record what his life was like when he wasn’t reviewing movies.

Which is why, as we reach the 12th chapter, we’re still only up to high school. By then, we’ve already learned a lot about growing up in Illinois in the 40s and 50s. Ebert has specific memories of his past, and he trusts those memories (perhaps more than he should). His experiences, related to us via his fine writing, are interesting in a generic way, by which I mean it’s not crucial that we’re reading about the childhood of a famous man. We’re reading about an American childhood.

This is followed by several chapters about college, and the period just after he graduated. By chapter 20, we’re knee deep in the life of a journalist at the tail end of the “Front Page” era. Ebert is a fine raconteur, and his tales of people, famous and not, are fascinating.

Things proceed in a roughly chronological pattern: a Studebaker he loved, Gene Siskel, his marriage to Chaz (she’s present throughout the book, Ebert sees everything through her eyes, even the decades before they met), all the way to his 50th high school reunion. Outside of an odd tendency to repeat himself, these are all delightful to read, again whether the subject is something about which we know (his partnership with Siskel) or something about which we are clueless (I had no idea Studebakers were ever considered anything but a joke). He finishes with three chapters that form something of an elegy, as if he wanted to be sure to get it all down before he died and someone else’s version became public. Just before that, though, he includes a chapter about Studs Terkel, because after all, if you knew Studs, you’d be remiss not to spend some time on his life. He calls Terkel “the greatest man I knew well … the most widely and deeply loved man I ever hope to know.” Studs belongs at the end, alongside the passages about the end of life, because he exuded so much life, himself.

I think people would enjoy this book, even if they didn’t know much about Ebert’s film work. But for those of us who followed him right up to his last years, when he became King of the Internet, Life Itself is more than an interesting memoir about an interesting man who knew interesting people. It fills in gaps we didn’t know existed, adding depth to his legacy. Perhaps Kael should have written those memoirs, after all.

by request: 42

Since my sister and her husband moved out here from the East Coast, we’ve occasionally taken in a movie. It was Paul’s turn to choose, and so we found ourselves watching 42 on its first day in the theaters.

My feelings about 42 were quite similar to my feelings prior to seeing On the Road, or watching the ubiquitous previews for The Great Gatsby. Did they cast it properly? Did they do right by the story? Did they screw it up?

To answer the last question, no, they don’t screw it up. Most of the casting is fine. It’s fun to see real historical figures portrayed in a fictional movie (Christopher Meloni as Leo Durocher!). There are moments that threw this Giants’ fan off for a bit: Ralph Branca is one of the good guys who treats Jackie Robinson right, but the minute he shows up on the screen, I hear “THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!” in my mind.

The problem lies in what my brother-in-law said afterwards: it was a typical biopic. Why anyone expected something different is to the point. I had gotten myself worked up about seeing the Jackie Robinson story told in a new way, when it should have been obvious what was coming. A series of events are selected to stand in for various points the film makers want to make. In almost every case, those events follow the same pattern: Jackie faces racism, Jackie doesn’t fight back in an obvious way (usually after a pep talk from Branch Rickey), Jackie beats his opponents by showing them up on the ball field, and on to the next example of racism. It is all quite uplifting, Jackie Robinson defeating the forces of racism because he has “the guts not to fight back”. The way 42 tells the story, racism in America was on its downward slide the first time Jackie stole a base.

Obviously, this is crowd-pleasing. We settle into an enjoyable pattern where Jackie defeats the racists because he’s a great baseball player, with each victory a feel-good moment for the audience. This upbeat tone is framed in part by the narrow time frame of the story. We don’t see Jackie’s formative years, we meet him when Branch Rickey decides to make him a Dodger. We don’t see Jackie in his life after baseball. We only see a sliver of his baseball career, for that matter. The movie ends with the Dodgers winning the 1947 NL pennant (feel good) rather than the 1947 World Series (feel bad: the Dodgers lost to the Yankees, with Jackie going hitless in the deciding game).

This is all understandable. Why wouldn’t they want to make an upbeat film, one that might win awards given its subject matter, but also one that might succeed at the box-office as well? But, since it’s a typical biopic, it is ultimately unmemorable, just like all the others. In the moment, it seems better than it really is; in the future, it will seem overrated. Chadwick Boseman and Nicole Beharie, who play Jackie and his wife and whose scenes together are the best part of the movie, will hopefully get more good parts, and we’ll think back to when their careers were just starting. But 42 is not a classic, nor is it intended to be a classic. For a classic might not be so upbeat, so intent on pleasing the audience, might not be as successful at the box office.

42 is safe, which is ironic, given how frequently in the film we see Robinson safe after yet another stolen base attempt. There is no attempt to stretch beyond the boundaries of the biopic genre, no attempt to break free from the formulaic structure. And since Jackie Robinson’s introduction into the major leagues was anything but safe, it’s rather sad to think how much 42 is lacking in danger.

The final credits add a disturbing coda. We are told that the “good guys” in the film were successful (Robinson, Rickey, and Pee Wee Reese all ended up in the Hall of Fame, Rachel Robinson started the Jackie Robinson Foundation) while the “bad guys” were not (virulent manager Ben Chapman was fired by the following season). It’s just one last feel-good moment, but it leaves a bad aftertaste, for it suggests that racism is behind us now, that thanks to Jackie Robinson, baseball was integrated and America, seeing the light, was no longer racist. I’m sure if Jackie was still alive, he’d have something to say about that. 7/10.

roger ebert

Roger Ebert was probably more influential than any other American film critic, ever. It’s not just the more than 10,000 reviews he compiled over the years. It’s not just that he was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer for criticism. It’s not just the books he wrote (a couple of dozen). More than any of these things, it’s that he brought an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, a fine writing style, and a keen critical sense to the masses, via his long-lived television show with Gene Siskel (and, after Siskel’s death, Richard Roeper). I’ve read countless times how Siskel and Ebert were bad for film appreciation, because they reduced everything to a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, like Beavis and Butthead for the Baby Boomer generation. But they were also expert at explaining themselves on the show with brief comments that helped us understand why the thumb was pointed in that direction. Roger Ebert’s work on television was not as in-depth as his written work, but neither was it worthless, and he and Siskel brought smart movie criticism to the masses.

Television is the reason Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel are the only film critics many people can name, and that kind of fame only lasts as long as you are on the air. (Siskel’s name doesn’t come up much anymore, although he, too, was a fine critic.) But it is for his writing that Roger Ebert will still be read and quoted and relied on in the future. His career is exemplary for anyone in any field who wants to be a critic.

In later years, Roger Ebert’s health became a public issue, one he met with expected courage. In 2002, he underwent surgery to remove thyroid cancer. Four years later, he had further surgery, also cancer related, that involved losing part of his jaw. Complications from that almost killed him, and he lost the ability to speak, eat, or drink. After rehabilitation, he was back on the job, and also back in the public eye … he looked like a man who’d lost part of his jaw, and he couldn’t speak, but he didn’t let that stop him. Later, there was more surgery, mostly attempts to reconstruct his jaw, none of which worked. He didn’t let that stop him.

On Tuesday, Ebert wrote that cancer had returned, and that he was taking what he called a “leave of presence”. Ebert had embraced the online world as a place where he could continue to write, and he was one of the best people to follow on Twitter. He also had The Ebert Club, a web site that featured essays, previews, and full-length films. He threw himself into the online world as he had with the print world and the television world and the festival world. He always seemed to be on the job. Yet he never came across as a workaholic. No, he came across as someone who loved what he did, appreciated his family and friends, and was engaged in the world beyond films.

Two days after he announced the return of the cancer, Roger Ebert died. The last words of his final post: “I’ll see you at the movies.”

what i watched last week

Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954). Does it mean something that it’s 24 hours since I watched this, and I’ve had plenty of time to write about it, but I keep putting it off? I see I gave 8/10 to the only other Mizoguchi I’ve seen (Ugetsu), but to be honest, I can’t remember the damn thing. I remember Sansho because I’ve only had one day to forget it. I can’t think of anything bad to say about it, and there are some scenes that are quite memorable. I knew while I was watching that I was seeing a very good movie. But here I am, 24 hours later, and I don’t have anything to say about it. I guess I’ll resort to spoilers … hey, the movie’s almost sixty years old, I think it’s OK to talk plot points. The family at the center of Sansho the Bailiff is filled with good people (none of whom are Sansho … I’m not sure why he gets to be the title character). They suffer, oh do they suffer, like Job, or like Björk in Dancer in the Dark. As the film begins, the father, a governor, pisses off his Lord (I think for being too nice to his peasants) and gets sent off to a distant province. The wife, son, and daughter do not accompany him. Later, those three are tricked and captured, with the mother sold into prostitution and the kids being sold into slavery. Many years later, the son escapes thanks to the sacrifice of his sister, who commits suicide before she can be tortured into telling of her brother’s whereabouts. What follows approaches a happy conclusion, but what sticks in your mind is the child slavery. #82 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time. 7/10.

Whiteboyz (Mark Levin, 1999). 6/10.