That’ll Do, Pig
March 22nd – March 28th
The Tin Drum — My expectations about this movie were way off. Or course I was aware that there were certain scenes which had been determined obscene my some. But it wasn’t those scenes, or any sort of unanticipated moral shock, that contradicted my expectations. I was simply anticipating both an older and duller film. Grainy black & white images out of some boring old war movie occupied the space in my brain reserved for The Tin Drum.
So I was genuinely surprised to see that it was made in 1979 and in color. And watching it, I was further surprised by how much humor it contained. Still, I thought of both Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke while watching this. The former for the loads of potential symbolism that maybe don’t add up to too much and the latter for the notion that evil clearly resides in children. But those are unfair parallels. I haven’t seen nearly enough of either to be able to say anything definitive about their work, nor have I read the Gunter Grass novel upon which this movie is based.
I’m not sure what I think. Better than expected, to be sure. Not worth banning, of course. And I can certainly say that it has piqued my interest in reading the original novel.
Whatever Works – Woody Allen’s most recent film, starring Larry David but originally written in the 1970s for Zero Mostel. This first half is a bit Curb-y, with David doing that misanthropic thing he does so well. It’s okay but you wonder why not just watch Curb Your Enthusiasm instead. And the radiant Evan Rachel Wood is just annoying as the stupid girl from Mississippi. But as the rest of the cast comes into the film–Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr., Jessica Hecht–it turns into something stronger. Unfortunately, it’s too little too late. Not enough to save the clunky beginning.
The Brother From Another Planet – Now this was a gem of a find–a movie I had frankly never heard of. It ended up on our Netflix Instant Viewing queue based on the title and cover art and the desire for a silly 80′s sci-fi movie. Turns out, this movie from 1984 was written and directed by John Sayles. And to further demonstrate my cinematic ignorance of the Godfather of Bootstrap Cinema, I had no idea the lengths Sayles has gone to finance his own movies. I had no idea that he wrote the 1978 film Piranha nor that his pen played a part in the scripts for Mimic, Apollo 13, and even an apparently ditched take on Jurassic Park IV.
Funded by a MacArthur Fellowship genius grant, The Brother From Another Planet stars Joe Morton (who would later go on to invent the neural net processor in Terminator 2 that led to Skynet) as a mute alien slave who appears on Earth as a black man. He is chased around Harlem by two alien Men in Black, played by Sayles and David Strathairn. This is not big budget sci-fi extravaganza. Instead, it is a more restrained take on the stranger in a strange land trope. An alien creature, who mostly looks like a black human, crash lands near Ellis Island and must navigate the streets of Harlem. It pretty much writes itself. Good stuff.
Zombieland — While not nearly as good as Shaun of the Dead, I still had a lot of fun with this zombie comedy. The integration of The Rules into the movie’s world was a clever touch. Sure, the movie plays a little video game-y. Perhaps an emotional attachment to the characters is lacking, but video games don’t need emotional ties to still be fun.
