Movies Galore

2010_5_10 Movies Galore
With Sue gone to Santa Fe for 4 days—she’s there to dance with more Mettler dancers that she met through various Dance Congresses—I have been eating from a pot of chili she made for me and watching a lot of movies and NBA playoff basketball, and journalizing. Yesterday (Sunday) David came to the house to give Kaia another Shiatsu treatment and this time it went two and a half hours, from 9:30 till noon, which is a half hour longer than last time. Afterwards the three of us had a quick lunch. David went home and Kai and I headed to Foothill’s Mall to see “Iron Man 2.” I saw in the paper this morning that it took in $133 million over the weekend, which is better than the $98 million for the first “Iron Man.” As usual it wasn’t my first choice. I am in a hapless situation because whatever I pick she vetoes because it is depressing and my choices always lack happy endings. I have more of less given up and satisfy myself by being able to spend some daddy time with her.
Number 2 was on a par with the first one, even a little better, as I thought the written script was better and the narrative was more interesting and consistent. However, the film was overcooked when it came to action scenes and to the number of explosions, droids, and two Iron Men, sometimes more, flying around, like comets on their honeymoon. The script was pithy and more to the point and Downey did not mumble like he did in “Sherlock Holmes.” I thought the film resembled a James Bond movie to an extent, especially with some puns, like “hammernoids” and “little prick.” Mickey Rourke made a great villain. His name is Ivan Vanek and he is the physicist son of a Russian inventor who also has come up with a turbo-jet-weapon-heavy- superman suit, giving the lie to Tony Stark’s claim that he had “privatized world peace.” Ivan is on a revenge trip because his father, who dies in his arms as the movie opens, was on to something years back but instead of backing him the government had him deported. So Ivan wants to show Stark his suit is just as capable as his, if not more so.
Ivan doesn’t know it but Stark is seriously ill: his power source buried in his chest in a circular device is toxic to his his blood. Through half the movie he doesn’t know what to do about the problem. But then he gets help from Nick Fury who is with SHIELD, a rogue spy outfit that is led by Samuel Jackson, who dresses all in black and wears a black patch over his left eye, pirate-like. Fury has also secretly installed a Super Girl into Stark enterprises, Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) who can easily handle a bevy of goons twice her size. There’s a second villain too, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who runs a weaponry factory and wants the suit to make money off of, like sell it to the highest bidder, or even to the Pentagon, in the Grand American tradition. Hammer is Capitalistic wheeler-dealer and ruffian in competition with Tony Stark. He teams up with Ivan to defeat Stark. His aim is to corner the market on all the new fangled smart droids and bombs. He is in love with destructive power. Peace is against his principles. Fury has told Stark there is a way to find another power source and with a lot of on-screen hocus-pocus the new formula for the power source is not only found, but it’s even more powerful than the first one.
Following that discovery there is the final shooting match, a Marvel Commix hyperbolic extravaganza. That’s the bomb circus I mentioned earlier. When it’s all over Ivan Vanek has been turned to ashes and Tony Stark gets to kiss Pepper Potts (Gwen Platrow) and wonder about what “Iron Man 3” is going to be like. The Producers drop a hint after the credits have rolled by that there could be Number 3 on line. The scene is New Mexico and it appears to be a round hole in the ground which suggests a Flying Saucer and beings from outer space. Kaia can’t wait. I can.

In contrast to “Iron Man 2” I saw “Tetro,” Francis Ford Coppola’s latest effort, with Vince Gallo in the lead along with Maribel Verdu, who was so memorable in “Y Tu Mama Tambien.” She was Tetro’s woman in a family of festering hate, jealousy, and lies. But she sticks with him through thick and thin, always hoping for the best. Tetro and Miranda have lived together in an apartment in Buenos Aires for several years, without getting married. Out of the blue they are visited by a younger brother who works on a luxury cruise ship with lots of affluent customers. He is just 18 and works as a waiter on board the cruiser. The lad is stuck in port because the ship needs repairs, and they will take four of five days. Tetro acts coldly and indifferently to his younger brother, who doesn’t understand his attitude. They haven’t seen each other in many years and young Bennie has a lot of questions about the family. Tetro hates his father who is a Maestro in a huge Symphony Orchestra, a very successful man. Tetro is also a writer, but one who no longer writes and hates the idea of fame. He is so against fame and any kind of communication that the only way to read his work is with a mirror because, like Leonardo DaVinci, he writes backward. Bennie, the younger brother is also a writer of sorts and when he comes across Tetro’s manuscript in a suitcase he transforms one of his brother’s stories into a stage play which he submits for a prize and wins. When Tetro finds out he is furious and…
It has taken over two hours to get this far in the movie. The narrative seems to going around in circles that move very slowly. There are a few fantasy section involved with two plays. The play and a dance sequence are shot in color, as are all the sequences involved with Tetro’s father (Klaus Maria Brandauer.) I think the scenes with the father work in color, if only to separate him from Tetro and Bennie. But the fantasies are so artificial and stylistically in a different language they strike me as out of place and don’t work. What we know of the father he is a bastard, very unkind to his son, even going so far as to steal his girl friend when she was pregnant by Tetro. The movie concludes with the Father, who Tetro always calls “The Great Man,” is dying but with no family member making any real effort to get to his bedside. There is a dramatic twist right near the end of the picture and I think I’ll leave that out here for those who planned to see the film.
I thought the movie was overlong and repetitive, rather exhausting at two and a half hours. The whole family melodrama could have been compressed and shortened to make its point with more clarity and force. The surprise ending is done pretty well and has some emotional punch to it. I find myself in sympathy with Tetro’s attitude about fame.

David MacKenzie is or was an eccentric Scottish director who in 2009 did “Spread,” a sleazing sexpot movie with little redeeming virtue. In Western Europe the film was called “L.A. Gigolo” or “Boy Toy.” I saw some of MacKenzie’s previous movies, like “The Last Great Wilderness,” his first film and the most eccentric. I also saw “Asylum” with the now deceased Natasha Richardson and Ian McKellan, a story of wild passions in a Mental Hospital with partners that don’t fit. Then there was “Young Adam” with Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton, which also include plenty of odd sex and a strange death. “Spread” is not up to his previous standards, being a sexploitation kind of film starring Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche. There are many sex scenes where they show everything but genitals. It is as close to porn as Hollywood can get. It’s a remake of “Midnight Cowboy,” with Nikki (Kutcher) doing his imitation of Joe Buck (Jon Voight) coming to town to sweep the ladies of their feet with his charm and sexual prowess. After sleeping with a lot of twenty year old girls he sets his sight on an older woman with a nice place where he can drop anchor for a while. He selects Samantha (Heche) and it goes well for a time, till he becomes interested in another girl, and so on and so forth. He ultimately ends up ends up a delivery boy driving a truck to survive. The movie ends with him feeding a mouse to this huge frog: it is meant to convey what has happened to him. Swallowing the movie would be more difficult.
I also saw “Nine,” that musical treatment of Federico Fellini’s love life, starring Daniel Day Lewis and a bevy of beauties, too many to name. It’s not a movie; it is an event on film, rather boring at that and pretentious. Two musical numbers, one by Penelope Cruz, the other by Kate Hudson, were moderately entertaining. What did think of the movie? Forgetaboutit!!
Finally I completed my second time through all three seasons of “Deadwood,” watching the last two episodes while Sue was gone. Since I have written about the series before, when I was writing for Bookman’s, suffice it to say I enjoyed even more than the first time.