I’ve been fascinated for a few months by the cleverly titled Web site Decent Films, whose slogan is “film appreciation, information, and criticism informed by Christian faith.” The site has an abundance of thoughtful writing about movies, and it’s frequently clever and funny. Still, there’s something disturbing about it.
I thought that new silly-looking Tom Hanks movie was a Coen brothers project, but the television marketing for The Ladykillers makes no mention of them. So I figured I was mistaken. Nope.
A reader complained biliously about my comments on Capturing the Friedmans, specifically my refusal to dismiss as ludicrous the accusations of sexual abuse against the Friedman father and one of his sons. His comments are worth repeating and responding to, because they speak to important issues in the criminal-justice system, sexual-abuse cases, and objectivity in documentary filmmaking.
What interested me most seeing Who Framed Roger Rabbit recently were the movie’s political implications.
The conventional interpretation of American Beauty is wrong, and lauding or damning the movie based on it is a major mistake. Except for the prologue, American Beauty is a movie within a movie, not a straightforward narrative.
If Peter Weir’s movies fundamentally operate on basic levels and within simple formulas, they also resonate more deeply than those of virtually any other working director. Weir creates well-rounded and complicated characters, puts them in a premise, and watches them go. He is, in short, making character-driven movies, generally without pretense or intrusive style, which might be one reason he’s not held in terribly high esteem.
I love Jeff Bridges. I love Tim Robbins. I love them equally, and (my gut tells me) in about the same way. We are a ménage à trios, even if they don’t know it yet.
Did they do it? Capturing the Friedmans is wonderfully rich, and of all the things in it, this is among the least rewarding lines of inquiry for me. The most obvious point of the film is that we cannot know the truth of the accusations, so why argue about it?
Spike Lee’s 25th Hour would appear to be about a good-hearted drug dealer’s last day of freedom before he begins a seven-year prison sentence, but the movie insistently pushes itself beyond that. It should be a circumscribed drama limited to the dealer (named Monty and played by Edward Norton), his girlfriend, his father, and his two best friends, but the film regularly veers into the margins.
I was expecting something special out of the IMAX presentation of The Lion King, but it was merely bigger than I’d ever seen it. This was not the transcendent experience I expected and (to a degree) hoped for.
