Three Great (Underrated) Films and Two Disappointments

Film 345
"Manhattan"
starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Michael Murphy, Anne Bryne, Karen Ludwug, Michael O'Donoghue
written and directed by: Woody Allen

It was quite apparent early on in Woody Allen's filmmaking career that he's always been in love with New York. He pretty much sets all his films in the great, powerful city.

Woody Allen has built his career around presenting himself as the main character (usually in his films) which are not too far-fetched from the person he is in real life. He has become the definitive vulnerable artist with giant (almost unattainable dreams). A great deal of the success of Allen's "Manhattan" depends on how well he has established that Woody persona. A movie that might seem sketchily fleshed-out in other hands becomes a great deal more resonant in Allen's: This is a variation on a familiar theme.
Allen's humor has always been based on the contrast between his character ("Woody," spectacled, anemic, a slob, incredibly bright and verbal, tortured by self-doubt) and his goals (writing a great novel or winning the love of beautiful women). The fact that he thinks he can achieve his dreams (or that he pretends he thinks he can) makes him lovable. What Allen does in "Manhattan" is to treat both the Woody character and the goals with more realism, and to deal with them in an urban social setting we can recognize. His earliest movies were made from farce, slapstick, stand-up verbal wit, satire, and the appeal of the Woody character. "Manhattan" is made from his observations about the way we talk and behave, and the fearsome distances between what we say and what we mean, and how we behave and how we mean to behave. 

The story follows several characters through several affairs; and they all seem to know each other or simply run in small circles, which could very well be the case, since it is hipster New York in its heyday. Woody Allen's character is having an affair with a seventeen year old girl (played by the just as young Mariel Hemingway. His best friend, Yale, is married but having an affair with a girl he met at a party (played by Diane Keaton). Yale tries to pass off his affair lady to Allen and they end up starting to fall in love. Plus, Allen's seventeen year old girlfriend has hopes and a chance to go study in Europe, so that relationship probably won't last. The relationships aren't really the point of the movie: It's more about what people say during relationships -- or, to put it more bluntly, it's about how people lie by technically telling the truth. One of the reasons why I've always stuck by Allen's side is for the simple fact that he is a master of writing dialogue. It's near perfect in almost all of his movies, some more than others, of course, and this is one of those cases. 

I absolutely loved this early film of Woody Allen's and I can't believe I hadn't previously seen it. 
Full disclosure, I haven't seen "Annie Hall" in its entirety, either. But now I will.  
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Film 346
"The House of Yes"
starring: Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Tori Spelling, Freddie Prinze Jr.
written and directed by: Mark Waters (based on the stage play by Wendy MacLeod)

This is a film based on a stage play of the same name. After seeing the film, played well by the young actors and actresses involved, makes me wish I could see it on a stage in a theatre production, but since the film came out in 1997, I doubt it's still running.

The story takes place on a stormy (metaphor, of course) Thanksgiving night in 1983, in a home in a Virginia suburb. Marty Pascal (Josh Hamilton, from "With Honors") is back home for the first time in apparently awhile, and he's decided to bring his girlfriend/fiancee, Lesly (played actually well by Tori Spelling, even during her "90210" days) so that she can meet his family. His bizarre family includes his twin sister, Jackie O (the ever-wonderfully crazy Parker Posey), his younger brother, Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr.- wow) and his mother, Mrs. Pascal.

At the heart of the film is the story of a damaged family that has somehow struggled along together, hidden behind doors and walls of their safe, suburban home. But, when a stranger is introduced into their world, the family's secrets seem to come into the light. Jackie O (Posey) is very disturbed to hear/learn that Marty has brought home his girlfriend and even more so when she hears that they are engaged. This seems to shatter her world, and we don't really know/understand why exactly, other than Jackie O is a bit of a fragile egg, so any news could break her.

I've seen a lot of films and witnessed a lot of actresses play roles, but few actresses can smolder from beneath lowered brows more dramatically than Parker Posey, and she receives the news with ill-concealed dismay. Her mother, Mrs. Pascal (Genevieve Bujold), does little to reassure their guest: "Jackie and Marty belong to each other. Jackie's hand was holding Marty's penis when they came out of the womb.'' Some of the lines, like this one, seem to come directly from the stage and I love that. The dialogue is smart and terse. Just like all very focused plays for the stage that take place in one central location (re: the house), it's a lot of back and forth dialogue that never seems to stop. There's certainly no lull in the conversations and it's all highly entertaining, especially the way it's all delivered. Parker Posey is fantastic. Anthony, who loses no time visiting Lesly in the guest room, has hopes of talking her out of his brother and into sleeping with him. Outside, the storm rages.

I really enjoyed this from-the-stage-to-the-screen film. Mostly for Parker Posey's performance.
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Film 347
"Weakness"
starring: Bobby Cannavale, Danielle Panabaker, June Daine Raphael, Josh Charles, Lily Rabe
written and directed by: Michael Melamedoff

Within the first few minutes of Joshua's (Bobby Cannavale) life goes from bad to worse to the worst. Joshua is a married man whose wife wants to engage to a bit of swinging (which he can't ultimately go through with) and then she cheats on him, which leads to their separation and inevitable divorce. His mother is also dying of cancer. Joshua is a high school English teacher, who seems to be liked by his students and colleagues. The film starts at the beginning of his summer break, which should be promising, but the idea of vacation seems to kick him when he's already down. The theory of "when it rains it pours" as well as "Murphy's Law" seems to apply quite well to Joshua. His mom dies. He injures his leg. His mentally retarded brother gets evicted from the hospital he's been in. And, of course, as I mentioned before, his wife has an affair and demands a separation.

But, then things start to look better for Joshua- mostly in the romance category. A fellow English teacher shows an interest in him; and at the same time, so does an ex-student, named Danielle (played by Danielle Panabaker). Joshua's idea of a date seems to generate from his inability to grow up out of his teenage years- a video arcade and a batting cage! And of course, because his life can only consist of bad things, Joshua chooses to take up with his ex-student, because that could only mean good things! Ha! Right? In many scenes, Danielle seems to be more the adult than Joshua and could possibly be talking him down from the ledge often, when really he should just be enjoying the company of this girl, even if it's morally wrong.

"Weakness," the debut feature film by writer-director Michael Melamedoff, is a very eloquent yet dismally realistic portrayal of a lost and confused man who could probably be satisfied with a way to just decelerate the dreadful downward spiral of his existence. Joshua’s life, at least as represented in "Weakness," is like a 90-minute long train wreck (Melamedoff’s film utilizes events such as a fall from a roof, as well as being stuck up there all night- and a near car crash as metaphors for Joshua’s life); and Cannavale, in his doleful and subdued performance, ably conveys Joshua’s many weaknesses without always verbalizing them. Joshua definitely does not make the best choices or say the most appropriate things; in many ways Joshua just plows through life with a kind of nonchalance, just assuming that things will begin to improve without his urging.

I liked this film a lot, because it's a genuine look into someone's reality and it could very well hit home for some people. It sort of reminded me of another film I've watched thanks to this project- Will Ferrell's "Everything Must Go."

You should definitely watch this one, but make sure you're in the right mood. 

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Film 348
"Twixt"
starring: Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning
written, directed, and produced by: Francis Ford Coppola

It's really hard to believe that the man behind probably one of the greatest film trilogies ("The Godfather") could make one of the worst films I've ever seen. It plays out more like a sketch of a story idea that Coppola found in his notebook and then never bothered to flesh out into a true film. It also seems like he is lazily borrowing from other films in the noir category. The entire time, I couldn't help thinking I was watching an extended episode of "The Twilight Zone" mixed with a bit of "Twin Peaks." It definitely tries to play out like a David Lynch film, except really terrible.

The hero, and I use that term quite lightly, is named Hall Baltimore (and is played so horribly by an overweight and bloated Val Kilmer- which leads someone to ask, "What the hell happened to Val Kilmer?"). Baltimore is a pudgy, to say the least, agreeable alcoholic who is known for being a "bargain basement version of Stephen King" thanks to his witch hunter series of books. He pulls into a small town in order to sell some copies of his latest book in a hardware store that doubles as a minimal book store. The town seems to only be populated by the characters we see (so I'm guessing the grand total is about 10). Nevertheless, Baltimore settles in for a couple of days. It doesn't help that he gets lured in by the stories of mystery behind some girls' deaths. Bruce Dern plays the Sheriff- Bobby LaGrange- who is aching for a co-writing credit for Baltimore's next book, if he writes it about these mysterious deaths. I think one of the worst parts of the film is the fact that Coppola decided to add Hall Baltimore having trippy, crazy dreams that involve...get ready for this...contact with Edgar Allen Poe (played by Ben Chaplin, who plays it as if he knows he shouldn't be there). Most of Baltimore's contact though is with one of the missing, dead girls. "V" (played by Elle Fanning) is old-school gothic wanna-be vampire who ran with a similar crowd of outcasted gothic youths.

The atmosphere that Coppola creates, mostly in the dream sequences is nearly perfect, but it doesn't make up for the fact that the film is more a bunch of vignettes strung together than anything else. There's never really an established tone or sense of reality, even in the small town. Sure, maybe Hall Baltimore is holding himself up in this town, because he wants to escape his own reality (an ex-wife who is apparently also his manager or accountant and the brief, vague description of his daughter's death).

This is definitely a film to avoid at all costs, but maybe you've already learned that from F.F. Coppola's other films, following his "Godfather" movies.

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Film 349
"Breaking the Girls"
starring: Agnes Bruckner, Madeline Zima, Shawn Ashmore, Kate Levering

This is a film that is essentially feeding a stereotype of the psychotic lesbian who is also very unstable, quite the manipulator, gives way to extreme bouts of jealousy and rage, and uses her beauty and charm on the same-sex to do her bidding (which in this case, involves murder), perhaps because she knows that "smarter" men would never fall for her manipulation (but, let's be honest, many would).

Alex Leyton (played by Madeline Zima, whom I'm familiar with thanks to the Showtime series "Californication" in which she kind of plays a similar character) is the schemer, seemingly in the driver's seat for most of the film. Although, the film has so many twists and turns (all of which seemed quite obvious to me, but that could just be because I've seen so many films, not even counting this project) that if you were on a roller-coaster, you'd probably throw up afterwards, or at least I would. Alex is quite a stereotype of the beautiful, young, crazy lesbian. Well, to be fair, I haven't really known too many lesbians that well to be able to say if that's entirely true).

"Breaking the Girls" is about women trying to out-scheme each other, when they're not having sex with each other, but even when they're being intimate, you can tell the wheels are turning. Besides, when has sex not been a vehicle used by anyone to get something that they want?

Sara Ryan (Agnes Bruckner, whom I remember years ago in a great indie film "Blue Car"), is a law student who finds herself the target of bitchy colleague Brooke Potter's (Shanna Collins) efforts to sabotage her standing at the university. When a highly flirtatious Alex shows up at the bar where Sara tends part time, the two hit it off, eventually going back to her place and having sex, Sara taking instantly to her first same-sex encounter. Really?! After Brooke gets Sara's subsidized housing revoked, the latter moves in with Alex, becoming her regular lover. When Sara unfolds her woes to her new roomie, Alex starts scheming to undertake a Strangers on a Train-style murder exchange in which she would kill Brooke and Sara would take out Alex's stepfather's obnoxious new wife.

Things don't work out quite according to plan, of course. Sara refuses to carry out her part of the arrangement and later because it's revealed that all of the film's female characters have hidden motives. About two-thirds of the way through "Breaking the Girls," the twists start to come hot and heavy and the film goes from simplistic bad-lesbian drama to would-be edgy, shocking thriller. But the plot points land with the thud that comes from contrived inevitability, and the film proves to be a singularly unexciting piece of work. Instead, it's just another tepid girls-behaving-badly drama that isn't in the least subversive. Rather than use its exploration of lesbianism as a tool of empowerment for its women, and notwithstanding the justifications indicated by the final plot twist, the film turns into a cynical portrait of Machiavellian scheming, in which to be the biggest, most calculating bitch is to be the last one left standing. Such a terrible message to send to anyone, especially women. 

Miss this one, even if you enjoy watching two attractive women making out, all of the time. It's totally not worth it!