Whatever Works, 2009. Directed and written by Woody Allen. Starring Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr., Leo Brockman, Henry Cavill, Adam Brooks, Lyle Kanouse, and Michael McKean.

Whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can provide, every temporary measure of grace--whatever works. --Boris Yellnikoff

That's a beautiful philosphy. That quote closes out Woody Allen's new movie Whatever Works, and it sums up not only the character of Boris (Larry David), but the film as well. Sometimes, when the summer movie experience is an unhealthy amalgam of battling robots, machine-gun wielding pretty-boys, or drunken frat guys, it's nice to sit in a darkened theater and watch people talk--about love, life, philosophy, art, quantum mechanics, you name it. In places like beat-up little cafes, out-of-the-way Chinese restaurants, and knish bakeries. Like many Allen movies, Whatever Works is about people trying to get to the bottom of life's mysteries, and the jokes they tell and the art they create to endure. And while Whatever Works is far from Allen's best, and far from a great movie, it's as pleasant a distraction as any. Whatever works, right? Continued...

The Wire, 2002-2008. Created by David Simon. Starring Gbenga Akinnagbe, Chris Bauer, Keenon Brice, Al Brown, Robert F. Chew, Chad Coleman, Jermaine Crawford, John Doman, Steve Earle, Idris Elba, Frankie Faison, Aidan Gillen, Seth Gilliam, Larry Gilliard Jr., Anwan Glover, Wood Harris, Jamie Hector, Clark Johnson, Hassan Johnson, Domenick Lombardozzi, Deirdre Lovejoy, Thomas McCarthy, Julito McCullum, Felicia Pearson, Clarke Peters, Wendell Pierce, James Ransone, Lance Reddick, Andre Royo, Amy Ryan, Pablo Schreiber, Sonja Sohn, Jim True-Frost, Glynn Turman, Dominic West, Tristan Wilds, Delaney Williams, J.D. Williams, Michael K. Williams, Robert Wisdom, and a cast of many dozens more.

You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps the holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided. --Franz Kafka

In season five of The Wire, Bubbles (Andre Royo), a recovering heroin addict, is handed a worn slip of paper by his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor Walon (Steve Earle). Written on the scrap, no doubt in a barely legible hand, is the above quote. Neither Bub nor Walon know shit about Franz Kafka, but it doesn't matter. They understand what he was saying, are moved by the words, and we know that that paper, worn soft over years of reading and rereading, will change hands yet again. For Bubs will not hold back, he will lend himself to the suffering. And if we're lucky, we watch The Wire, and will not hold back from the suffering ourselves. Continued...

The Miracle Worker, 1962. Directed by Arthur Penn, written by William Gibson (not the Cyberpunk guy.) Starring Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, Inga Swenson, Victor Jory, Andrew Prine, and Kathleen Comegys.

I remember when my parents sat us down one night to watch The Miracle Worker. You've seen it, right? Helen Keller, champion of the handicapped, in her early years. Brought out of her darkness by the 'miracle worker', Annie Sullivan, herself almost totally blind. The fights, the old South of the Reconstruction, where father and son sit at a table and talk about the Civil War while Annie and Helen wrestle for control. You've seen it, and you say, "yeah, OK." But there's one problem: my guess is, you saw the tame 1970s version, the Hallmark Hall of Fame version, so novel because Patty Duke, who played young Helen in the original, now took her turn as Annie. Little House's Melissa Gilbert was the little blind girl. So what? Well, until you've seen the original, you don't know what kind of a war it was to get Helen Keller to see again. In fact, it tore my own family apart.

Continued...

Up, 2009. Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson. Written by Bob Peterson. With the voices of Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer, and Bob Peterson.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Carl and Ellie Fredericksen have been married a very long time. At the opening of Pixar's wonderful Up, we see the young Carl gazing in rapt attention at a newsreel of his favorite hero, Charles Muntz. Muntz, dressed like Charles Lindbergh but looking like Adolphe Menjou, is an explorer who jumps into his fabulous dirigible The Spirit of Adventure to search for the bones of the great and mysterious animals of the jungle, past and present. The explorer is in trouble: his latest discovery is called a fraud, he is disgraced, and vanishes into the misty Venezuelan jungle to prove his innocence. After the show, little Carl pretends to be the great Muntz, leaping over tree stumps and cracks in the sidewalk, when he also runs headlong into Ellie, a girl his age who is equally enamored of exploring, and the redoubtable Muntz. A friendship ensues. The friendship grows into love. The love quickens into marriage. The adventure begins. Continued...

Two Lane Blacktop, 1971. Directed by Monte Hellman, written by the great Rudy Wurlitzer, Will Corry, and an uncredited Floyd Mutrux. Starring James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, and Harry Dean Stanton.

G.T.O.: Well, here we are on the road.
The Driver: Yup, that's where we are all right.

I don't even know where to begin. By the time you're done reading this, you'll probably say to yourself he doesn't even know what he's talking about, and you'd be right, except that I'm writing, not talking, but then you knew that. I'm assuming you haven't seen Two Lane Blacktop, so if I'm a bit... obtuse, forgive me. If you have seen Two Lane Blacktop, then you might just nod a bit, thin your eyes and wonder why you haven't been on the road lately, really on the road, in a good long time. Come to think about it, you haven't seen Blacktop in forever. But, man, you remember. And you'll give that sly smile and say: I dig you, man. I don't quite get it, either. Continued...

Anvil! The Story of Anvil and Star Trek



Anvil! The Story of Anvil, 2008. Directed by Sacha Gervasi. Featuring Anvil: Steve "Lips" Kudlow (lead guitar with dildo, singer), Robb Reiner (drums), Glenn Five (bass, backing vocals), manager Tiziana Arrigoni, and a host of other friends, producers, well-wishers, and head bangers.

When they were all of fourteen years old, suburban Torontoites Steve Kudlow and Robb Reiner made themselves a pact: that they would boldly go where many young teens have gone before, namely, into the bizarre and often cruel universe that is rock and roll. They formed the heavy metal band Anvil, and began to rock hard, often times in parent's basements or garages. Continued...

Goodbye Solo and X-Men Origins: Wolverine



Goodbye Solo, 2009. Directed by Ramin Bahrani, written by Bahrani and Bahareh Azimi. Starring Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West, Diana Franco Galindo, Mamadou Lam, and Carmen Leyva.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 2009. Directed by Oscar-winning hack Gavin Hood, and written by David Benioff and Skip Woods (both of whom have written such trite garbage that you wonder how it can be called writing). Starring Hugh Jackman, Danny Huston (please stop wasting your career), Liev Schrieber (ditto), a non-entity named Will i Am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney, and Scott Adkins. Very few of these people will go on to do anything of value, ever.


You might ask yourself: what in the hell could Ramin Bahrani's modest Goodbye Solo have to do with the mighty, mighty extravaganza that is X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Aside from the fact that on this bright and sunny May Day, the start of when Hollywood shifts in its cave like a bear emerging from its winter slumber and unleashes its blockbusters, both Solo and Wolverine open here in Minneapolis. But aside from their debuts, it is apparent from watching both that they're about superheroes, fighting and struggling to maintain order, and bring peace and harmony to the world. Goodbye Solo, may not seem like the stuff of DC and Marvel flights of fancy, but it features a man who does such heroic acts of kindness that you might find yourself wondering if you, too, can fly in the world of human suffering as he does. While Wolverine which gives us plenty of CGI flights, makes you only wonder why you waste your time at these things, and aren't out connecting with fellow human beings. Continued...

Sugar and Tyson




Sugar, 2009. Directed and written by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Starring Algenis Perez Soto, Jaime Tirelli, Rayniel Rufino, Richard Bull, Ellary Porterfield, Ann Whitney, and former Cincinnati Red and current disgraced scout Jose Rijo.

To boil it down, Sugar is a baseball movie. Now I can already imagine art house patrons and filmgoers in general beginning to close their minds like gates in front of a Brooklyn Liquor store at the thought of yet another treacly film about the noble sport. So when I mention that Sugar is one vital part of the great American mythology, the essential tale of a Latin American immigrant struggling to make it here, well, then I find myself trying to shake into consciousness the hordes of baseball fans who want their movies as clean and crisp and sharply delineated as Rick Monday's flag-saving sprint. Alas, Sugar, then, seems to hover in a netherworld between these two communities, who, if judging by box-office returns in Los Angeles and New York, are missing out on what is, simply put, a damn good movie. Continued...

Your correspondent reports to you now from Richmond, Virginia. For those of you not in the know, I was invited to attend the James River Film Festival by one of its programmers, James Parrish. Now, my status as the pill bug of Minneapolis film criticism has not spread so far and wide as to reach the former capital of the Confederate States of America. Rather, James was a friend of my Dad's and we met at Dad's wake. James dabbled in magic as a child, and we began to talk about my pop's love of the art of prestidigitation and cinema. "Why not come down to our film festival and help program a night of movies to remember your Dad?" And so two nights ago, I found myself in the Carver Healing Arts Gallery with about fifty other people to watch Magic and the Movies, a series of short films spanning over a century, celebrating magic, animation, and this man Peter Schilling Sr. who affected James and I so profoundly. Continued...

The Ox-Bow Incident, 1942. Directed by William A. Wellman, written by Lamar Trotti. Starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Harry Morgan, William Eythe, the always solid Jane Darwell, Frank Conroy, and, unjustly uncredited, the amazing Leigh Whipper.

Have you ever read The Ox-Bow Incident? I haven't, though it used to be a staple in high school English classes. In fact, it was written by a high school teacher, one Walter Van Tilburg Clark, who never went on to write anything of any weight ever again. Simple, straightforward storytelling, with a heavy message on the end. About law, and justice, and especially the conscience of men. Continued...