"This is my happening and it freaks me out."--Roger Ebert, in a line from his movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

There he was on television again after all this time: Roger Ebert, the movie critic, on the Oprah Winfrey show. By now, movie lovers have seen and heard of Ebert's troubles. The battles with thyroid cancer, the loss of his jaw, the inability to eat, and the crushing loss of speech. Now he's left with a dangling lump of flesh and a permanent smile. But he soldiers on--in fact, the man is happy: married, working, living. Oprah spoke lovingly of his wife, Chaz, who has given up her career as a trial lawyer to run his affairs and to take care of him. It was a truly touching moment. Chaz Ebert described her husband as "A man who respects women," and Winfrey, her audience, and Ebert, agreed. His eyes are bright and communicative, and his gesticulations remain expressive, if not more so than before he lost his ability to speak. In this way, he was able to tell us all how much he loved and admired her. Despite my admiration, or perhaps because of it, I had to chuckle. What a crazy, wonderful life. Roger Ebert: Movie Critic. Writer. Historian. Television Personality. Pundit. Cancer survivor. And writer of Russ Meyer's Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, Beneath the Vally of the Ultra-Vixens, and Up!--definitely not to be confused with the latest Pixar classic. Continued...

Salesman, 1968. Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin. With Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt, James "The Rabbit" Baker, Raymond "The Bull" Martos, Dr. Melbourn I. Feltman, Kennie Turner, and scores of potential customers.

The cruelest merchandise is a talent for which there is no demand. --A.J. Liebling, "People in Trouble"

Salesman, the Maysles Brothers' and Charlotte Zwerin's profound documentary about roving Bible sellers, opens with a failure. We see Paul Brennan, a slight man, his suit tight in spots and loose in others, lacking a chin and with hands gnarled from arthritis, desperately trying to make a sale. He's showing off the beauty of his product: a Catholic Press Leather-Bound and Illustrated edition of the Good Book. "Do you think this would be a benefit to you in your home?" he asks. The woman of the home, in curlers, her child hanging all over her, mumbles a 'yes', knowing damn well that any 'yes' exposes her limited finances to plunder. But she resists, says she can't afford the thing, and finally invokes her husband, who is not home to make the decision. Paul is defeated, and bites his lip. The camera freezes on him as his name appears onscreen: Paul Brennan. "The Badger." But we can see, very clearly, that The Badger's claws and teeth are worn , his fight is nearly gone, and his time in this field is limited.
Continued...

What is this, January 11? For most critics, top tens have given way to having to write 500 words on Youth in Revolt or that vampire movie with Ethan Hawke, who's becoming so gaunt in real life I'm starting to wonder if he's hasn't slipped into vampirism in real life. In any case, last Thursday we revealed our 2009 Top Ten movies on KFAI's "Movie Talk" (meaning myself and my co-hosts Jim Brunzell and Erik McClanahan), but inadvertently deleted the half of the show where we discussed our top ten, and read our damned lists. So, though you didn't ask, here's the beast. Continued...

Well, there goes that decade. This passing allows your film critic to muse on his favorite movies of the past ten years, a nifty habit that makes me (at least), revisit some really amazing films, always a joy. So without further adieu, here's my twenty-five favorite movies from the aughts.

Oh, and I didn't forget about No Country for Old Men, OK? So don't ask. Continued...

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, 2009. Directed by Lee Daniels, written by Geoffrey Fletcher. Starring Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, and Lenny Kravitz and Mariah Carey, for Christ's sake.

Precious is the story of a young woman, all of sixteen, who has been raped twice by her father and given birth to a pair of children from him. The eponymous girl, played with steely determination by Gabourey Sidibe, is beaten by her mother. She is overweight. Because of her pregnancy, she must drop out of school and attend an alternative high school in one of the upper floors of a run down New York hotel, which is often surrounded by crack heads. Poor Precious hates how she looks, wishes she were white, wishes she had a light-skinned boyfriend, wishes she was on a Black Entertainment Television music video. She is good at math, but she cannot read. At last, she is HIV-positive. Precious' life is difficult, to say the least. But in Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, director Lee Daniels and writer Geoffrey Fletcher have created a Disney heroine, wandering through an empty fairy tale that is as damaging to young black women as the movies and TV shows that make Precious wish she were white. Precious, with its suggestions that young, troubled women wait for fairy godmothers and -fathers is a travesty and a burden. Continued...

Yessir, I've missed posting on a ton of movies this year. So here's a few microreviews, in case you're wondering what's good to see (and use my opinion to make your decision... probably not a good idea.) And no, I'm not going to see 2012. Continued...

The Night of the Hunter, 1955. Directed by Charles Laughton, written by James Agee (and an uncredited Laughton.) Starring Billy Chapin, Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Evelyn Varden (so I annoying I want to take Preacher's switchblade to her), Don Beddoe, Peter Graves, and the creepy Sally Jane Bruce.

and,

Davis Grubb's The Night of the Hunter, published by Harper Brothers, New York, 1953.

We all know of great novels that have been turned into awful movies. But what about those rare moments when a movie is so good that it overshadows a decent source novel? And then there are those times, rarer still, when a great movie's shadow casts its darkness over a forgotten book that turns out--surprise!--to be superior in every way to the classic film. Consider the case of the movie The Night of the Hunter. Profoundly bizarre, funny in spots, terrifying in others, referencing silent films and Grimm's fairy tales and stories from the Holy Bible, Night is a classic flick by any account, and a personal top ten favorite. So imagine my shock when I opened the novel, casually, and began to read the book by long-dead, long-forgotten novelist Davis Grubb. Reading the original made the movie so much more moving. In fact, the book ruined a good many evenings, and got to the point where I literally couldn't read ten pages without crying. Was screenwriter James Agee moved in the same way? Or director Charles Laughton? Read the book yourself... if you can. Continued...

Chinatown, 1974. Directed by Roman Polanski, written by Robert Towne (with significant changes by the director.) Starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Diane Ladd, Roy Jensen, James Hong, and, with his stiletto, Mr. Polanski himself.

There he is, with his switchblade, talking about nosy little kitties. Roman Polanski, the unnamed assailant, emerging from the shadows. "Who's the dwarf?" Nicholson's Jake Gittes asks, nodding at Polanski. The nameless little man is startled, offended. So he puts the tip of the stiletto in Gittes' nose and jerks it back, slicing open the nostril and sending a shocking spray of blood across Nicholson's face. For the rest of the movie, Jake Gittes will have a big white bandage across his face. It will make him stand out, it's the sign of the fool, the man who thinks he can get to the bottom of the mystery. But Polanski knew. He knew that life is a little man with a stiletto, it's a hero who fails, and that eventually we all find ourselves staring at the horror. And then someone says, "Forget about it. It's Chinatown." Continued...

The Hurt Locker and Public Enemies



The Hurt Locker, 2009. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by Mark Boal. Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo and, ever so briefly (and for no apparent reason), these stars: Guy Pierce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Evangeline Lily.

The Hurt Locker, a film about three members of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) squad stationed in Iraq, opens with a very literal bang. Sergeant J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), and their leader, Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce), have sent a robot to detonate an Improvised Explosive Device (IED--a road bomb) left in a pile of trash by a busy Baghdad neighborhood. Whoops--a cart was attached to the robot with a device to blow it up out of harm's way, but now the wheel has fallen off. So Sgt. Thompson has to don his big bomb suit and lay the device on top of the bombs himself. While guarding the perimeter, Spc. Eldridge sees an Iraqi grocer with a cell phone in his hand, the man watching the proceedings a bit too closely. Eldridge panics--should he shoot, and risk killing an innocent civilian, or not, and risk his friend and colleague's death? Continued...