Keeping Track (August 2, 2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Last Week at the Movies
Business called me to Chicago last Friday and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to catch a double feature at the Music Box. The weekend classic matinee was Billy Wilder’s The Front Page (1974), starring Jack Lemmon as ace crime reporter Hildy Johnson and Walter Matthau as editor-from-hell Walter Burns. Like the original Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play, the movie is set in 1928 Chicago, although with the crucial difference that the play happened to be written then and Wilder is looking back- and taking the opportunity to pepper the script with wink and a nudge jokes. It sometimes strains too hard for comic effect and falls flat as a result, but the play holds up and the performances are as good as you’d expect from that cast.
Sacrifice- Chen Kaige’s new movie was the second half of my self-made double bill
Last Week at Home
The Hurt Locker- film club movie of the month
New in Theaters This Weekend
Colin Farrell in Total Recall, the new take on Philip K. Dick’s short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, and for the family audience, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.
What have you been watching? What are you looking forward to?
At the theater–The Dark Knight Rises. At home, a favorite–Waking Ned Divine.
At Home
Elmer Gantry- now I know where Paul Danno’s famous speech from There Will Be Blood comes from. Plus, this is a great film that features an astonishing performance from Burt Lancaster, one that he won an Oscar for.
Nowhere To Hide- a neat, visually extravagant yet, sadly a product of the ’90s from South Korea. But a fun film nevertheless.
Un Flic- my favourite French film director Jean-Pierre Melville reunites with Alain Delon and also throws Richard Crenna and Catherine Deneuve into the mix. It’s not character heavy or plot heavy but atmospheric, and the characters feel mythological more than archetypical cops and robbers. It’s a neat film with awesome cinematography and lots and lots of fog, smoke, and steam, to add to the mood.
Paper Moon- an amazing Bogdanovich instant classic. It sports an amazing, Oscar award wining performance by then 8-years old Tatum O’Neal; she and Ryan O’Neal are amazing in the film and the cinematography and direction (neither which were nominated for Oscars) are also outstanding.
The Phantom of the Paradise- a funky, interesting, hockey, well shot, meta, not-really-a-music from Brian De Palma that combines The Phantom of the Opera and Faust. I really liked it!