1. Ocean’s 13 (Steven Soderbergh, 2007): It was all right. Things I liked: the Pitt-Clooney banter and the way it would pick up mid-conversation, the way the dudes all talk in code and some of it never gets explained, the way they don’t totally explain every single thing, the union thing in the dice factory, the pretty. Things I didn’t like: it was sort of flat and affectless for a “this time, it’s personal” sequel, the total lack of dramatic, exciting payoff. Still, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
  2. The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944): This was interesting; they ran it during the Turner Classic Movies gay images series. Apparently it was really popular with lesbians in the 1940s, because they picked up on this subtext. Both the (male) commentators were just baffled and thought it was such a stretch that this one character was supposed to have lesbian feelings for this other (dead) character, but, like, she had a giant portrait of this woman in her house, and kept talking about how beautiful she was, and there was all this talk about how cold and unwilling she (the dead woman) was to have a child? I thought it was pretty obvious, but I don’t know if I would have felt that way if I hadn’t been cued to look for it. In non-lesbian news, I thought the second love story, with Ruth Hussey was kind of tacked on and also that Ruth Hussey was criminally underused.
  3. The Last Action Hero (John McTiernan, 1993): This was both strangely hypnotic and not as bad as you’d think. It was fun to see Schwarzenegger making fun of himself, and also fun when he made some jokes about how terrible politicians are.
  4. A Mighty Heart (Michael Winterbottom, 2007): I really liked this a lot. I was worried that Angelina Jolie’s presence would spoil Winterbottom’s obsessive docudrama realism, but it worked in this because of the way her character is positioned in the film. She’s also — and I had forgotten this — really good at acting. It managed to convey the sadness of the situation without trying to score easy ideological points; it hinted at the bigness of the global problems that the characters were rubbing up against without totally making a speech about it. Don’t go not prepared to be really sad.
  5. The Wiz (Sidney Lumet, 1978): This is entry #1 in Alex’s and my insane baroque late 70s/early 80s musical screening series. It was awesome: I seriously don’t understand why this movie is still so reviled (it has a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes). For those who are unfamiliar, it’s an update of The Wizard of Oz with an all-black cast and moved to an urban setting. They shot a bunch of it in actual New York. They filmed one huge production number in the actual plaza at the World Trade Center, which was Emerald City in the movie. It is also pretty obviously an allegorical treatment of issues of black identity. Like, the lion, who is exiled from his job as king of the jungle, regains his courage. And the scarecrow learns to value his education and not be subject to peer pressure from the mean crows. And at one point, after Dorothy kills the Wicked Witch (who runs a sweatshop), all these black caricatures who were working there unzip their costumes to reveal their real faces. Even if it’s not very subtle or productive allegory, it’s totally fascinating and super awesome. I seriously want to write a paper on this movie. I have problems.