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Happiness One of the best movies to play Cannes last May, "Happiness" is the latest peek at modern malaise from Todd Solondz, whose "Welcome to the Dollhouse" was a minor masterwork of peer persecution and geekhood in New Jersey. If the "hair gel" in "There's Something About Mary" was an occasion for hilarity, the substance in question is a stickier wicket in this darkly funny and melancholy ensemble piece. The performances couldn't be better, although the subject matter loneliness, the irony by which the same man can be an excellent father and a public menace, more loneliness may be off-putting to some. Solondz has created characters whose perpetual frustration echoes the lyrics of the Rolling Stones' "[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction." But adult viewers who don't mind visiting the darker corners of well-crafted black humor will be so satisfied as to bemoan the lack of more films this good. (Feb 17) The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (Les 5000 doigts du Docteur T) A few years back researchers confirmed that listening to Mozart can temporarily boost your IQ. Informal studies conducted during repeat personal viewings over the years have convinced me that exposure to 1953's "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" can increase your giddiness and giggle quotient. Another "doctor," Dr. Seuss, devised the script and wrote the songs. Equal parts camp and surreal, it's the twisted tale of 9-year-old Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) and his merciless piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried), who will brook no false notes. Not only do I love the movie, I love the idea that grown-ups reported to the studio daily to make it. ("Pass me another Happy Fingers beanie with the rubber human hand on top, would ya, bud?" "Sure thing, pal. Could you tell the twin policemen on roller skates to tie their beards together, and cue the harpists to take their places in the dungeon?") (Feb 17) You've Got Mail (Vous avez un mess@ge) Okay, I'll admit I laughed in places (the revelation of Jean Stapleton's youthful dalliance that didn't work out, for example), but the underlying message of Nora Ephron's update of "The Shop Around the Corner" makes my skin crawl. The film suggests that nothing should get in the way of two Hollywood stars kissing before the closing credits including the fact that, were this real life, a more appropriate response would be for Meg Ryan to scratch Tom Hanks' eyes out. Ryan runs the delightful, service-oriented children's book shop she inherited from her beloved mother. It's been a New York and neighborhood fixture for 42 years, but the new humongous discount book emporium-cum-capucchino bar run by Hanks is about to drive her out of business. Ryan and Hanks each have live-in main squeezes whom they'll have to jettison along the way. For, although Ryan and Hanks are sworn enemies in their workaday lives, it turns out they've been pouring their true inner selves out to each other, anonymously, via email. In the original Ernst Lubitsch film, Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, both clerks in the same Budapest notions shop, were oil and water at work but sugar and spice in their dual lives as unsuspecting pen pals. The snail mail to email update is brilliant, but the rest of the emotional armature just plain doesn't fit. If you go to the theater in "It's-Only-a-Movie" mode and sign a virtual "Go Ahead, Manipulate Me" waiver, you may well enjoy yourself, but if you're wearing even a fragment of thinking cap you may leave the show feeling as cranky and betrayed as I did. (Jan 20) Meet Joe Black (Rencontre avec Joe Black) Nearly all the reviews I've seen emphasize that "Meet Joe Black" is way too long. I disagree. It's long the same way "Titanic" is long a movie so very "Hollywood" and glamorous that watching the far-too-rich and far-too-attractive protagonists is painless even if they do overstay their welcome. It's a movie that stammers, with a strange air of beauty, tension and expectancy that's very appealing. "Meet Joe Black" is overblown but enjoyable as Death (Brad Pitt) gives an extremely successful tycoon (Anthony Hopkins) a temporary reprieve if he'll show Death around this crazy little thing called Life. The tycoon has a beautiful daughter. Like any father, Hopkins doesn't want his daughter messing around with just any young man especially if he happens to be the Grim Reaper. If you liked "Titanic," "The Horse Whisperer" or "Legends of the Fall," chances are you'll like this. (By the way, although this and "You've Got Mail" are distant cousins in the "Yeah, sure, thatcould happen" Hollywood tradition, I maintain that this one "works" because it so happens that everybody dies. Even though "Stockholm Syndrome," in which hostages fall for their captors, is a documented condition, most people, given a choice, will not fall in love with the schmuck who forced them to abandon a once-thriving and much-adored institution.) (Dec 30) |
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