We're 200 reviews old! Here's some personal favorites

To celebrate that My Lawyer Will Call Your Lawyer recently passed 200 posts, we decided to pick three of our favorite reviews so far.
Click on the film title to read our reviews.

Astrid:

New York, New York :

 

Brief Encounter:

Comes A Horseman:

Nick:

Stardust Memories: 

To Have And Have Not:

The Misfits:

Falling in Love (1984) Directed by Ulu Grosbard

Astrid:
I went to the library last week and borrowed a pile of movies to watch while Nick was too busy to sit down with me. I have squirmed through Last Chance Harvey with the elderly Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson embarrassing themselves as new lovers. I knitted my way through Flash of Genius and was actually moved by The Great Debaters. One evening Nick was home and I had saved us the most romantic of my library choices, Falling in Love.

Falling in Love pictures Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep falling for each other in New York – or on the train going there actually. It describes the tangles and mess of being already married but falling for someone new...and not being able to recover from those feelings. This was a film I had seen a glimpse of many years ago on TV and had since dreamed of it as a great unattainable movie. Sure, had I seen Falling in Love in the 1990s I would have truly loved it. Now I could not help but notice that it was a little hollow here and there, the clothes on Meryl were 4 sizes too big and Robert's intensity was a misplaced leftover from Raging Bull or some other testosterone-role. After seeing him in all the aggressive and violent roles he was so brilliant at all through the 1970s, as a viewer I could not trust that he wasn't actually a psycho waiting to blow his fuse...not a good thing for a romantic drama with no intended edge.

 

 

Falling in Love casts the great Diane Wiest as Meryl's single girlfriend. Although her role is not big here, she is funny and deep even in the small supporting role. I have grown to love Diane Wiest over the last couple of years. Not the least because of her role in Hannah and Her Sisters and her version of a psychotherapist in the TV-series In Treatment. She is the New York woman.

Nick:
My life is a perpetual blur at this time. Flu has been a constant companion, I just cant shake it. I'm drowning in things to do, the in-tray permanently full. I'm waiting for a lull. It feels like it ain't coming. So this past Sunday finally arrives and palatable relief. I've not had a genuine day off in weeks. Here it is. Time with my family, nice. Unwind, relax. Falling In Love, let the blandness wash over you. It's an easy option when my brain won't engage. Powerhouses of American acting share the screen, New Hollywood graduate behind the camera, it's a sure fire wet dream! No? Why? Surely? Don't piss on my undemanding mode of operation. This film's actual stiffness becomes a problem that precludes me from merely just enjoying it.

Here's the problem: Grosbard has a history of average movies behind him, with a couple of alright efforts (True Confessions, Straight Time). He brings willful arty pointlessness to Falling in Love. This could be OK in some faux-European-Art-House-movie sense, but Falling In Love has the flat feel of a US TV movie from 1981. Falling In Love also takes an age to get going. So, in my tried impatience, I don't want anymore scenes of the main protagonists Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro nearly meeting on their train into New York, nearly exchanging glances and so on ad-nauseum. It's shocking that De Niro and Streep accepted this slow slow slow build-up. Falling In Love is a picture about finding one's true love despite existing, established surroundings. The chance meeting. Is this a new Brief Encounter? If only.

I did catch this when it first came out. It was all the rage back in 1984 and I was seduced by Streep and De Niro. The pretension that so inflicts almost every frame of Falling In Love was somehow acceptable in those hollow times. When eventually these confused lovers get it together in Falling In Love a sense of "thank god this is over" transpires. A wooden turkey from people who should know better.

Terms of Endearment (1983) Directed by James L. Brooks

Nick:
I get it sometimes when extremely tired, also when mentally and emotionally hurt. If I bang my little toe on the sideboard, I get it too. What is it I get? I get a handful of hankies/tissue papers and ultimately a flood of tears. Yes, I get tearful. I cry watching movies (I'm sure I've mentioned this here before?) King Kong does it for me every time (strangely the 1970's remake!?) And some other pictures like say, Casablanca or the Clint Eastwood/Meryl Streep definition of the modern weepie, The Bridges Of Madison County. Terms Of Endearment is a terrible film. There is no way for me to avoid making that statement. It's smug and self-satisfied and has the worst chirpy-fucking-chirp soundtrack. Add this to shallow characterization in a film that thinks it's dealing with real issues. Yet, this film makes me blub like a baby every time. Why?

Hateful mum (Shirley MaClaine, sister of Warren) resents getting old, treats grown-up daughter (Debra Winger) terribly. Mother does not agree with her daughter's pending wedding to Stephen Malkmus clone Flap (Jeff Daniels). After the marriage a few years whiz by. Daughter has children all the time whilst husband moves family around America, accepting teaching jobs and having affairs with students. Daughter has affair with ugly bank manager and is diagnosed with cancer. Lots of guilt ensues. Daughter dies. Crying starts. This is basically the plot of Terms Of Endearment. I forgot to mention that MacLaine is excellent and that Jack Nicholson as a boozy womanizing astronaut steals the film. In fact the hateful mother and the crazy astronaut scenes elevate Terms Of Endearment momentarily to greatness. Unfortunately, the movie focuses too much on the duller-than-life daughter's story.

Despite my boredom with this twee Americana and the essentially slavish mentality of the do-gooding Winger character, once she's on her death bed, being so brave and the big C is coming to get her and she says goodbye to her kids and her husbands a shit, the hateful mum keeps the children once she's gone, all this emotion just does me in, it's too much for me ...boo hoo hoo.......  So, I say it again. Terms Of Endearment is a terrible film. One that brings the tears out in me and I don't know why (or maybe I'm being coy?).

Astrid:
Terms of Endearment is a film I cannot discuss without acknowledging that I took it very personally indeed. I (along with a surprisingly big number of my close friends) am currently expecting a baby. Needless to say, at this point this fact influences my perspective on almost anything I experience. Yet,  because Terms of Endearment is largely about a mother-daughter relationship once the daughter has started her own family, I watched it especially closely with mother-to-be spectacles on.

The movie portrays a mother (MacLaine) who has difficulty letting go of her daughter and accepting and supporting her in her independent choices. In fact, the mother has obviously always been using the daughter for her emotional needs rather than offering her own shoulder of support for her growing child. That becomes clear from the beginning of the film. The mother does not approve of the daughter's (Winger) hair, girlfriend, husband, or any choices for that matter. The film offers no explanation as to why these people have turned out the way they are. The mother is rich and the daughter ends up poor and uneducated with three children and a philandering looser husband. The mother finally breaks her years of loneliness by starting an affair with her neighbor, an alcoholic astronaut (Nicholson). All the while the mother keeps herself suffocatingly close to the daughter by phoning her up everyday, all day long. I'm not sure if the film is aware of its portrayal of co-dependency, but that's what it certainly depicts.

Terms of Endearment is infuriatingly flawed. It creates very flawed characters and leaves the viewer wondering if this is entirely intentional or not. Maybe it's a good thing that I never know what the film wants me to feel about anything – there is a callousness of the characters which remains in complete juxtaposition with the sentimental and therefore intrusive music. Finally, the ending of the film is entirely unsatisfactory. Despite all these things, in my current state of metamorphosis and becoming, I enjoyed the movie because it allowed me to reflect on my own dreams of mothering and my own experiences as somebody's child. Terms of Endearment was made in 1983. Unfortunately, I'm afraid there is nothing out there being made now that could speak even this honestly of such flawed parenting. Nowadays Hollywood seems to concentrate on sneakily making films about how to be a better consumer-mother-workaholic-genius-breeder. No pressure – just entertainment.

Planet Of The Apes (1968) Directed By Franklin J. Schaffner

Astrid:
During the titles Nick had already made a few comments: "Great titles!" he said, and then "we never watch enough 60s films". I said nothing. I was making an effort to be nice and agreed therefore to watch Planet of the Apes although I knew I was in for something equally as annoying as it would be entertaining. I could have remarked that the reason we cannot watch too many movies from the 1960s is because the period in cinema is unreliable (you get a lot of daring invention but you get unimaginative conformist and naive stories too)...While I can embrace some of the stylish, groovy and funny 60s, I hate James Bond and to me it signifies the period. Anyway, I continued to say nothing when Nick predicted that I would like Planet of the Apes.

He was talking in a hopeful voice with a tiny amount of force in it (just in case that would do the trick of persuading me to fall in love with Chalton Heston). The film began and Nick declared with child-like excitement: "the spacecraft is sinking!" and "wow, that must be the Grand Canyon". Indeed, I thought, but how stupid is this film when it expects us to believe that these 700-year-old astronauts would not recognize the Grand Canyon when they land in the middle of one of the biggest landmarks in the US, their original home? That question proved to be frustratingly poignant throughout the film. It felt as if the makers were undermining both the audience in front of the silver screen and the characters in the film. In 2011 it felt a little too simple to just reverse the roles between humans and apes (or other mammals) and then stop imagining anything further. It would a be a great script if it had been written by a 10-year-old, but it wasn't.

Nick remained enthusiastic until the end. I could see he was watching the film with the childhood self who first saw the film decades ago. He did not suffer and intellectualize, he did not laugh at but with the film. He got the almost environmentalist message at the end of the movie and it still could make an impact after all these years. I watched Chalton Heston ride away in his Tarzanesque outfit with his own non-verbal sexy Jane in tow. Yes, I got it  – Adam and Eve all over again. Past and present meeting in a circle where it no longer matters what is the future because it's all the same evolutionary repetition in the end. And then there was the final scene of the film with the Statue of Liberty. Nick loved it  because it was "iconic" – sometimes I wish I were a little boy, sometimes I wish I was in the target audience for something other than Sex and the City I and II.

Nick: 
A strange symmetry, web of conceit or pure coincidence seems to tie together the movies we have reviewed this month. Edward Scissorhands features Johnny Depp playing a character who is in part based on The Cure's Robert Smith. This year at Cannes premiered a new movie called This Must Be The Place starring Sean Penn, where his character is a Robert Smith-like retired rock star looking for his father's killer (!!!!).  James Franco co-starred with Penn in Milk, and this year Franco starred in a kind of sequel to Planet Of the Apes called Rise Of the Planet Of The Apes. Confused? Well, lets just add that Scissorhands helmer Tim Burton directed a famously pointless remake of Planet Of The Apes in 2001. This really doesn't represent anything other than the small circles and lack of original material knocking around Hollywood. Planet Of the Apes, the original from 1968 is still the definitive chapter of the series that warrants revisiting (at least in my opinion).

Planet Of The Apes not only spawned sequels and remakes but also a TV series in the 1970's which I was a big fan of when I was a kid. I had the badges and knew friends who were members of the series fanclub. I always loved the reverse concept of Planet of The Apes, that the human species have created their own destruction, only for the Apes to rise and become the dominant species on a future earth. Man cannot talk and is in fact closer to our present understanding of the primate. Planet Of The Apes deals with this concept, yet also manages to mix in an oppressor influenced by Nazism, a commentary on the outsider in society, the issue of race and man's headlong race to destroy the planet (environmentalism). This is perhaps why Planet Of the Apes has endured so long, under disguise it tackles so much that is still relevant to our current state.

Schaffner manages to create an amazing looking backdrop for the 'new planet' with the early scenes shot in Glen Canyon, Utah, these being the most impressive of the picture. Charlton Heston as our cynical hero spends most of the picture in states of undress (he was 45!), yet offers us a stern authority as future spaceman Taylor. Stand out performances come from Kim Hunter and Roddy Mcdowall as the intellectual scientists who fight for Taylor's cause of actually being an intelligent human being. Special mention must go to the ape make-up, which still looks convincing after all these years. So, what Planet Of the Apes actually states are quasi-liberal ideologies, a warning to man of what might happen. The final scene of Taylor's ultimate discovery has become one of the most iconic images in modern cinema history. It's enough alone to preserve Planet Of the Apes standing as a classic.

Milk (2008) directed by Gus Van Sant

Nick:
Harvey Milk is someone from real life I find inspirational. A human being who ended up on this earth fighting hypocrisy, discrimination, bigotry and hatred in its worst forms. Milk seemingly did this with a smile on his face and a big heart. So yeah, if we're talking of modern heroes, they don't come any better than Harvey Milk and his fight for the rights of gay people. It's amazing to me that these events are so recent and how backward we are as a society that we even have to have this discussion. If you've watched the excellent documentary The Times Of Harvey Milk, then, in a rather sad way, I can't think of any reason for you to watch Gus Van Sant's movie Milk.

Yes, Sean Penn is great in Milk as Harvey. He displays a rarely seen sensitivity, Van Sant positions his film solely on Penn's shoulders. However good Penn is, it's too much responsibility for him to carry the movie when all other characters are left so shallow. This is a bio-pic in the most crass Hollywood terms, sharing facts, but little personal insight. Milk is never as gripping as the real life portrayal of Rob Epstein's aforementioned documentary, yet it covers virtually the same ground. Actors like James Franco, Josh Brolin and Diego Luna are wasted in poorly written roles that just keep the story moving along. I would love to say there were great scenes of fucking in this movie, but unfortunately even these are rare and very self-conscious in a "let's not rock the established order" kind of way.

I'm never convinced by Gus Van Sant as a director, he' so miss with the odd hit. For every Drugstore Cowboy  or Goodwill Hunting (both great), there is the frankly awful Psycho remake, Finding Forester and Last Days. You know Van Sant could be a wonderful art-house director, but he always has one eye on the mainstream and gets too confused. If Milk had been made from a personal perspective it would have been far more interesting than this piece of second hand furniture. Worth watching (just!) for Penn and some visual flare, Milk was a major let down for me. Harvey deserves better.

Astrid:
I was familiar with Harvey Milk's story through a great documentary on him. I think I saw it around the time Milk opened. I was curious to see the film as well, but the documentary kind of satisfied that need for the time being. Before watching the film I expected to see some different approach to Harvey Milk, but in fact Milk turned out to be strangely loyal to the doc. Whatever personal affairs and emotions the film tried to inject into the drama, it hardly took the narrative anywhere – the most interesting stuff became Milk's gender political campaigning.

I guess in many ways Milk was an attempt at mainstreaming gay rights issues in a social environment where things had gotten seemingly more relaxed, yet huge discrimination abides in the US and Europe.
If Brokeback Mountain (2005) had approached gay men as a romantic leading couple, in 2008 it was time in Hollywood to portray the larger scale of what it has meant to be gay in America. Lesbian women await that more politicized treatment from Hollywood, now that The Kids Are Alright (2010) has offered the personal-is-political viewpoint.

Back to Milk the film. I was impressed by its 1970s look, the way it was shot and the mood that was created with sets, props, and clothing. This was the first time I saw James Franco in a film. Strangely enough he reminded me of Heath Ledger, the other star of Brokeback Mountain. The film itself was in no way perfect or cinematic, but I'm glad it got to be made. What happened to Harvey Milk cannot be forgotten. If I ran for office in any political election, I would argue for more public affection. There should be much more public kissing and cuddling in general – between men, among women and in what ever combination. Public affection makes the world a safer place.

Edward Scissorhands (1990) Directed by Tim Burton

Astrid:
As a child I missed the fall-in-love-with-johnny-depp boat. I just didn't get on it and then it got difficult later in life. I'll admit though, that once he got old enough to seem a bit ragged instead of just beautiful, I like him better. One big reason why I didn't get Depp like all my girlfriends was that I totally missed Edward Scissorhands. Can you believe it? I was just the right age to be very impressed by it in the early 1990s, and it was everywhere – oh, the references I must have missed. For me Winona Ryder was also a phenomenon familiarized by Little Women, not Edward Scissorhands.

So in my 30th year, among many other baffling and strange things I had never tried before, I finally saw the film. And I shared the experience with a lucky 10-year-old who got very frustrated and sad because she thought the film was hopelessly sad and downward-spiralling. She did not realize, how amazingly lucky she is from my perspective. She's not missing out on major cinematic shifts. My theory on why she got so very upset is that she has been totally bitten by the johnny-depp-love-bug already. He's still hanging around for this generation of girls...in pirate costume, in a chocolate factory and everywhere else.

Edward Scissorhands is a good movie even though I was hopelessly late for it. It is a light look at difference contrasted with monotony, and a look at the inability we socially have to accept anything different from our norm. It was romantic and kind of funny. In my opinion though, the film was light as a feather. I cannot help but associate the discovery of it with the discovery that I grew up in bubble when it comes to popular culture. That's why I'm writing this blog now: I'm taking it all in and devouring pop with a hunger. I don't have scissors for hands, but I relate to Ed(ward) – a little.

Nick:
Johnny Depp eh? What a cad. Nowadays Depp sleepwalks his way through many a picture, picking up some ridiculous paycheck at the end. There was a time when he was the king of quirk, making many a flawed art-house picture for cult audiences pre-the-Pirates franchise. It's clear now that Keith Richards wasn't the first rock star that Depp mimed for onscreen inspiration. Depp's early collaborations with Burton are in my opinion the best Depp pictures. With Edward Scissorhands Burton and Depp are able to create a modern day fairytale where the main character, at least on a visual level, is based on The Cure's front man Robert Smith.

I haven't watched Edward Scissorhands in many years, so I was surprised how well it stood up.  Not only this, I'd say nowadays this stands as a modern classic. This is no news to anyone, it's hardly an obscure film. But it's a strange film, with a singular vision. Edward Scissorhands mixes post-war (1940's) sensibilities/visuals, old school-Hollywood Horror (Vincent Price!) with Lynchian attitudes and Walt Disney fantasy to create something new. Not only this, but Burton manages to imbue the picture with a great sense of humor (there are many laugh-out-loud moments). The film's eccentric take on American suburban uniformity has endured. Its message of tolerance to difference is more relevant now than ever in a world that can't accept any change or the other.

Winona Ryder is the love-interest (around this time Depp and Ryder were an item), the chemistry between the two leads is palpable and ultimately makes the picture moving. Lets be honest here, Ryder can be awful, this could be her best role. But it's Depp all the way that one remembers. As Edward Scissorhands Depp displays the makings of a future star (this was his first performance to make a mark), but one who understands restraint. He returned to this standard in later Burton pictures but never quite with this comic intensity. Edward Scissorhands still has the capacity to move and bring a lump to the throat, it's an emotional picture. A true original, Edward Scissorhands really might turn out to be Burton's masterpiece.