Friday Round-Up

It's a good week when you see three 5-star movies. I started out with 42: Forty Two Up, which is the sixth film in the Up Series. According to the DVD cover, Roger Ebert counts the series in his top 10 of all time. I don't know if I would go that far, but they are some of the most engrossing and heartbreaking documentaries I've ever seen. The premise is this: a group of children from different parts of England and different backgrounds were chosen and interviewed in 1964; the filmmakers have checked in with them every seven years since then. This film was made in 1998, so I still have one more to watch before the next one is released in the next year or two. I really can't say enough about how much you come to know these people and feel for them. It's terribly sad, in some cases, to hear their hopes for the future and see how they fell short. On the other hand, it's great to see things going well for some people, particularly Bruce, the nicest man in the world. As the years have gone on, more participants are choosing not to appear in the films, which is sad - I just checked Wikipedia, and it looks like the 56 Up film will be pretty sparsely populated. Still, I hope the series continues because I feel like I'm invested in their lives now, as weirdly voyeuristic as that is.  

Singin' in the Rain was just a lot of fun. It was the first Gene Kelly film I had seen, but I can't wait to see more. Such a charismatic guy, and I couldn't look at anyone else when he was dancing. I was particularly impressed by what I perceived to be a modern feel to the film. Maybe that's a disingenuous way to describe it. What I mean is that some of the staging, colors and effects of the film were better than other films I've seen from the early '50s. For example, during the Broadway Melody finale, there's a shot where Kelly is in front of a green screen and he stays in shot while the camera pans out from the other performers. It looked seamless, which is tricky - even today, green screen shots can look obviously fake. Also, Jean Hagen gave an incredible, Oscar-nominated performance as Lina Lamont. Her style of brassy humor wouldn't be out of place in a film shot this year (unlike Debbie Reynolds, who was also great but seemed more like a '50s woman, if that makes sense). And wow, that dance scene with Kelly and Cyd Charisse, with her mile-long floating train, was stunning. Great movie.

And finally, The Godfather Part II. How often do you finish watching a 3.5 hour sequel at 1 a.m. and then immediately want to watch it and the first movie over again? Just like everyone says, this is a brilliant piece of work. It's brutal to watch, as you feel Michael (or at least the idealistic Michael from the beginning of the first film) slipping away; the birthday party flashback really digs the knife deeper as you see just how far he's fallen. In fact, that's true of everyone - no one is the same person they were in the first film. The sweetness has disappeared from poor Fredo (John Cazale still makes him sympathetic, despite his mistakes, and that's what makes each of his scenes so hard to watch) and from Kay - man, what a gut punch scene that fight between her and Michael is. Even Connie, in her couple of scenes, goes on an emotional rollercoaster; the dominance she tries to assert at the communion party is forced out of her and she falls at Michael's feet at the funeral, but as the flashback shows, she's always been pushed around by her brothers. The reason the film's so brutal to watch is that there's no one left to trust and no character to relate to; I think that's the mark of a really great film, that it avoids the easy way out. One last thing I noticed: I had to listen to it on headphones because Netflix Watch Instantly was really quiet, and it seemed to me that bird noises were mixed really loudly in the soundtrack. I did a quick Google search to see if this had some significance, but I couldn't find anything. I think I've been hearing background noises louder than normal for a while, though - pretty much every time I watch a movie, I think certain sounds are coming from inside the room instead of from the TV.