Movie Review Wrap-Up

The idea was to watch and review a movie a week for a year. It happened, for the most part, as planned. I didn't quite hit the 50 movie mark, but what do you expect from an Unreliable Narrator? For this blog I have written almost entirely about movies since October of 2010. All my literary thoughts got funneled through my posts over at Beyond the Margins.

I had some guest posts, for The Illusionist, Harry Potter, and The King's Speech. That freed me up for a few weeks here and there, and I suppose that's cheating. But sometimes when writing for two blogs and keeping up other non-blog writing, you need a break.

I did not end up reviewing 52 movies. But, I didn't do too badly. I reviewed 38 new releases, along with a couple of older movies I saw on the big screen including Touch of Evil and Tron. I also reviewed the films I enjoyed at the Disposable Film Festival, which the Lowell Film Collaborative brought to Lowell last year. I posted an appreciation of Steel Helmet, the Korean war film by Samuel Fuller and wrote an essay comparing Tarantino and Sam Packinpah. I also ran a duel DVD review of Easy A vs. Machete.

Thanks to this experiment I saw some gems that I may have otherwise passed over, including Cedar Rapids, Limitless, Bridesmaids, Inside Job, The Social Network, and True Grit. I saw The Fighter with an adoring hometown audience (Lowell, MA!) and got my twelve year old on with Transformers, Captain America, Priest, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

I would also like to take a moment to lament the eight hours I will never get back watching Battle: Los Angeles, Drive Angry 3-D, The Dilemma, and The Warrior's Way. Also, I found out how crappy a movie-going experience it can be watching a 3-D movie, with those dimming, uncomfortable, very low-tech glasses. 

I saw most movies here in Lowell, at the Showcase Cinema, a decent mainstream theater with stadium seating. But I also saw movies in Arlington, Cambridge, Brookline, Oak Bluffs, Woburn, Waltham, and back in Lowell at the Historical Park Visitor's Center theater.

Did I capture that feeling I had when I was a kid? That excitement, that anticipation? Sort of. I have to admit that watching the action spectacle that was The Transformers was a guilty pleasure bar none. And laughing along with a full theater at Horrible Bosses was also an oddly comforting, communal experience. In the same way I groaned along with the audience during Hangover II.

I'll always go to the movies. Just this past week I went to see a great film at the Historical Park Visitor's Center (another unique viewing experience sponsored by Suzz and Brett of the Lowell Film Collaborative!) called Of Dolls and Murder. The director, Susan Marks, was on hand to discuss this documentary about crime scene doll houses created in the 30s and 40s by Frances Glessner Lee and used as forensics training for detectives.

What's next for Unreliable Narrator? Not sure yet. I may go back to writing about writing, books, and reading. I also have another idea, another possible direction for this blog. I'll let you know in the next few weeks.

Thanks to everybody who reads Unreliable Narrator and also to those who leave comments. The comments and views really keep me going.

Happy Halloween. More soon.

Unreliable Narrator Goes to the Movies

As I announced on Thursday, UN is getting an extreme makeover*. Starting next week I will write about a movie a week for a year.

Before you click away in disgust, let me explain:

When I was a kid, I went to the local movie theater every weekend—often on Friday nights—to see whichever new movie was out that week. I loved the gestalt of movie going. The one-sheet posters in the lobby and out front. The lobby cards (photos of scenes from the movie—which I haven’t seen used in years). The smell of the lobby: gum, popcorn, butter: both fresh and stale. Waiting in line at the concession stand to buy Pom Poms, Milk Duds, Twizzlers, or popcorn, and a large Pepsi.

Every movie was a hoot—the good and the bad. Movies were an event. Each week was a small Christmas. Going to a movie combined many of my favorite things—candy, soda, friends, and getting out of the house without adult supervision. Going to the movies was, ultimately, a celebration of the mighty Friday night when school was over for the week and the weekend lay ahead, unadorned (until Sunday afternoon when I had to buckle down and do my homework).

This weekly devotion to movies was planted early. The first movie I saw in a theater that I remember was a David Niven movie from the late '60s called The Brain. The theater was in Manhattan. Why were we all there? The whole family? Mom, dad, me, my three older sisters? In a building that was many blocks long and as tall as the tallest skyscraper. The inside of the theater seemed many stories high, the aisles as long as a football field, the screen stretched wide and convex.

My sister, Cindy, loved movies and shared this love with me. She took me to see The Sting, which I didn’t really understand. Was it funny? Scary? Sad? What happened at the end? I didn’t get it. That didn’t stop me from loving movies, and the experience of movie-going. She took me to see all the disaster movies I could stomach: The Towering Inferno, Airport ‘77, Earthquake. She was excited to take me to see Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I begged her to drive me and my obnoxious friends to see the King Kong remake. The one with Jeff Bridges. And Jessica Lange! Va va voom!

When The Exorcist came out there was a furor in the mainstream media. The trailer played on TV and it was the most frightening thing I ever saw. Or heard, since I hid behind the couch or ran out of the room when it came on. That movie, and the ideas behind it which I never understood when I was growing up, just twisted through my malleable young mind and gave me nightmares for months. In a weird way, that experience of thinking about a movie so hard that it affected the way I thought solidified my attraction, my repulsion, my non-stop love affair with movies.

So much so that when I graduated high school I went to film school. I learned all about how films were made. I learned how to shoot and edit and light and direct actors. I learned that an extension cord is called a stinger. I crewed on student films and struggled to write a script for my senior thesis. And I watched a lot of films (no longer movies, but films). Deconstructing and reconstructing films was an unforgettable experience.

I didn’t consider it at the time, but it also scraped away the mystery of the movies. When I moved to Los Angeles for 16 months in 1990-91, I learned more about the business of the movies. In L.A., Hollywood is front page news, not relegated to just the Calendar or Arts section. It wore me down. It ruined that initial little-kid excitement I felt growing up. Movies had been larger than life. Now they were just a business. I didn’t last long out there.

That was twenty years ago. I still watch a lot of movies. Mostly I watch movies on DVD. I go to the theater occasionally. But very seldom catch that movie-fever feeling I had as a kid. I’m not blaming film school, or Los Angeles. There is no blame, because there is no problem. I learned what I wanted out of both experiences, and met some great people, made lifelong friends, some of whom are still in the business of making movies. But this last point brings me back to my first point.

I’m going to watch a movie a week for a year and write about it. Mostly new movies. These will be more than reviews. I’ll write about the entire experience. I’ll mention who I went to the movie with. And the theater I saw the movie in. And the trailers they showed. There may be spoiler alerts because what’s a discussion about a movie if you don’t include the entire enchilada?

But, finally, I’m doing this because I want to catch that feeling I had when I went to the movies and it was like celebrating a birthday and opening gifts and dating the hottest girl in school. Why did going to the movies change? And why do I not care about 95% of the movies that get released, when as a kid I was egalitarian? Did I get big, or did the pictures get small?

Give me a year and I’ll give you 52 movies. We’ll find out together.

* Note: I will still post about literature, books, publishing, and writing if something strikes me. So, like a book featuring multiple narrators, not all of whom you sympathize with: if there's a post you're not enjoying, wait a couple days next one.

The Criterion Collection: An Appreciation

I'm not sure when it started for me. The sudden, very real infatuation, hinting at obsession, for The Criterion Collection. I've always been a film buff. Ever since I studied cinema as an undergrad, I always wanted to own as many great, life-defining films as I could find. Discovering the Criterion Collection has helped me start realizing this goal.

Criterion restores and releases classic and contemporary films for home viewing. They add a few movies to the collection every month, and give each one thoughtful and loving preservation, packaging, and contextual supplements. They champion forgotten or disregarded filmmakers, like Samuel Fuller and Paul Morrissey. And while you expect such reverance for obvious film study mainstays as The 400 Blows, Wild Strawberries, and Breathless, they also make room for popular commercial movies like Spinal Tap, Robocop, John Woo's Hard Boiled, and Michael Bay's Armageddon. Most editions include inserts or booklets with essays and interviews that make a book collector like me not feel guilty for spending money on a DVD.


Sure, these editions are pricey (most run $20 to $40; more if you buy boxed sets), and they sooner run out of stock then sell at discount. But if a film you love finally gets the full-on Criterion Collection treatment, 35 bucks for a 2-disc version that includes a new, restored high-def digital transfer supervised by the now-aged director who came out of seclusion just for this; well, it's is enough to make you forget your soaring credit card interest rate. I only own nine movies from Criterion, but these are movies I expect to watch more than a couple times, and whose special features I enjoy as much as the film itself.


For example, take The Killers. Based on the story by Hemingway about two hit men on the trail of a doomed boxer, this DVD contains two discs and features three very different film adaptations of the story. You get the 1946 Robert Siodmak version, starring Burt Lancaster in his debut, and a young Ava Gardner. Then there's Don Siegel's 1964 version, starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, and John Cassavetes. If you just can't get enough, they include a student film version directed by Andrei Tarkovsky from 1956. Tucked away in the case are two essays by Jonathan Lethem and Geoffrey O'Brien, from which you can garner tidbits of context and gossip. Like how Don Siegel's version was originally shot for TV, but deemed too brutal for prime time and got a theatrical release.


Most editions include beautifully bound booklets or inserts. The 2-disc version of My Own Private Idaho comes with a 60-page booklet that is full of color photos and includes essays by Amy Taubin and Lance Loud, and an interview with director Gus Van Sant by the great literary imposter JT LeRoy. There are conversations between Van Sant and River Phoenix and a joint interview with Phoenix and co-star Keanu Reeves, both from 1991 Interview magazines.

My most recent purchase was Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique. This handsome 2-disc set came with a booklet that includes a series of sublime movie stills, many of actress Irene Jacob, essays by Jonathan Romney, Slavoj Zizek, and Peter Cowie, plus an excerpt from Kieslowski on Kieslowski.

Okay, it's not all sunny brilliance. Their version of Fellini's 8 1/2 includes some additional short films that highlight one very over-indulgent filmmaker (beware Fellini: A Filmmaker's Notebook). And it's not like I want to own every movie they release. If I need to see Chasing Amy again, I'll Netflix it. And I can't imagine slogging through Passolini's The 120 Days of Sodom, let alone owning it.

Already a fan of the Criterion Collection? Which of their films are part of your collection? If you're not a fan, check them out. They just might be releasing that long lost classic you've been pining to see again.

Here's a promo of some of their 2009 releases which gives a good overview of the disparate films they offer:

Lowell, Mass: Hollywood East

I live right in downtown Lowell, MA. During the spring of 2008 Ricky Gervais shot much of his movie, The Invention of Lying (working title, This Side of the Truth), in Massachusetts. Many scenes were shot on location here in Lowell. One weekday Liz and I decided to head down to that day’s location to see if we could spot a movie star. We knew we were getting close when we saw Middle Street lined with trailers. We didn’t see familiar faces around the trailers, but the name on each trailer door was worth the trip.


Out onto Central Street and we found the crew, shooting a scene on the sidewalk. We were directed to cross the street to stay out of the shot, then funneled across to Merrimack Street, where we stood looking back down Central to watch the show. Us and about fifty locals.

We caught sight of Ricky early on. He was both director and lead actor, so he never stopped moving. It was difficult to tell when they were shooting, rehearsing, or changing camera angles. The scene they were shooting involved a lot of movement, so they used a steadicam instead of a stationary camera or a camera atop a tripod or dolly.


We spent a half hour or so watching the bustle of the movie crew.


Aside from Ricky, none of the other actors were around, including Jennifer Garner, Louis C.K., and Rob Lowe.

Why am I mentioning this now, over a year later? Because the trailer for the movie, scheduled for a fall release, just came out. And Lowell is all over this thing. There’s restaurants like the Dubliner and Cobblestones, not to mention the very scene they shot on the sidewalk the day we were there.

Check it out, 18 seconds in:



Okay, that’s not all. Come this Monday, July 6, Hollywood arrives again, this time to film The Fighter, a film directed by David O. Russell, starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. According to themovieblog.com, “Wahlberg will play (Micky) Ward, a fighter (from Lowell) who was losing bouts and was ready to hang up the gloves when his brother came back into his life. Bale will play Eklund, whose drugs and robbery spree drew him a 10- to 15-year sentence in state prison. There, he kicked drugs, became a model prisoner and emerged as a changed man who helped his brother reach the glory that eluded him.” I have no idea how much of the movie they’re shooting in town, but it’s always cool to see a movie crew hanging about. Keep track of the shoot here.

Also, check out Liz’s blog post from last year. She talks more about seeing the Ricky Gervais shoot, with additional pics. Plus, she gives you a little history of another film shot in Lowell.