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The Great Movies: The Truth About Cats & Dogs

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The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996)

Romantic comedies are for the most part, trinkets of cinema, not really to be taken seriously as art, the best ones no more than a run of jokes strung together with cute dialog and a love conquers all messages. Is this film any different? No....and Yes. The real difference isn't about how we are laughing, but what we are laughing at. These characters act under their self-delusions of themselves and are caught in the middle of each other’s delusions that still resonate after love conquers all. Tell me of any other romantic comedy that does this any better.

Cats and Dogs is about Abby Barnes (Janeane Garofalo), radio personality who hosts The Truth about Cats and Dogs, about pet problems (a radio show I might actually listen to considering Abby's surefire wit and grace). Abby is independent, outspoken, and cynical. She isn't yearning for a man, because she knows there's not going to be one.

When Brian (Ben Chaplin) calls with a dog-on-roller skates problem (Don't you hate one of those), she treats him as she would any other caller. What he sees in her is intelligence, coolness under pressure, and a hint of yearning. When he calls her later and asks for a date, he says the one thing that assures him everything, what she looks like. In a fit of panic, she describes her next-door neighbor (Uma Thurman), a model that turns any head wherever she goes. Why does she do this? Is it confidence? Maybe, but I think it's more than that.

What happens next might be considered plot contrivance, but I don't. It's called coincidence. Noelle shows up for a good reason at the station the same day Brian does. He sees Noelle and thinks it's Abby. Abby, in a fit of fear, asks Noelle to play along. She does, and we have ourselves a love triangle. But all three characters hold delusions about themselves. Abby's delusion is her cynicism, she wants to be, but she's romantic by nature. Noelle's delusion is her plainness. She doesn't see herself a beautiful. She doesn't see just how far it gets her until she wants to use it in a cruel way. Brian's delusion is his modesty. He has no problem accepting Noelle as Abby when it's almost staring him in the face that Abby sounds like the woman he talked to on the phone, that she says things the same way Abby does. When the truth is revealed, we see everybody's cards and all of them have to acknowledge their delusions, but they are still there.

Garafalo is the real star even though it's Thurman's name that comes up first. All three are 3 dimensional characters with hopes, fears, and an underbelly of disappointment. But Abby is the one we're rooting for. I love how quick she's able to turn an insult into an art form. She's smart, she's incredibly funny, and she's starting to fall for a man who perhaps isn't as smart as her, but fires up those yearnings. It's always hard to do that. Thurman takes a two-dimensional woman and adds a third by understanding what drives her, and what entices her to be who she is. Chaplin understands Brian's complexities the way that he fights with a truth he should have known from the beginning.

Audrey Wells' screenplay is tactful, intelligent, and incredibly well done. This is by far Michael Lehman’s best film, better than Heathers by far. This pair made an incredible film that allows characters to talk in paradoxes, but understand what they are trying to say.

Perhaps you'll agree. Maybe you won't. I'm asked why The Truth About Cats and Dogs, considering the options. Here's my answer: Harry and Sally might have had an orgasm, but Abby and Brian have an understanding. Sometimes the truth about cats and dogs doesn't lie within animals.

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 6:06 AM by erico_77375 | with 0 comments

The Great Movies: Taxi Driver

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Taxi Driver (1976)

A proverb once said that if you look into the abyss, the abyss will look into you. If there's anyone who can vouch for that, it would have to be Travis Bickle...and perhaps Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese. Taxi Driver still gives me goose bumps months after watching it. It haunts you in ways that few films do and is one of the first films to show antiheroes that shouldn't be applauded, but feared.

Travis (Robert De Niro) takes a job as a taxi driver to make money and to move around. He works nights and finds himself isolated even with people that sit only a couple of feet behind him. He is isolated even from himself to a point that when he looks into a mirror, he can't even recognize his own reflection. His misunderstood because he wants to be misunderstood, antisocial because that would only fuel the rage that pounds underneath the surface. The film doesn't so much have a plot but observes the ultimate deconstruction of a time bomb.

Travis finds love in two women who couldn't be more wrong for him. First is Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a political campaign worker whose trying to get a man elected President. She accepts a date with him out of curiosity, and quickly regrets it when he takes her to an X-Rated movie. But she doesn't know what we already know: he doesn't go to the movie for the sex; he goes to these movies in failed attempts to connect himself to humanity. When he fixates himself to a teenage prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster), he sees sex as another catalyst for rage and wants to protect her from her pimp (Harvey Keitel) and from herself. In his mind, she's begging for his help when in reality, she's accepted this life with her soul.

All this spirals to one fateful day where Travis decides to completely sever ties with humanity and take someone down with him. His first target is the Presidential hopeful that Betsy works for. When the results of that doesn't go as Travis expects, his next target is Iris' pimp. After the bloodshed is over, the look on Travis' face says everything that Scorsese, Schrader, De Niro and Bickle are trying to say.

What De Niro does in this film is beyond masterful. He gives Bickle an evil romanticism that is disgusting, but understandable. He wants to lash out on someone and doesn't understand that the one he's wanting to lash out at is himself. He wants to love, but doesn't understand what love is. He wants to bring hell, but doesn't understand to do so he has to bring The Devil along with him. The famous scene in front of the mirror says all of this in one scene. In his mind, he's pointing the gun at a human being with the intent to kill, not understanding it's his reflection.

Martin Scorsese's work in the 70s has to be some of the most influential work of any filmmaker of a decade. With Taxi Driver, he sets a standard he'll never be able to attain again. His opening shot of steam rising from New York streets and a bold yellow taxi cab strolling by moving just off-left still reminds me of the opening shot of Star Wars, perhaps because I get the feeling I'm watching predators on the hunt in both scenes.

So what exactly is the abyss of this film? Is it loneliness? Is it isolation? I honestly think its justification, the ability to say that you're right when everybody else says you're wrong. That's probably why Travis Bickle quit the human race.

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 6:03 AM by erico_77375 | with 0 comments

The Great Movies: Sideways

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Sideways (2004)

I will admit that I came into Sideways biased. In fact, I went out of my way to see this movie, still in limited release. Being Alexander Payne's third major film, we see a progression of a filmmaker who is going to shake the foundation of emotional epics.

Sideways is about four people and four different sets of painful lives. The first (and hands-down most pained) is Miles (played with gusto by Paul Giamatti), a middle-school English teacher and potential novelist who sets up a weeklong bachelor blowout for best friend Jack (Thomas Hayden Church). Miles is two steps away from becoming a full-blown alcoholic, and decides to take Jack to wine country in California. Jack wants to go, but not to drink. He's interested in the proverbial "last fling", which he finds in Stephanie (Sandra Oh). Feeling guilty about his promiscuity, Jack makes a mission in getting Miles together with waitress Maya (the wonderful Virginia Madsen). To go any further is to take the wonderful taste from this film which is about how these four people see themselves and each other and turn this from being just another road movie into something hauntingly beautiful and bittersweet.

The acting in this film is the best I have seen in the last three years. Giamatti, who showed in American Splendor that he's leading man quality, puts on a performance that earns him Best Actor in my book. He creates a man who could become an alcoholic not because it's an addiction, but because it's the only thing he knows he's good at. There's a scene between Miles and Maya that was so powerful, it brought me to tears. It was a scene with Miles explaining his fascination with a specific wine grape that we realize he was talking about himself. You see the pain in his eyes and the burden in his heart as he constantly weighs his friendship with Jack with his conscience knowing what Jack is doing just before his wedding.

But Jack isn't a two-dimensional character either. A man who cruises on his charisma as an actor and never had to make a real choice when others would do it for him. You can see that the wedding to him isn't about going to the next step as much a fear of being alone going into his forties. We know that he isn't serious about Stephanie, but he doesn't know that. Thomas Hayden Church brings a weight I never knew he had to a role that could have been made cookie-cutter and just more slapstick.

Everybody seems to underestimate Sandra Oh, who never plays roles that seem to ethnocide her. We see real women in her characters and this is no different. She balances her enormous sexual appetite with a vulnerability that becomes essential in a crucial point in the story.

But it is Virginia Madsen that is the real charm of this movie. Madsen could have been overwhelmed with Giamatti's performance, but she matches him step for step, creating a character that we see is afraid of being venerable to deception, and she never has to say it. If she doesn't get at least an Oscar nod, there is no justice in this world.

Alexander Payne's work seems to keep getting better every outing. Election was nothing short of brilliant. About Schmidt was a film that was very difficult to take seriously, but we do. Sideways is a masterpiece of cinema. These characters are rich with hopes and fears, dreams and pain. He paints a portrait of the wine country with a brush of nostalgia and harsh realism at times. And by the way, Alexander Payne is one of only four directors who know how to film road trips.

Please, do me a favor and go see this movie. Trust me, you will love it and come away feeling better about yourself. And maybe a better appreciation of wine.

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 6:00 AM by erico_77375 | with 0 comments

The Great Movies: Seven Samurai

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Seven Samurai (1954)

It's impossible to think of modern film today without thinking of Akira Kurosawa. He changed so many of the rules not only of filmmaking, but of storytelling in his films, taking us into realms not only of the visual, but of the emotional ranges few have ever ventured and never with the same kind of boldness. Anyone who has ever seen more than one of this master filmmaker's films can tell you there is never just one that is his greatest. But if I were tortured into it, I would have to say it would be Seven Samurai.

This film has a plot that guides us through the story, but is not bound to it. There is a history that is never lectured, but is visible all the same. This is morality tale as well as an adventure. This is an epic that didn't play by the rules of epics and inspired filmmakers around the world to do the same.

We first see a village in bitter turmoil. They can't eat because bandits take their food. They want to fight back, but they don't know how too. On top of that, the bandits might not just stop at taking their crops. But one young man encourages the patriarch of the village to give it a shot. They can't pay for samurai protection since they have no money. But perhaps there might be a few samurai who might do it for the challenge. And so the young man is sent off to find help. They quickly find an older samurai (Takashi Shimura), who helps to disarm a criminal who is holding a child hostage. They also find a samurai fool of sorts (Toshiro Mifune, one Japan's finest actors), who is the polar opposite of the older one. The needy villagers are told it will take seven superbly trained samurai to fend off the bandits. And over the next few days, they go looking for them. Each samurai they find has a personalities as rich as they come. From the stoic master swordsman (I wouldn't even fight him in my sleep) to a young samurai in training. These seven men find brotherhood amongst themselves and encourage a village to fight for themselves.

If the film was just that, it would be good, but not excellent. What makes it excellent is how these characters react to each other. The villagers are hesitant to trust the samurai due to history and prejudice. The samurai have to fight as one even though some of them aren't so prone to teamwork. When the day of combat arrives, there are deaths, and the samurai are not invincible. This film argues more than freedom vs. oppression, but life vs. death on the most philosophical terms.

The two amazing performances from this film come from Shimura's wise older samurai, who has to not only keep his team together, but unite the villagers to their own cause. The other being Mifune's rouge whose contempt for samurai and peasants have serious reasons behind them, but who also jests as a means of bringing people together. Watch a scene where he entertains some of the village kids. Mifune's performance is probably the strongest since he's the wild card in this film.

Kurosawa is a master of putting together incredible shots that leave your jaw open. With Seven Samurai, his job isn't to be fancy, but to give pace and understanding to the action. He doesn't use stage fighting in this film (or in any of his films, he liked showing realistic combat), but swordsmen who use simple sword techniques to block and attack. Only one swordsman makes fighting look good (and that's because he's the best, and you believe it). He also knows how to shoot in the rain and in the dark. He isn't so much crafty in his shots with this film as firm and decisive. You never for one minute forget what's going on or what's at stake.

As we get to the end of this three-hour epic (I've seen the movie six times, it still surprises me it's 3 hours, it feels shorter than that), we get to an ending that isn't lighthearted or cheeky. In fact, I would think it would be the Saving Private Ryan ending of that age. It might be sad, but it's honorable and we still feel thankful for following those brave men. And that's how you change the rules of storytelling.

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 5:58 AM by erico_77375 | with 0 comments

The Great Movies: Salesman

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Salesman (1969)

A man in his late 40s tells a woman ten years younger than she is about a new illustrated version of the bible that he would like to sell to her. His hands are racked with arthritis. His nickname is The Badger, perhaps because his hair looks like one or because that's what he's doing with this customer. His name is Paul Brennen, the main subject in Albert and David Masles' documentary, Salesman.

Salesman isn't just a movie about Brennen, but about America in many respects. Along with three other Boston-natives The Gipper, The Rabbit and The Bull, Brennen sold bible to Catholic households with information given to them by the local churches. They handle many different types of customers in different climates up and down the continental United States. These four men travel together for camaraderie, but also to beat down the pressures that come with the job (all four are avid chain-smokers). Between the pitches, each carries onto the dream of greater wealth, a dream encouraged falsely by the company they work for. We go to the sales meetings, which hold more despair than the pep they're designed to bring.

In the middle of this is Brennen, who starts off thinking he's just having a dry run of luck. But as the others keep seeing success while he's still falling deeper into decline. His life on the road has isolated him from his wife, where the only conversation we hear between them is distant and sterile. The company lines make it clear that this product sells itself and that if you're not selling, there's only you to blame. And as the days keep going by, Paul's desperation reaches deeper levels of unprofessionalism as he goes from lying to customers to selling more aggressively than should be allowed.

Salesman sees a country at the beginning of a slide into commercialism and mass consumption. It shows us a real world where men will sell you your religion on a payment plan (I'd hate see someone come repo a bible). There's a dark humor in all of this, the professional way this company tries to encourage it's salesmen to pitch and sell "the world's best-seller of all time", while motivational speakers make these road-weary agents the equivalent of Jesus Christ.

For directors Albert and David Maysles with editor and co-director Charlotte Zwerin, this is a crowning achievement in documentary filmmaking as they use a technique that puts a distance between the camera and it's subject, but allows the subject to be of focus at all times, like a novel. Maysles states that this technique was inspired by Truman Capote's revolutionary writing style used for In Cold Blood. We follow all four men, but we get closer and more interested in Paul. The others are concerned for him, first starting off with an intervention and ending with Paul riding shotgun with The Gipper, which ends with Paul getting the blunt end of a embarrassing moment by his partner. The film feels like fiction, but comes through clear enough to believe it to be real life. And in Paul, they find a soul falling into a despair of his own making and yet a fall was going to happen one way or another. There's only so much time before the magic of persuasion is lost. And for a salesman who lives and eats off the high that comes with such persuasion, this is almost as bad as a deathblow.

Ultimately, this film is powerful without being overwhelming. It's earnest without being coy. And when we look at Paul Brennen by the end of the film, we feel that more than a part of his soul is lost, but a part of our country's as well. The film is sad, but not depressing. And I cannot tell you how important this film should be in the classrooms.

One last thing I'd like to say: The National Registry put Salesman on its list in 1991. This film is considered a national treasure. After seeing it, you'll understand why.

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 5:56 AM by erico_77375 | with 0 comments

The Great Movies: Pleasantville

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Pleasantville (1998)

As the opening credits come up, we're watching blended colors on the screen as we hear the sounds of channel surfing going on. As we focus in on the colors and see we're watching the television as channels keep flipping by, we come to a channel called TV Time and are informed of an upcoming marathon of a show called Pleasantville. We are given some information up front. And we go into our tale with...

Once Upon A Time...

Gary Ross' fantasy is something of an original. It is a modern fairy tale as well as a social satire. His film says so much with humor and whimsy that only after watching it once do you pick up on a few details. With further watching do you really start to see more of what Ross intends to show you. And more you begin to appreciate this film for what it is really about; the value of change and the destructive force of maintaining status quo.

The film's protagonists are modern kids David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Whitherspoon), though the film is mostly about David. When we meet him, he's shy and timid. He relies on the reruns of Pleasantville to fulfill the desires for what he considers a normal family. Jennifer doesn't want that in her life. She values change too much, as we'll see later in the film. When they are brought into this new world, David is afraid of change, afraid that by doing so that they might be stuck there, but also afraid of tarnishing his perfect image of how life should be.

Jennifer almost instantly tries to find ways to change it. She is not ignorant as some people I have talked to put it. In a crucial scene where she takes the offensive in the front seat of her date's car, she is doing this not really because she's needing sex, but to shake things up.

At this point, we begin to see colors appear in the black and white world of Pleasantville. Is it the sex that's causing this? Not in the least. In fact, sex isn't even the first act of defiance in this movie. The first act is actually independence when Mr. Johnson (Jeff Daniels) informs the audience he's closed the store down on his own, something he's never had to do before. When the kids start to feel independence (as well as a few of the wives of this town), that's when we start to see colors. Eventually, other acts create change. The two strongest are knowledge (watch as kids enter the library in black and white and leave in color) and Passion (either romantic or in the case of David, passion of a son to a mother-figure). Notice after the rain sequence, that most of the characters who turned to color did so without showing to have had sex).

The social implications start taking root as early as the scene that David helps Betty (Joan Allen), his TV mother to hide the fact that she has turned to color. When he sees that they do have feeling towards what they have become or have not become, we also see this. When the characters start to see the walls of this repression start to shatter, it becomes violent (and realize that the violence starts with the B&W holdouts). We see racism sprout ("No Coloreds" one sign says in the hardware store) as well as segregation (The Courtroom Scene).

Now bare in mind that Pleasantville does not have a police force nor a central government, it is run by the Chamber of Commerce and Big Bob (J.T. Walsh). They meet at the bowling alley and the barbershop and lay plans not to quell rebellion, but to bring back "pleasantness". But as the citizens of Pleasantville are becoming more individual, it becomes harder to please everybody. Even to the point that a blue door is considered unbearable.

The three acts of this story are separated by two acts of the elements. The first is by a tree that catches fire. The second is by a rainstorm. This kind of reminds me of the story of the Phoenix; the old Pleasantville was burned away by one burning tree, and was washed anew in a gentle night storm.

Performances are key to this story's success. Maguire and Allen's performances are what gauges the rest of the actors. Maguire has to slowly come around from being the keeper of the status quo to a leader of opposition. He does so by finding the little events that make him see how his own fantasies about the show hurt those that actually live in that show. Allen's performance is important because she's the one who feels the changes first in her world in a way that's not exciting, but terrifying. How can she let her husband find out? What will the others think? Little at a time does she realize just how much she wants to be free to make choices for herself. And then there's Jeff Daniels who does a great Jimmy Stewart every-man thing. All he wants to do is paint. His terror is to find something he really loves and have it taken away from him.

Gary Ross is no stranger to fantasy tales. His first screenplays were for Big (about a boy who wishes to become a man and has it granted) and Dave (about a look-alike who becomes president and does the job even better than the REAL president does). Even his Seabiscuit is about a real-life fairy tale about a horse that defied the odds more than once.

Pleasantville is more conscious than those other films. It intends to tell you a story and make you think about it afterwards. It doesn't treat you like a kid and it doesn't hold your hand. Hard choices are left for all the characters even as the film ends with a character saying, "Well, I guess I don't know either."

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 5:54 AM by erico_77375 | with 0 comments

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