Amazingly, having a wrinkled and depressed Bill Murray in a jumpsuit drive around coloring tress does not a good movie make. Who would have thought? In fairness, I was probably having my expectations too high, since I’m an admirer of both Jarmusch’s (Dead Man!) and Murray’s previous work. But even after correcting for that, I did not feel a connection with either Murray (who played essentially the same character, only much better, in Lost in Translation) or any of his former girlfriends, and the neighbour gone detective, as a grotesque caricature, doesn’t even qualify. Watch About Schmidt instead, it’s a much better movie.

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This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the story of Noodles, the way it’s woven together with prohibition history, and the final plot resolution. But this movie is just way too long. I don’t really recall much from seeing the original version, but even that might have been a bit on the tedious side, but this reedit is excruciatingly slow. In addition, the way past and present are intercut doesn’t really work all that way in several places. But the biggest problem is that this ultimately fairly simple tale of betrayed friendship doesn’t justify taking up almost four hours of my time. I’d much rather watch Once Upon a Time in the West twice.

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There is a song by Tom Lehrer called Send the Marines with the lines “We’ll send them all we’ve got//John Wayne and Randolph Scott”, which I ever only understood half. I had heard of and seen movies with the Duke, but not even the name of Scott sounded familiar. I’m happy to report that this sad state of affairs has changed. Other than that, I liked this early Peckinpah for a nice peek into how life has been not too far from here in both time and space. I remember watching Western movies as fairy tales set in a mythical country with no connection to reality as I knew it – but now that I’ve seen the Central Valley and the Sierra, suddenly all the little plot details, the solitude of the religious nut and his daughter on their farm, the rough digger camp, make much more sense. Unfortunately, the story itself is none too interesting, a somewhat trite tale of friendship, betrayal and friendship again, complete with a heroic death at the end. Maybe it was novel then to have shades of grey, instead of good/bad guy ensembles, and I can certainly see how breaking with such a convention could have given enormous tension to this plot, but from todays point of view, the moral struggle of the straying friend and his rash yet good hearted sidekick is just not very captivating.

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Not before I looked the movie up on IMDB did I realize that the reason the main character looked familiar was that I had just seen him in Zatoichi, playing the title blind swordsman. As with Zatoichi, Kitano wrote the script, directed and played the lead in Kikujiro, the odd tale of a summer vacation a young kid spends with Kikujiro, a smalltime crook and loudmouth with a good heart. The movie felt a bit too long, but that might in part have been due to the strangeness of it all. Most of what the main character did didn’t make much sense to me emotionally, but not in the sense of it being written badly. Rather, all the relationships and communications here were partially opaque to me – in other words, adhering to strange conventions. Not knowing whether these are Kitano’s conventions, or those of Japanese culture in general, I can but try and unravel the mysteries of a character who is very abusive and mean, yet respected and humoured by everybody except the tough criminals he runs into at a fair. Cultural mysteries aside, there are wonderful images and ideas here, and lots of little surprises.

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I knew I had seen and loved it, but as with Shortcuts, I couldn’t remember a thing. Now, memory is an odd fellow, and often you’ll immediately recognize what you couldn’t actively remember – but not me, in this case. Every part of it was just as fresh and new as it was when I first saw it, and that is just as well, for it is a terrific and clever script, and surprises in general work much better when you don’t know they’re coming. Tom Hanks is wonderful as the lead character, an asshole producer in trouble, there are numerous celebrity cameos, and the opening scene rivals the one in Bertolucci’s 1900. In fact, just seeing this long continuous setup made me want to rewatch 1900, and to my dismay I found that it is available neither at Netflix nor Amazon, and the studio doesn’t currently offer DVDs of it for sale. A remark oddly fitting for the end a minireview of a satire about the movie business.

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Just having talked about how Sunset Boulevard is still haunting after all these years, here is an example of the opposite effect. A great and important script, great acting, impeccable direction and photography, indeed the whole things reeks of masterpiece, yet the story and message seem pale to me. Maybe it’s the fact that this was followed by so many movies after this one painfully driving home the message of war being hell inflicted by the powerful on the poor. That being said, the final scene, where Douglas’ character listens to his soldiers first degrading a german woman, and then sentimentally singing along with her, is very touching, in spite of its kitschy message: War may be hell, but not everyone condemned to it is an unreconcilable sinner.

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It is probably a bit unfair to review this while I’ve only seen less than half the episodes, but already it’s very obvious that the strength of this series lies in the meticulous presentation of Victorian England. Costumes, sets, acting and direction are masterfully recreating the times of Dickens, and are a pure pleasure to watch. The plot itself, is typical for Dickens, a big, crude soap opera, full of drama and dark secrets, but if it is presented so lusciously – who cares?

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With a script by Tarantino, and being directed by the guy responsible for blockbuster mainstream crap like Top Gun, this could have turned out an self referential exercise in explosion and meanness. Instead, this is a gritty and funny roller coaster ride of a movie, with an awesome cast and a wonderfully reckless storyline. Funny how this one went entirely by me when it came out.

Interestingly, this script already raises the issues Tarantino’s Kill Bill got criticized for: if violence is an aesthetic component of storytelling, am abstract dance with blood as a costume, rather than a realistic deptiction of its physical and psychological consequences, does that make the movie itself an act of violence? I don’t personally think so, but it might be a hard case to make.

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I lost interest in this overblown, thickly layered soap opera somewhere in season two, but when I heard that the final episode was exceptionally well done, and the bothersome Nate would finally die, I thought it might be nice closure to watch it. Unfortunately, the, err, video supply store, accidentally delivered the final episode of season three, and not until the final minutes of that tedious, overdramatized convolution of plots did that fact dawn on me. What a waste of an hour.

The true final episode then wasn’t quite as bad, but somewhat disappointing. Until the moment when Claire drives away from LA, Nate’s ghost jogs down in her rear view mirror, and the future of all the characters is revealed, up to their deaths. That this touched me, even though I didn’t care for any one of the characters, speaks to the quality of the sequence. But if you’re like me, and want to see it, skip the first 40 minutes of the episode. They’re just business as usual.

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The first part of this felkt like someone had invented a new cipher for social communication and forgot to tell me about it. Nothing anybody said seemed to make any sense not within the plot, not as commentary. But eventually the fog lifted (it might have just been the fog of history, anyway), and everything made sense and dissolved into sweet, sweet nothings. Which turned out to be the movie’s point in the first place. Fun, and so, so money.

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