French Letters

I've been having a little trouble finding movies that I want to watch lately, so I was pretty happy whn I realized that The French Dispatch (2021) was available. I'd kind of forgotten about it. 

It takes the form of an anthology movie, or a movie about an anthology of magazine articles. The magazine in question is the French Dispatch, a supplement of the Liberty Kansas Evening Sun. It seems that Bill Murray, son of the publisher of the small Evening Sun newspaper, went to France to publish a literary review, probably to keep him out of his father's hair.

Now Murray has died. His final wish is that the magazine should close down, and last issue be his obituary. But first, let's meet some of the staff and writers, and hear about some of their articles.

First, is Owen Wilson, who gives us a bike tour of the town the Dispatch writes about, Ennui-sur-Blase. It's a small town that resembles Paris in the 50s (?). The flophouse quarter is full of pickpockets, the river (Blase?) is full of corpses, and there is a large, medieval-looking prison and insane asylum. 

The first full article is about an inmate of the prison, Benicio del Toro. It is written by Tilda Swinton, Dispatch art critic, who narrates as part of a lecture series. Del Toro is a large, quiet artist, who killed a few men in a bar fight. In prison, he drinks alcoholic mouthwash and paints a guard, Lea Seydoux, who poses nude. Adrien Brody is an art dealer who thinks del Toro could be a lucrative investment - on the strength of one painting, he inspires an art movement. But when his magnum opus is revealed, it turns out to be a series of abstract frescos on the prison walls - frescos which are bound to the wall and un-sellable. 

The next story features Frances McDormand as an acerbic, single journalist during the revolutionary French 1960s. While the youth riot in streets, mostly in support of male students being able to visit the women's dorms, her friends try to set her up with a normal single guy (Christoph Waltz). But she starts an affair with their son, Timothee Chalamet, who wrote a manifesto for the movement. She also edits the manifesto - she is a writer. Cute Lyna Khoudri is another leader of the movement, but a more practical and self-assured one. She scoffs at Chalamet's manifesto, his romantic ideals, and the undemocratic way he invited McDormand into the fold. After Chalamet's attempt to settle the riot with a chess match vs. the police chief fails, McDormand advises the young man and woman to forget their political differences and sleep together, which they do.

The last piece has Jeffery Wright, as an erudite, gay black man on a talk show. He is the Dispatch's food critic. He tells the story of celebrity chef Stephen Park, whose speciality is cuisine policier, food for policemen. The story is how his cooking frees the kidnapped son of a police comissaire. The story is told with expansive digressions and fillips of language, and seems to have little to do with food criticism. But Murray asks him to add one little detail that Wright withheld - how the poison he created and purposefully ate tasted: a taste few have lived to tell about.

Each of these stories has it's own flavor: The first, has a desaturated prison palette, except for the hot pink paintings, and the cuts to Swinton's lecture series (with personal/sexual asides). The second has a rather French New Wave feel, both in the lo-fi style (including black and white sections) and youth culture content. I identified McDormand as inspired by Joan Didion, for her dry, depressive, spare style. But I was wrong, it was really based on Mavis Gallant, who I had never heard of. Guess I don't read enough New Yorker, which is what this is all a take on. Of course, the last one is based on James Baldwin, with Wright even looking very much the part. 

I've left out most of the jokes - the clever names, like Herbsaint Sazerac for Owen Wilson, or Zeffirelli for Chalamet, or Nescaffier for Park's chef. There are some wild set pieces, like scenes from the musical made of Zeffireli's movement. The way each story is a framed in the anthology, then framed again in a lecture or David-Frost-style talk show is also fun.

So I enjoyed this a ton, but did get the feeling that this is a minor Wes Anderson movie. It's not just the anthology, it's also the way it is always deflating itself. It's not about the biggest literary magazine in America, it's about the foreign supplement to a small Kansas newspaper, from a medium-sized French city. The youth revolution that McDormand is covering isn't about war or capitalism, it's about boys visiting the girl's dorms. So don't expect too much. Of course, Anderson tends to make fluffy confections, but you do find depth if you care to look. Either way, you always find entertainment.

Cheap Laughs

The Cheap Detective (1978) looks so good on paper - Peter Falk plays a 40s detective in a pastiche of Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Madeline Kahn, Dom De Luise, Abe Vigoda, Ann-Margaret, Sid Caesar, and a million others co-star. But I forgot one detail: It was written by Neil Simon.

It starts with a murder scene - everyone in a flophouse hotel has been shot. But the murderer was after a detective. His wife calls his partner Peter Falk to let him know. She also tells the police that they were having an affair. Now Falk has to clear his name. 

Madeline Kahn shows up at his office and gives him a long list of aliases. She is looking for a particular treasure, although she's pretty canny on details. Meanwhile, a bunch of American and German Nazis are doing something, and someone needs letters of transit. And a few other plots from Bogart movies.

To be clear, all the character actors and comedians are great. They deliver the way you expect them to. Falk makes a great Bogart, surprisingly. He looks rough enough, and his tough-guy mumble isn't far off Bogart's. The only problem, and I feel that it is fatal, is Simon. Time and again, when it's time for the punchline, he reaches for the most hackneyed, obvious one. A lot of the setups are pretty stale too. Why is he so popular?

This is sort of a spiritual sequel to Murder by Death. I had the same reaction to that one.

Know Rom-Coms

I love classic rom-coms, especially of the screwball variety, but haven't found a lot of modern ones that I enjoy. But I don't stop trying, so: Down with Love (2003).

It's New York City, 1962. Rene Zellweger is the author of a soon-to-be best seller, "Down with Love." Her thesis: woman don't need a man or a relationship. Sex is fine, as long as it's purely physical. Emotional needs can be met with chocolate. Etc. Her new best friend and editor is Sarah Paulson, and the publisher is Tony Randall - see, this movie is a throwback to the Doris Day movies of the time, where Randall played many a neurotic best friend. 

I'm going to quote the best joke here: When Zellweger is being introduced in the boardroom, the editors all introduce themselves as "J.R.", "E.G.", "J.B.". etc. Zellweger says, "O.K." Someone responds that O.K. is down with T.B. When Zellweger apologizes, he says, "No, he's eating lunch downstairs with T.B., our publisher." Nice joke with at least 3 punchlines.

Anyway, to promote the book, Paulson suggests that she get interviewed by Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor). He's a sort of Mailer-esque playboy wildman journalist. He writes for a magazine called "Know", which allows for a couple of "no magazine" jokes. His neurotic editor, David Hyde Pierce, plays the Tony Randall role. 

When McGregor keeps blowing her interview dates off (to sleep with assorted stewardesses, including Jeri Ryan), she publicly insults him. So now it's war: He decides to seduce her in disguise, and make her fall in love, destroying the premise of her book.

So he makes himself into a shy Texan with NASA and starts a slow, conservative courtship. She falls very quickly, trying to get him into bed, but he's a good boy who doesn't do that. Will she break down and fall in love before he does?

I'm not going to spoil this, but there is an amazing twist in the last act, that Zellweger explains in an epic 3-minute no-cut monolog. Of course, everyone gets their comeuppance, and lives happily ever after. 

One of the things I like about rom-coms is the way the plot must meet certain technical requirements - mix-ups occur and are resolved, love that is unrequited gets fulfilled, the untruthful and unfaithful are punished, etc. The script here is tight, and it all comes together in a satisfying way. The jokes are often in the style of the 60s, but raunchier. For example, there's a split screen phone conversation between Zellweger and McGregor, based on the one in Pillow Talk. Except here we see McGregor doing pushup in the top half, with Zellweger lying on the floor under him in the bottom frame. 

I liked this a lot - not a new favorite, or on my top 10, but a solid execution in a genre I like. I like seeing Rene Zellweger - she reminds me a bit of Vera-Ellen: a round-featured face on a slim build. McGregor doesn't do much for me here. He just doesn't seem hot enough for the role, and I didn't feel much chemistry between him and Zellweger. Although, they sing a song together in the end credits that feels like they were having a good time. 

In case you're wondering why I picked this, it was directed by Peyton Reed, who did the MCU Ant-Man movies. Since the first one in particular has a very 70s heist movie vibe, I guess his penchant for pastiche got him that gig.

Wild Style

We're not big fans of Henry Sellick, but we did watch his Wendell & Wild (2022). If you don't know Sellick, I'd be in the same boat. except the Blank Check podcast did a series on him. He's the stop-motion director who made Nightmare Before Christmas but producer Tim Burton got all the credit. We didn't see that, but liked Coraline, so we figured, why not?

It starts with little stop-motion animated black girl Lyric Ross enjoying a street fair with her parents. The parents own the root beer brewery that the town's prosperity revolves around. On the way home, while their car is crossing a bridge, Ross bites into a caramel apple and screams when she finds a worm. This distracts her dad, and the car goes into the river. Only Ross survives.

Then we meet Wendell and Wild, two demons played by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. They operate a hair plug contraption drawn by a giant tardigrade on the scalp of a giant demon, Buffalo Blezer, voiced by Ving Rhames. Peele keeps squirting the hair growth cream into his mouth because it gets him high, and when Key gets some, they see a vision of Ross.

A few years later, Ross has become a rough juvenile delinquent, tortured by grief and guilt for the death of her parents. Her indigenous family friend, Tantoo Cardinal, is taking her back to her home town for a last-chance entollment in a Catholic girl's school. It's run by an old priest (James Hong) and a nun (Angela Bassett). She meets a trio of "mean girls", who are actually kind of nice - when Ross shoves the ringleader, it coincidentally pushes her out of the way of a falling brick, so now the thinks Ross saved her life. Oh, and the brick fell because Raul (ex-Ramona), a trans boy who feels left out in this all-girls environment (the clique doesn't actually exclude him, but does dead-name him "accidentally"). 

This school isn't too bad, but the whole town has fallen apart since the root beer brewery burned down. The land has been bought by an evil corporation for a for-profit prison. 

Around about this time, Wendell and Wild decide that she is their "hell-maiden" (lore on this TBD) who can bring them to Earth so that they can build their amusement park (long story). When she does, her price is that they bring her parents back to life. Wendell tells Wild, "We don't know how to do that!" and Wild replies "But we do know how to lie". But it turns out that hallucinogenic hair cream actually can bring the dead back to life, so they are all set.

Following this? OK, it turns out that Evil Corp is run by the parents of the lead mean girl. They look like a Spiiting Image version of Joanna Lumley and a black Boris Johnson. They were the ones who burned down the brewery, and the priest knows it so they kill him.  But Wendell and Wild test the cream on him, so he comes back to life. 

There is a lot more here - this is a very plot-heavy, theme-rich movie. For example, I've left out the whole Afro-punk theme: Ross and her parents are into Fishbone, Death, X-Ray Spex, and there's a ton of it on the soundtrack. (Remember that other Black lead movie that featured X-Ray Spex?) I'd tell you about the demon hunter in the school basement modeled on older Marlon Brando - if I could figure him out. But, really, there's too much for me to really get into here. In fact, that might be what torpedoed this movie - it didn't get much attention or love, and it might have just been too dense.

But it had a really interesting look. Lyric Ross' face looks something like an African mask. Wendell and Wild look like construction paper sculptures of Key and Peele. In general, I'd say the look combines Constructivism with African Primitivism. Kind of odd inspirations for stop-motion animation - but cool. Also, the cast and characters are very diverse - most are Black, indigenous, Latin, Middle Eastern, etc. The priest seems to be Euro, but is played by Asian James Hong. I know this sounds "woke", but it's just refreshing.

In conclusion, the mean girl clique in this movie were much better that in that last one. 

De Ville Made Me Do It

Still looking for horror for Ms. Spenser, I queued up The Invitation (2022). She is now wondering whether she should just give up on horror.

It starts promisingly enough, in a spooky old mansion. A young woman is being kept locked up in a room. She escapes and manages to kill herself. Then we go to present day, where we meet the protagonist, Nathalie Emmanuel. She is serving canapes at a tech conference, and not doing it very well. She gets fired, but her friend does score her a DNA test. Her only known family is her recently deceased mother.

The DNA results come back, and she discovers she has a distant cousin in England - Cousin Oliver (wink, nidge). He meets her for lunch in a swanky NY joint, and invites her to a family wedding. He seems nice, disarming and charming, and is offering her a free vacation, a chance to visit England, and to meet family. Also, she's out of work, so...

The wedding is being held at New Carfax Abbey, but fortunately, Emmanuel hasn't read any books or seen any movies, and doesn't think that is odd. It seems nice, but they are pretty rough on the servants. A batch of maids with numbers 1-5 on their pinnies are brought in. Emmanuel tries to treat them as humans, which strikes everyone else as eccentric.

She also meets the bridesmaids, one tall and bitchy, the other smaller and a bit more friendly. And finally. she meets the lord of the manor, young and darkly handsome Thomas Doherty as Walter DeVille. Emmanuel still isn't putting it together. In fact, even though he's a rich entitled twat, which she supposedly doesn't like, she gets quite horned up over him.

So that's the setup. I'll leave the rest out. There is a reasonably clever brides of Dracula plot at work, and it ends with Emmanuel allowing herself to be turned. She does this so she can kill Doherty, which turns her human again, based on Lost Boys rules. Oops, spoiler. And it has the now-classic woman-who-was-supposed-to-be-the-victim-walking-away-from-setting-the-whole-thing-on-fire ending.

I didn't mind that this movie self-consciously used so many tropes and twists: a retainer named Renfield (Sean Pertwee! Thought it was Martin Freeman for a mo), Jonathan and Mina Harker running a shop in town, etc.  Ms. Spenser, on the other hand, thought it was completely stupid. Oh well, better luck next movie.

Tall Tales

We got our Netflix disc of The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) after being on Long Wait status for a while. When it arrived, it was cracked. I was pretty sure that the replacement would take forever - but it came the very next week. So glad we waited.

This movie is essentially Powell and Pressburger mounting Offenbach's final opera. performed largely in ballet. It starts in a theater where Moira Shearer as the ballerina Stella is performing "The Enchanted Dragonfly", wearing a charming bodystocking. She has two particular admirers: One is Councilor Lindorf (Robert Helpmann), a sinister old man with a big en bataille hat (which reminds me of the Commendatore from Don Giovanni). The other is poet and lover E.T.A. Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville).

At the interval, everyone hustles over to the student pub across the street to get a drink. Hoffmann starts talking about his past loves, and the crowd decides to skip the rest of the ballet and listen to his three stories.

In the first, he falls in love with a oerfect automaton, played again by Shearer. It was created by puppeteer Helpmann. This conceit gives the composer and choreographer a chance to make some music and dance jokes about her running down. In the second, Hoffmann is seduced by a Venetian courtesan, Giuliettsa (Ludmilla Tcherina). She has been bribed by a wizard (Helpmann again) to steal Hoffmann's reflection. The style is lush and exotic. In the last story, Hoffmann falls in love with Antonia (Ann Ayars), a singer with a disease that will kill her if she sings. Her father (seemingly cruel) forbids her to sing, but Hoffmann encourages her. Finally, Dr. Miracle (Helpmann) gets her to sing, and she dies tragically.

The conclusion is that Stella is the best of all these loves, but when she appears, she finds him passed out drunk, and leaves with Helpmann.

The production uses opera-style costume, sets, and acting style (although most of the singing is dubbed), but it isn't stagey - more fantastic. The colors are striking and stylized. I don't know much about opera, but Offenbach seems fun. He has a modern style with a lot of wit. There are elaborate songs on silly topics, simple beautiful melodies and dances, and some very fancy soprano showpieces. Just the kind of thing I like. 

I didn't mention the role of Hoffmann's servant Nicklaus, which is played by Pamela Brown in pants. I mention this because I learned about "pants" or travesti roles from Ariadne Auf Naxos. Did you know that "travesty" is based on the Italian word for "transvestite"?