THE WEEKEND IN REVIEW (OR AT LEAST IN REPORTAGE): A VERY GOOD CHRISTMAS JEW

My oldest and best friend returned home to San Francisco on Christmas Day after a week’s vacation in Hawaii. While neither of us are particularly religious, we both love movies and Chinese food, therefore making the longtime Jewish tradition of how to spend one’s Christmas the most important tradition of all? Canvas sneakers with a suit on Yom Kippur so as to avoid wearing anything from an animal? I’m a reform Jew — I should barely even know about that. But movies and Chinese food — that’s a tradition I can whole-heartedly endorse. (And I’m sure I will be struck down any moment now for even saying as much. Moving on.) I was quite disappointed with my friend. He had watched a movie on the plane, but somehow, even in a city with as many wonderful choices as San Francisco, he didn’t eat so much as a potsticker.

I however managed to have a Super Jewish Christmas. It involved a weekend long movie-watching marathon (in the theater and at home on DVD) totalling 14 films (I think … I don’t have the patience to actually count). But how was it “Super Jewish” you ask? Well, let’s see: not only did I watch several movies (in the theater and at home on DVD), and not only did I eat my egg roll and Chicken and Shrimp in Garlic Sauce (hey, I didn’t say it would be kosher Chinese food! Although the pork fried rice — in my world — cancelled out the shellfish, making everything copacetic), but I also managed to earn personal bonus points. Bonus point #1: One of the movies I saw was Munich. Now come on — regardless of whether it’s good or bad, it sure as hell was the choice of Jewish people large and small this Christmas, at least as evidenced by my audience. Not just the choice — it was probably the responsibility of all Jews to rush to Spielberg’s opus, to see it and therefore be able to justly praise or demonize as they saw fit. And bonus point #2: I saw Munich at the City Cinemas Village East, the older of the two East Village/Lower East Side former Yiddish theaters now reinvented as movie houses. (The Landmark Sunshine obviously being the other one. The Sunshine is certainly more high-tech and modern and a “better” place to see movies, but the Village East has its own peculiar charm, especially the main and largest theater in which (at least it seems) that 75% of the seats have you looking down at the screen.)

The Village East has been a part of one of my own personal on-again/off-again Christmas Day traditions. When I first moved to New York in 1996 and lived in the East Village, there were really only three movie theaters within decent walking distance: The Village East on 2nd and 12th, the Loews (then Sony) VII on 3rd and 11th and the (blech) Angelika. There was no Union Square 14 yet or Sunshine. The Cinema Village and Quad Cinema were long-distance walking, as was the Loews at 19th and Broadway. I used to frequent the Village East and the Sony the most, always noticing that for some reason the Village East manage to attract much more talkative (and simply rude) audiences than the Sony even though the two theaters were just a block and an avenue apart.

I tried to start my own tradition of always seeing a Christmas movie at the Village East, however. It just seemed right. My first year here, I believe I managed to go there for The English Patient, which I vividly remember watching in the top row of the main theater, leaning forward and looking down which made it impossible to ignore the two 60-something ladies in the row below me who literally wouldn’t shut-up. About 30 minutes in, I said, “If you’re having trouble with the movie, could you explain it to each other either outside or after. Thanks a lot.”

The highlight year would have to be 1999, though, when I saw the proper Jewish-themed movie at the Village East: Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights. I sat in a theater that was roughly 80% full, and obviously at least 80% Jewish. How did I know? Maybe it was the family that bumped into one of the children’s religious school teachers. Or the other post-movie conversations involving reminiscences of upbringings that mimicked Levinson’s semi-autobiographical experiences we had just witnessed.

Anyway … Munich at the Village East seemed appropriate, but Munich at the Village East also screwed-up some of my plans for a weekend of movie catch-up, getting to hopefully as many as 10 films during the Saturday/Sunday frame. I got halfway there pretty well. Saturday involved a day at the AMC 25 near Times Square. I didn’t prepare quite as well as usual with smuggled sustenance, but I did OK. I had prepared a relatively decent schedule that I actually thought might get me to six films, but I suppose I was looking at the wrong day, and the AMC didn’t have any of their late shows on Saturday night/Christmas Eve.

I’ll try to discuss each film in more detail later and separately, but my Saturday marathon went as follows:

• Walk the Line: I didn’t like this movie any better when it came out last year and was called Ray. “The June Carter Cash” story seems to be more unique and interesting, and I wish that’s what we had seen. Like Ray, the performances and music save it from being a total waste, but James Mangold once again proves he is not a good director.

• The Family Stone: Oh how I want to like this movie. Oh how I can’t. It doesn’t know whether it wants to be a tearjerker drama or a screwball comedy, and while the attempt at mixing the two is admirable, it just doesn’t work. The biggest problem is in the writing, though, and inconsistency in characters. I can’t sympathize with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Meredith because I can’t stand her either. It’s also the most predictable movie I’ve seen in some time. Yet it’s still the kind of family Christmas film that for my own personal reasons I love. In a way, I dislike The Family Stone more because of its inability to fulfill its promise of being a possible modern Christmas family classic. Instead, it’s just another by the numbers, outsider-meets-the-family mediocrity.

• Memoirs of a Geisha: I haven’t read the book, so I’m not going to speak in terms of adaptation as I so often love to do. I will speak in terms of boredom, however. I was bored. I could see glimpses of why the story must have attracted so many in book forms, but the pacing of Rob Marshall’s epic was so laborious, I just wanted to take a nap. Also not helping was how dark the movie was. I don’t mean in tone; I mean in luminescence. I get that there wasn’t electricity in this Japanese village and the alleys and streets and rooms were dark, but this is a film. We have to be able to see what’s going unless we’re specifically meant not to. So much of this film was physically unwatchable, it made it that much harder to stop my eyelids from fluttering.

• Brokeback Mountain: I think I may be one of the few people to say this, but I enjoy enjoyed Ang Lee’s film way more than I remember liking Annie Proulx’s short story when I read it some seven or eight years ago. At the time, I was working at HBO NYC Productions, and everyone else on the development staff was going crazy for the story, pleading with the powers that be to try to option it. I was less enthusiastic. I remember thinking it was a nicely written story, but it didn’t hit me emotionally, and I thought the “gay cowboy” aspect read gimmicky. (I haven’t re-read the story since then — I would like to — and I realize that I am in a huge minority with this opinion.) I love how Proulx’s story has been fleshed out by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and Lee’s wonderful direction does indeed make it one of the most moving films of the year, and probably one of the best as well.

• The Ringer: That’s right, dammit. I went from a poetic, touching love story showing both the best and worst aspects of humanity to Johnny Knoxville posing as a mentally retarded guy in order to compete in the Special Olympics. What of it? The Ringer is relatively horrible, although I can’t deny it has some funny moments. What the hell the amazing Brian Cox is doing in this movie is beyond me. There aren’t too many cheap jokes at the expense of the developmentally disabled people who make up most of the players in the film, although it should come as no surprise that the majority of the main characters are played by working actors who would not be eligible for the Special Olympics. The most interesting performance (so to speak) comes not from Knoxville but from Jed Reese who’s method of speech and nearly-permanent grin can’t make Wallace Shawn too happy. The resemblance is pretty uncanny.

When I got home that night, I popped Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin into the DVD player. I haven’t actually seen much Araki — I think maybe only The Doom Generation which I didn’t like all that much — but Mysterious Skin is quite a notable achievement. A gut-wrenching story (adapted from Scott Heim’s novel) about two very different young men’s long-term responses to their childhood molestation. This is a film that will stick with you and not let you go.

Watching Mysterious Skin kept me up pretty late, which meant on Sunday I got started late as well. I also couldn’t manage to focus enough to figure out the best way to get to as many films in one theater (for one ticket price, natch!). The schedules didn’t seem to want to help, and my priority for the day was to get to Munich, whether it was at the Village East or not. And then there was the rain.

I got into Manhattan in an attempt to see Munich at the Village East at like 2:15 or something. I arrived at 2:10; it was sold out. I thought I’d hustle up to the Loews on 19th Street for the 2:45, but when I got there at 2:30 (already with pants cuffs pretty wet), it too was already sold out. I started looking at schedules and realizing that everything I had planned was relatively shot-to-shit, so I went back to the Village East in order to catch the 3:20 Munich, which I did. Munich will surely get its own post, but my quick opinion is very middle of the road. My problems with the film lie solely in the filmmaking, and they likely stem from my own expectations that Spielberg is simply better than this. I’ve noticed several trends in Spielberg’s last several movies, but the biggest one that hit me while watching Munich is that he’s become lazy. I wonder how interested he really is in narrative feature filmmaking now as opposed to simply trying to get certain points across. It’s almost as if he is so technically proficient a director and has his own formula down so well that he doesn’t look for ways to make his own filmmaking exciting and fresh. The thing is, it works. Most people will probably get sucked in by Munich, and that’s fine. But personally, I want something more. (Again, I’ll go into more detail later.)

After Munich my options were a little bit limited just because of the time. I could hide-out at the Village East for more than an hour and try to see Casanova, but that seemed unappealing for several reasons. I thought about trying to catch the new Claire Denis film The Intruder at the Cinema Village, but I don’t know that my brain was ready for that level of complexity at that moment. Instead, I wound up going to the Quad Cinema and catching Pride & Prejudice, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Here’s another adaptation which I have to admit I haven’t actually read, but not for lack of trying. As heathen (or male) as this may make me, I’ve never been able to get more than 20 pages into Jane Austen’s most celebrated novel. It’s one of only two books I’ve repeatedly tried, but ultimately failed, to read. I know there have been liberties taken with this version (although I’ve never seen the famed and beloved BBC adaptation neither), and I do intend to try tackling the novel again, but as a movie on its own terms with no other ties to the story itself, it was a wonderful little romantic drama, with great performances (yes, that includes Kiera) and a perfectly pleasing style and pacing.

After Pride & Prejudice, I again considered going to The Intruder, but I (also again) just wasn’t in the mood. I decided to hit up Kim’s Video (sort of, but not really) on my way home where I rented Kung Fu Hustle, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Millions. I headed home, stopped off at the Chinese restaurant near my apartment (ahhh … it all comes full-circle), and then settled in. Before watching any of those, however, I got a sudden urge to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. I hadn’t seen it this year, and I think some residual effects from The Family Stone the day before somehow influenced me. I know some people hate Capra and this all-time Christmas-fave, but I think it’s the first “old” movie that really spoke to me, and there’s so much in its fantasy of a pre-WWII small-town America that somehow fulfills my sense of nostalgia for a time before even my parents were born.

I then watched Last Life in the Universe. That’s right — all of you who think I’ve just been too lazy to change that sidebar on the left with the videos and the books? Nope. I’ve just been too lazy to watch those videos. Yeah, Netflix loves the shit out of me. Well, the sidebar will change shortly because I did finally watch the magnificent Last Life and last night I finally hunkered down for the three-hour Dogville. Meanwhile, after Last Life, I watched Kung Fu Hustle which is quite a treat, and I now understand why it’s making so many “Best of 2005” lists. It’s a really fun spoof of Kung Fu movies taking special aim at a movie (or series) influenced by but not really part of the genre: The Matrix.

I woke-up on Monday and decided I had to watch the rest of these DVDs because a) the ones to Kim’s were due and b) I needed to play fast and furious catch-up with the help of Netflix. I got sidetracked watching the original 1933 King Kong as well as the new TCM documentary I’m King Kong: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper, which I had DiVo’d. Then, after taking a few hours break from movies (crazy, I know), I turned on Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (which I liked but not nearly as much as Oldboy or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, the latter of which will be out next year), and then finally Dogville. I wrapped-up my three day movie-watching marathon with Danny Boyle’s magical and wonderful Millions, which sadly and unjustly was relegated to a March release this year and thoroughly overlooked. A wonderful little Christmas-time family film that nobody saw, Fox Searchlight did not treat this movie well. Yes it’s a fable filled with fantasy and it certainly exists on the sappier side of the spectrum, so if just reading that makes you nauseous, you might as well skip it, but otherwise, I enthusiastically suggest you rent it.

Even with all of this, I still feel heavily behind, and that’s why you haven’t seen a “Best of” or “Worst of” list from yours truly yet. What do I still need to see? Well, I definitely need to get to Match Point which opens this week, and I actually am curious about both Casanova (it is Lasse Hallestrom, after all) and Fun With Dick and Jane. My Netflix queue is chock-full of other titles I never got to and am quite anxious to watch and consider including, but not limited to, Funny Ha Ha, 2046, Broken Flowers, Head-On, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Grizzly Man, The Holy Girl, 5×2 and Kings and Queen. So as I’ve been saying, expect my list closer to mid-January. I’m sure you’ll all be sitting, waiting with baited breath, constantly refreshing those browsers … or something.