Movies in May

This month I saw 4 movies in English, two on cable, one a borrowed DVD, and one I desperately wished I hadn't paid for.

The borrowed DVD was Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic. I remember seeing Johnny and June perform together on countless music shows on TV as a kid. It made an impression on my young mind, the way he looked at her as if he didn't just love her, he really looked up to her. So I find this movie very interesting since I hadn't known all that much about his life. I found it very well done, although the scenes where he talked about his older brother who had died so young messed with me a bit, as Joaquin Phoenix also lost his older brother. I don't know how actors do it; I wouldn't want to relive those sorts of feelings over and over again before an audience and share it with the world. (For similar reasons, I think it's going to be a few years before I'll be ready to watch Batman: the Dark Knight. I don't separate fact from fiction so terribly well).

The first one I caught on cable was the very interesting but ultimately flawed Stranger Than Fiction. It's a brilliant idea, well acted, and very good for the first two-thirds. I particularly loved Dustin Hoffman as the literature professor who helps Will Ferrell figure out just what sort of novel he is trapped in (he can hear the writer, Emma Thompson, narrating his actions). This movie could have easily made it into my all-time fave list if it had only stuck the landing. Alas (SPOILER ALERT) for the ending to work the death of Will Ferrell's character needed to feel like the only possible conclusion to all the action up to that point, as if it had a deep and significant meaning, the sort of grand death that wins writing awards (since Emma is supposed to be just that sort of writer), but it didn't. It felt totally random and meaningless. So when she changes the ending there is no sense that she has found a deeper meaning. Instead you just get the sense the the screenwriters think that stories that end with death suck and no one should ever write them.

The second movie I saw on cable worked even less well for me, but since it was Adam Sandler's Click perhaps you won't be surprised. I only watched it because it had both Christopher Walkin and Sean Astin in a tiny, tiny Speedo. Mostly I kept wondering how if he had to work seven days a week late into the night just to afford to get new bikes for his kids his wife could justify not only not working even a part-time job while her kids were at school, but going to the gym every day with her friend (do you have any idea how much a gym membership costs, even the Y? There's your bike money right there). She just nagged Adam Sandler for putting on weight himself and never helping her out when she inflicts incredibly complex children's parties on herself (God forbid a bunch of kids should amuse themselves without having every minute of their evening filled with structured activities). Yeah, this one rubbed me wrong in a couple of places (Ooh! Here's another - double standard with how he talks to his son and his daughter about sex. No, I don't find the "I'm going to lock my daughter up until she's 30" sort of attitude endearing). Still, Christopher Walkin is the bomb.

The one I regret: Highlander: The Source. I know, skipping the theater release to head straight to a Sci-Fi Channel premiere is never a good sign. And I hated that animated Highlander: The Search for Vengeance movie. Still, Methos was in it. I wanted so badly for it to just be watchable. The best thing about this movie are the wonderful One Star reviews at Amazon.com (because Amazon doesn't let you give zero stars). Sharp and funny, and written by people with respect for Highlander and Highlander fans. I think the next time I have a hankering to revisit the world of Highlander I'll dig up some fan fiction online. Mathematically, it would have to be better than this film.

In the Bollywood category: Ek Aur Ek Gyarah was a caper film starring Govinda and Sanjay Dutt. Shika says that when she was in school in Delhi the boys used to cut school when new Govinda movies came out. Knowing his target audience was teenage boys helps to explain this movie. Still, I liked the title track.

Dil Ne Jise Apna Kahaa is the second Hindi film I've seen that involved a heart transplantee getting up and running and dancing around ridiculously soon after surgery. Salman Khan's wife (a doctor played by Preity Zinta) dies and leaves her heart to one of her patients (apparently they have no organ donor program in India and given the reaction to her not having all her parts at her funeral I think there is a religious conotation I didn't quite catch). The recipient's name was confidential, so when the girl in question starts working at Salman's office he can't figure out why he's attracted to her. This was a pretty likeable film (although the plot sounds vaguely like a Hollywood movie I never saw). It's filled with some familiar faces, all of whom get scenes which are amusing on their own but don't really move the story forward. (And apparently Ramen is the food of the lonely guy in every culture).

Garv reminded me a lot of the movie about Kashmir I watched last month. Both feature Arbaz Khan as the only Muslim you can trust, although this one tried harder to make the point that not every Muslim is either a terrorist or Arbaz Khan. It had some nice speeches to that effect, anyway. But it was too much of a Steven Seagal type of film to be taken seriously (good thing; the ending would have been brutal if played as a serious drama). Now I've seen many Bollywood films with questionable medical practices, this one shows the same freehand with police procedures. I mean, Salman Khan gets understandably frustrated with the bureaucracy that keeps letting the criminals he works so hard to catch go on technicalities, so he decides that arrest warrants could be read as "dead or alive" and goes in shooting (very Steven Seagal, yeah?). The unbelievable part? The government actually backs him. (Except the human rights types who protest, but all turn out to be on the bankroll of the big don who's trying to take over Mumbai from Dubai). Still, the scene where Salman Khan tries to pass off the first drug dealer he killed as self-defense was pretty funny. "Self-defense? You broke 17 bones in his body and shot him six times." (Did I mention the Steven Seagal?).

Tere Nam was even more violent, only without having the actual story to go with it. I think the writer looked at Romeo and Juliet and decided he could make a more depressing ending. Salman Khan has a really strange haircut, I think to cover the prosthetic they need for the one scene where gangsters ram his skull repeatedly into the front of a train. Not something I needed to see. (They won't show actors kissing on the lips, but bashed in skulls I get to see in far too graphic detail).

Phir Milenge was really Philadelphia, but this time it's a woman who has HIV and is fired. She gets it from Salman Khan, who got it from a white girl in New York. Because he didn't listen to Johnny Lever in Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai when he told them that all white girls are riddled with venereal disease. I did like Abhishek Bachchan as Denzel Washington, but this film had a decided lack of Antonio Banderas (clearly after getting HIV the only time she had sex, this woman has sworn off men and is just going to hang with her little sister). I did like the music. There was no real dancing in this film, so the music is more guitar-oriented pop.

The last film didn't work for me either, damn it. Aaja Nachle stars Madhuri Dixit, whom I love in everything. I'm not alone in that, actually. In the movie Kabul Express, two Indian journalists touring post US invasion Afghanistan are taken hostage by a Pakistani soldier who had been sent by his government to work for the Taliban, but since Pakistan had told the US they had never done such a thing he needs to get back across the border before he's killed. (A very good film. Not a musical, but an interesting non-US perspective of Afghanistan). At any rate, the two Indians catch the Pakistani singing along with their filmi and are surprised he knows it, as Bollywood films are banned in Pakistan. But pirated videos are everywhere (and Pakistan has since lifted the ban), and the soldier tells them the films are so popular Pakistan would gladly relenquish all claims on Kashmir if only they could have Madhuri Dixit. But the Indians sigh, alas she has married and gone away to America.

Which is true, she lives in Colorado. But she went back to India during her son's summer break from school to make a film. And she is wonderful in it, and still a dazzlingly expressive dancer. Sadly the story doesn't work. She plays a woman who lives in NYC but goes back to her hometown in India to save the theater where she used to dance from being torn down to make a shopping mall. So she organizes a show using the townspeople themselves to show them just how important dance is to the community. Now I'm all about the importance of doing things over buying things. I like the idea of pursuing an art for its own rewards, of acting or dancing for your friends and neighbors and not necessarily needing to hie off to Hollywood or Mumbai to do it.

Sadly the most amazing part of the film is the part that just doesn't work: the show. They do a 30-minute number based on the Leila-Majnu story (or as Eric Clapton would spell it, Layla). This show is very cool, but it's not remotely believable as a production put on by people who had never acted, sung or danced until Madhuri blew into town to get them all motivated. And the sets and costumes are beautiful, but who made them - heck, who paid for the materials?

The movie let a lot of plot lines just drop at the end, it was a frustrating "but what about..?" experience. My dream job? Script doctor. I hate when what should have been a pretty good film falls down because of lazy writing, and it would usually take such little tweaks to fix it. Alas, I'll just have to stick to doctoring my own stories.

Still, bad film or not, Madhuri is a terrific dancer. And she gets to wear the best clothes (this outfit is second after the dark burgundy she wore for the "Chalak Chalak" number in Devdas in my book):