Do the Right Thing

What was most interesting to me about this movie is that there were two sides to it, but they blended together extremely fluidly. It's sort of a comedy about every day life in the city, but it's also a searing, controversial drama about race. It seems like these aspects might not work well together, but they really do. This is only the second Spike Lee film I've seen so I can't really say a ton about him, but he does seem to have some interesting ideas.

The movie takes place mostly during a single, extremely hot day in Brooklyn. Lee plays Mookie, who has a sister he lives with, an extremely boisterous girlfriend played by Rosie Perez (and who dances in the opening credit sequence, which is so iconic that I recognized it instantly despite not having seen it before), and works at an Italian-owned pizza restaurant as a delivery boy. He goes about his day, delivering pizzas, avoiding the heat, and bumping into a number of the neighborhood eccentrics that surround him. A bit of tension, driven by the heat, slowly starts to boil as a couple people start to butt heads with Danny Aiello's Sal, the restaurant's owner. One is Buggin' Out, who takes issue with the fact that the place's "wall of fame" is populated exclusively by Italians, and who is played by Giancarlo Esposito, in a performance that is absolutely fascinating watching him play the endless calm and calculating Gus Fring on Breaking Bad. The other is Radio Raheem, who carries around a huge boom box blasting "Fight the Power", and who just seems to not like most people.

The movie goes along, introducing and spending time with its various characters, like John Turturro's Pino, the son of Sal, who's a racist but also hypocritical about it (he loves Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson but justifies it by saying they're "not really black"), and Love Daddy, a fast-talking radio DJ who sort of acts as a narrator and is played by Samuel L. Jackson. Eventually though, the simmering tension comes to a head, in a series of events that unfold surprisingly quickly change the entire mood of the film. Mookie does something that has been much debated over time, but only really by white people. It's an act of violence that causes a full-on riot, but it also probably saved some people's lives. The movie's called "Do the Right Thing", and I think that he does, but the movie's not about supplying simple answers to complicated questions about race. The types of events that caused Lee to write the movie in the first place don't happen as often as they used to, but as long as they continue to occur anywhere, it's the kind of movie that people should be watching, if only to make them think a little bit.

Hannah and Her Sisters

Hannah and Her Sisters is another comedy/drama about relationships by Woody Allen, and while I didn't think it was as good as a couple other examples I've seen, it was still a very good movie. It shows the intertwining lives of three sisters over the course of two years as they go through relationship woes and sometimes don't get along too well. Mia Farrow plays Hannah, whose husband played by Michael Caine feels attracted to her sister played by Barbara Hershey, who is also in a relationship with an artist played by Max Von Sydow. Dianne Wiest is a struggling actress who butts heads romantically with her friend and business partner played by Carrie Fisher. Woody Allen plays a TV writer who has a history with both Farrow and Wiest, and believes he may have a tumor. All of these plot threads dance around each other and come together repeatedly around Thanksgiving, when the whole family gathers to pretend nothing is wrong with their lives.

While I have enjoyed other films by Allen more, I think this one actually impressed me the most with its direction. The unique use of title cards, the way things are cut together, the way some of the scenes are shot, are all really interesting. It's certainly the best case I've seen so far for Woody Allen as a great artist and not just a guy who makes cute, funny movies. There's some of that too though, especially in his subplot, which is mostly tangentially related to the other stories until near the end. It involves him worrying about his mortality and looking for solace in religion, but because he's neurotic, nebbish Woody Allen the way he goes about it is really silly and amusing. He's mostly there to provide laughs while everyone else is doing heavier lifting. Caine and Wiest both won Oscars for their work, and they along with pretty much everyone in the film do great jobs with the material, sympathizing people with often very unlikable traits, which can be difficult to do. I can see why those two were singled out for their work, but the whole thing is a pretty outstanding ensemble. It's not quite as fun a movie as it could have been, but I liked what it did.

The Big Lebowski

I was watching this again with friends last night, for the first time in too long. While there are films I would name as superior artistic achievements, I really can't think of any that I love more. Few movies hold up to repeated viewings as well as this one, and there are only a small handful of flaws that keep it from being perfect. There's something special about it, like you could try to replicate its success with the same amount of talent both behind and in front of the camera and never find the same magic in a hundred years. Instead of pontificating on why it works, I'll just start listing little details you might not notice the first couple times but help show why it's such a cult favorite. It really is the epitome of that sort of thing, failing when it was in theaters, but it's hard to find someone in my age group who hasn't seen it at this point.

- There's a lot of stuff with shirts that's fun. Most people have noticed that Donnie's bowling shirts never actually have his name on them, but fewer know that between their first and second scenes, Jackie Treehorn's two thugs decided to switch what they were wearing.
- It's fun to think about how people became friends. Walter and the Dude get along but really don't have much in common, leading us to think they were put in a situation where they were forced to find common ground, like they went to college together and were roommates or something. Neither one seems to care much for Donnie, but you can see how they saw his bowling talent and befriended him so they could use him on the team, and him being so weird accepted the only friends he could get.
- A bit more mysterious is how the Jesus and Liam became bowling buddies. The best theory I've heard is that the latter is the former's parole officer.
- Not really a fun fact, but Philip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic in this movie. And it's the only time I've ever seen something make Tara Reid useful.
- When he's discussing the toe with Walter in the diner, the Dude gets angry and dumps some change on the counter to pay for his coffee. It's easy to miss that he picks up a joint he accidentally grabbed with the money before he shuffles out of the place a bit too quickly.
- Walter's inappropriate references to Vietnam are great, but I might like his flashbacks even more. It only happens a couple times, but he'll forget where he is for a minute.
- Have you ever made note of how many times the movie could have ended if the Dude just stayed out of things? Eventually he gets in too deep, but if Walter never told him to go see the other Lebowski, or if he didn't take that specific rug from the place, and so on.
- It's gotta be common knowledge for fans at this point, but it's great how much of the Dude's dialogue is taken from what he's heard other people say and how all the elements of his dreams come from somewhere else in the film. Perhaps the best instance of this is when he tells Larry he's going to castrate him.
- How sad is it that Donnie's bowling buddies are the only ones at his funeral. Does he really have no family at all? I assume they knew him well enough to contact them if he did.
- The entire arc of Jackie's pornographic doodle is great. For one thing, it's a great drawing. For another, why is he drawing that while he's on the phone? What the Dude does is one of his smartest moments, but he gets nothing out of it, and of course it's the only thing in his pockets after he's arrested besides his Ralph's card.

I'm running out of steam here, so I'll wrap it up. Like I said, there are some issues with the movie and I'll touch on those. When the Dude gets thrown out of the cab and Bunny zooms by, the shot lasts too long and the Dude's expression of bewildered dismay ends up looking artificial. It's a very small problem, but again, we're talking about one of my favorite movies ever. Another thing is that I think there's only one scene in the movie that doesn't feature the Dude, the very brief snippet where we see the nihilists ordering breakfast. It's not really necessary because the other scene shows Bunny's toes intact, and it would have been nice if you could say there is no scene in the film without its protagonist. It's a stylistic thing, and when you're that close, you might as well go for it. These are both minor quibbles of course, small bumps in what is still one of cinema's most enjoyable experiences. I don't doubt that I like the movie just a bit too much, but I'm okay with that.

Barton Fink

Barton Fink is perhaps the Coen brothers' oddest film, and that's saying something. It's not the silliest, but there's a strange, symbolic thing going on through the whole movie, and by the end it takes over the actual story. It's about a playwright from New York played by John Turturro who is brought to Hollywood to write for motion pictures, and who struggles when brought out of his comfort zone and forced to write in a genre he doesn't understand. The movie is very slow to get started, and doesn't really get entertaining until about half an hour in. The fun comes from the people Turturro meets in the new city, who provide the sort of dialogue we've grown used to from the Coens - crisp, clever, and unique. The acting is quite strong all around, as everyone besides Turturro gets two or three good scenes to show off their chops, and they're all up the task.

Before the Coen brothers were winning Oscars, this movie took home a hat trick at Cannes, including the Palme d'Or. It's definitely the sort of thing voters at film festivals would go for, the most of any of their work. There's an unusual structure to the film, and as it goes on the viewer's comprehension can only drop as strange things being happening without a ton of resolution, culminating in the climax which brings a metaphor completely to the forefront and a final scene which recalls a repeated image throughout the story, without actually saying anything obviously meaningful. There's a strange mystery to the whole thing, and I'm not sure how much of what happened was supposed to be real. The movie's definitely enjoyable whenever people are speaking, from Buscemi's chipper bellhop, to Goodman's ambiguous salesman, to the fast talking detectives investigating something, and everyone else. Still, I might not recommend the movie to anyone who doesn't already like their work or appreciate more unusual films, because it would be easy to be left unsatisfied by how it all ends. Definitely an odd film.