This is continuing the list of films I saw in the year 2000 and notes I wrote about them at the time. As before, current updates are in bold.

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8/17. MABOROSI (1995) at Walter Reade. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, who made AFTER LIFE, which I sort of liked at the time, but now would like to see it again in light of this earlier film. I really liked MABOROSI. His style and way of looking at the world is reminiscent of Ozu. No closeups in the entire film; I think the closest he got were several medium closeups. This kind of physical distance can result in an emotional distance from the characters, yet this film seemed full of feeling that’s very hard to describe. Few of the scenes advanced the “plot” in any conventional Western way. The film is almost anthropological in the way it just shows us locations and people and what they’re doing. A young widow’s efforts to understand why her husband apparently committed suicide are at the core of the film, but it’s almost never talked about. I also felt a kind of aprehension or anxiety that further tragedies were going to occur, or could occur, and maybe the fragility of life is part of the point of the film. The way it’s just presented without any usual explanations for the benefit of an audience reminds me of Abbas Kiarostami’s THE WIND WILL CARRY US.

I saw Maborosi again a week later on 8/24 and made this note: “Holds up on second viewing, though of course the sense of discovery is gone. Was able to admire the formality of the style more, but had less of an emotional experience.” This was Kore-eda’s first feature, an impressive debut considering how self-assured it is. He’s gone on to make many excellent films, which I’m always anxious to see.

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8/22. RAN at Union Square 14. Re-release, new print & sound. Looks good, though image is a little soft, I thought. This didn’t blow me away like I remember first time I saw it, though that time was at NY Film Festival with Kurosawa in attendance, so that was a real event. Still very striking. Toru Takemitsu’s score is great. Very mournful music. Very few, if any, real closeups. Mostly long & medium shots, long takes. The battle scenes are very graphic, though I thought the blood, and there was a lot of it, was generally too red, too bright, which undercut the realism for me. Amazing that Kurosawa was 81 or so when he made this. Must have been an arduous shoot.

I’ve seen Ran a number of times over the years, most recently in a 4K restoration last year in a 40th anniversary release at the IFC Center. At the time I made the following note: “My only reservation is that the blood (and there’s lots of it), sometimes didn’t look realistic, bright red doesn’t seem right.” This is almost exactly what I wrote in the entry above, so I guess my feelings about the blood stayed with me.

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9/12. NURSE BETTY at Campus Theater, Iowa City IA. Like it a lot. Renee Zellwegger, Morgan Freeman & Chris Rock were especially good. Unexpected movie from Neil Labute, though. More like a Coen Bros movie with a little Tarantino thrown in.

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9/25. HOUSE OF WAX at Film Forum. 3D screening. Have seen this before, but always interesting to see, since I think it uses the 3D process the best of any of the films made during the 3D craze in the 50s. Also showed the only WB Bugs Bunny cartoon shot in 3D, “Lumberjack Rabbit”, which isn’t very good, especially coming from Chuck Jones. Maybe I would’ve appreciated it more if I’d been wearing the correct eye glasses under the 3D glasses. Realized about 10 minutes into WAX that I’d put the 3D glasses over my reading glasses, which I was wearing when the program abruptly started up. I was in too much of a hurry to put my book away and get the 3D glasses on at the time.

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10/9. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON at the New York Film Festival. Great, really enjoyed this, even seeing it at Avery Fisher. Michele Yeoh is especially good, brings a lot of feeling to her character. The fight scenes are amazing, though I didn’t like the one in the tree tops so much, it was just too much of a stretch for me. Also, the lengthy flashback sequence to the princess in the desert and her encounter with the bandit guy she falls in love with interrupts the main story, kind of fractures the structure, even though it’s a great episode in its own right. These are small points, finally, considering how much I liked the movie.

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10/20. THE YARDS at Sony Lincoln Square. Directed by James Gray (LITTLE ODESSA). Nice downbeat tone, but doesn’t really climax. Or maybe it does, but not in way that’s satisfying to me, or maybe I was just missing a big violent scene that would cap it off. Wahlberg is good, but his character mainly reacts; the part doesn’t give him all that much to do. Joaquin Phoenix’s character is actually the most interesting, along with James Caan’s. I wanted to like it more, but basically felt “so what?” by the end. One very good scene is when a guy has come to Wahlberg’s mother’s apartment to kill him. The guy is walking down the hallway with the camera tracking ahead of him, slightly slow motion, and what makes it interesting is that the natural sounds are dropped very low or out entirely and the music is low, ominous chords, kind of a grinding sound.

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10/21. BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET at Walter Reade. Had never seen this before. It’s very funny at times, though I found myself put off at times by the response of the audience, which seemed to be largely Italian. Felt their laughter was excessive, that what they were laughing at wasn’t quite that funny. Of course, if these people were indeed Italians, then they were probably picking up on language stuff, etc that I was obviously ignorant of, that the subtitles couldn’t convey. Interesting seeing Mastroianni and Vitorrio Gassman looking so young. This is part of a Toto series, though Toto has a guest role, appearing in only several scenes, but very effectively.

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11/14. RED PLANET at Loews Astor Plaza. Not as bad as the reviews I saw made out. Much, much better than De Palma’s disasterous MISSION TO MARS earlier this year. Thought Carrie-Anne Moss came off the best, despite the fact that hers was a fairly passive role. Tom Sizemore is a terrific actor, and Val Kilmer usually has a lot of presence, but their characters as written didn’t give them much to work with. But compare this to Kubrick’s 2001, 32 years old now, or ALIEN. PITCH BLACK, with a lower budget (I’m assuming) and a much wilder, more lurid style, was a lot better, I thought, and the situation is actually quite similar to RED PLANET.

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11/16. PIE IN THE SKY: THE BRIGID BERLIN STORY at Walter Reade. Part of the Indenpendent’s Night series. Pretty interesting documentary about someone heavily involved with the Andy Warhol scene. The interview segments with Brigid Berlin today were the most interesting to me. A friend, Vic Losick, shot this, which I guess was the main reason I decided to see it, though I’m glad I did. Can’t imagine the film will have any sort of wide appeal, but I guess it’s the rare documentary that does.

My closing comment about documentaries rarely having wide appeal ignores the popularity of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins, Grizzly Man, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens, and Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, to name but a few. Maybe not blockbusters, but not exactly rare.

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11/17. THE SIXTH DAY at Loews E-Walk. Cloning movie starts out pretty well, but goes off track after 30-45 minutes and gets quite absurd and unbelievable. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pretty good, though the scenes between him and the cloned Arnold are generally bad. There’s little or no attempt to give these characters much depth or history. Robert Duvall brings more to his role than it deserves. Seems like he’s actually trying to suggest some depth for the character, but maybe he just can’t help doing that as an actor. Tony Goldwyn is just a bad guy and that’s about it. The first part of the film looks to be influenced by Paul Verhoeven’s ROBOCOP in its attention to interesting and funny details, i.e. TV broadcasts, news items, advertisements, etc that give a sense of that particular world and society. The “twist” near the end with the Arnold we’ve been with finding out he’s the clone and the other guy’s the real Arnold, and not the other way around, reminds me of something out of Philip K. Dick. All in all, a fairly useless movie, though not terrible.

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11/19. BOUNCE at AMC 25. Not bad, though my primary interest was in seeing it in digital projection, which I thought looked great, though as with DINOSAUR, I’d really like to see it in 35mm projection side-by-side to compare. Ben Affleck & Gwyneth Paltrow are very good in this. Doesn’t seem to do all it could with the material. Was also very aware of two scenes in the trailer that didn’t make it to the final cut. Those scenes suggested more development of Affleck’s character, or maybe just his problem with his relationship with Paltrow. Directed by Don Roos, who was the writer/director of THE OPPOSITE OF SEX.

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11/22. THE TRENCH at Film Forum. Pretty good, but didn’t quite get to where I think it wanted to go by the end. Also seemed a little stage bound by being in the trenches basically the entire movie. Of course, it is called THE TRENCH. The performances make it worth seeing, though I had trouble understanding all the dialogue.

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11/23. UNBREAKABLE at AMC 25. M. Night Shyamalan’s followup to SIXTH SENSE, also with Bruce Willis. The trailers are quite clever in that they don’t really don’t tell us what the film’s about beyond the initial train wreck survival. People expecting another SIXTH SENSE are going to be a little confused by this, I think. I was amazed that Willis turns out to be a superhero, in a true comic book sense, and is unaware of the extent of his “powers” until clued in by Samuel L. Jackson’s character, who is also revealed to be a mad villain at the end, Mr. Glass. The movie teeters right on the edge of absurdity with this, but I think almost pulls it off. I think Shyamalan was trying for something more mysterious and spiritual, but “real”, which may have prevented him from going further with the superhero angle, though I guess he goes pretty far with it. Great scene when Willis’ kid is going to shoot him just to prove Willis is indestructible.

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11/24. LA BUCHE at Paris Theater. First feature directed by Daniele Thompson, who I hadn’t hear of before. Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Beart & Charlotte Gainsbourg play three sisters preparing for the Christmas holiday in Paris. Claude Rich is their father. Strange to see him looking so old after seeing him in Resnais JE T’AIME JE T’AIME this summer, but that was made in 1968, so he was 31 years older when this was made last year. Sabine Azema, who was my real draw to this film, having liked her so much in the Resnais films this summer, looked quite a bit older than she did in SMOKING/NO SMOKING from 1993. I liked this movie. It could have been quite sentimental, given the situations, but avoided taking that route.

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11/25. QUILLS at Lincoln Plaza. Philip Kaufman’s take on Doug Wright’s play about the Marquis de Sade’s final years in a nuthouse. Geoffrey Rush tends to put me off, but he’s well cast as de Sade. Kate Winslet & Joaquin Phoenix are very good. Michael Caine is good, but he doesn’t have much to do except be the bad guy. I thought the movie went on a little too long, plus the final scenes were neither that satisfying or convincing. Nonetheless, it held my attention and I liked it. Small point: the last scene with de Sade in the cage, having written on the walls with a mixture of his own shit and what else, there’s no way he could have shit that much to do all that writing.

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11/25. FOOLISH WIVES at Walter Reade. Goofy Erich von Stroheim extravaganza, but interesting. Live orchestra accompaniment was nice, but not spectacular. Interesting detail of a character reading a book titled “Foolish Wives”, and when there’s a closer shot of the cover we see that it’s written by Erich von Stroheim. Kind of like a Hitchcock appearance in his own film. Very grim scene of von Stroheim’s knifed body being dumped down a sewer manhole by the father of a girl his character tried to molest.

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11/29. ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER at Film Forum. Documentary about the Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Found it interesting, since I didn’t really know anything to speak of about what had happened. But seemed like it pushed some easy buttons. Particularly interesting that the filmmakers were able to interview the last surviving member of the Black September terrorist group. We’re told in an end title that he’s survived many assassination attempts (the other two survivors were subsequently assassinated) and is living somewhere in Africa. It would be interesting to know how the filmmakers contacted him and arranged the interview, especially since their sympathies seem to be with the Israelis.

Subsequent theatrical features concerning this event include Stephen Spielberg’s excellent Munich (2005) and the smaller but equally excellent September 5, in which the ABC sports broadcasting team has to switch gears to cover the crisis as it unfolds.

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11/30. LIMBO at 92nd Street Y. Third film in Annette Insdorf’s “Reel Pieces” series. Didn’t go last week. Almost didn’t this week, but wanted to see David Strathairn in the Q&A following. I really like this movie. Strathairn was great in the interview. He said that not only is the ending unresolved, but he thought nothing else in the movie is resolved, either. I think this is true. We never really find out how things “work out” for any of the characters. Sayles really went out on a limb doing this.

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12/1. A HARD DAY’S NIGHT at Film Forum. New print and new sound. Looks great, a spotless picture. Still like seeing this. The jokes that weren’t that funny to begin with still aren’t, but small matter. Lots of very clever visual storytelling in this. With this film and HELP!, Richard Lester can lay claim to helping shape the way we perceived the Beatles. Not to mention the major influence on the whole world of music videos yet to come. So maybe Lester is also one of the inventors of MTV.

The “comedy” concerning some of the supporting characters is very lame and really took me out of the movie the last time I saw it a few years ago. Though the music and the Beatles themselves are still great, which I suppose is what matters. For me, Help! is a better film.

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12/2. PROOF OF LIFE at Sony Lincoln Square. Taylor Hackford movie with Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe, David Morse & David Caruso. Liked it, mainly the first 3/4 or so, but the big commando raid felt kind of bogus, also the final sequence when Crowe has delivered Morse back to Ryan didn’t play very well. People in the theater were laughing in spots. The Van Morrison song under shots of Crowe watching Ryan drive off with Morse is a major mistake. Russell Crowe handles this kind of extremely competent character very well, and I like watching him do it.

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12/3. A GOOD BABY at Walter Reade. Good film with Henry Thomas and David Strathairn. Had sort of a Flannery O’Connor feel, maybe because of the rural, backwoods Southern setting (actually North Carolina per the end credits). Strathairn is quite convincing as a duplicitous and murderous traveling salesman. I was concerned that from the time Thomas finds the baby in the woods in the beginning through to the end we never see anyone have to change the baby and only once is the baby shown being fed. I would think this would be a big concern with any baby. Some of the landscape shots were absolutely incredible, such a painterly range of green and brown.

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12/9. CHOCOLAT at Sony Lincoln Square. Excellent, liked it a lot. Lasse Halstrom followup to CIDER HOUSE RULES. With Juliet Binoche (looking much healthier than she did in ALICE ET MARTIN), Judi Dench, Alfred Molina, Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, Carrie Anne-Moss (whose appearance is totally transformed from THE MATRIX). The movie has a somewhat magical feel. The voice-over narrator’s first line is “Once upon a time…”, which invokes a fairy tale, and the first appearance of Binoche and her daughter approaching the village on foot wearing identical red hooded capes, adds to this. A happy ending is never in doubt, but the way we get there is really engaging. Very satisfying, top to bottom.

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12/10. PLENILUNIO at Walter Reade. Part of the yearly “Spanish Cinema Now” series. Hadn’t planned to see this, but glad I did. Directed by Imanol Uribe (2000), who I’d never heard of before. Really liked it. Concerns a police inspector investigated the murder of a girl about 12 years old. Also his love affair with the dead girl’s teacher. The actors are great; they convey great depths of feeling. The woman who plays the teacher, Susanna, is very hot, though not in a “babe” way; she’s a real woman — sexual, intelligent, independent. There are some scenes with young girls here that I think would be a problem in an American film. An early scene, after the discovery of the dead girl on the riverbank, is at the medical examiner’s and the camera tracks alongside her nude body, not an overhead shot, but we see her hairless vagina. Later in the film the killer has left a second victim for dead, but she’s still alive, naked on the same riverbank. She manages to get up and climb up the bank and into the street. We see her naked from behind. I think American audiences, or the MPAA, somebody, would be very nervous about these scenes. There’s nothing salacious about them in anyway, however. They just make the film that much more powerful. I really liked the actor who plays the police inspector, Manuel.

Saw this again at Walter Reade on 12/26 that year and noted that it held up well on a second viewing. Haven’t seen it since.

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12/15. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH at DGA Theater. Didn’t hold my attention as much as when I saw it at the New York Film Festival. Was noticing how careful Davies was in each scene to maximize what was a fairly low budget, how little we actually see of an outside world. Through bits and pieces at the edges of the frame, angles and shadows, the film suggests settings much larger than what we actually see. There are very few exterior wide shots, certainly not in the urban settings. Gillian Anderson and Eric Stolz are really good. Terence Davies was there to introduce the film and participate in an interview and Q&A following. He’s given to bitchy behavior and outbursts. His personality seems quite at odds with the totally sober film he made. I also had this impression at the Q&A after the NYFF screening. Don’t care for him personally, but it’s a good film.

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12/16. BILLY ELLIOTT at Sony Lincoln Square. Finally saw this and liked it. Had held off, for some reason, maybe the influence of a few negative things I picked up from glancing at the reviews when it opened. Jamie Bell is terrific in the title role. I thought the family caved in a little too quickly on their opposition to Billy’s ballet aspirations. Julie Walters is great as his first ballet teacher. I also liked that they let these working class characters talk the way they talk, so it’s a lot of “fucks” and “twats”, which means an R-rating here, which is kind of too bad. It ostensibly shuts out a lot of younger people who’d probably find the movie inspiring.

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12/17. TRAFFIC at Ziegfeld/Movies 101 screening. A friend invited me to the last screening in the fall term of Richard Brown’s film class, which I’d taken before. Liked it a lot, though wasn’t emotionally blown away like I wanted to be. It’s really well made, and has a rough, documentary look and feel. The use of different film stocks (presumably, though this effect might have been achieved in the lab) reminds me of THREE KINGS. All the acting is outstanding, with Benicio del Toro being especially good. The closing scene of Del Toro at a Little League (or equivalent) baseball game at night is a fine positive note on which to end the film, since building the ball park was his price to the DEA for his assistance. The Michael Douglas as drug czar storyline is slightly weaker than the other two, maybe because his character is finally pretty ineffectual.

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12/23. STATE AND MAIN at Lincoln Plaza. Funny and clever, but in a very smug, smartass way. All the acting was good, i.e. William H. Macy, David Paymer, Alec Baldwin, Rebecca Pidgeon. Seemed like it had Preston Sturges aspirations. Didn’t quite buy Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character; he seemed a little too dense to me.

Tried to watch this again a couple years ago and couldn’t get through it. No longer thought it was “funny and clever,” even in a smartass way. Seemed very forced and condescending this time. Good cast, though.

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12/23. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? at Union Square 14. Liked this Coen Bros. movie a lot more than I thought I might. It’s a real fable; quotes and parallels with “The Odyssey”, though I didn’t get all the references. Great music. There’s a great moment when a cow gets hit by a speeding police car.

As with The Big Lebowski, which I initially did not like but later came to love, this film took time for me to realize how great it is. Good stuff frequently takes a while for people to catch up. Stanley Kubrick’s films are another example of this.

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12/29. SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE at Loews E-Walk. Liked this. John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck are terrific. Eddie Izzard finally got a good screen role. The background design behind the main titles is great, really creates a mood, plus the score is very good. Wasn’t sure if Udo Kier and Cary Elwes believed Murnau when he finally tells them the truth about Schreck. Do they really believe Schreck is a vampire? Did I miss something? Schreck approaching the camera at the end is quite unsettling.

On January 6, 2001, I saw Shadow of the Vampire again at AMMI (now called the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens). Dafoe was there for an interview and Q&A after the screening. When asked how he got into the character of Max Schreck as a real vampire, he said that the makeup did most of the work for him, he was already there. Also, I love the scene where Schreck snatches a bat out of the air and chomps down on it, to the consternation of those nearby.

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Okay, that does it for this one. See you next time. — Ted Hicks