“Actually our work depends on how much we can appropriate from other people’s work! Painting, music, films, literature … it’s all grist for the mill. We think of our work not as individual creativity but like a lifelong baton relay. Your work passes through your body and your life; you transform it into something, and then you pass it on to the next generation.” Hiyao Miyazaki interviewed by Roger Ebert for The Chicago Sun Times, October 1999

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by Toru Hara
86 minutes

Picking a film produced by Studio Ghibli is like tasting sushi when you’ve been raised on a diet of meat and potatoes animation from Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera your whole life. The world of Hayao Miyazaki is one without heroes to cheer, villains to hiss at or talking animals to cue laughter. There are families and houses. Children learn to deal with change and to assume greater responsibility. In addition, the unseen surrounds them. As the story begins, there’s a slight feeling of unease, as well as fascination as the invisible world reveals itself. No film from Miyazaki exemplifies these sublime characteristics like the first to bring him an international audience, My Neighbor Totoro. 10-year-old Satsuki Kusakabe and her bratty 4-year-old sister Mei settle into life in the countryside, where their professor father has moved them to be closer to their mother, who recuperates from a long illness at a local hospital.

The Kusakabes are both excited and disquieted to discover their new house is inhabited by soot sprites, harmless creatures which scatter from light and whisper in the rafters. While Satsuki attends school, Mei explores the yard. There, Mei encounters two forest spirits, overstuffed rabbits which lead her into a magnificent camphor tree where the girl finds an even bigger forest spirit snoozing. Offering the name “Totoro”, the spirit vanishes before Satsuzki can meet him. She gets her chance while waiting for her father’s bus in a downpour and makes an impression on Totoro by introducing him to an umbrella. The spirits return the generosity of the Kusakabes by sprouting their garden to enormous heights. The spirits are unable to heal the girls’ mother and after losing her temper with her sister, Satsuki blames herself when Mei disappears. When search efforts by the townspeople falter, Totoro and his friends step in.

For his fourth feature film, animator Hayao Miyazaki sought a return to his childhood in Sayama Hills, which was farmland in the 1950s before it became suburban Tokyo. Miyazaki’s mother spent many years under bed rest with spinal tuberculosis, a detail that worked its way into the story. Executives at Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. didn’t feel that sketches of Miyazaki’s nature spirits looked promising, so producer Toshio Suzuki proposed that Totoro be made in tandem with an adaptation of the novel Grave of the Fireflies and released as a double feature. A modest box office success in Japan, Miyazaki’s output began attracting comparisons to Walt Disney. Reaching an agreement with Tokuma for worldwide video distribution of Miyazaki’s films, The Walt Disney Company produced an English language dub of My Neighbor Totoro in 2005 featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning and Tim Daly as the Kusakabes.

Miyazaki’s compositions have fantastic depth of field, basking light on the old farmhouses, lush forests and rice fields the characters move past. To those who grew up on Josie and the Pussycats, the novelty of My Neighbor Totoro isn’t just the animation, but its spiritual depth. Respect for the natural world and an open mind toward the unseen course through the story, not as teaching points, but as an alternative to the lifestyle the Kusakabes are retreating from. My Neighbor Totoro is a bounty of both joy and imagination, as if Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are had been adapted for an Eastern audience. The girls are stricken early on with a giddiness that doesn’t cross over very well, something Miyazaki would change with his Oscar winning Spirited Away in 2001, but the pure enjoyment of the film is how different it is. Instead of catering to what the we expect, this magic carpet takes us somewhere different.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 75,711 users: 94% for My Neighbor Totoro

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“I remember being absolutely fearless because I was too young to know any better. I had no idea, I had never tasted failure — or pressure from the studio. You know, that film got made because Sean was very hot, Sean wanted me to direct it, and because he and I were so simpatico, we could do whatever we wanted because we held the power. I never appreciated that at the time, how important that was, so we literally did whatever we wanted and tried crazy things and didn’t care what other people thought — we didn’t have to care what other people thought.” James Foley interviewed by Walter Chaw for Film Freak Central, April 2003

At Close Range (1986)
Directed by James Foley
Screenplay by Nicholas Kazan, story by Elliott Lewitt and Nicholas Kazan
Produced by Elliott Lewitt, Don Guest
111 minutes

If the songwriting of Bruce Springsteen could conjure moving images, the result would be something very similar to At Close Range. Though The Boss didn’t supply any music for the soundtrack, echoes of “Thunder Road” or “Darkness on the Edge of Town” with their engines of discontented youth reverberate through this film, siphoned into a crime story and injected by an ensemble cast that makes a case for being one of the greatest ever assembled. Somewhere in the seemingly lawless farmland of Pennsylvania in 1978, Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) trucks into town to pick up his knucklehead brother Tommy (Christopher Penn). Brad summons the guts to talk to a girl named Terry (Mary Stuart Masterson) hanging out in the square. Lacking a job or even reliable wheels, he ultimately convinces the 16-year-old to light out west with him for a better life together.

Brad Jr. seeks out his absentee father Brad Whitewood Sr. (Christopher Walken), who local gossip has it is a thief. Brad Sr. introduces the boy to his woman (Candy Clark), as well as the uncles (R.D. Call, J.C. Quinn) and the epileptic (David Straithairn) he disappears with in the dead of night. Wary of Brad Jr. getting mixed up in the schemes of his dim witted Uncle Patch (Tracey Walter), Brad Sr. gives his son a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle and sends him back to his mother (Millie Perkins). Seeking respect and some extra cash, Brad Jr. and Tommy gather their friends (Crispin Glover, Stephen Geoffreys, Kiefer Sutherland) and start stealing tractors. Brad Jr. compels his father to show him the ropes, but sees more than he bargained for one night and breaks away from his dad. When his son is arrested, the bonds of family buckle and Brad Sr’s self-preservation kicks in.

In August 1978, producer Elliott Lewitt came across an account in the Philadelphia Inquirer of two teenagers — a federal witness and his 15-year-old girlfriend — who’d been riddled with bullets in rural Chester County. Details emerged that the boy’s father Bruce Johnston Sr. was patriarch of family notorious for stealing tractors and anything else that wasn’t moving. Seeing potential for a modern day Greek tragedy, Lewitt hired Nicholas Kazan to adapt a screenplay based on these events. Titled At Close Range, Kazan’s script became one nearly every executive in Hollywood wanted to see made but none were willing to bankroll. That changed in 1985 when Sean Penn was being heralded as the most talented young actor in movies. Penn had befriended USC Film School grad James Foley and a script both men loved was At Close Range. Hemdale Film Corporation agreed to finance the project with Orion Pictures handling distribution.

Kazan let it be known how displeased he was with Foley’s work, cutting scenes the scribe felt pivotal to the plot, redacting the humor and giving the picture a visual sheen Kazan thought undermined its reality. It’ll never be known how great At Close Range might have been, but in Foley’s defense, what’s on screen is remarkable. Cast by Risa Bramon and Billy Hopkins, the ensemble is extraordinary and in his sophomore feature, Foley knew to let his actors act. The energy harnessed by Sean Penn, his brother Chris and their mother Eileen Ryan (playing the boys’ grandma) is palpable, while Walken and Masterson and the great Tracey Walter mesmerize in every moment of their screen time. The lightning by Juan Ruiz Anchia bleeds shadow, but in a fresh approach, this is film noir set knee deep in the boondocks. Madonna co-wrote and performed the ubiquitous theme song “Live To Tell”, which materializes throughout the film as its own atmospheric effect.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 8,017 users: 71% for At Close Range

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

Q: “Why exactly did Paramount bury it?”
A: “Well, I think the real question is, why was it even made?”
Nick Schager interviewing Lou Adler for IFC News, September 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1982)
Directed by Lou Adler
Written by Nancy Dowd (as Rob Morton)
Produced by Joe Roth
87 minutes

For those who always wanted to find a time capsule buried in their backyard, or possibly stashed beneath the floorboard of their home, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains comes closer to capturing that sense of handcrafted wonder, impeccable historical detail and genuine surprise than just about any movie of the 1980s. Like a tin bin containing dime store knick knacks and faded newspaper clippings, this eclectic hybrid of music drama and chick empowerment vehicle lacks anything in the way of lavish production value. Much of its speedy 87 minutes feels duct taped together from different script drafts, reshoots and test screenings, but strangely, nothing could feel more true to the film’s punk rock aesthetic than a film with the sound of a worn out amp resold at a Pittsburgh pawn shop.

Diane Lane — 15 years young when shooting commenced in March 1980 — plays Corinne “Third Degree” Burns, an orphaned teen stuck with sister “Dee Peleted” (Marin Kanter) and cousin “Dizzy Heights” (Laura Dern) in their Pennsylvania steel town. Corrine catches British punk band The Looters as they pass through and implores their irascible lead singer Billy (Ray Winstone) for an audition. The Stains get their break from a Jamaican tour manager (Barry Ford), who hopes the girls distract Billy from exterminating the headliner, a one-hit rock relic from the ’70s named Lou Corpse (Fee Waybill). Corrine makes up for zero musical ability with a fuck you attitude, provocative hair/makeup and a feminist point of view, declaring “We’re The Stains and we don’t put out!” TV exposure swells the band’s disaffected female fanbase, but ignoring Billy’s advice, Corrine makes all the wrong decisions for the very first time.

After the success of Slap Shot in 1977, Paramount Pictures offered screenwriter Nancy Dowd a two-script deal. Dowd wanted to write about girls in a steel town who liberate themselves through punk rock. Introducing her to that scene was Caroline Coon, an artist who’d briefly managed The Clash; the studio would retain Coon as creative consultant and costume designer for what Dowd had titled All Washed Up. To direct, Paramount offered the project to Lou Adler, a record producer who’d worked with The Mamas & The Papas and Carole King and hit pay dirt at the picture show in 1978 with Cheech & Chong’s Up In Smoke. Dowd would later strip her name from the credits — citing sexual harassment on the set in Vancouver — but what doomed the film was a calamitous test screening in Denver. Now titled Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, it became a staple on USA Network’s zombie schedule in the late ’80s but wasn’t available on home video until 2008, when Rhino Entertainment distributed the DVD.

Whether by strict design or happy accident — Dowd received an Academy Award for co-writing Coming Home, while Adler never directed again — Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains taps into an agitated rhythm, buzzing the two bit dives of the Rust Belt with bumblebee’s pace and never losing its sting. In addition to performances by Diane Lane and Laura Dern that feel both surly and vulnerable, the sublime cast is led by a cherub faced Ray Winstone. Former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook (who together wrote three songs for the soundtrack) comprise an all-star punk band in The Looters, along with Paul Simonon from The Clash on bass. Playing tour manager, Barry Ford brings both diversity and a sense of truth to the story, which neither advocates coloring inside the lines or ripping up the paper purely for anarchy’s sake.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,325 users: 64% for Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“Talking about it was so important to that film. I think some people could despise it. If you don’t like the story or what it’s saying, then you just end up hating everything. It’s not a movie for everybody. Some people really dug it. Others thought it was disgusting and sick. And, of course, it is but it has two sides. You have to have the contrasts. Films should have power. The power of good and the power of darkness, so you can get some thrills and shake things up a bit. If you back off from that stuff, you’re shooting right down into lukewarm junk.” David Lynch interviewed by Chris Rodley for Lynch on Lynch

Blue Velvet (1986)
Directed by David Lynch
Written by David Lynch
Produced by Fred Caruso
120 minutes

Taken at face value, Blue Velvet is the most primal tribute to Alfred Hitchcock to be conjured by another director outside of Alfred Hitchcock. Shadow of a Doubt found diabolism under the eaves in a small town, Rear Window warned voyeurs against peeping through the blinds of their neighbors and Blue Velvet hands out literature with a similar message, complete with a portrait of evil more unsettling than Psycho. If David Lynch had been satisfied making a thriller about other thrillers, his fourth motion picture would have still been one of the decade’s most powerful. Kyle MacLachlan (in his second film role after debuting as The Chosen One in Lynch’s unwieldily adaptation of Dune) plays Jeffrey Beaumont, a college student who returns to his “woodsy” hometown of Lumberton after his father suffers a terrifying stroke.

Strolling home, Jeffrey discovers a human ear in a field. The police detective on the case stays mum on who belongs to the ear, but his teenaged daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) is game to let Jeffrey in on what she’s heard through the walls, specifically, the name of a singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini). Jeffrey’s thirst for “knowledge and experience” leads him to Dorothy’s apartment on the dark side of town. He’s forced to take cover in a closet and see what should have been left unseen: an amyl nitrate inhaling psychopath named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) has kidnapped Dorothy’s son and husband, clipping off her spouse’s ear to keep the songstress dependent on him. Jeffrey is repulsed by and attracted to his subject and it takes more than a hell ride with Frank and his crew for him to put Dorothy Vallens out of mind.

David Lynch grew up in Spokane and began noodling on Blue Velvet as early as 1973, starting with Bobby Vinton’s haunting version of the melody, some suburban mise-en-scène and Lynch’s obsession with sneaking into a girl’s room at night, where a mystery might be revealed while he watched her. The script frightened Warner Bros. and perplexed Lynch, specifically, how it should end. He accepted an offer to adapt and direct Dune for Dino De Laurentiis and though the results didn’t live up to expectations, De Laurentiis rolled the dice on Lynch again and his gamble paid off. The National Society of Film Critics voted Blue Velvet the Best Picture of 1986, but with Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission, Platoon and A Room with a View vying for Best Picture, Blue Velvet was left in the dark at the Oscars.

With the eerie steadiness of a planchette being nudged across a ouija board, the mastery of Blue Velvet is how it drifts away from safety and discovers perversity lurking under what passes for normal in the suburbs. In terms of visual composition, this is watercolor come to life. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes immerses the film in electric blues, verdant greens and nightmare black. Even with extras who look like they were stolen from a circus, there’s not a bad performance in the picture; Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper have never been stronger, with Hopper cracking the screen with white trash intensity. In the daylight scenes, Lynch lets his infectious sense of humor come out to play. After dark, he forces viewers to question the foundation of evil. Angelo Badalamenti composed the lush orchestral score.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 67,823 users: 88% for Blue Velvet

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“I was angry about seeing so many movies with naked women and never seeing a naked guy. So when I shot the sex scene between Stacy and Damone in the poolhouse, I wanted it to be uncomfortable. She was naked, so I wanted to show the guy naked too. And the ratings board said, ‘You do that and you’ll get an X rating.’ I said, ‘How come you can see all these naked ladies in movies?’ And they said, ‘Because the female organ is not aggressive, but the male organ is.’ So what? Should we shoot it? Whatever. But I was a very cranky young lady, and the idea of compromising makes you crazy.” Amy Heckerling in Sean Penn: His Life and Times by Richard T. Kelly

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Directed by Amy Heckerling
Screenplay by Cameron Crowe, based on his novel
Produced by Irving Azoff, Art Linson
90 minutes

A guerrilla handbook to growing up in America, Fast Times at Ridgemont High should have been the last word in high school movies for a while, just like The Outlaw Josey Wales put a nail in the pine box carting around the western genre in 1976. Fast Times didn’t set out to perform last rites on the teenager movie per se, but is such an exhilarating, A-to-Z tour of familiar landscapes that it’s a wonder John Hughes found any territory to carve out for himself. Rather than an incursion by adults into the world of teenagers, Fast Times feels like an inside job. The project was the brainwave of Cameron Crowe, a prodigal 22-year-old Rolling Stone reporter whose publisher David Obst suggested that the only way to uncover what high school kids were all about these days was to actually go back to high school.

So in the fall of 1979, Crowe returned home to his parents in San Diego and received front office permission from Clairemont High School to enroll as a student. Crowe’s surveillance culminated in six characters: a middle class brother and sister, her sexually experienced friend, a nerd, a music obsessed ticket scalper and a stoned surfer. At the end of the school year, Crowe approached his subjects and revealed he was writing a book. At the time, they were indifferent. Universal Pictures grabbed the film rights and put Crowe to work on a script with Art Linson, a producer Crowe had met reporting from the set of American Hot Wax in 1975. In the search for a director, Linson recalled an AFI student thesis he’d seen titled Getting It Over With and offered the job to Amy Heckerling, a 27-year-old who’d yet to direct a feature film.

What qualifies as a plot goes like this: Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) works at Perry’s Pizza in the mall. When a foxy looking stereo salesman asks her out, Stacy’s friend Linda (Phoebe Cates) encourages her to be sexually aggressive with him. Mark Ratner (Brian Backer) is assistant to the assistant manager of the movie theater and shares his ardor for Stacy with the smooth talking Mike Damone (Robert Romanus), who dispenses love advice to the geek. Stacy’s brother Brad (Judge Reinhold) is employee of the month at “All America Burger” but after blowing his cool with a customer, suffers the indignity of accepting work at “Captain Hook Fish ‘n Chips”. Stoner Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) rejects the concerns of his peers, but runs afoul with history teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) in a battle of wills that spans the entire school year.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High shoves other high school movies aside like wimps because Crowe and Heckerling inject so much honesty into the film: laugh out loud honesty, quirky honesty, tender honesty, brutal honesty. It’s not a war documentary, but it sometimes feels like it could be. Rather than turn predictable, Fast Times samples from several  genres. The duels between Spicoli and Mr. Hand are like highlights from a stoner comedy, while Heckerling isn’t kidding around with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s sex scenes, opting for stark realism. What lingers through all of this is how court jester Spicoli suggests there may be more to growing up than consumerism and sex. Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards and Nicolas Cage (billed as Nicolas Coppola) made early career appearances.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 148,349 users: 76% for Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“The interesting thing about Flesh+Blood is that when Paul was looking for music, he went to Luc Van de Ven, who has a record company, Prometheus Records, and he said, ‘What do you think, what kind of music should I use?’ and Luc played him Conan. That’s the score that took me to Paul. I think he had shown the film to James Horner and Horner said, ‘I can’t do that, it’s a terrible movie.’ And I just was, ‘I got to do it! This is the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life!’ and frankly, it really was. I loved it because I thought it was honest, and it was ruthless, and terrifyingly brutal, but what else would it be like? The whole marriage of politics and religion was brilliant.” — Basil Poledouris interviewed by Olivier Desbrosses in Ubeda, Spain, July 2006

Flesh + Blood (1985)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Screenplay by Gerard Soeteman & Paul Verhoeven, story by Gerard Soeteman
Produced by Gys Versluys
126 minutes

The Dutch filmmaker and cultural lightning rod’s first experience in Hollywood was not 1987′s critical and commercial sensation RoboCop. Paul Verhoeven actually made his English language directing debut two summers previous with Flesh + Blood, his first occasion to spar with the MPAA over censorship, American style. A quick release capsule of medieval death and eroticism, the film was bum rushed out of the U.S. box office, failing to launch action figures or sequels of any sort for its primary investor, Orion Pictures. Yet this relatively low budget pill holds up surprisingly well in a designer age of digital entertainment, delivering a potent kick of complex characterization, historical detail and brass balls, revving its sex and violence past legal limits in the United States.

Set in the way back of 1501 A.D., Flesh + Blood introduces a band of mercenaries receiving communion before they lay siege to a fortified city. The rabble includes an archer (Brion James), the very pregnant harlot he adores (Susan Tyrrell), a defrocked cardinal (Ronald Lacey) and various cutthroats and jezebels led by a charismatic soldier of fortune named Martin (Rutger Hauer). Promised 24 hours to ransack the homes of the rich if they can retake the city for its ousted lord Arnolfini (Fernando Hilbeck) and his captain of the guard Hawkwood (Jack Thompson), the rogues are observed by Arnolfini’s teenaged son Steven (Tom Burlinson), a cocksure engineer who aspires to the heights of Leonardo da Vinci. Victorious in battle, Martin and his band are double-crossed by Arnolfini Sr. and expelled from the city.

While Hawkwood retires to the countryside with a mute nun (Blanca Marsillach) he maimed during the invasion, Steven’s war booty arrives in the form of Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a daughter of aristocracy who enters marriage to Steven pure as the driven snow. The college boy announces he has career plans, but plans change when Martin and his marauders make off with his bride to be. More cunning than she appears, Agnes weighs her chastity against her odds of survival and throws herself at Martin sexually. This shifts the balance of power in the band, which storms a castle they fail to realize sits in a valley beset by the Black Plague. Steven coerces Hawkwood out of retirement to save Agnes, who may not be in as desperate need of rescuing as her prince believes.

Verhoeven and writing partner Gerard Soeteman had amassed medieval research dating back to their 1969 Dutch television series Floris starring Rutger Hauer. Their full throttled script for Flesh + Blood is woven with subject matter as fascinating as it is disparate: the Black Plague, piracy, 16th century mechanical engineering, Catholicism. An onslaught of debauchery that proved too flagrant for the MPAA to award an R rating without cuts, the irony of Flesh + Blood is that amid the impaled chests and bare bottoms, its characters (particularly the ladies played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Susan Tyrrell) possess far greater humanity than the caricatures of generic Hollywood action films. The outstanding international cast is mirrored on the other side of the camera by Dutch cinematographer Jan de Bont and American composer Basil Poledouris.

Whoever said that talking about politics, religion or sex on a blind date was a bad idea could just have easily applied that rule to movies. Or maybe like Peter Venkman said, it’s more of a guideline than a rule. I caught two movies recently that were the flip side of the same coin: independently financed romantic dramas ripe with political intrigue, both written and directed by women under the age of 40. Let’s see Blockbuster Video devote a shelf to that genre.

Night Catches Us (2010)
Directed by Tanya Hamilton
Written by Tanya Hamilton
Produced by Ron Simons, Sean Costello, Jason Orans
88 minutes

Tanya Hamilton was born in Jamaica and arrived in the United States with her mother at the age of 8, growing up in Maryland. A young painter for many years, she started making short films as an undergrad at The Cooper Union in New York. When it came to ideas for a feature film, Hamilton was inspired by a close friend of her mother’s, who had once organized a sit-in at the Johnson White House to protest racial violence in Selma and received a 1-year prison sentence as a result. Struck by how you could spend the rest of your life paying for a single decision, Hamilton workshopped a script at the 1999 Sundance Film Lab Institute. She assumed that like classmates Darren Aronofsky (Pi) and Debra Granik (Down to the Bone), getting a feature film off the ground might take her two years at most.

Hamilton’s script — which she began writing at age 31 — was set in Philadelphia 1976 amid the ashes of the once potent Black Panther Party. A 10-year-old named Iris begins to piece together events that led to the murder of her father, a Panther shot by the FBI on information furbished by Marcus, an ex-Panther who returns to Philly to bury his father. Marcus rekindles his relationship with Iris’ mother Patty, now an attorney. A Black Panther project without guns, an adult romance as opposed to a shoot ‘em up, Hamilton spent years listening to financiers tell her “no” until her fiction writing husband urged her to look for private investment from the black community. In June 2009, Night Catches Us finally began shooting in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Playing DVDs on my MacBook, I’ve noticed a link between the quality of a movie and whether I finish it in one sitting or not. If I can make it to the end credits without ever hitting the pause button, that’s worth a 5-star rating. It’s in there with The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three as far as I’m concerned. Taking a break to jump on the world wide web and listen to music or watch Australian backyard rasslin’ on YouTube means something is awry; I lop off one star each time I hop on the web. Taking multiple nights to finish a movie indicates systematic failure by the filmmaker and if I send it back to Netflix unfinished? The ship done sunk. Night Catches Us is not Casablanca, but it’s more than seaworthy; credit Tanya Hamilton and her painter’s aesthetic to keeping my fickle senses peeled to her debut film.

With lush strokes, Germantown PA circa 1976 stands apart from any community I can remember seeing in a film. Pinned between the idealism of the ’60s and the realities of the next decade, uniformly black, the ghetto I was expecting seems overwhelmed instead by nature; trees, creeks, empty space. This gulf carries over into the lives of the characters, who struggle to find a common ground while holding onto the secrets they carry. Vintage R&B platters make cameos on the soundtrack while Philly’s own The Roots provide the low key musical score. It’s such a short, simple story that Wendell Pierce seems under nourished in his role as a crooked cop, but Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington are credible as the fated ’70s lovers. Tanya Hamilton demonstrates a fantastic eye and ear for adapting her world to film.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 964 users: 60% for Night Catches Us

Metacritic “Metascore” average among 18 leading critics: 65 for Night Catches Us

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Cat Food”, “Rain” and “Corset” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Beautiful Girls (1996)
Directed by Ted Demme
Written by Scott Rosenberg
Produced by Cary Woods
112 minutes

Like a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for Generation X, Beautiful Girls has carved its niche as holiday comfort food that tastes great every year. Following his first produced screenplay Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Scott Rosenberg signed a deal with Touchstone Pictures. He submitted a treatment for his first assignment Con Air and waiting for word in Boston while snowplows dug through a blizzard, it occurred to Rosenberg that the real action was in his hometown, where friends were dealing with commitment as they hit their third decade. Rosenberg emerged from his room five days later with a script. Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott and Mace Neufeld were interested, but producer Cary Woods and Miramax Films won the bidding. Rosenberg worked on a dozen drafts with James L. Brooks before the director decided he didn’t relate much with blue collar 30-year-olds and dropped out.

Ted Demme wasn’t much older than the characters in the script and was ultimately hired to direct. His aesthetic influence was The Deer Hunter and preferring “Knight’s Ridge” to look as worn down and as frozen in time as possible, opted to shoot the film in Minnesota. With 17 characters packed into a 1 hour 50 minute movie, there are segments of Beautiful Girls that work much better than others: Michael Rapaport as a local yokel obsessed with fashion models, a Neil Diamond sing-along and (no joke) Rosie O’Donnell chart high, while the “romance” between Natalie Portman and Timothy Hutton remains the #1 reason to see the movie, an episodic comedy drama that never spells out its intentions or dumbs itself down. The script is a series of insights in search of a story, but after a few years, you not only feel you know these characters, but look forward to spending time with them.

Lounge playing piano man Willie Conway (Timothy Hutton) scrapes together enough cash for bus fare from New York City back home to the town of “Knight’s Ridge” for his 10-year high school reunion. Willie discovers that his friends never really left. Tommy (Matt Dillon) runs a plowing company and clings to his glory days by sleeping with ex-cheerleader Darian (Lauren Holly). Tommy’s loyal girlfriend Sharon (Mira Sorvino) copes with his behavior by focusing on her weight, which her brassy pal Gina (Rosie O’Donnell) sees as a perpetuation of male fantasy. Paul (Michael Rapaport) pushes away his girlfriend Jan (Martha Plimpton) by refusing to accept she isn’t cheating on him with the meat cutter. He buys her  a brown engagement ring and when she refuses to marry him, Paul buries Jan’s driveway in snow.

The quiet Kev (Max Perlich) also shovels snow for a living but aspires to do little more than work all day and drink all night. Husband and father Mo (Noah Emmerich) seems to be the only genuine grownup among the group. The weekend takes a detour with the entrance of Andrea (Uma Thurman), a beautiful and cool import from Chicago visiting Knight’s Ridge to see her cousin “Stinky” (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who runs the tavern the boys drink at. Each of the guys take turns trying to impress her, to little avail. Willie’s girlfriend and possible fiancée (Annabeth Gish) soon joins him, but the 29-year-old musician confides his commitment fears to a kindred spirit, the soulful 13-year-old who lives next door, Marty (Natalie Portman). She suggests Willie wait to get married until he meets someone who excites him. By Willie’s math, when Marty turns 23, he’ll only be 39.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 4,746 users: 79% for Beautiful Girls

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 64 for Beautiful Girls

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Chopsticks”, “Slacker” and “Fitting Room” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Shopgirl (2005)
Directed by Anand Tucker
Screenplay by Steve Martin, based on his novella
Produced by Ashok Amritraj, Jon Jashni, Steve Martin
106 minutes

As dazzling as Christmas pageant and equally bloated, Shopgirl is blessed and dogged by its formality. Not exactly an autobiographical account, Steve Martin drew on 25 years of relationships for a novella, published in 2000. A film version was set up at Lakeshore Entertainment, with director Anand Tucker and actress Claire Danes attached. Thrown into turnaround, film rights were picked up by Ashok Amritraj, who was sold on the property while working with Martin on Bringing Down the House in 2002. The former tennis pro’s production company Hyde Park Entertainment had a deal with Touchstone Pictures and once Jason Schwartzman took a role vacated by Jimmy Fallon at the last minute, they had a movie. A 45-day schedule commenced October 2003 in Beverly Hills and Silverlake. Several of the interiors were filmed at Delfino Studios in Sylmar.

Steve Martin had gambled on Englishman Mick Jackson to direct his script L.A. Story and 14 years later, the Thailand born, U.K. bred Anand Tucker certainly brings a European depth to Martin’s material. Deliberately paced and nearly devoid of chuckles, the approach is eye popping, a poor man’s David Fincher for better or for worse. Claire Danes & Jason Schwartzman are superbly cast as L.A. lovers who meet a year too soon, but Martin’s subdued older gentleman intrudes like an afterthought from a previous draft. Shopgirl is worth watching for Danes, whose gifts of refinement seem rarely in demand for high concept Hollywood these days. David Cronenberg’s frequent DP Peter Suschitzky provided the carnivale lighting scheme, though the musical score by Barrington Pheloung suggests something heartbreaking is set to occur at any moment.

In Beverly Hills, Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) is relegated to working the lonely 3rd floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, where she sells the antiquated women’s garment of hand gloves. Returning to her plain apartment building in Silverlake, Mirabelle dedicates herself to etchings, which she sells here or there to local art galleries. The Vermont native otherwise toils in obscurity, hoping someone important heralds her unique talent. At the Launder Land coin-op laundry, Mirabelle instead meets the slovenly Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a fellow artist who stencils fonts of his own design onto amplifiers. After an awkward first date totally devoid of chemistry, she throws Jeremy’s phone number in the trash. Succumbing to loneliness, Mirabelle initiates a sexual tryst that ends up being cut short by her reclusive house cat.

Back at Saks, Mirabelle receives a customer in the silver haired Ray Porter (Steve Martin), whose reserved approach and taste in shoes catch her eye. The mystery man sends Mirabelle a gift of gloves attached to a dinner invitation, which she accepts after he pays her work station another visit. A Seattle logistician who rents a home in Los Angeles so he won’t have to spend time packing when visits, Ray plays it proper with the emotionally maturing Mirabelle, making a speech the morning after they consummate their affair that his job doesn’t permit a long-term relationship. Mirabelle translates this as Ray planning on being with her long term as soon as work permits it. While Ray continues to keep Mirabelle at arm’s length, Jeremy follows her advice, showing some initiative in his field. Finding great success, he returns to Mirabelle a man.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 17,747 users: 51% for Shopgirl

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 62 for Shopgirl

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This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Female Artist”, “Mac Computer” and “Underwear” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)
Directed by Peter Webber
Screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier
Produced by Andy Paterson, Anand Tucker
100 minutes

Illuminating a corner of history with mesmerizing technical flourish, Girl with a Pearl Earring is vivid enough for a film owing its existence to Johannes Vermeer. Inspired by the artist’s most famous painting, Tracy Chevalier researched and wrote a novel in eight months before giving birth. She sold film rights to producers Andy Paterson and Anand Tucker of London based Archer Street Films. Paterson’s wife, editor Olivia Hetreed, shared her husband’s love for the novel and adapted a screenplay. Director Mike Newell came and went when a cast failed to gel, but documentary filmmaker Peter Webber impressed Paterson with his grasp of fine art agreed to make his feature debut on the project. With book sales soaring, Pathe agreed to co-finance Girl with a Pearl Earring. Filming took place mostly at Delux Studios in Luxembourg on a budget of roughly £10 million.

Nominated for three Academy Awards — Best Art Direction (art director Ben Van Os, set decorator Cecile Heideman), Best Cinematography (Eduardo Serra) and Best Costume Design (Dien van Straalen) — Girl with a Pearl Earring lacks the historical depth and emotional resonance of The Remains of the Day, but like the Merchant Ivory classic, it does depict the clockwork of a great house with extraordinary panache. The characters are too wholesome and their relationships probably too respectful, with passions between artist and muse kept stored away in a cool, dry place. This could account for the film’s passive reception among critics and audiences, but Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth are superbly cast. Alexandre Desplat composed a lush and mysterious musical score while the lighting by Eduardo Serra conjures the wonder and precision of Vermeer’s work.

In 1665, the teenaged Griet (Scarlett Johannson) arrives in the canal city of Delft, Holland. The daughter of a broken down artist, Griet acquires work as a housemaid for a somewhat prosperous family of six. Given a tour of her new home and workplace by the punchy senior maid (Joanna Scanlan), Griet is shown the kitchen she’s to scrub and rooms she’s to clean, the exception being a studio in which the master of the house apparently isolates himself, painting. Several months pregnant, the temperamental mistress of the house Catharina (Essie Davis) does not suffer the new help lightly. Venturing to the market to buy meat and fish, Griet makes an impression of a butcher’s apprentice (Cillian Murphy) but seems drawn instead to the intensity of the master of the house, Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth).

Griet catches the eye of Vermeer’s patron, Pieter Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), who is invited to the house to celebrate the birth of Vermeer’s son and the unveiling of his latest commission, where the quiet artist is at a loss for the subject of his next painting. Griet demonstrates greater art appreciation than anyone else in the house and is welcomed into Vermeer’s studio to give her impression of his work. In the attic, he shows her how to mix colors. Vermeer’s mother-in-law Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt) manages the family’s purse strings and observes how threatened her daughter has become by Griet. Meanwhile, the salacious Van Ruijven offers Vermeer a commission to make a portrait of him and Griet, but the artist calls it off, preferring instead to immortalize Griet and a pair of his wife’s pearl earrings.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 16,939 users: 67% for Girl with a Pearl Earring

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 74 for Girl with a Pearl Earring

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