Kinematoscope

Leading questions about the many movies not in the top 250


Dogtooth

What is it?

It is a Greek film, and one of five 2010 Oscar nominees available on Netflix Instant, which is neat (the others are I Am Love (costume), Alice In Wonderland (art direction, costume, VFX) and documentaries Restrepo and Exit Through The Gift Shop).

Dogtooth made a surprising showing in the Foreign Language category despite being COMPLETELY INSANE.

What do you mean by that?

Let's list some things prominently featured in Dogtooth- incest, self-battery of the Fight Club variety, prostitution, fake pregnancy, cat murder, alternate vocabularies, fake translations of Sinatra songs, and a bizarrely sticker-based acheivement system.

Wait, what?

Okay- it's about two parents that have raised their three children, now younng adults, in complete isolation for reasons that are never explained. They don't let them watch television or go outside of their walled-in property, and they tell them that if they do, stray cats will tear them apart with their claws.

Also they tell them they have a brother that went outside the fence and met a super-violent death. And they give certain words false definitions, seemingly just ones that would imply the existence of a world outside: "telephone," for example, is what they call saltshakers.

For real?

For real. The whole movie is pretty much just about this family's insane home life.



But what happens?

Well, the dad works at some sort of office, and he pays a female security guard there to come home with him and sleep with his lone son, I guess to satisfy the son's natural urges? This has been arranged before the film starts.

Naturally bringing in an outsider causes some minor ripples in the weird stasis they've set up, but the film is not structured in a very linear way.

Is the film's look as insane as the story?

Nope, it's a beautiful, aethestically pleasant film. The family's compound has a rather large yard, and a pool, which makes for some great compositions during what appears to be summertime.

The parents aren't made to be villains, at least not by music cues and camera angles. They clearly have their reasons for everything they do, even if these reasons are never made clear to the audience in the slightest.

The director, Giorgos Lanthimos, has solidly positioned himself as a master of artful, bizarre simplicity much like Lars Von Trier or Michael Haneke. But don't ask me exactly what he was trying to say.

Should it be on the countdown?

Not quite, but it's definitely a intriguing debut feature. You spend the entire film sort of waiting for it to unravel into a nightmare, when the real frightening part might be how normal it seems to everyone involved.

Leading questions about the many movies not in the top 250.


Mary and Max

What is it?

It's claymation, that's what! One of my favorite things ever since Gumby.

If I have a heart, is Gumby a pal for me?

He totally is!

Anyway, what's 'Mary and Max' about?

It's about a lonely little girl from Australia and a man from New York City with Asperger's syndrome that become unlikely pen pals. It claims it's 'based on a true story' at the beginning.

Does it have that song from those pentium commercials in it?

Indeed, the beginning credits and key moments of emotion are set to Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Perpetuum Mobile, which you will recognize as soon as the piano kicks in.

Is it a kids' movie?

Not at all- it wasn't rated by the MPAA for some reason, but I would guess at least PG, if not PG-13. There is some frank discussion of sexuality (which gives Max panic attacks), death, alcoholism, and one near-suicide.

Is it affecting?

It is, kinda. It makes a pretty broad point about the importance of human connection in a life filled with loneliness, and uses a hugely contrived ending to put an exclamation point on it.

But you can't blame it for that, right, because it's a true story?

Here's the thing- it's not. Not even in the slightest. The director, Adam Elliott, has said in interviews that he wishes they had gone with "Inspired by a true story," instead of 'based on,' because only the barest facts are true: as an Australian youth (17), he himself began a two-decades long pen pal correspondence with a Jewish man with Asperger's from NYC. That is it.

It bothered me, probably too much. It's one thing for something like Unstoppable to throw that line out there, because 'there was a runaway train that some people had to stop' is a pretty generic premise. But for a story that was seemingly intensely personal, it was a huge misdirect that probably should have been removed altogether.

But you enjoyed it, right?

I guess I did? I felt for them, I cared at the time. But now, especially now that I know it was it was 95% made up, it strikes me that it was just an unending parade of miserable things happening to miserable people, capped by a bittersweet ending. And that's one of my least favorite types of film. It also relies heavily on a narrator to tell us obvious things about how Mary and Max are affecting one another.

It's not holding up well, let's put it that way.

Should it be on the countdown?

It actually is, it just wasn't when I did the 200's before. But it wouldn't make my top 250, personally. I do admire the craftsmanship, though, and especially enjoyed the opening credits, which focused on the small details around Mary's neighborhood.

For the record, the fact that Fargo is mostly not true (but explicitly claims to be up front) was spoiled for me before I saw it, and it's great anyway. But I wonder now how I would have felt if I was duped.

Welcome to a new feature, featuring quick, much breezier reviews of movies that either are not on imdb's top 250 (and a few from 160-250 that weren't on it before).

In short, just random stuff. A chief motivation for this is that I recently signed up for Netflix instant, which is probably the reason the internet was invented in the first place. And it's only eight bucks a month, which is less than the cost of one movie ticket.

Now, I know that the top 250 entries can get kind of silly, but these will be even sillier, mostly because the majority of what I find to watch is screwball comedies. Let's get started!


My Man Godfrey

What is it?

A classic screwball, one that falls squarely into the 'Rich People Be Crazy' sub-genre. I would guess that people liked to mock the wealthy during the Great Depression, and this was right in the middle of it (1936).

Who's Godfrey, then?

He's a forgotten man, played by the super-suave William Powell, that two daffy rich sisters try to recruit as part of a scavenger hunt. He pushes the arrogant sister into an ash pile, and accompanies the nicer (but considerably wackier) one to help her win the hunt. She hires him as the new family butler, which leads to both sisters and the family maid falling in love with him.

How creepy is the age difference?

As we'll soon see, this is an essential question of pretty much every old movie that features romance of any kind, even silly romance like My Man Godfrey. In this case we have Powell, 44, eventually ending up with Carole Lombard, 28. So... just a little creepy.

Though for a good portion of the movie I thought Godfrey was headed toward the other sister, played by the 25-year-old Gail Patrick. The actress playing the maid (Jean Dixon) was 40, incidentally.

Is there a wacky foreign dude?

Of course there is! Seemingly a staple of lampooning high society, here we get Carlo, a piano 'prodigy' that the mother of the family is 'mentoring,' who only seems to know one song (and is constantly stuffing his face with food, or acting like a monkey to amuse his benefactor).

Should it be on the countdown?

I say yes, but just barely. Here's the thing: it's wonderfully funny, with plenty of great quips from Powell (and Eugene Pallette, who played a lot of rich fathers back in the day), but Carole Lombard rubbed me the wrong way. She just seemed shrill and nuts and stalkery.

This could be just me- after all, Katherine Hepburn does mostly the same thing in Bringing Up Baby and it worked for me then. But Powell seems to have a lot more chemistry with the other, haughtier daughter, Gail Patrick. There's even a movement to their relationship during the story, wherein she tries to frame him for theivery and eventually realizes how shallow she's been.

Lombard just doggedly clings to Powell until, dazed, she arranges to marry him at the film's end. What?

Also in favor of the film is the inventive title sequence, which is a long pan over marquee lights (as in the still above).