Weekly Movie Roundup

Kind of back to normal this week. Still some Naruse's showing, but not the solid block like last week. So then...

A Countess From Hong Kong - * - Charlie Chaplin brings Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren together on an ocean liner. He's a politician, she's a white russian countess who's been hustling in Hong Kong and sees a chance to smuggle herself to America. Hilarity and romance - is supposed to ensue, but what ensues is pretty bad. Lots of talk, lots of glowering from Brando, bits of stained farce. Poor Charlie.

Wife! Be Like a Rose! - **** - some Naruse left... seeing this the second time, I am more sure than before that it is among his best films. He had the filmmaking thing down pat - he still moves the camera a lot in this film, but has lost the mannered showiness of the silents I've seen - he had figured out how to use sound already - and he shows a complete mastery of tone. The way the film shifts - tone, style, pace - when Kimiko goes to the mountains is first rate. (The story, roughly, is this: Kimiko is a modern girl, working in a office, in love with a boy - in an unneurotic way almost completely missing from Japanese films of the day - hell, missing from most American films, then or now; her mother, meanwhile, is a poet, a teacher; her father has abandoned them for an ex-geisha. Eventually, Kimiko heads into the mountains to bring dad back - where she meets his other woman, and her family, and gets a new perspective on things.) It' a great little film - funny, sweet, masterfully made, and probably should be considered among the better films of the 30s...

Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-rabbit - *** - amusing tale featuring Nick Parks' claymation stars... W&G here are running a humane pest-riddance service - but when Wallace tries to branwash the rabbits out of liking their veg - bad things happen... All very amusing indeed.

Thumbsucker - **1/2 - I don't know what I think of this exactly. Story is - a 17 year old who still sucks his thumb - his father, his orthodontist (Keanu Reeves! in full hippy-mode!), the school nurse all have ideas... the thumbsucking isn't all that important tot he story - it's about the kid navigating though his senior year... I don't know what to think. It's an honorable effort - it features a Magnificent Cast, who are all on top of their game: Keanu Reeves gives it some star power, and sends himself up - while Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio and Vince Vaughn provide the acting chops. Lou Pucci (as the thumbsucker) acquits himself well in this company... But for all it has going for it - it still seems disjointed - jumping from one setup to the next, sometimes offering a rather pat set of oppositions (speed/pot, notably) which give the film a certain by-the-numbers feel. I don't know. I can't tell if I liked it more or less than I should have....