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Heaven Can Wait
Heavenly Creatures
Henry and June
L’heure d’été
High Anxiety
High Fidelity
High Plains Drifter
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Heaven Can Wait 1978 Warren Beatty and Buck Henry (co-writer Elaine May)

2.5 Warren Beatty as reincarnated football player, Julie Christie with little to do as his romantic interest, Jack Warden laboring mightily as Joe’s trainer appearing in his subsequent incarnations, Charles Grodin and Dyan Cannon laboring just as mightily to make Elaine May’s murderous comedy funny, James Mason doing little but lurk in the background as heavenly bureaucrat in charge of a way station to heaven, Buck Henry officious but basically little occupied as subordinate bureaucrat who bungles the job of collecting Beatty for the hereafter. Supernatural comedy that was engrossing in original guise in 1941 (“Here Comes Mr. Jordan”) when war was raging in Europe, and that had a certain charm with the all-star cast when released in 1978; the movie has virtually nothing to do with the Lubitsch classic ‘Heaven Can Wait’ released in 1943. Deals with Beatty’s premature collection for heaven (he is not supposed to die for another 47 years), and then eventually Mason’s successful attempts to find a suitable body for him to return to life on earth (his own has been cremated). Humor and comic acting seem forced throughout – Beatty trying too hard to be boyishly charming as he sprints athletically through the halls of the mansion of his reincarnated identity with a soprano sax in hand, Grodin and Cannon trying too hard to make murder hilarious, Buck Henry not trying hard enough to make celestial officiousness charming, etc. Film, which appeared in the late 70s when feel-good movies were again in vogue after the coming of ‘Star Wars,’ has ‘Rocky’-like pseudo-excitement of Beatty building his borrowed body back up so he can compete as quarterback of the LA Rams (!), wowing the coaches and winning over the Rams players in a scrimmage, and then of course triumphing in the Super Bowl game scoring the winning touchdown in the last minute of play. Romantic scenes with Christie, a labor activist (?) from England are pretty hackneyed and empty. Ending has a certain charm, when Christie and Beatty redevelop a tentative interest in one another, despite Beatty’s having changed his body since they became acquainted. Big disappointment.


Heavenly Creatures 1994 Peter Jackson (New Zealand) 4.0 Kate Winslet (Juliet) in her first role as upper class girl, manic, giddy, excited, imaginative, self-confident, open-faced, joyful, always on the verge of hysteria, Melanie Lynskey (Pauline) as her friend equally lost in the real world but more rebellious, filled with hatred and anger, staring darkly at the camera under her dark eyebrows, Sarah Peirse as the hard-working, good-intentioned mother of Lynskey – she has no idea how to deal with her disaffected daughter. Marvelous imaginative director’s film depicting the two girls’ infamous murder of Pauline’s mother in 1950s New Zealand. Set against the backdrop of the highly conventional, stultifyingly puritanical New Zealand of the 1950s – shown by the deadpan documentary about Christchurch that begins the film (“a greater percentage of the population rides bicycles than any other city in the world except for Copenhagen!”), the maddeningly despotic culture of the girls school (“Sit!”), and the repressive behavior of Peirse. Film reflects the Down Under themes since the 1970s dealing with the limits of civilization and the implications of sexual repression. The two disaffected girls strike up a bosom friendship that morphs into a desperate, almost hysterical connection that feeds on itself, becoming progressively darker until the parents’ plan to separate the girls by sending Juliet to South Africa motivates them to murder Peirse (the murder makes no sense since it is hard to imagine how it would prevent their separation). All the characters are interesting and well-drawn – for example Juliet’s rather stuffy English professor father, who asks for tranquility, but is shocked out of it by his daughter’s behavior. Filming, editing and soundtrack are brilliant. Film opens with the girls running through the woods screaming in terror with blood-streaked faces; film then doubles back to tell us how we got there. The development of the girl’s obsessive relationship is told in detailed, colorful sequences, e.g., running through the woods in their underwear and then falling to the ground embracing and giggling and squealing uncontrollably; Pauline trying to find an outlet by having (grotesque) sex with a boyfriend. The girls hate the real (New Zealand, bourgeois) world and escape into medieval fantasy via novels and operas that the two are writing – their imaginary world is depicted through life-size clay figures who dance, listen to the music of Mario Lanza, and then as the imagery gets darker commit violence against real-life figures the girls cannot stand (Pauline’s psychiatrist is run through with a sword from the back). Both girls are obsessed with Mario Lanza (overwrought romantic pop culture of the era), and his music (“Be My Love,” “Because”) is often on the soundtrack. The ending sequence as the girls walk with their mother through a Christchurch park and prepare to murder her is accompanied by the gentle and lyrical Humming Chorus from ‘Madama Butterfly;’ the end credits roll to the accompaniment of Lanza’s rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” reflecting the girls’ thwarted hope of finding love and companionship in this world. The effect is a profound sense of tragedy and pity for the mother, who tried her best but had no clue, and the girls, who committed an act that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. The movie is riveting and holds you attention from beginning to end.


Henry and June 1990 Philip Kaufman 3.0 Fred Ward, Maria de Madeiros, Uma Thurman, High Grant. One of few movies that attempts to make dramatic, significant film while including explicit sexual content. Stand-in models used for explicit soft-core sex scenes that emphasize the sexual experience of love-making. Movie focuses on Anais Nin (Madeiros), who is bored with her husband Grant; she wants to be a great writer, and is convinced that sexual experimentation is the ticket (she also just likes the pleasure of sex, which she says a couple of times). She has stormy affair with Henry Miller (played very well – callous and flat but sensitive -- by Ward), but she ends up staying with her husband; she also pursues June (Thurman), since a lesbian attachment would expand her experience bank, but that relationship doesn’t prosper. Photography is arty and beautiful, but distracts perhaps from making the movie truly dramatic. Music is pleasing mix of contemporary popular music (seems emphasis on Latin) and French piano, etc. music of composers like Debussy and Satie. Thurman has some good thespian fireworks toward end; Madeiros is totally charming and sexy in her childlike persona with the broad face and big eyes (one presumes her nude body was that of a stand-in). Movie as pretty sexy and interesting experiment, but probably would have been more compelling if it had been grittier and more realistic.


Hero 2002 Yimou Zhang (China) 3.0 Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Tony Leung. Stunningly visual martial arts film telling part of the tale behind the unification of China under the Qin dynasty; focuses on attempts to assassinate the Qin emperor. Lots of martial arts action with antagonists flying high in combat. Violence though is attenuated and ritualized, since all is focused on aesthetic beauty; there is almost no blood. Incredibly beautiful scenes -- fighting amidst a shower of red and orange leaves, fighting amidst raindrops frozen in time, fighting above a glassy-surface lake with the antagonists dragging their swords in the water making beautiful patterns, calligraphy scribes working away at their desks while thousands of arrows from the Qin army rain around them; sign at end that Nameless has been executed is cut-out pattern of his body surrounded by enormous pincushion of arrows sticking in the wall. Narrative structure is Rashomon-like -- there are at least three different narratives of how Nameless (relation to "Man Without a Name" from Clint Eastwood movie?) has killed three potential assassins of the Emperor, each one coded in a different color scheme -- red, white, green, etc. Having the three narratives undercuts the emotional impact of the drama since we never know who is telling the truth; and the narrative finale -- the Emperor sees the necessity of overcoming violence to establish peace and harmony in China (a patriotic message?) -- lacks dramatic punch; after all, we are never sure who is telling the truth. On other hand, the playing of the narratives against one another keeps the puzzle alive and the viewer engaged. Does not have quite the mythic, philosophic, or even poetic stature of Crouching Tiger; not enough dramatic force/impact (caring about protagonists, feeling the romantic impulse) to involve the viewer emotionally.


L’heure d’été 2008 Olivier Assayas (France) 3.0 Edith Scob as wealthy matron living in charming although run-down country house filled with valuable art; Charles Berling as her older son who wants to preserve the house and art intact after his mother’s death; Juliette Binoche uncharacteristically blonde and slovenly as sister living as designer in New York; Jérémie Renier as nondescript younger brother who is living in China and declares he needs money. Well-reviewed, perhaps overrated low-key film focusing on family, the passing of generations, and the value of art in the lives of people. The film suffers from a thin plot. Best part of film is the beginning when the whole family congregates at Scob’s house and the viewer is introduced to the charm of life there (the usual French scene of taking their meals on rickety tables on the terrace), the presence of pieces of art (again the usual French bourgeois film trumpeting the nation’s artistic sensibility), and the concern of Berling to keep the house and art intact after his mother’s death for the sake of posterity – the children’s children. After the mother dies, the siblings decide with some hesitation and embarrassment to sell the house but to donate the objets d’art to the Musée Orsay (the museum actually loaned the items to Assayas to make the film). While the first scene of the film had younger children storming rambunctiously around the grounds with their dogs, the last scene has the teenagers congregating with their friends in the abandoned and soon-to-be transferred house celebrating their own party to the accompaniment of loud rap music; Berling’s adolescent daughter, who already has a romantic relationship with her boyfriend, has tears in her eyes as she regrets the death of her grandmother and the disappearance of the house. The film suffers a bit from its slow pace and rather banal subject matter and for certain viewers from its typically French sense of superiority about their lifestyle and values. However it does successfully convey sadness and loss about the impact of death, transition from one intrafamilial generation to the next, and the loss of a way of life that is “doux” and civilized. Globalization and the intrusion of American values are referenced several times in the film: the family gets together infrequently because they live so far away from one another; two of the siblings live on other continents with little prospect of returning; the children are obviously captivated by American youth culture and when Berling shows his children his beloved Corot paintings hanging in his mother’s house, they are unimpressed. So, about all we can do is to continue to do our best; at least the paintings and furnishings are available in the museum. Quiet, genuine film with an undercurrent of sadness.


Hi, Mom 1970 Brian DePalma 2.5 Robert DeNiro as aspiring filmmaker, Jennifer Salt as his girlfriend and then wife, Gerrit Grahame, Charles Durning (cameo), Allen Garfield also in a cameo as comical porno film producer. DePalma in his underground subversive, counter-culture comedy phase before he started making thrillers! DeNiro wants to make a peeping Tom type of film, and although it doesn’t work out it leads to hilarious scene in which he tries to stage and time a seduction with Salt in front of the window, but his camera fails. He then gets involved in black television urban guerilla theater. Striking participatory play in which white liberals from suburbs are shown what it is like to be black (“Be Black, Baby!”) by having paint smeared on their faces and then actually brutalized including one semi-hysterical woman having her panties ripped off and “raped,” but then DeNiro comes in and brutalizes the white niggers like it supposedly really happens in the streets; the most amusing part of the movie is watching the white liberals talk after the play how insightful and useful the play was to them – “great theater”, even though they have been terrorized. Then the “guerillas” blow up a public housing building. Tone is comic and in your face. There is no consistent story line aside from looking at something that has to do with DeNiro; many different points of view – objective recording what DeNiro is doing, looking through his camera, watching television that is recording the Black experience theater (talk about confusing!). Director plays a lot with jump cuts and especially fast motion. Whole thing has improvised, informal feeling. DePalma’s later work with its artiness and romanticism is quite different, but some connections are there – especially the shocking, terrifying features of the play that seems real (and one suspects the black actors were thoroughly enjoying the humiliation of the white liberals).


High Anxiety 1977 Mel Brooks 2.5 Mel Brooks; Harvey Korman; Dick Van Patten; Cloris Leachman as Nurse Diesel is hilariously crabbed and disquieting with torpedo breasts and S&M habits; Madeline Kahn is hyper neurotic – “I am so close to my menstrual cycle, I could scream!”; she is as usual horny – when Brooks in a phone call is gasping from being strangled, she thinks it is a sex crank call, at first objecting but then coming around. Tribute film to the subject matter, filming techniques, and famous scenes of Alfred Hitchcock. The references to Hitchcock’s films are legion. Vertigo: Brooks has serious vertigo (‘high anxiety’) – even with spiraling background. Spellbound: Brooks arrives at institute to take over from dead director. Northwest: Brooks’ name is Thorndike and is paged in the hotel when he gets to SF; Brooks framed for murder that happens in front of dozens of witnesses in the lobby of the hotel. Psycho: Brooks in shower, valet looms through curtain, stabs with newspaper, quit cuts of different parts of Brooks’ body (washing his armpits!), popping curtain hooks, newsprint water down drain, cut to eye and camera pulls back from face; professor seated in swivel chair facing away from camera, Brooks swivels to discover... 39 Steps: woman arrives breathless in Brooks’ room; Brooks asked to kiss girl to throw off outside person (2x). Birds: jungle gym fills up with pigeons while Brooks is sitting in Golden Gate Park; the birds then chase him and … crap all over him. Camera slowly tracking to a window, through which we can see people talking inside, and then instead of dissolving through it, breaks it! And then at the end, when Brooks is climbing into the bridal bed with Kahn, the camera pulls back … then breaks through the wall and away from the house! Dramatic symphonic music punctuates key developments; once it is played by LA symphony passing on a bus; several passages with Herrmann’s syncopated muted trumpets or cackling clarinets as the action progresses. Film ends with recreation of tower scene in Vertigo: Brooks hilariously is cured of his vertigo by psychiatrist (talking cure – he remembers the fights his parents had about him) as he hangs from a stair; he rushes to the top to save the victim from being thrown over the edge, and Nurse Diesel plummets to her death on the rocks. Some of the gags appear to be based on television or non-Hitchcock films (e.g., the villain with the “tin teeth” from the Bond movie). Usual lack of consistency and good taste expected in Brooks’ films. Interesting mainly for Hitchcock fans looking for parodies.


High Fidelity 2000 Stephen Frears 3.0 John Cusack as the heart of the movie, since he is half talking to the camera about his past and explaining the present, and half acting his part; Jack Black pretty hilarious as the intolerant and in-your-face rock music-obsessed assistant in Cusack’s record shop; Todd Louiso as the other obsessed assistant except that he is shy and nerdy; Iben Hjelje as Cusack’s girlfriend’s whose breakup at the beginning of the film sets off the plot; Joan Cusack as a gossip who supports Iben; Tim Robbins not so impressive as Hjelje’s new New Agey boyfriend; Catherine Zeta-Jones as one of Cusack’s old – flashback – girlfriends. Set in Chicago, translated from the London of Nick Hornby’s book. Set against the backdrop of with-it rock music, which fills the soundtrack and occupies the minds of especially the two store assistants. Film is essentially a romantic comedy that kicks off the new subgenre of slacker romantic comedy (thanks to David Denby), whereby the unambitious male – Cusack, who has success with women but can’t seem to keep one – is pursuing a more accomplished and mature female mate. Film involves primarily Cusack reflecting on his past “top five” breakups (he loves to comment on the action in terms of top five lists), gropes his way toward maturity and taking responsibility for his actions (it is a long, hard road!), and then eventually relinks with Hjelje in what one hopes will be a mature, faithful (he had previously cheated on her several times) relationship. Film is entertaining; and benefits immensely from Cusack’s expertise in conveying his character honestly and convincingly. The obsessive focus on rock music is a bit off-putting for the non-rock lover. The film seems to have been the first of the slacker romances that have had great success since 2000 – ‘School of Rock’, ’40-Year-Old Virgin’, ‘Knocked Up’, etc. Show Frears’ great flexibility in making successful movies in many genres, British and American.


High Noon 1951 Fred Zinnemann 4.0 Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, Otto Kruger, Lon Chaney, Thomas Mitchell. Classic western about courage, doing your duty in the face of impossible odds. Cooper decides to stand up for himself, his bride and his town when Frank Miller returns from prison. Cooper walks endlessly through town trying to convince townspeople to join him in standing up to dangerous Miller (gets a little tiresome), but despite orderly town hall-style debate in church, no one signs up; most people are just afraid and don’t want to die, although there is some personal resentment of Will in town (manifested in the bar scene). Church scene has individuals saying that Frank Miller is Cooper’s personal problem, not the town’s responsibility, and that the most important thing is that the town be prosperous and grow, and that a gunfight in the streets would deter economic development. The refusal of the town to support Cooper appears to be a critique of actors and writers in Hollywood, who hid their heads when they should have stood up to defend Hollywood workers like screenwriter Carl Foreman when were harassed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. At the beginning of the film Cooper has just married Quaker Kelly, who decides to leave him because of the impending violence, but she converts in the climactic shootout when she shoots one of the outlaws in the back – love is stronger than religious belief; she helps Cooper a lot in defeating the four bad guys. Jurado has uninteresting subplot, in which she decides to abandon town because it has no future – they won’t even stand up to bad guys. Lloyd Bridges is set up as callow ambitious coward – a contrast with the noble, restrained and courageous Cooper. Cooper’s performance matches his low-key acting skills; he is inexpressive as usual, but that matches his character. Shot more or less in real time, as camera refers to clocks several times in the course of the movie, building up suspense; pictures of clocks gets bigger toward end to increase drama. Ever so often, the editing cuts to the Miller’s assistants waiting at the station for their boss, and with shots of empty tracks extending into distance (shot in Sonora, CA!). Best part of movie is last 15 minutes. Wonderful editing in the waiting scene synchronizes the beat of the music, the ticking of the clock, and the editing from scene to scene (individual faces, men cowering in the bar, the empty streets, the clock, an empty chair, the guys at the station, etc.), just before the whistle blows when the clock strikes twelve! The famous crane shot of Cooper standing alone in the street expresses his courage, his aloneness, and the cosmic morality of his action (duty above all). Shootout is exciting with protagonists dodging from building to building, fire in the livery stables, the surprise shot in the back from Grace Kelly, and the final shooting of Miller with again the help of Kelly. Music is based largely on Tiomkin’s song, either sung by Tex Ritter, or treated symphonically as in the final shootout sequence. Good suspense until the arrival of the train: makes the action exciting. Beautifully photographed and edited; and wonderfully restored.


High Plains Drifter 1973 Clint Eastwood 2.5 Clint Eastwood as the mysterious Stranger riding into town at the beginning of the film; Verna Bloom overacting as the town slut. Rather bizarre western that is part ghost story, part revenge drama, part surrealist anti-western. Eastwood rides into the beautiful landscape of Lago situated in most picturesque fashion on the shores of Mono Lake – all blue water and sky, high mountains when we are looking westward, the town built by the studio on white sand. Very difficult at first to understand where the story is taking us: the townspeople hire Eastwood to organize them against three ex-cons heading back for revenge, but his actions – raping at least one woman, killing close to a dozen men, instructing the authorities to confiscate the property of townspeople, having the townspeople take target practice as dummies race by on wagons, building picnic tables for an apparent reception, putting a 'Welcome Home, Boys' sign at the entrance to the town, painting the whole town red-orange and crossing out the 'Lago' in the town sign and replacing it with 'Hell' – they all turn the townspeople against one another, creating enormous internal dissension. Bizarre happenings abound – the above, the rape of the town slut, befriending a midget and making him sheriff of the town. It gradually emerges through two flashbacks (Eastwood [was he there?] and the midget [he was]) that the root of Eastwood's mission is ruthless revenge for the heartless murder with bullwhips of the former town marshal, who had cried out "Damn you all to hell!" before he died. We are thus set up for the entrance of the ex-cons into town: it turns out that they were the actual murderers; they manage to shoot up the town good, before Eastwood steps in and dispatches them all mercilessly and appropriately (usually with a bullwhip). Eastwood acts like some pitiless Old Testament avenger; since it is never clear who he is, he comes across as some sort of ghost or angel of retribution setting right the moral balance. The film is the ultimate anti-western: the gunfighter is no hero on the side of right, the townspeople are not hard-working and industrious by any standard, civilization is certainly not brought to the town by the protagonist; only the scenery seems to live up to the tradition of the classical western.