When I was a kid, I only read two sections of the newspaper: the comics and the Friday movie section. On Friday afternoons, I would study the movie ads and scan the reviews, making note of favorable reviews, and imagining what movie I would go see if I actually lived in a town with a movie theater. Such trips were rare, as the closest movie theater was a half-hour away. I loved hanging out at my friend Amanda’s house, because her parents owned a VCR; not only that, they owned movies. (This is why I’ve seen “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Sound of Music” approximately 24 times each.). The day my parents finally broke down and bought a VCR was one of the most exciting days of my young life.
My appetite for movie-related information was insatiable. When my piano teacher acquired the Roger Ebert movie guide, I borrowed it and read all of the reviews, much like a normal person might sit down and read a novel. At 14, I regarded Ebert as a close friend (actually, I still do — I’m delighted to hear that he’s recovering from his most recent surgery and will be able to attend his annual film festival later this month). I could recall his star ratings for films from memory — “The Princess Bride,” three and a half stars; “A Fish Called Wanda,” four. Looking back, this obsession with movies seems a little bizarre because in reality I hardly ever had the opportunity to watch them. Perhaps denial fueled my obsession.
In any case, I’m an adult now, and I generally watch three to five movies a week. I’m far from an expert on film, and there are plenty of important films I’ve never seen, though my goal is to see every movie ever made. (That’s a slight exaggeration. There are some movies I have absolutely no interest in seeing, like “College Road Trip” and “Drillbit Taylor.”) But I’ve seen more movies than most people, and I feel pretty comfortable writing about them in this blog. (That’s the beauty of blogs — you don’t actually have to be an authority on anything to write one.).
The 2005 movie “Game 6” arrived in the mail just in time for the start of baseball season. As a Red Sox fan, I felt obligated to see this movie: It takes place on a fateful day, game six of the 1986 World Series, Red Sox versus Mets. Michael Keaton is a playwright and avid Red Sox fan whose new play is opening that day; instead of attending his premiere, he watches the game in a New York City bar with a philosophical cab driver, surrounded by Mets fans. This is a small movie; in his glowing review, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe suggests it appeals to a pretty narrow demographic: “literary-minded Red Sox fanatics who recall with awful clarity exactly where they were on the night of Oct. 25, 1986.” Well, I’m a literary-minded Red Sox fan, but I didn’t love the film, which was sometimes brilliant (the screenplay is written by novelist Don DeLillo) but too often quirky when I wanted incisiveness.
The parts that work are great. When Michael Keaton says, “Winning’s easy. Losing’s complicated,” it pretty much sums up the fatalistic attitude, pre-2004, of most of the Red Sox fans I know, who believed that the world as we knew it would end if the Red Sox ever won the World Series again. Maybe we really did believe this, that winning was easy, but losing, in the grand heartbreaking style that the Red Sox were known for, was somehow glorious and unique. (After watching Memphis blow a nine-point lead to Kansas last night in the NCAA men’s championship game, I’d argue that plenty of losing teams know about heartache and missed opportunities.)
I don’t remember the 1986 World Series with any clarity, although I remember my mother telling me, “They’ll probably lose.” (Which is exactly what she said when the New England Patriots played in the Super Bowl for the first time, and I requested special permission to stay up past my bedtime and watch the game.) My dad suggested I write about Bill Buckner throwing out the first pitch today at Fenway as the Red Sox collected their 2007 World Series rings; he seems to think there’s a larger story here, about forgiveness and redemption. Poor Buckner had to move out of town after that ball went through his legs in 1986, which seems a little extreme, and I’m glad to see that the fans have moved on.
Some good baseball movies: “Bull Durham,” “A League of Their Own,” “Eight Men Out,” directed by indie-film pioneer John Sayles, or, as we like to call him around here, Schenectady native John Sayles, and, if you like the classics, “Pride of the Yankees” with Gary Cooper. To this day, my favorite baseball movie remains “The Bad News Bears.”
Two of my favorite films of the past month are lost movies that were never released theatrically in America, but have been rediscovered after being released on DVD. The first is “Army of Shadows,” by the great French director Jean-Pierre Melville. It depicts key members of the French Resistance during World War II; it briefly made me wish I could have participated in such a noble fight, until I realized I would have to do things like strangle people with my bare hands. Melville himself was a member of the French Resistance, and the movie depicts this world without a shred of sentimentality, as dangerous and tedious but ultimately courageous. (Also check out Melville’s existential gangster flick, “Le Samourai," starring French screen idol Alain Delon, or “Bob Flambeur,” a slyly humorous gambling film that inspired the 2003 Nick Nolte film “The Good Thief.”) The other film is 1975’s “Overlord,” a meditative World War II film that follows a British soldier through Army training and the D-Day invasion. The film blends new and archival footage from the Imperial War Museum in London; approximately 27 percent of the film is archival, which probably explains why the scenes of battle and military life are so realistic. I’d think “Overlord” would be of particular interest to World War II buffs and people who like war movies.
The big DVD release today is “There Will Be Blood,” the dark, brooding movie about the oil industry directed by one of my favorite young American directors, Paul Thomas Anderson. I loved everything about this movie. The acting’s great. The story’s great. The music’s great. Some people have suggested the film flies off the rails in its final scenes, but (SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS MOVIE!) at that point I was so sick of the hypocritical charlatan played by Paul Dano that I didn’t mind watching Daniel Day-Lewis beat him to death with a bowling pin.
