Things I Watched While I Was Sick

I was very ill last week, beginning on Wednesday, when I spent several hours in the emergency room on an IV. I thought perhaps I had appendicitis, but it turns out I just had a horrific flu and was severely dehydrated. I'm finally starting to feel normal again.

Anyway, while I was sick, I watched a lot of movies and went out to see a stage musical (we had already purchased the tickets, and I was excited to see it anyway). Here's a summary.

Point Blank (1967). John Boorman directs a dreamlike revenge thriller about a guy who might just be dead. Lee Marvin plays Walker, who's double-crossed by his friend Mal (as if you can trust anyone named that outside of Firefly), shot and left for dead on Alcatraz. Now it's several months or years later, and he wants the money Mal stole from him. It cuts between past events and conversations that are mirrored, sometimes exactly recreated, by present events; we're invited to view it as a straightforward, if somewhat absurdly funny, revenge flick in which an old-fashioned thug attempts to deal with criminal bureaucracy; we can also dig a little deeper, perhaps adding meaning unintended by the filmmakers (the novel it's based on is apparently clear on the point of Walker's state of living), and see the events as Walker's fever dream of revenge before he dies on Alcatraz. We can also look at Walker's specific role in the chain of deaths he sets off and wonder whether he's some kind of supernatural force of chaos. Heady stuff, and the third best film of 1967, after In the Heat of the Night and Bonnie and Clyde. 4 goats.

Sword of Doom (Japan, 1966). Finally, another of my New Year's Resolution movies. Kihachi Okamoto's visually stunning epic tracks a sociopathic samurai as he wreaks havoc on a series of people who end up connected by the end. Tatsuya Nakadai plays the blank-faced Ryunosuke, whose casual murder of an elderly pilgrim in the opening scene comes back to haunt him in the wacked-out sword-flashing, house-burning finale. There's something fascinating about samurai movies about swordsmen so skilled that you never hear the clash of metal on metal, only the soft sound of their blades through flesh. Where do those throngs of eager samurai come from, running out just to be cut down with a shriek or a groan? And I'm not ordinarily a fan of needlessly ambiguous endings, but this one was perfect: what would it matter to tie up plot threads in the midst of such carnage? 4 goats.

The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (Japan, 1962). I was on a samurai kick, I guess. The second film in this long-running series (22 films?) is superior to the very good first one. The blind swordsman/masseur Zatoichi accidentally discovers that a local lord is nuts, and the lord's retainers spend the rest of the film trying to kill him. He points out that if they were to ask him to keep quiet, he would, but then where would we be? On the one-year anniversary of the climactic duel from the first film, in which Zatoichi was forced to kill his only friend, he journeys to the man's grave where the retainers and a phantom from Zatoichi's past await him. These films are melancholy reflections on the ramifications of violence; that they contain such stunning swordfights is probably part of the point. 3.5 goats.

Eddie Izzard: Glorious (1997). I love this man, and he might be my favorite stand-up comedian. In this show, he uses the Bible as his framework, starting off with Genesis and ending with Revelation, with lots and lots of hilarious digressions into hopscotch, James Mason, and beekeepers. How can I explain it? He was some kind of funny... What does it matter what you say about a comedian? 4 goats.

"Spamalot" (2005). I was disappointed with this stage version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, although if I had really considered its reason for existence, I might have been better prepared. There was little about the show that needed to be on stage. Most of the songs merely belabored the jokes we've been laughing at for over 30 years; only one, really, "The Song That Goes Like This," added something theatrical and showed an understanding of the form. The high point and the low point came at the same time, when the coconut-bearing patsy sang "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" to a despodent King Arthur. It was by far the best song in the show, which was good. But it was bad for important reasons. First, it was imported from a different film, and it took away the delicious, bitter irony of its appearance in Life of Brian and transformed it into a mere cheer-up song for the depressed—what a crappy reimagining! Second, it crystallized the show's twin themes: the good days are long behind us, and we might as well cash in on nostalgia for them. 1.5 goats.

Blonde Crazy (1931). Another disappointment, although not nearly as bad as that. James Cagney and Joan Blondell play a pair of up-and-coming swindlers who verbally spar and pretend not to get along because they're in love and can't admit it. I should excuse the awkward staging of many of the scenes and the odd choices of camera placement; after all, it was just 1931. But I've seen better, and if the film had been funnier I'd have excused it anyway. But the repartee doesn't work; Blondell and Cagney didn't click for me. Some annoyingly repeated jokes, and the way they kept saying "hooo-ney," kept me on edge. It was perfectly fine, but I had been led to expect more. 3 goats.

One Foot in Heaven (1941). Another Best Picture nominee down; only 52 to go. It's a decent episodic biopic of a Methodist preacher, played by the almost always good Fredric March. I think he's growing into my favorite actor. I love how he can age in a film: here, he starts out as a college kid and ends up some 30 years later, and by some miracle combination of makeup and an ageless face, he looks natural throughout. The film's structure causes the typical biopic problems of uneven pacing and disappearing characters (you know, the ones who pop up to illustrate a point and then vanish). But it's worth watching for March's performance—although we don't get to hear him preach enough—and for his take-down of a wealthy family determined to run his church for him. 3 goats.