Ranking the Coen Brothers’ Films

1. No Country for Old Men: Pretty close to perfect
2. The Big Lebowski: a great cult movie
3. Fargo: one of the most watchable movies ever made; how could anyone not like it?
4. Miller’s Crossing: a beautiful gangster movie
5. A Serious Man:  a movie that gets its time and place
6. True Grit: two-thirds of a great movie; the last act fails
7. Barton Fink: a fun oddity
8. Raising Arizona: starts great and goes downhill
9. Brother, Where Art Thou?: kind of fun but not much there
10. Burn After Reading: saved by Brad Pitt and Fances McDormand; the rest of the movie is awful.
11. The Hudsucker Proxy: uninteresting through and through

Ones I haven’t seen:

• The Man Who Wasn't There
• Intolerable Cruelty
• Blood Simple
• The Ladykillers

Party Girl (1995)

Slight but enjoyable film.  Young, directionless 20-something girl goes from hosting parties to being a librarian while falling in love with a falafel vendor. The pieces don’t fit together particularly well in terms of structure or character development but the film has fun.  It doesn’t take itself seriously and doesn’t worry about the details. Parker Posey stars.

Cookie's Fortune (1999)

Not close to Altman’s best; not even second tier Altman.  A small town ensemble film that never gels or surprises but is pleasant at times. 

2011 Movie Ranking of Films I Have Seen: August Update

1. The Tree of Life
2. Beginners
3. Midnight in Paris
4. The Double Hour
5. Hanna
6. Jane Eyre

What is the Digital-Age Equivalent of Ditch Digging?

Imagine that stock markets continue to fall and as a result the United States enters a double-dip recession. Unemployment spikes to near 20%.  During the Great Depression the Federal government formed the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide jobs to millions of unskilled workers.  The WPA employed people in a variety of capacities but the vast majority worked in construction fields.  If a similar employment program were to be launched today, workers could still be employed in construction.  The United States certainly has a need for infrastructure upgrades.  But given that we are in the digital age, what would be the current equivalent of ditch digging? Are there productive technological tasks that could be performed by unskilled, low-skilled labor that only involved minimal training?  Given the greater skills and knowledge required to use technology are there any viable options for a digital mass employment program? 

Like Son

Many interesting plot elements that never coalesce into anything. The novel makes a transgender person the protagonist but treats the transgendered elements as something completely natural and normal.  Here the novel is successful. Like Son accomplishes its goal of creating a normalizing depiction of a transgender person trying to live his life.  While the writer, Felicia Luna Lemus, deserves credit for that, but if gender issues aren’t going to propel the story something else must.  This book has various elements that could fill that space: a mysterious photograph, a love plot set in revolutionary era Mexico, 9/11, parent-child relationships. But the book stays on the edges of all these and has nothing interesting to say about them.  The raw material seems to be there; it just isn't developed.  Inert would be one word to describe this novel. Disconnected would be another.  The prose doesn’t help. The writing at the sentence level is not so much bad as unsatisfying. Reading any one sentence, the prose works okay. Descriptions are serviceable. But the writing never builds to anything and is never remarkable. In the entire book there were perhaps one or two phrases that stood out.

Stripes (1981)

Bill Murray makes this tolerable to watch as 80s comedies go but the militarism is a bit much.  When Murray needs to save the day, he tells the soldiers in his platoon, “we're American soldiers! We've been kicking ass for 200 years! We're 10 and 1! Now we don't have to worry about whether or not we practiced…. All we have to do is to be the great American fighting soldier that is inside each one of us.”  America, fuck yeah!  We don’t need to practice!

Shutter Island (2010)

As one would expect from a Scorsese movie, one can appreciate much of the craft.  Unfortunately plot weaknesses means this film holds only passing interest. The solution to the central mystery was obvious about 15 minutes in, which would be forgivable if it weren't for the fact that the details of the resolution are so damn absurd. 

I've never been much taken by Leonardo DiCaprio.  He always seems to be trying to be a serious actor. Not that he's bad exactly, in fact he's generally pretty good, but whenever I watch him I feel a demand is being placed on me to focus on him acting. It always takes me out of the movie. In Shutter Island, he is featured with Mark Ruffalo’s bemused aloofness supporting. It is hard not to like Ruffalo and he is good here.  But the pairing with the overly serious, intense DiCaprio doesn’t work.  They don’t have chemistry and seem to be pulling the film in different directions. 

A Prophet (2009)

Excellent prison/mob film featuring wonderful performances: both the central protagonists are captivating. The story avoids romanticizing prison life until the unfortunate final scene/shot.  The only other negative note is the supernatural elements seem to be leftover from an early version of the script and should have been dropped altogether.  They don’t add anything, are undeveloped, and don’t particularly make sense.