Top 5 movie-going moments of 2017

Again, not a whole lot of rare or unusual things happened at the movies this year, but there were some rare and unusual movies.

5. Talk of the Town at the Astoria Historical Society. It wasn't exactly a large crowd - it wasn't even a crowd - but Sandi and I enjoyed the movie nonetheless, we made a new friend, and the day on the whole was pleasant. I think the Society gets more people at screenings when they're tied to a major event of some sort. This wasn't. It's okay, though.

4. Rebecca at Vija's place. Also more for that entire day, pouring rain, donuts, and all, although the situation with the malfunctioning DVD player was certainly an event in itself. I would've hated to have lost that DVD. In fact, I wrote a short story inspired by that incident. Gonna shop it around next year.

3. Island of Lost Souls at the Loews JC. Once again, Halloween at the Loews means party time; I got to hang with Aurora, plus I finally met Monstergirl (along with her girlfriend). Wish I could've stayed for all three movies in the triple bill, but I had a good time anyway.

2. Loving Vincent. One of the rare occasions I've loved a movie more for its looks than its story. The plot was good; it's just I wanted to bask in the visuals more - and every single frame of this extraordinary film literally is a work of art. It's a singular achievement that needs to be seen to be believed.

1. Mother! Full stop. I'm still not sure how I feel about this movie, but I do know it took brass balls to make, and Darren Aronofsky has got 'em. Maybe if I had gone into it knowing everything, I might not have been as freaked out by it as I was, but it seems to me this is why we go to the movies in the first place: for the possibility of seeing something you've never seen before that will shake you up in some way, even if you don't understand how or why. This may not make my top 10 for the year, but damn if it wasn't the craziest two hours I've spent in a movie theater in a long time.

Happy new year to you all. Barring any news about the future of the Lincoln Plaza, I'll return January 9.

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Previously:
2016 top five
2015 top five
2014 top five
2013 top five
2012 top five
2011 top five

The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens NY

Even as a kid, I had the impression King Kong wanted to, um, do the horizontal mambo with the chick. Maybe it's not as obvious in the Fay Wray original, but it sure as hell is in the Jessica Lange version, the one I grew up with. I couldn't have articulated it then, but I distinctly remember having "that funny feeling" when he was alone with her, using his finger to tug at her clothes...

In all those old monster movies where the heroine is carried by the alien or the creature or the robot or whatever - a trope stolen from the covers of pulp SF books and magazines - I suspect the implication of sexual intent was there, but how often did we actually see it happen?

Off-topic: cookies a la Paddy

So I was rummaging through Paddy's back pages and found this recipe for chocolate chip cookies, which she calls choir cookies (click the link to find out why). I've made a few desserts ever since I've seriously taken up cooking, but I hadn't tried cookies of any kind yet, so this seemed like a good time.

The good news is, they were edible!  I didn't follow the sequence exactly (I was finishing dinner at the same time I was working on these) and I thought they would come out wrong; plus, my oven didn't cook them all the way through the first time, so I had to bake them longer, but in the end, they looked the way chocolate chip cookies should look.

They're not as soft as I expected: firm shell outside, softer on the inside; tasted a little buttery (even though I used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter); lots of chips. They're okay. I'm sure Paddy makes them better.

Lincoln Plaza the latest theater to close

...In an interview with Deadline, owner Dan Talbot and his wife said that they have done “everything we could ask for the lease to be extended,” but building owner, Milstein Properties, is only “looking to make money.”

This one hurts. The Lincoln has an excellent selection of movies, good food, nice seats; some of the auditoriums have beams that obscure your view depending on where you're sitting, but not by much and not that many. The owners say this closure is only to make renovations, but no one knows for certain what the timetable for that will be.

On a personal level, I don't know if everyone else in our film club feels this way, but I know I had come to think of it as almost "ours." Vija and Lynn and Andi like going there for Woody Allen movies (although this year they saw Wonder Wheel across town at the City Cinemas), but we like seeing all kinds of movies there too. This was one venue we all agreed on for a long time.

The neighborhood is upscale; Lincoln Center is a stone's throw away, so the restaurants and shops cater to that particular crowd, but if we have time to spare, we'll occasionally go to a diner on Columbus Avenue, a little further over.

The online reaction has been big. This is more than a neighborhood theater, like Cinemart; it's a nationally-known venue that has a tradition of providing a home for indies and foreign cinema. Plus, a number of people see this as another sign of developers having their way with city planning at the expense of cultural institutions.

A petition to attempt to stop this from happening has already been formed; I've signed it. If you live in the New York metropolitan area and you care about indie film, I hope you will too. I'll keep an eye on this and provide any updates.

(Thanks Debbie and Lynn for telling me!)

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Related:
More NYC theaters facing the wrecking ball
What if more movie theaters were non-profit?

Movies I saw at the Lincoln:
Loving Vincent
Menashe
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
Cafe Society
Les Cowboys
45 Years
Whiplash
Blue Jasmine
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Blue Valentine
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

The Disaster Artist

The Disaster Artist
seen @ AMC Fresh Meadows 7, Fresh Meadows, Queens NY

I've always felt I had some measure of artistic talent. People I trust - family, friends, teachers, critics - have said as much, and it has been a driving force, maybe the driving force, in my life: the belief I could do something with it, even if I could never decide exactly what... but what if I've overestimated myself?

Alan Hale Sr.: More than Flynn's sidekick

The What a Character Blogathon is an event devoted to the great character actors of classic Hollywood and the often memorable supporting roles they played throughout film history, hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled, & Paula's Cinema Club. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the links at any of the host sites. 

Mention the name Alan Hale today and if you don't get a blank stare, you might get a response associated with Gilligan's Island - but that was Alan Junior, a noted film and TV actor in his own right. We'll get to him in a bit. Today's subject is his dad, Alan Senior, a fixture within classic Hollywood going way back.

The former Rufus Edward Mackahan originally aspired to sing opera before going into the movies instead. He spent the early 1910s appearing in a wide variety of shorts before graduating to features. As a young man, he's recognizable; his mustache is smaller, but he's still a big guy (6' 2"), still has that wavy hair. 

In addition to making movies with Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Jackie Coogan, Tom Mix, Colleen Moore and others, he had a side as a director. He helmed a movie called Braveheart seventy years before Mel Gibson. Here's a funny story from his silent era days.

In 1922, Hale made the first of three Robin Hood movies, playing Robin's right hand man Little John in all three. The silent Robin is pure Tinseltown spectacle, with a large cast and larger sets: the castle alone is believed to be the biggest for a Hollywood silent. It's Fairbanks' movie through and through, but Hale acquits himself just fine in it.

It's not until the talkies that we get a better sense of Hale's boisterous screen persona, usually in support to the protagonist(s). In It Happened One Night, for example, he's the driver who stops at the sight of Claudette Colbert's bare leg, singing as he drives.

My favorite role of his is in Stella Dallas, where he plays Barbara Stanwyck's drinking buddy who inadvertently drives a wedge between her and her family; Stanwyck wants to be respectable, but at the same time her association with Hale, who isn't a bad guy at heart, embarrasses her husband.

Hale made thirteen movies with Errol Flynn, including the 1938 Robin; they were mostly adventure films of one kind or another, whether they were swashbucklers, like The Prince and the Pauper and The Sea Hawk, or westerns like Dodge City and Santa Fe Trail. When Hale reprised his Little John role in 1950 for Rogues of Sherwood Forest, it was without his friend Flynn; John Derek put on the green tights, but not as Robin: as Robin's son, who must reunite the Merry Men.

Alan Jr. was born to Alan Sr. and his wife of over thirty years, actress Gretchen Hartman, in 1921. Junior made movies beginning in 1933 after starting on Broadway. He made a bunch of films and TV shows before he set sail on that ill-fated three-hour tour beginning in 1964. In 1979, he reprised his father's role of Porthos (from the Three Musketeers film The Man in the Iron Mask) in The Fifth Musketeer.

I like seeing Hale Sr. in old movies; he has an easy charm and ebullience that plays well with his bigger co-stars. He shared a screen with two of the biggest action heroes of all time, Fairbanks and Flynn (not to mention Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), and perhaps that's how he's remembered best amongst cinephiles, but he also had a substantial career that began deep within the silent era and well beyond, which is pretty impressive.

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Films with Alan Hale Sr.:
So Big!
Stella Dallas
The Adventures of Robin Hood
They Drive By Night

Previously:
Sig Ruman
Shelley Winters
Joe E. Brown

Lady Bird

Lady Bird
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens NY

Let's talk about Saoirse Ronan, because I have a feeling we're gonna talk about her a whole lot more in the future. As I've said here, I knew she was going places the first time I saw her, in Atonement. Child actors who achieve success rarely live up to that promise as an adult, but so far, Ronan has bucked that trend.

She's worked with quality directors: Joe Wright, Peter Jackson, Peter Weir and Wes Anderson, among others, with baby steps into the mainstream - though I'm sure it's only a matter of time until somebody puts her in a superhero movie or a Star Wars spin-off or whatever.

She's American! I totally did not know that; she was only raised in Ireland. Not only that, she's a New Yorker, born in the Boogie Down Bronx. "Saoirse" is Irish Gaelic for "freedom."

Every year, it seems, some fine young actress comes along who is proclaimed as the new "it girl," the next Audrey Hepburn; movie pundits love anointing one, whether it's Emma Stone or Jenny Lawrence or Anne Hathaway or Kate Hudson or Gwyneth Paltrow, etc. etc.

Ronan's new film, Lady Bird, written and directed by indie film lifer Greta Gerwig, is a very good, very pleasant coming-of-age story that has a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes; as a result, Ronan has become the current "it girl" and an Oscar contender.

It's my hope all this sudden attention won't go to her head; I want her to be popular enough to keep making good movies, but I don't want to see her get sucked up into the movie star hype and wind up on Page Six with a pop singer. It's way too soon to tell if that will happen - she's only 23 - but so far, she strikes me as level-headed and smart, and most importantly, she grew up and still has a career. That alone is noteworthy.

Unfortunately, I've seen very few of Gerwig's films as an actress. She was good in 20th Century Women; I don't remember who she played in Jackie. As a director, she gave us a nice sense of her hometown of Sacramento, the setting for Lady Bird. Her script was very character-driven, balancing humor with drama; Lady Bird is believable as a modern teenage girl who knows what she wants. I liked her relationship with her parents. This is one hell of a debut; a Best Picture nod has got to be a possibility.