The Firm

Last night I watched The Firm, a 1992 movie starring Tom Cruise based on a John Grisham novel.

It really holds up! About a young attorney right out of law school hired by a fancy Southern firm, the plot is consistently engaging and suspenseful. The protagonist quickly learns about the corruptions surrounding him and finds himself pressured by the Feds while being squeezed into a corner by the firm. How will Cruise get out of this mess? Watch and find out.

Anomalisa

Anomalisa, a stop-motion Charlie Kaufmann feature, is saturated in pained drudgery. Acutely focused on a man traveling to a conference to promote his book on customer service, the beginning sequences are drawn out in their attention to the annoyances of moment-to-moment daily existence. The viewer is in Michael Stone's world, trapped in his isolated subjectivity, and it soon becomes apparent that all the other characters he interacts with have the same face and the same voice. The effect is tremendously unsettling and uncomfortable.

In the hallway of the hotel Stone suddenly hears a different voice, and he rushes to find out who it is. He discovers the insecure and nervous and relatively ordinary Lisa. But she is extraordinary to him. Her voice is like no one else's and her scarred face is hers and hers alone. He immediately falls in love.

It raises questions about love and identity -- who is are object of desire, and what do we see when we behold them? Who are we in the crowded world of others? Are there other subjective experiences besides are own?

Anomalisa is surreal and disturbing. Claustrophobic. It includes the most tense sex scene I have ever experienced. And Anomalisa is brilliant. The mood stayed with me for quite sometime afterwards. In the final scene we catch a quick glimpse into the world outside Stone's perception, and in this moment we are released from his pained solipsism.

Finding Vivian Maier

I had read so much about the discovery of Vivian Maier's photography and the unusual story of her life that I didn't feel much curiosity or urgency about seeing the documentary, Finding Vivian Maier. I'm so glad I finally go around to it!

The documentary does a great job presenting not only the vast amount of negatives and undeveloped film she kept, but the strange accumulation of objects she amassed as a compulsive hoarder. It helped me see the intense value of the discovery and provided some insight into her mysterious life.

The photographs she took are startlingly beautiful and her eye was very sophisticated. The work shows a deep visual connection to human suffering.

But Finding Vivian Maier goes beyond showing the artistic value of these, and is more about trying to put together an image of the woman herself and the life she led as a nanny to wealthy families. Some of what the grown children she cared for shared in their interviews was upsetting and dark, and from other interviews you get a sense of an isolated, disturbed woman. Her identity as an artist remains murky -- it is unclear how she thought of herself in that way or how she thought about her pictures. I got the sense that her photo-taking was largely compulsive.

I was impressed by the dedication and work that Maloof, who first came across some boxes of her negatives, put into printing and scanning and sharing her work and investigating her background.

The movie also touches on class issues and art world practices. It raises many interesting questions, and was fascinating to watch.

The Intern

The Intern is a slick mainstream movie that really offers no surprises. By no means brilliant, probably not memorable, kind of fluffy, definitely corny.

But I ate it up and enjoyed every minute.

Robert De Niro plays a 70 year old retired, widowed business man who is content and healthy, but feels a lack in his somewhat solitary life. He signs up for a senior internship program at a hot internet startup company staffed by young Brooklyn hipsters. The Intern centers on his relationship with the founder, played by Anne Hathaway. He is initially seen as a harmless oddity in the office, but soon becomes kind of a mascot, and gentlemanly role-model for dressed-down male coworkers. With Hathaway's character he soon proves professionally valuable and they form a warm friendship.

What I liked so much about it was how affable all the characters were. There is no bad guy. It's just a sweet story of an unlikely but enriching friendship.

Lucky Numbers

Lucky Numbers is a goofy and fun movie starring John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow. Travolta plays a self-satisfied local weatherman who enjoys his reserved seating at the Denny's and his celebrity status. Because of poor financial management -- investment in a snowmobile store during an unseasonably warm winter -- he finds himself broke. He is charming but dumb and clueless, and smarter, meaner people around him, including his girlfriend played by Kudrow, get him involved in a plan to rig his TV station's lottery drawing. Twists and turns and he gets deeper into a situation he can't handle. Cute and funny stuff.

Whitney Cummings: I'm Your Girlfriend

I didn't like the HBO comedy special Whitney Cummings: I'm Your Girlfriend.

I was unfamiliar with this comedian and was turned off by her sharp-edged, kind of hostile style. There were some bits that I enjoyed, but much of her routine struck me as anti-sex in a strange way. She made it seem that women don't enjoy it and men are pigs, which is pretty one-dimensional and somewhat un-feminist.

Hoagland: Application for Release from the Dream

Tony Hoagland's Application for Release from the Dream is a soft and sad collection of poems, observing and reflecting on yearning and loss. I loved reading these. They were comforting in their beauty and their gentleness. There is wit and bitterness here, and there is also love, kindness, and regret. A wonderful book by a poet I very much admire.

From the last stanzas of "Crossing Water":

Each time I make the trip, I get the strange idea that this
is what is waiting at the end of life --

long stalks slanting in the breeze, then straightening --
flowers, loose-petaled as memory, grey

as the aftertaste of grief.

Tonight, I'll lie in bed and feel the day exhaling me
as part of its long sigh into the dark,

knowing that I have no plan,
knowing that I have no chance of getting there.

I will remember how those flowers swayed and then held still 
for me to look at them.

And here's some favorite lines from "Controlled Substances":

Like money,
         which teaches you to strangle time,

or the narcoleptic trance connected with a small lit screen?