The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) Directed by Norman Jewison. Richard Schaal as Oscar Maxwell, Cliff Norton as Charlie Hinkson, Jonathan Winters as Norman Jones, Brian Keith as Police Chief Link Mattocks and Guy Raymond as Lester Tilly.

Norman Jones: Chief we gotta do something. I mean, we really gotta do something. There are people running around down there with guns!
Link Mattocks: Well, that’s great. That’s just great. I thought all the nuts went home after Labor Day.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) directed by Milos Forman
Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched (not pictured), Jack Nicholson as Randall Patrick McMurphy, William Redfield as Harding, Sydney Lassick as Cheswick (not pictured) and Delos V. Smith Jr. as Scanlon (not pictured)

Nurse Ratched: Do you want to say something to the group, Mr. McMurphy?
McMurphy: Well, yeah. I’d like to know why none of the guys never told me that you, Miss Ratched, and the doctors could keep me here ’til you’re good and ready to turn me loose. That’s what I’d like to know.
Nurse Ratched: Fine, Randall. That’s a good start. Would anyone care to answer Mr. McMurphy?
Harding: Answer what?
McMurphy: You heard me, Harding. You let me go on hassling Nurse Ratched here knowing how much I had to lose and you never told me nothin’.
Harding: Now, Mac. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I didn’t know anything about, uh…
McMurphy: Shit!
Harding: …Wait a minute. Now listen. I… Now look. I… I’m voluntary here. See, I’m not committed. I don’t have to stay here. I mean, I can go home anytime I want.
McMurphy: You can go home anytime you want?
Harding: That’s it.
McMurphy: You’re bullshittin’ me.
Harding: No.
McMurphy: He’s bullshittin’ me, right?
Nurse Ratched: No, Randall. He’s telling you the truth. As a matter of fact, there are very few men here who are committed. There’s Mr. Bromden, Mr. Taber, some of the chronics, and you.
McMurphy: Cheswick? You’re voluntary?
Cheswick: (nods) Mmhm.
McMurphy: Scanlon?
Scanlon: (nods)
McMurphy: Billy, for chrissakes, you must be committed, right?
Billy: N-n-no.
McMurphy: You’re just a young kid! What are you doing here? You oughta be out in a convertible, bird doggin’ chicks and bangin’ beaver. What are you doing here for chrissake?

The Sunshine Boys (1975) Directed by Herbert Ross from the play by Neil Simon. Richard Benjamin as Ben Clark and Walter Matthau as Willy Clark

Willy: How do you like that? Saul Burton died.
Ben: Who?
Willy: Saul Burton the songwriter. Eighty-nine years old. He went just like that from nothing. You know what kind of songs he wrote? Shit. (sings) “Lady, lady, be my baby.” Lady rhymes with baby. Oy. No wonder he’s dead.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Directed by Mike Nichols. Elizabeth Taylor as Martha and Richard Burton as George

Martha: Fix me another drink, lover.
George: My God, you can swill it down, can’t you?
Martha (in baby voice): Well, I’m thirsty.
George: Oh, Jesus.
Martha (angry): Look, sweetheart. I can drink you under any goddamn table you want, so don’t worry about me.
George: I gave you the prize years ago, Martha. There isn’t an abomination award going that you haven’t won.
Martha: I swear if you existed, I’d divorce you.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) Directed by George Clooney
Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris

Chuck Barris (in voiceover): When you’re young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age when which you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren’t Einstein. You weren’t anything. That’s a bad moment.

If you’re on the Twitters or the Facebook, you might already know I’m going to the Cannes Film Festival this year, but I was waiting until all the ducks were in a row before making an official announcement here on the blog. Yes, as unlikely as it seems, the passport is ready, the press pass is approved, the plane tickets are purchased and the lodging reservations are made. I’m going and there’s not a goddamn thing standing in my way.

I know, the last few months have not been the finest in the history of Living in Cinema, but I assure you I had no intention of devolving into nothing more than a Movie Quote of the Day. Of course longtime readers will know that I’ve always had unscheduled lulls in output, but I don’t recall one going on quite as long as this last. I don’t believe in excuses so I’m not going to make any. It is what it is or it was what it was, and I’m moving on. To Cannes, bitches!

All of my official writing on the festival which kicks off on May 15 will be for Awards Daily, but I’ll be linking to it here and I’m thinking about doing some sort of informal diary-type “so this is what Cannes is like” pieces which I’ll be publishing here.

I’m hoping to use the festival are sort of a relaunching of my enthusiasm for the whole blog thing in general. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what LiC was, what is has become and what it could be in the future. Things are all kind of up in the air at the moment, but I’m feeling some momentous changes afoot one way or another.

So anyway, I want to give an especial shout out to those of you who have stuck with me through this disconcerting dry spell. In a very real way, I owe this exciting Cannes opportunity to you.

Near the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Caruthers) warns young Danny Torrance, “There ain’t nothin’ in Room 237.” He’s lying to the boy, but he could just as easily be speaking directly to the audience of the new Shining documentary Room 237, a festival favorite examining some of the meanings people have attached to Kubrick’s horror tale. It’s ironic the documentary quotes this scene directly because there’s nothing to see here unless a lot of continuity errors, subliminal boners and an imaginary Minotaur are your idea of something.

Continued »

(This review originally appeared last summer when I saw the film at LA Film Fest. It opens in limited theatrical release today and is also available On Demand and online through Amazon etc.)

Writer/director Todd Berger’s It’s a Disaster turns out to be the apocalyptic relationship comedy that last year’s wretched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World lies awake at night wishing it had been. For starters, it’s flat out funny (and that’s probably the most important thing), but underneath the humor there is a vein of honesty about how people are, what they want and how they relate to one another that sets it apart from other black comedies of its type. It never sells out its comic soul to land a point, but the two sensibilities fuse naturally into an uncommonly good indie comedy.

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Carrying the similarly light and laid back comic tone of his Looking for Eric, Ken Loach heads north to Glasgow, Scotland for Angel’s Share where he finds a group of wayward youth sentenced to community service for assorted crimes small and large. In particular, there is Robbie, a young man whose temper and bad family blood always seem to keep him from straightening up and flying right even for his newly pregnant girlfriend. Luckily for Robbie, his community service supervisor takes an interest in him and shows him a better way through, of all things, the joys of very expensive fine malt whisky. It turns out Robbie has a talented nose for the stuff which comes to the attention of a buyer who works for a shady foreign whisky enthusiast. Combining talents from his old life and his new, Robbie rallies his pals and hatches a plan to get his girlfriend and new son away from Glasgow once and for all.

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Punch-Drunk Love (2002) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Adam Sandler as Barry Egan and Emily Watson as Lena Leonard

Barry: I didn’t ask for a shrink, that must’ve been somebody else. Also, that pudding isn’t mine. Also, I’m wearing a suit today because I had a very important meeting this morning and I… don’t have a crying problem.

Manhattan (1979) Written and directed by Woody Allen. Mariel Hemingway as Tracy and Woody Allen as Isaac Davis.

Isaac: Where the hell does a little Radcliffe tootsie come off rating Scott Fitzgerald and Gustav Mahler and, and Heinrich Boll?
Tracy: I don’t understand why you’re getting so mad.
Isaac: I’m mad because I don’t like that pseudo-intellectual garbage that she… Pedantic! “Van Goch!” Did you hear that? She said “Van Goch.” I couldn’t… Like an Arab she spoke. I couldn’t… And if she had made one more remark about Bergman, I woulda knocked her other contact lens out.
Tracy: What, is she Yale’s mistress?
Isaac: That will never cease to mystify me. I mean, he’s got a wonderful wife and he prefers to, to… diddle this little yo-yo that, that, you know, and uh, but he was always a sucker for, those kinda women. You know, the kind that, that would involve him in discussions of existential reality. You know? They probably sit around on the floor with wine and cheese and mispronounce “allegorical” and “didacticism.”
Tracy: Well, I get the feeling that Yale really likes her.
Isaac: Well I, I’m old fashioned. I don’t believe in extramarital relationships. I think people should mate for life like… pigeons or… Catholics.
Tracy: I don’t know, maybe people weren’t meant to have one deep relationship. Maybe we’re meant to have, you know, a series of relationships of different lengths. I mean that kind of thing’s gone out of date.
Isaac: Hey, don’t tell me what’s gone out of date, ok? You’re seventeen years old. You were brought up on drugs and television and the pill. I, I, I was World War II. I was in the trenches.
Tracy: You were eight in World War II.
Isaac: That’s right I was never in the trenches. I was caught right in the middle. It was a very tough position.

Screening in competition tonight at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles is Mohammed to Maya, a documentary chronicling a year in the life of a 42-year-old devout Muslim as she undergoes gender reassignment surgery.  Even in the relatively permissive West it’s difficult to imagine the difficulties of making such a transition, but it’s almost inconceivable this case.

Continued »

Boxcar Bertha (1972) directed by Martin Scorsese. Barbara Hershey as Boxcar Bertha and Barry Primus as Rake Brown (not pictured)

Bertha: Folks? May I have your attention? Folks?
Rake: Shhh. The lady would like to say somethin’… Go ahead kid.
Bertha: Thank you. Yes, I’d just like to say this is a holdup. We’ve come for your money and jewels. So, if you’d just line up against that wall there, Bill, Rake and Von won’t have t’ shoot ya.

The Conversation (1974) Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Gene Hackman as Harry Caul and John Cazale as Stan (not pictured).

Stan: I can’t see why a couple of questions about what the hell’s going on can get you so outta joint.
Harry: ‘Cause I can’t sit here and explain the personal problems of my clients.
Stan: It wouldn’t hurt if you filled me in a little bit once in a while. Did you ever think of that?
Harry: It has nothing to do with me and even less to do with you.
Stan: It’s curiosity. Did you ever hear of that? It’s just goddamn human nature.
Harry: Listen. If there is one surefire rule that I have learned in this business is that I don’t know anything about human nature. I don’t know anything about curiosity. I don’t… that’s not part of what I do. What I… this is my business.

Making its US debut April 13th at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Shahid is a fairly straight forward biographical film directed by Hansal Mehta about a man who probably isn’t a household name here in the West, but whose remarkable life has something to say to all of us.

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A Woman Under the Influence (1974) Written and directed by John Cassavetes. Mario Gallo as Harold Jensen and Gena Rowlands as Mabel Longhetti.

Mabel: What’s your name again?
Mr. Jensen: Harold.
Mabel: Harold… Your first name?
Mr. Jensoen: Harold.
Mabel: Harold? Oh, you poor thing. You can’t name somebody Harold.

Lenny (1974) Directed by Bob Fosse. Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce and Mickey Gatlin as San Francisco Policeman (not pictured).

Policeman: What makes you think you’ve got the right to say a word like that in a public place?
Lenny: What word is that? I, I, I say a lot of words.
Policeman: You know what word I’m talking about. It’s against the law.
Lenny: I didn’t do it, man, I just said it.

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) Directed by Jean Negulesco from a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson. William Powell as J.D. Hanley and Lauren Bacall as Schatze Page.

Shatze: What I’m trying to tell you, J.D., is that I’ve always liked older men. Look at Roosevelt. Look at Churchill. Look at that old fellow whatsisname in African Queen… Absolutely crazy about him.

48 Hrs. (1982) Directed by Walter Hill. Nick Nolte as Jack Cates and Eddie Murphy as Reggie Hammond.

Reggie: Look, if we go in there and get a phone number or Ganz or a dead Indian, anything that helps us out, turn your back for a half hour and let me go get some pussy.
Jack: What for? Any man that talks about women like you can’t get it up anyhow.
Reggie: I been in prison for three years. My dick gets hard if the wind blows.

From Roger’s paper, The Chicago Sun-Times

I’ve said it before, but when I was a kid, Roger Ebert and his newspaper rival/TV partner Gene Siskel were the guys who introduced the concept to me that movies were art. Movies were something to think about and to be argued about. I don’t have to tell you that the significance of that to me is immeasurable.

Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) Written and directed by Paul Mazursky. Richard Dreyfuss as Dave Whiteman

Cop: Sir, may I see your driver’s license?
Dave: Uh… yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, huh, huh, huh, huh, who… who hit who?
Cop: May I see your driver’s license please?
Dave: Nuh huh, uh huh, I’m just, I’m just trying to figure out who, who I’m mad at.

The Odd Couple (1968) Directed by Gene Saks from the play by Neil Simon. Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison, John Fiedler as Vinnie, Herbert Edelman as Murray, Larry Haines as Speed and David Sheiner as Roy

Roy: You can never tell what a guy will do when he’s hysterical.
Murray: Nah, nine times out of ten they don’t jump.
Roy: What about the tenth time?
Murray: They jump. He’s right! There’s a possibility!
Oscar: Not with Felix. I know him. He’s too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seatbelt to the drive-in movie.

Land of the Lost (2009) Directed by Brad Silberling
Will Ferrell as Dr. Rick Marshall and Anna Friel as Holly Cantrell

Holly: What are you eating?
Rick: It’s a doughnut stuffed with M&Ms. That way when you finish the doughnut, you don’t have to eat any M&Ms.

Thief (1981) Written and directed by Michael Mann. James Caan as Frank and Robert Prosky as Leo (not pictured)

Leo: I give you houses. I give you a car. You’re family. I thought you’d come around. What the hell is this? Where is gratitude?
Frank: Where is my end?
Leo: You can’t see day for night
Frank: I can see my money is still in your pocket which is from the yield of my labor. What gratitude? You’re making big profits from my work, my risk, my sweat. But that’s okay, because I elected to make that deal. But now the deal is over. I want my end and I am out.
Leo: Why don’t you join a labor union?
Frank: I am wearin’ it… My money in 24 hours or you will wear your ass for a hat.

The Sting (1973) Directed by George Roy Hill. Robert Redford as Johnny Hooker and Paul Newman as Henry Gondorff

Hooker: I wouldn’t ask you to do this, you know, if it weren’t for Luther.
Gondorf: Nothin’s gonna make up for Luther. Revenge is for suckers. I been griftin’ thirty years, I never got any.
Hooker: Then why are you doin’ it?
Gondorf: Seems worthwhile, doesn’t it?

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999) Directed by Trey Parker.
Eric Cartman voiced by Trey Parker.

Cartman: Mom, if you were in a German sheisse video… y-you’d tell me, right?

Christa Theret as Andree Heuschling and Michel Bouquet as Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Renoir.
Photo Credit: Fidelite Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films

A dummy dressed as a German soldier hangs in effigy along a quiet country lane on the Côte d’Azur. It’s 1915 and World War I haunts the pastoral picture even from hundreds of miles away. We know what the war portends for the world and that is enough. Nearby, the impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir struggles through his final years; still making life out of color, but wheelchair-bound and barely able to grip his brushes from the rheumatoid arthritis. A self-described cork in the stream, he is a man who has adapted and made the most out of the twists and turns of his life. The story of Pierre-Auguste’s middle son Jean, however, is not yet written. At 21 with his career as a world-renowned filmmaker still 20 years away, Jean has returned from war a wounded man. Almost wilting in the shadow of his great father, he is lost and lacking ambition. Into this nexus between war and peace, between son and father, comes the beautiful Andrée Heuschling, Pierre-Auguste’s new model and a spark that might bring Jean to life.

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The Long Good Friday (1980) Directed by John Mackenzie. Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand and Derek Thompson as Jeff (not pictured)

Harold: (hangs up the phone) This is… a diabolical liberty!
Jeff: What is it?
Harold: Blown up. He’s dead. Eric is dead. A car bomb.
Jeff: Aye?
Harold: Mother’s all right. Suffering from shock. She’s in the London hospital…
Jeff: I don’t understand.
Harold: You need a million dollar computer to understand this. Who’d do such a thing? It’s outrageous! Outside a church? You don’t go crucifying people outside a church – not on Good Friday!

Top Secret! (1984) Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker. Jeremy Kemp as General Streck and Warren Clarke as Colonel von Horst (not pictured).

Colonel von Horst: He won’t break. We’ve tried everything. Do you want me to bring out the LeRoy Nieman paintings?
General Streck: No. We cannot risk violating the Geneva Convention.

The Hills Run Red (1967) Directed by Carlo Lizzani. Thomas Hunter as Jerry Brewster and Nando Gazzolo as Ken Seagull

Ken: Six hundred thousand dollars and all in one swoop! You know, Jerry, it’d byy a lot of land and horses. When I think this money was supposed to buy cannon, it gives me the creeps…
Jerry: You’ll get the creeps if they get their hands on you. That’s government money and don’t you forget it.