Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)

There is a certain kind of movie that makes me want to say something.

That something is very unfair and probably even misdirected.

But movies of this certain type drive me to feel this something coming up out of my throat, no matter how inappropriate.

This is that kind of movie, so here goes.

I hate white people.

The Yakuza (1974)

A tidy bit of grit here. Shot at the peak of Sydney Pollack’s directorial career—sandwiched between The Way We Were and Three Days of the Condor—The Yakuza is a smooth meditation on manly obligations and the legacies of the US occupation in Japan. After the World War Two, American soldier Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum) fell for a girl who was already spoken for and he never managed to get over her. Twenty years later, his grim mug is back in Tokyo to take care of some business as a favor for an old friend and to get this job done, he ends up having to call in some old favors himself. Genre hint: all favors involve gangsters and murder.

Tenure (2009)

Hollywood representations of academic life tend to be incredibly off base and, as such, sometimes hilarious to those of us "in the business." That’s what I was hoping for with Tenure.

What I got was a flat third-rate knock off of Alexander Payne’s funny-meets-sweet formula. Not that I imagined that Luke Wilson would suddenly figure out how to carry a movie. But with this lifeless script he didn’t even have a chance.

The Motel (2005)

Michael Kang does an Asian-American coming of age story, full of puberty, generational conflict, and awkwardness. It's honest and strong without being overbearing.

The best part was the "Making of..." documentary. First-time actor Jeffrey Chyau comments on the director's one-of-a-kind leadership style, that unique trust that he puts in his actors, etc. It's nice to see that even the rookies understand the conventions of DVD special features.

The Italian (2005)

My dear sweet God, do Russians ever grow tired of movies and novels about difficult childhoods? In the 1920s and 1930s, besprizornye—the orphans-turned-street-kids left behind by the millions who died during the post-revolutionary Civil War and famine—were common figures in Soviet film and literature, representing the aftermath of national trauma and, through their potential transformation to good Soviet citizens, the promise of Bolshevik rule.

Set in a contemporary mismanaged orphanage in rural Russia, The Italian transposes this figure into modern times with the tale of Vanya, a six-year-old boy tapped for adoption by a wealthy Italian couple. The kid has his reservations, though; he'd rather try to track down his real mother. So, following in the footsteps of Neverov’s classic besprizornye tale Tashkent, City of Bread (1925), Vanya hits the road and gets into all manner of innocent mischief, ultimately demonstrating that Russians need not look abroad for salvation, but instead rely on their heartland’s latent human decency.

An Education (2008)

After watching Wayne Wang's The Center of the World, I knew that Peter Sarsgaard could play a gross, creepy dude.

After watching two movies based on Nick Hornby novels (and reading About a Boy), I knew that the author excelled at writing creepy, gross dude characters.

Now that I've seen An Education, I know that Sarsgaard can play a Hornby-scripted lech with a faux British accent.

Nice job.

Dicks.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

Based on the debut novel of Boston crime writer George V. Higgins, Eddie Coyle tells the story of its eponymous hero, a banged-up, small-time criminal grinding out chump change. Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle put in appropriately understated brilliant performances, and my only criticism is that the movie spends too much time away from them while following the details of a string of robberies fueled by the guns that Eddie deals in. The upside of this excursion is a tour of all the depressing backwaters in and around Boston. The downside is that this diversion turned to a trip down memory lane for me as I ruminated on the question that haunted me for the entire year I lived among the Massholes:

How can a major US city be so shitty, and for so long?

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

Werner Herzog's wildman film-making is best when tamed by a vast, calm underwater seaworld or when limited to mining the amateur video footage of an eccentric animal lover. Give the director free rein, an unleashed Nicolas Cage, sex symbol Eva Mendes, and the setting of post-Katrina New Orleans, and you get bedlam. Sure, a few scenes tickled. But for the most part, the film read as a Hollywood in-crowd gag reel that was never meant to be distributed.

On a hopeful comeback note: I was happy to see Fairuza Balk onscreen again.

Disgrace (2008)

John Malkovich has done what he rarely does: he has failed. In trying to navigate the ambivalent character of David Lurie, a self-satisfied English professor with a predilection for the young and the exotic, Malkovich does not stir mixed emotions, but leaves the viewer's sentiments untouched. Watching a young black South African douse Lurie with some inflammable liquid and then torch the man, I fixated on the special effects, indifferent to the ostensible suffering of an empty character.

Jessica Haines does a much better job in the role of Lurie's daughter Lucy. Had the movie been anchored in her life and not in her father's, I might have been left with something other than drifting pieties about the horrors of violence and the complicated legacies of apartheid in South Africa.

The Unknown Woman (2006)

Director Giuseppe Tornatore sets up astonishingly beautiful shots to tell a gruesome tale of sexual slavery, torture (both bodily and psychological), and human endurance. It's a striking contrast, but at some point I wanted to plead to Mr. Tornatore, "Please, signore, you don't need to hit me so hard, nor so often!" Similarly, when I ran out of fingers and toes to count the plot twists, I mentally composed a short, teacherly letter to Tornatore explaining the difference between teasing and bullying.

Happily Ksenia Rappoport's unforgettable portrayal of Irena--a Ukrainian woman trafficked into Italy and forced into a decade of prostitution and coerced surrogacy--provides the substance and the succor needed to remain invested in the film.

By the final scene, however sappy it may have been, I felt rewarded for having endured this stomach-twisting roller coaster for two hours.