the hit or miss films of Eric Rohmer

eric rohmer is one of the last living directors of the french new wave and alongside claude chabrol and jacques rivette, represent the last link to the golden age of cinema in france. rohmer, like chabrol and rivette have had incredibly prolific careers that have consisted of some masterpieces and some uninteresting stuff.

in terms of rohmer specifically, one of my movie 09 goals was to watch more rohmer. i watched every film in his comedies and proverbs trilogy where i will quickly summarize:

Comédies et Proverbes (Comedies and Proverbs):

1981 La Femme de l'aviateur (The Aviator's Wife) — good, flirty, idealistic, and at times humourous films

1982 Le Beau mariage (A Good Marriage) — cant remember anything about it...must not have been very good

1983 Pauline à la plage (Pauline At The Beach) — fantastic! will discuss later!

1984 Les Nuits de la pleine lune (Full Moon In Paris) — meh

1986 Le Rayon vert (The Green Ray/Summer) — i saw this a while ago and consider this a worthy entrance into rohmer's catalog though not deserving in they shoot picture's top 1000 films of all time

1987 L'Ami de mon amie (My Girlfriend's Boyfriend/Boyfriends and Girlfriends) — worst of the bunch but not horrible

last week, i watched A SUMMER'S TALE (CONTE D'ETE) and absolutely loved it. this was a part of his his series of films; the seasons series.

plot: musician falls goes to south of france to meet girlfriend who doesnt show up. he falls in love once and then again. there is a romance, melancholy, and music; all the things i love in life.

the common link Summer's Tale and PAULINE AT THE BEACH is Amanda Langlet, the cute, intellectual, and engaging star of Pauline and Summer's Tale. In each of them, she plays a wise beyond her years teen confused by love and baffled by relationships. she has an incredible charm, sophistication, and spunk that is decidedly french but not the somber sort exemplified by sandrine bonnaire.

its movies like pauline and summer's tale that make me wish i was a french teen in the late 80s/early 90s. i totally want to hang out with french hipsters in skinny jeans listening to british music. i started that sentence quite genuinely but now it seems really silly. ok, i will change that too. i wish i was french and had a time machine to go back 20 years. i already have the hipster, jeans, and music part taken care of. on a related note, i did put this lego version of the eiffel tower together in the last few days.

so yeah, in summation, rohmer has some pretty good films and in the spirit of echoing past blog sentiments, know your movie type.

did i actually enjoy risky business?

holy shit. i think i actually really enjoyed RISKY BUSINESS. i was going to slap it into a recent watching blog entry but i realized that it was way too interesting to NOT write about.

risky business is of course, tom cruise's breakout role. he stars as a straight laced teen caught up in a frenzy of sex and hijinks when he gets a call girl (with heart of gold) and ends running a brothel in his house to pay for repairs to his father's porsche he incurred whilst trying to get a crystal egg back from said call girl with heart of gold. (its an 80s comedy, of course its plot is ridiculously convoluted). sunglasses, bob seger, booger from the nerds movies, rebecca demornay's breastsm, and balki from perfect strangers all costar.

this wasnt a good movie. not by any means. it was a seminal 80s film though. the term seminal 80s film means that good taste does not apply. these films are supposed to be cheesy and have generally awful acting but should be at least enjoyable to watch (kelly lebrock in weird science was robotic even for a robot!). its like the rest of the world in the 1980s said to the US, 'dont worry about acting well, we will take it from here.' (comedy at least).

why did i enjoy risky business? i think it comes down to two things:

- curtis 'booger' armstrong
- the 'hey! turning my house into a brothel is totally making money' montage sequence
- rebecca demornay sex scenes, which i will sub-break down into the two

sex scene 1 - she enters the house
awesome things:
- the wind machine blown curtains (seriously, was that a tornado going on?)
- the fact that if not for tom cruise, it could very well be the red shoe diaries

sex scene 2 - the subway fuck scene
awesome things
- was that in the air tonight by phil collins that set the mood?
- seriously, is that a song about a child drowning another child to get hot young people fucking?

in each scene, there is ever present moaning saxophone which was perhaps the #1 most aphrodisiac between the years of 1978 and 1991. when i was being conceived i can only hope that there was a live saxophone player playing passionate whole notes in the background.

i am continually amazing by which films end up leaving an impact. perhaps im not the elitist i thought i am.

i guess sometimes you just need to say, 'what the fuck.'

dont rate a movie before youve seen it...

when i started ticking movies off the list of bests website a years ago, i ticked off some films and rated them as 'worth or not worth consuming' before i had actually seen them. i didnt want to bother watching deliverance or the elephant man. as it turns out, i had confused the elephant man with mask (which i still maintain im not going to bother with) and deliverane with a gay porn (there is only one scene of sodomy! not the whole thing). when THE RIGHT STUFF popped up on the theyshootpictures top 1000, i ticked it as not worth consuming. i reasoned that i watched it at some point or at least parts of it. i had not. and when i watched it today i realized that the entire simpsons episode where homer goes into space was a big homage to it. in reality i confused the right stuff as a movie about dancing or music not a sweeping biopic of NASA from its infancy to the first space missions. im glad i finally watched it. it was quite good. the source material was a thom wolfe book, who is definetely one of my favorite authors of all time. and the film was a bit long, it was without a question worth consuming.

i learned some things about the space program

a. not all the monkeys sent it space were killed. one came back!

b. the eary astronauts were hot shot flyboys

c. ed harris probably never had hair

what did i learn about the movie the right stuff?

a. it was a film about music, dancing, or sports

a part 2. it is not a film about new kids on the block

b. not all epic movies from the 80s were duds

c. oh oh ooooooh oh oh oh oh oooooooh oh ...the right stuff

so, i learned a lesson today about life and about the space program. successful day overall