Movies

Tom McCarthy's The Visitor is showing at the local arthouse theater here in SLC. I saw this at Sundance last year and really liked it. (See review.) McCarthy also did Station Agent, the fantastic film with Peter Dinklage which premiered at Sundance in 2003. The Visitor is his second directing effort, and a lovely, lilting story that I thought was beautiful. I highly recommend it.

I've been on a vintage movie DVD kick lately, when I've found the time. Last night it was The Court Jester, a 1956 light whimsical comedy starring Danny Kaye, but also featuring a young Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote) and Basil Rathbone (from the old Sherlock Holmes shows). If you can rise above the dated feel, it's really quite a delightful movie, with a fast-paced storyline, dialogue that is arousingly clever and fun, a truly impressive performance by Kaye and wonderfully vibrant period-piece costumes (it was the early days of Technicolor). Plus, it is just so completely wholesome and charming.

A few weeks ago I tried a Japanese classic, Akira Kurosawa's legendary Yojimbo, the 1961 samurai flick that glorified the indomitable and enigmatic lone warrior striding into town, and was the inspiration behind Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name and all the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. I'm not enough of a film connoisseur to fully appreciate Kurosawa's craftsmanship, but the movie had the feel of greatness. Most of today's movie-goers would probably not enjoy Yojimbo, but it felt like an integral part of my education in film history, that I was witnessing something important--like listening to Miles Davis in The Birth of Cool.

Last week it as another 50's DVD, Marty, starring the immensely talented Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. The movie received a number of academy award nominations, and Borgnine beat out James Dean for Best Actor. It was something of a revival role for Blair, the wife of Gene Kelly had been an emerging star until her left-leaning activism got her blacklisted in the 40's. But history aside-- Marty is a charming movie and a quaint romance, and the more I thought about it the more I appreciated it as a story well-told, yet grounded in reality.