Vance-11 Reviews

Gray's Anatomy (1996)

A one-man bundle of neuroses

[7/10 · 21 November 2000]

But that's why some people love Spalding Gray. And although I do not fall into that category, per se, I was very entertained by this 80-minute monologue -- told in ranting New Yorker mannerisms that are nonetheless fairly endearing -- about what Gray should do about his macular pucker.

The macular pucker, we learn in great detail, is an eye condition that must ultimately be "scraped" in order to restore normal vision. Gray, a born Christian Scientist and an enduring doctor-phobe, walks around New York City, tearing his hair out while choosing among the opinions of an array of quacks who weigh in on the issue. (Or, at least, he describes himself doing this -- the whole film is a series of closeups of Gray in a studio, with various visual stimuli applied to him, through the wonderful direction of the visionary Steven Soderbergh). Through the course of the narrative he describes near-slapstick visits to a Native American sweat lodge, a Phillipino doctor who is the Elvis of healers, a quirky New Jersey "dietary opthalmologist" and several others. It's all told with great storytelling verve, and occasional moments of poignancy.

The film also consists of a series of short documentary interviews with about 8 survivors of eye trauma, who each nearly lost (or in some cases did) vision in stomach-churning ways. Their occasional thoughts on the healing process are very fascinating.

Because of its odd structural format, the one-man narrative film threatens to fall by the wayside. Not that it has ever been a particularly popular form, but its appeal is perhaps dwindling further as our attention spans, and ability to sit through prolonged stories, deteriorate. However, Gray, with a boost from Soderbergh, gives the genre a good name -- and hope

Ulee's Gold (1997)

Deflated dignity at its finest

[9/10 · 30 August 2000]

There's something about the world-weary way that Peter Fonda's

Ulee Jackson peels his spectacles off his face that makes this

one of the more indelible acting performances in recent memory.

In creating a character of quiet, bruised dignity, who wants to

do the right thing despite no longer having the energy or joie

de vive necessary for the performance, Fonda has justified every

award for which he was nominated. He pays close attention to the

kind of details that comprise a real character, and the flexible

arms of Ulee's glasses -- which give enough to let him pull them

around the side of one ear, and ultimately off the face -- are

just one of many traits that make Ulee truly come to life. It's

a credit also to Victor Nunez, who picked just the right actor

to embody a widowed beekeeper who looks like he'd like to sleep

for about the next week-and-a-half.

"Gold" follows Ulee and his two granddaughters over a difficult

week, which begins with Ulee getting an emergency phone call

from his imprisoned son and ends with him fishing a cooler full

of money out of a Florida swamp while held at gunpoint by two

thugs. What's worse is that it's the height of honey season, and

Ulee is under contract to produce 30 barrels of the thick amber

liquid he extracts from his many hives. His mentally unstable

daughter-in-law, Helen, has turned up after a long and painful

drug trip, and it's two of his son's former cohorts who have

made the phone call reporting her condition. The problem is, in

her condition, she let slip information that her husband, Ulee's

son, has a trove of cash hidden somewhere, which he stashed

prior to his own arrest for the most recent job the crew carried

out. They escaped capture, and now they want the money.

Meanwhile, Ulee has enough on his hands with the tupelo honey,

the rebellious teenage granddaughter (Jessica Biel of "Seventh

Heaven" and Gear Magazine), and a second granddaughter still too

young to stay home alone. Plus, his back is killing him, and he

still hasn't recovered six years after the death of his wife. In

a way, he still hasn't recovered from surviving Vietnam, when

many of his contemporaries didn't. Only his kind neighbor Connie

(Home Improvement's Patricia Richardson) provides any relief

whatsoever.

If this sounds like more contrivances than you'd generally care

to see in a movie that's mostly about people -- bank robberies?

gun-carrying thugs? -- rest assured that Victor Nunez, the

director, handles the material with such subtle, intimate style

that the movie avoids any tendency to gravitate toward cliche.

Truly, it's like nothing you've seen before, and it's the sad,

stoic, dignified performance of Fonda that grounds this work.

It's a movie of sometimes loud subject matter, but one that's

Ulee's Gold (1997)

Deflated dignity at its finest

[9/10 · 30 August 2000]

There's something about the world-weary way that Peter Fonda's

Ulee Jackson peels his spectacles off his face that makes this

one of the more indelible acting peformances in recent memory.

In creating a character of quiet, bruised dignity, who wants to

do the right thing despite no longer having the energy or joie

de vive necessary for the performance, Fonda has justified every

award for which he was nominated. He pays close attention to the

kind of details that comprise a real character, and the flexible

arms of Ulee's glasses -- which give enough to let him pull them

around the side of one ear, and ultimately off the face -- are

just one of many traits that make Ulee truly come to life. It's

a credit also to Victor Nunez, who picked just the right actor

to embody a widowed beekeeper who looks like he'd like to sleep

for about the next week-and-a-half.

"Gold" follows Ulee and his two granddaughters over a difficult

week, which begins with Ulee getting an emergency phone call

from his imprisoned son and ends with him fishing a cooler full

of money out of a Florida swamp while held at gunpoint by two

thugs. What's worse is that it's the height of honey season, and

Ulee is under contract to produce 30 barrels of the thick amber

liquid he extracts from his many hives. His mentally unstable

daughter-in-law, Helen, has turned up after a long and painful

drug trip, and it's two of his son's former cohorts who have

made the phone call reporting her condition. The problem is, in

her condition, she let slip information that her husband, Ulee's

son, has a trove of cash hidden somewhere, which he stashed

prior to his own arrest for the most recent job the crew carried

out. They escaped capture, and now they want the money.

Meanwhile, Ulee has enough on his hands with the tupelo honey,

the rebellious teenage granddaughter (Jessica Biel of "Seventh

Heaven" and Gear Magazine), and a second granddaughter still too

young to stay home alone. Plus, his back is killing him, and he

still hasn't recovered six years after the death of his wife. In

a way, he still hasn't recovered from surviving Vietnam, when

many of his contemporaries didn't. Only his kind neighbor Connie

(Home Improvement's Patricia Richardson) provides any relief

whatsoever.

If this sounds like more contrivances than you'd generally care

to see in a movie that's mostly about people -- bank robberies?

gun-carrying thugs? -- rest assured that Victor Nunez, the

director, handles the material with such subtle, intimate style

that the movie avoids any tendency to gravitate toward cliche.

Truly, it's like nothing you've seen before, and it's the sad,

stoic, dignified performance of Fonda that grounds this work.

It's a movie of sometimes loud subject matter, but one that's

Godspell (1973)

Overly pious, toe-tapping frivolity

[6/10 · 30 August 2000]

If you're going into "Godspell" looking for another "Jesus

Christ Superstar" -- as I was -- you are bound to be disappointed. While both revel in their 1970s aura, and both

display undeniably hippie tendencies, "Godspell" manages to

convince you it's really about religion, while "JC Superstar"

has a greater tendency to explore the frailties of human beings,

without the piousness of quoting chapter and verse, as

"Godspell" does so overtly. In other words, "Superstar" is great

musical theater, with stirring songs to accompany one of the

world's great dramatic stories. "Godspell" is a bit more like

going to church.

David Greene's take on the musical by Stephen Schwartz starts

well enough. It's an incredible dose of hippie wish fulfillment

as nine troubled New Yorkers, each of whom desires to break out

of the humdrum qualities of workaday existence, are lured away

from their frustrating 9 to 5 tasks to a fountain in Central

Park. Their Pied Piper is John the Baptist (David Haskell), who

appears in full hippie regalia, a briefly flashing illusion to

the nine, tooting his flute in an attempt to call them away. At

the fountain, they rush through the cool water in a symbolic

baptism. Then, appearing from some other place altogether, is

Jesus (Victor Garber), the last to take baptism from John, and

the first to lead them through the city to an old junkyard,

where they dress up like hooligans and paint each other's faces.

It's a nice idea, dropping everything you have to do and

stepping outside proper society to sing and dance with kindred

spirits. But the "plot," as it were, soon becomes tedious, as

the group -- employing all manner of goofy expressions and

cartoon voices -- begin acting out parables from the book of

Matthew, with Garber's Jesus there to correct them at any moment

they threaten to go astray, and with a different familiar New

York City setting as a backdrop for each parable. With the

possible exception of chronological Biblical order, there's

neither rhyme, reason nor logical progression to their skits,

and the viewer soon finds himself looking at the clock and

calculating how much time might be remaining.

The action eventually culminates in a last supper and crucifixion sequence back at the junkyard, with John the Baptist

inexplicably stepping into the role of Judas. This signal that

the credits might soon role is, unfortunately, a welcome one.

However, Schwartz's songs are certainly catchy, and they will

stick with you afterward, most notably "Day by Day," which I'm

told won some awards. While the score does not, I think, rival

"Superstar"'s either, it might come close if it were not in the

service of such unabashedly Christian material. While I don't

know what Schwartz's particular religious agenda was, I'd like

to think he could have inserted more of an arched eyebrow at the

proceedings. If you're talking about John the Baptist, isn't it

more fun to use a line like Andrew Lloyd Webber's from

"Superstar": "Like John was when John did his baptism thing."

But I suppose there are many reactions to Greene's approach,

depending on your own level of religious fervor. Mine just

happens to be pretty low. "Godspell" works on enough levels to

recommend it, but its relentless high-mindedness keeps it from

ever ascending to the heights of "Superstar," to

Dear God (1996)

Starts awfully, then improves measurably

[5/10 · 27 January 2000]

"Dear God" is the rare example of a movie that starts abysmally but slowly gains its stride. Most films these days are the opposite. They grab you right off, then run out of steam. To be fair, "Dear God" never fully grabs you or has much steam. But it gets to the point where it becomes worth watching, eliciting several pleased chuckles, while still falling far short of out-and-out funny.

Greg Kinnear plays a two-bit hustler whose honest face and convincing stories allow him to con working joes out of their money. He has a gambling debt to repay to Junior, an overweight thug who teaches him a lesson or two about horses and stables at a disastrous visit to the track. Kinnear's Tom Turner is arrested while trying to scam two undercover cops disguised as foreign sight-seers, and in a ridiculous plot convenience, is sentenced to find a paying job for one year. Most criminals should be so lucky. But of course, Turner has that honest face.

Anyway, he ends up at the post office, where he's assigned to a dead letter office filled with whacko postal cast-offs, played with sufficient nuttiness by Laurie Metcalf, Jon Seda and Tim Conway, among others. Conway's character once memorized the entire layout of the city of L.A., but was demoted when he lost it and bit a dog. Metcalf plays a former lawyer who needed a "less stressful" job. You get the idea.

Through a series of accidents, this motley crew begins answering letters to God, and, through their limited means, they begin making minor miracles happen throughout L.A. The press picks up on it, which draws the attention of the U.S. Postmaster General (played with his usual rabid energy by the director, Garry Marshall), and brings heat on the do-gooder crew, whose activities are technically illegal. (Opening the mail is a federal offense). Meanwhile, Kinnear's Turner remains on the run from the gangsters and tries to woo a single mother played by the adorable Maria Pitillo, whose character has no function in this film other than as a weak romantic interest.

Extraordinarily lame-brained from the get-go, "Dear God" actually gets on course, as the relative uniqueness of its storyline manifests itself in some sweet, quiet moments, and as the ensemble group of veteran actors really begins to relish their roles. Metcalf is always funny, although she's a little over the top here, and Kinnear is notable for his ability to play a likeable everyman. Conway has a very-funny apology scene with a dog and is otherwise likeable in his eccentricity.

The movie ultimately only reaches the level of so-so -- but I guess the fact that I felt compelled to write about it means that it made some impact on me, and that I can marginally recommend it. 5 out 10.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

The ultimate ensemble of today's finest actors

[10/10 · 21 September 1999]

When I ran into Al Pacino in the streets of New York the other day, and wanted to say something memorable to him, the first thing that came to mind was "'Glengarry Glen Ross' is one of my favorite movies!" (Later on I kicked myself for not praising a film closer to his heart, the outstanding documentary "Looking for Richard").

Pacino is just one reason this film is among the best showcases of superior acting we have. It was Pacino who was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar, but the most vibrantly desperate actor in this film full of end-of-their-rope flunkies is Jack Lemmon, never better than here, as a true Willy Loman type driven to contemplate serious crimes by his desire to move up the sales ladder at cost-cutting real estate brokerage. He must fend off Pacino, an intense Ed Harris and a cowering Alan Arkin. The winner gets a car, the runner up a set of steak knives. "Third place is your fired," shouts Alec Baldwin, in his most intense screen performance, as part of a brilliant diatribe in which he eviscerates and emasculates the underachieving salesmen.

Add Kevin Spacey and David Pryce to this marvelous cast, who get to speak some of the best lines David Mamet ever committed to paper, and you've got an intensely satisfying tour-de-force that's constantly riveting, despite the fact that the locale rarely shifts from the office and a nearby bar. Some movies written by Mamet are stultifying, since all the parts must perfectly blend for an audience to appreciate a filmed play. ("American Buffalo," despite the presence of Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, is one of the worst sleep-inducers out there).

But "Glengarry Glen Ross" is not for a moment dull, so colorful are the ideas of alienation and desperation, and so verdant is the dialogue, chock-full of perfectly intoned f-words. Baldwin's 15-minute monologue -- his only scene -- is the stand-out sequence, but Pacino also does a so-smooth-it's-chilling monologue with Pryce, the sweating potential customer wooed by Pacino's Ricky Roma, the current sales leader. Spacey, in one of his first prominent roles, plays a rule-enforcing office manager who absorbs insults like a battered sponge; Harris and Arkin sweat and kvetch aggressively and passively, respectively; and Lemmon is simply transcendent as he stammers toward his inevitable fate.

The ensemble effect is simply smoldering. Go rent "Glengarry Glen Ross."

Bound (1996)

See "The Matrix" directors in their true prime

[10/10 · 20 September 1999]

"The Matrix" is quite a good movie, but its writer-directors shine much more brightly in 1996's "Bound," one of the decade's smartest and most interesting-looking films. Surely one of the more unique "mob" movies in existence, "Bound" is chock full of characters who get themselves in and out of impossible situations with quick thinking that never strains credibility. One of the most smartly- and tensely-plotted movies I've seen, "Bound" also features the Wachowski brothers' unique artistic "look," including camerawork that anticipates the freeze-and-rotate of "The Matrix" (first seen in those Gap ads).

All "Matrix" fans should check out this brilliant precursor, which features better work by Matrix villain Joe Pantoliano, as the beleagured gangster who gets framed by his girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly) and her lover (Gina Gershon) as he's trying to clean $2.2 million in blood-stained bills. The film takes unpredictable twists that keep it an edge-of-your-seater throughout, and Tilly and Pantoliano, particularly, are brilliant.

Is almost as groundbreaking (if woefully underseen) a film about underworld types as "Pulp Fiction," and just as smart.