Cover of Tadpole

There is fine acting from Bebe Neuwirth, John Ritter, Sigourney Weaver and the newcomer, Aaron Stanford.  There is a fairly funny and unpredictable script by Heather McGowan and Niels Muller.  Gary Winick‘s decision to shoot the film in DV is acceptable because Tadpole (2000) is, to use another critic’s proper adjective for it, unassuming.

Nevertheless, this Graduate-like film with a 15-year-old Benjamin and Neuwirth’s Mrs. Robinson would have been far better had the precocious boy (Stanford) not been in love, or “in love,” with his fiftyish stepmother (Weaver).  With Neuwirth the boy is not smitten; with his father’s wife he is.  It’s a sleazy and ill-fitting item.  It knifes the otherwise successful confection right in the back.

The characters in the new Japanese picture, Our Little Sister (proper title: Umimachi Diary), hold our attention, but I find the story mediocre because certain things are laid on so thickly (a now dead woman became involved with Sachi’s married father; now Sachi is involved with a married pediatrician).  In addition, the film is so humanistic—and finally so sentimental—that all the major characters are, or become, virtual saints.  It is as though every fault has melted away.  This is not the case with a great film like Ozu’s Tokyo Story, which I bring up since Sister resembles an Ozu production.

The movie is based on a comic-book novel which director Hirokazu Kore-da probably should have left alone.

Cover of Shopgirl

I’ve never read Steve Martin‘s novella Shopgirl, on which this 2008 film is based, but I mostly admire his script for the film—more than I do his wan acting.

Directed by Anand Tucker, Shopgirl stars Claire Danes as an L.A. sales clerk for Sak’s.  Lonely and sans a beau, she takes up with a near loser (Jason Schwartzman) whom she can’t possibly love.  By and by he changes for the better, but by then the Danes character, Mirabelle, has drifted into the arms of a friendly, fifty-something swell (Martin).  The swell is not quite the man for her, though, albeit Mirabelle decisively wants him.  But will she, can she, fall for Schwartzman too?

Martin’s little opus surveys the pleasure and heartache of love without mutual commitment, romance which is sexual but of limited potency.  Note how falling in love spurs Mirabelle to give up antidepressants, only to eventually find she still needs them irrespective of whether she has a beau or not. . .  A histrionic angel, Danes creates a tender Mirabelle, and Tucker makes sure she has presence.  There are shortcomings in the film, such as Martin’s unnecessary voiceover and the fact that the last sentence he speaks will not do.  But, too, it is feelingful and pleasantly Chekhovian.  And, yes, not very comedic but it doesn’t have to be.

Cover of Sudden Fear

Revived this month in a New York City theatre, the 1952 thriller Sudden Fear, by David Miller (who?), presents love being replaced by self-preservation, both belonging to Joan Crawford‘s Myra Hudson.  Myra adores, and marries, the unscrupulous actor Lester (Jack Palance) but he starts making out with an old flame (Gloria Grahame), who hatches the idea that the two of them should murder Myra for money.

It’s riveting stuff, nicely justifying its title.  With an often sweat-drenched face—playing an armed self-defender who does not want to kill—Crawford deepens the film.  And Palance and Grahame are not without their unique appeal.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There really isn’t much to Almodovar‘s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Atame! 1990) because it exists only to be daring or—if you will—transgressive, not to convey a shared vision of life.  It is also decidedly politically incorrect, which is okay by me, since it deals with a woman (a porn star played by Victoria Abril) who falls in love with her unstable kidnapper (and would-be husband, played by Antonio Banderas).

Abril doesn’t quite convince me as a porn star and a drug addict, but it hardly matters:  her acting is excellent.  It isn’t her fault that her taking up with the kidnapper is a rather hard sell.  Tie Me Up! may be rated NC17 for its sex and nudity, but it is utterly minor, if beguiling (or seductive).  And, no, the Abril character does not really care about religion.

(In Spanish with English subtitles)