Terrific films on DVD & video ... Any suggestions?

Lightwizard

Are you suggesting that lots of people actually LIKED this film?
I didn't think that was possible.

It was nominated for the Oscar and Nicholas Cage also was nominated. It did good box office for its kind of film and got good critical response. That's why I was questioning whether this should be in a recommendation thread.

lightwizard

Good grief! I had no idea! And i'm astonished. I found it far fetched & very pretentious. I chose it knowing nothing at all about it.

Gosh, Lightwizard, you're right! I just checked. Goodness me!

ADAPTATION
**** (R)


December 20, 2002


Charlie/Donald Kaufman: Nicolas Cage
Susan Orlean: Meryl Streep
John Laroche: Chris Cooper
Valerie: Tilda Swinton
Robert McKee: Brian Cox
Amelia: Cara Seymour
Caroline: Maggie Gyllenhaal


Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Spike Jonze. Written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. Based on the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated R (for language, sexuality, some drug use and violent images). Opening today at local theaters.


BY ROGER EBERT

What a bewilderingly brilliant and entertaining movie this is--a confounding story about orchid thieves and screenwriters, elegant New Yorkers and scruffy swamp rats, truth and fiction. "Adaptation" is a movie that leaves you breathless with curiosity, as it teases itself with the directions it might take. To watch the film is to be actively involved in the challenge of its creation.

It begins with a book titled The Orchid Thief, based on a New Yorker article by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). She writes about a Florida orchid fancier named John Laroche (Chris Cooper), who is the latest in a long history of men so obsessed by orchids that they would steal and kill for them. Laroche is a con man who believes he has found a foolproof way to poach orchids from protected Florida Everglades; since they were ancestral Indian lands, he will hire Indians who can pick the orchids with impunity.

Now that story might make a movie, but it's not the story of "Adaptation." As the film opens, a screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) has been hired to adapt the book, and is stuck. There is so much about orchids in the book, and no obvious dramatic story line. Having penetrated halfway into the book myself, I understood his problem: It's a great story, but is it a movie?

Charlie is distraught. His producer, Valerie (Tilda Swinton), is on his case. Where is the first draft? He hardly has a first page. He relates his agony in voiceover, and anyone who has ever tried to write will understand his system of rewards and punishments: Should he wait until he has written a page to eat the muffin, or ...

Charlie has a brother named Donald (also played by Cage). Donald lacks Charlie's ethics, his taste, his intelligence. He cheerfully admits that all he wants to do is write a potboiler and get rich. He attends the screenwriting seminars of Robert McKee (Brian Cox), who breaks down movie classics, sucks the marrow from their bones and urges students to copy the formula. At a moment when Charlie is suicidal with frustration, Donald triumphantly announces he has sold a screenplay for a million dollars.

What is Charlie to do? To complicate matters, he has developed a fixation, even a crush, on Susan Orlean. He journeys to New York, shadows her, is too shy to meet her. She in turn goes to Florida to interview Laroche, who smells and smokes and has missing front teeth, but whose passion makes him ... interesting.

And now my plot description will end, as I assure you I have not even hinted at the diabolical developments still to come. "Adaptation" is some kind of a filmmaking miracle, a film that is at one and the same time (a) the story of a movie being made, (b) the story of orchid thievery and criminal conspiracies, and (c) a deceptive combination of fiction and real life. The movie has been directed by Spike Jonze, who with Charlie Kaufman as writer made "Being John Malkovich," the best film of 1999. If you saw that film, you will (a) know what to expect this time, and (b) be wrong in countless ways.

There are real people in this film who are really real, like Malkovich, Jonze, John Cusack and Catherine Keener, playing themselves. People who are real but are played by actors, like Susan Orlean, Robert McKee, John Laroche and Charlie Kaufman. People who are apparently not real, like Donald Kaufman, despite the fact that he shares the screenplay credit. There are times when we are watching more or less exactly what must (or could) have happened, and then a time when the film seems to jump the rails and head straight for the swamps of McKee's theories.

During all of its dazzling twists and turns, the movie remains consistently fascinating not just because of the direction and writing, but because of the lighthearted darkness of the performances. Chris Cooper plays a con man of extraordinary intelligence, who is attractive to a sophisticated New Yorker because he is so intensely himself in a world where few people are anybody. Nicolas Cage, as the twins, gets so deeply inside their opposite characters that we can always tell them apart even though he uses no tricks of makeup or hair. His narration creates the desperate agony of a man so smart he understands his problems intimately, yet so neurotic he is captive to them.

Now as for Meryl Streep, well, it helps to know (since she plays in so many serious films) that in her private life she is one of the merriest of women, because here she is able to begin as a studious New Yorker author and end as, more or less, Katharine Hepburn in "The African Queen."

I sat up during this movie. I leaned forward. I was completely engaged. It toyed with me, tricked me, played straight with me, then tricked me about that. Its characters are colorful because they care so intensely; they are more interested in their obsessions than they are in the movie, if you see what I mean. And all the time, uncoiling beneath the surface of the film, is the audacious surprise of the last 20 minutes, in which--well, to say the movie's ending works on more than one level is not to imply it works on only two.
~

I, too, was bewildered but entertained by the complexity of the characters. I watched it a second time and liked it more. I don't know what you found pretentious in the film -- it thought it was on a small scale without any affectations. But, to each his own.

Lightwizard

I guess in my very tired state last night I found the whole thing very contrived.

I've been that way with many films I've seen for the first time -- it's more that I'm not in the mood to get involved with the film's characters and, in this case, the characters are only likable in their likable dysfunction. I found the intergral underlining love of the brothers for each other to be heartfelt and not obvious or maudlin. I tried to watch a Kurosawa last week after many years, "The Hidden Fortress" which "Star Wars" was based on and I must have been tired because I was totally bored. With "Adaptation" it is not a film for everybody -- it examines human relationships that gets a little to close for comfort in my estimation. It was kind of like watching an accident happening and you're unable to look away.

Lightwizard

Perhaps I should view it again when less tired & jaded?

It's a difficult film to get into and become really involved. I was more enthralled watching it the second time because I was really concentrating on the interaction of the two brothers. The dialogue is really quite good -- very realistic in my book.

(And a little painful to absorb the sadness in the one brother's heart).

I found it really hard to accept the remaining brother's "recovery" at the end of the film, given his obvious closeness with his twin. Also found the decision to kill the Cage charecter by Meryl Streep very hard to accept, apparently because he had gotten to the truth of her real nature & might expose this to scrutiny & ruin her reputation.

The Meryl Streep character is not playing with a full deck -- I think she has one foot in the asylum door. Her paranoia was leaving her out in a netherworld you or I would definitely not want to vist.

Yes, indeed! But the dramatic change so quickly!

It was meant to pull the rug out from under you, much like the almost metaphysical message from the sky in "Magnolia." You really didn't expect or know how unbalanced the Meryl Streep character was -- her obsession was herself and how she could make her life right. It would only work with this sudden jolt of revelation that she should go ahead and commit the murder. It did send chills up my spine. I don't know how anyone could keep from tearing up when the brother who hadn't a clue where he stood with his now dead brother realizes what has just transpired and had what I can only call an epiphany. Of course, in the novel it didn't seem as abrupt.

(You only have two hours to tell the tale in a movie -- well, maybe 3 hours and 40 minutes like the extended version of "The Two Towers," but talk about a lot to get across there!)

Thanks for taking the time to explain another response to this film, Lightwizard. Much appreciated. Another viewing, later, I think ...

You know, I've said it recently -- some just connect with a film and some the film has problems grabbing hold. I really did appreciate the acting even if I didn't start unraveling what was happening on the screen. A lot of undertow stuff that can be uncomfortable to witness.

Amandla! A Revolution In Four Part Harmony
Directed by Lee Hirsch

MsOlga -- I saw this on DVD last night. It won the 2002 Sundance Audience Award for Dramatic Documentary. Highly recommended for the music and for the history. You'll come away with a sense of awe.

Hello Piffka!

Actually I recently noticed that one advertised at a couple of art house cinemas here in Melbourbe. As soon as I finish this load of reports I MUST complete I'll try to get to see it. Thanks for the suggestion. Sounds good!

Hi MsOlga! I guess the Australian market is different from the U.S.'s for which films are on video. Hope you like that African one. In a way... I guess because it was political, it was like Bowling for Columbine, which is also out on video here (and v.good).

Another film I enjoyed on DVD recently was Bend It Like Beckham. (Hot, Hot, Hot* and lots of fun.)


*quoted from the film