Storm’s blowing in, finals are blowing over, and Bwog movie maven Mark Hay has a few cinematic choices to accompany these first flakes of snow.

Something about the vintage and the slightly outdated social norms of these films make them an endearing accompaniment to any night of cocoa and candy canes.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

The film opens with two American soldiers stranded at sea after being hit by a German torpedo. Recovering in a Navy hospital, one of the soldiers, Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) begins to romance his nurse, Mary Lee (Joyce Compton) to get some solid food for a change. His plot works too well and she prepares to marry him, so he uses his uncouth history in the Navy as an excuse – he would be a terrible husband and could not appreciate a woman’s orderly home. Distraught, Mary Lee appeals to old acquaintance and publisher Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet) to rope his Martha Stewart-esque columnist into allowing Jones to spend Christmas on her Connecticut farm. Yardley agrees and decides to go himself. Only problem being that the columnist, Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) can’t cook, can’t clean, and doesn’t live on a Connecticut farm with her husband and child. Fearing for her career, she agrees to marry the somewhat sleazy John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner) to use his place to perpetuate her lie – but upon meeting Jones, it’s love at first sight. Whatever shall a girl do?

A film doused in saccharine sweetness and overplayed black-and-white characters and storylines, to be sure. It lays the glorification of the housewife a little bit strong at times, but with just enough tongue-in-cheek humor to be palatable. But some of the scenes at such a time as this become more heartwarming and seasonally appropriate than hackneyed. After all, at this time of year, can’t we all just for a moment suspend our snark and cynicism and enjoy a good wintery love story?

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The semester is drawing to a close and it is time to squeeze the last drops of fun from our ragged lives before being sent back to the grind of finals. But the guilt of shirking our studies for a moment or two of revelry weighs heavily upon us. This is a time at which slacking off can only be justified if it has the faint hint of highbrow studies to it. So this week, Movie Magnate Mark Hay is giving you a large dose of culture in your film choices with three fabulous adaptations of the classics of Shakespeare. Watch them, waste time, and feel good about yourself.

Throne of Blood (1957)

Something in the character of feudal Japan, or at least Kurosawa’s image of feudal Japan, lends itself to Shakespearian tragedy. The only way to describe it may be through the image of Japanese sword fighting, as explained to me once by a practitioner of Kendo. Many other styles of fighting are clumsy – full of rage and full of change, injury, and drawn-out, exhausting melee. But in a traditional duel between two Japanese sword fighters, their tools are so sharp and their bodies so exposed that the entire thing will be over in one swoop. There are no second chances. So the duel becomes a dance of stoic faces, gracefully drifting back and forth, hiding the building fear and tension, the boiling rage, and subverting it all into the search for their opening with one eye, for their death with the other. And it all explodes in one moment of loud fury.

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Perhaps disheartened, always undaunted: Mark Hay returns with this week’s movie picks.

So it would appear that the Manhattanville development project has hit a little snag this past week. And, coincidentally, that your reviewer has hit a few snags in his life as well. So this week, Bwog celebrates the unexpected hitches in life – flying by the seat of your pants, not really knowing if you are or aren’t in control, and just praying to make it unscathed from day to day – with three movies of struggles and hitches.

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

What was for director Werner Herzog a tragedy and a flirtation with insanity has become one of the most enduring representations of mankind’s maddening challenges to nature and his losses along the way. Because of Herzog’s obsession with faithful recreations and displays, his dedication to on-location shooting, the filming of this project became the story it portrayed, and suffered along the way all the snags and snafus of its title character and more. A strange collision of location, director, character, and story turn what should be a passable and convoluted action story into a documentarian exploration of man versus wild – and the crushing reality of it is captivating. Read more…

Mark Hay woke up from his food coma to bring you this week’s movie picks.

On Thursday the bulk of the nation was out cold in a tryptophan-induced coma, dreaming the troubled dreams of the turkey. For Columbians, especially, these next few days – too short for real work, too long for real stress – are a time of relaxation and catching up on our backlog of snoozing. But in this sleep, what dreams may come? Asking this age-old Danish question, Bwog presents a list of three films about dreams – their mythology, their power, and their meaning (best when watched just before drifting off to la-la land).

Ink (2009)

A rare and unexpected treat for the discerning fantasy fiend, so long starved since the last Guillermo del Toro release, Ink is a surprising piece of whimsy and compassion coming from the rather obscure Denver-based writer and director Jamin Winans. Despite a minimal budget, Winans creates a stark and disturbing world just past the veil of sleep, replete with a strong mythology, but avoids the blatant explanations and voice-overs that usually mar such intricate worlds. Nor does he insult the viewer by revealing too much of his plot, by illuminating the connections, at any one time. Instead the viewer lands directly and at full tilt into a disorienting parallel universe and must, by the power of their own intellect, piece together the bits of the story and the mythology of this dreamscape – and the revelations do not disappoint.

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Resident Movies ‘n’ Mashed Potatoes Machine Mark Hay is back with three films to enjoy in that post-turkey stupor.

Thanksgiving approaches quickly and many of you will be returning to your families. Bwog sympathizes with those of you who will be returning to dysfunction, disorder and other such unpleasantness. So in the spirit of the holiday, Bwog presents a list of three great Thanksgiving movies – two of which feature a pre-Tom Cruise insanity Katie Holmes. Oh, the good old days.

The Ice Storm (1997)

This Thanksgiving, when you feel the dysfunction of your family dawning upon you, watch Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and give thanks that (one would hope) your family is not such a frigid caricature of searching boredom and impending self-implosion as the two in this film. Set in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the confusing aftermath of the sexual revolution, Lee’s melancholic family portrait depicts the self-serving quests of many individuals lost in a new world. These bumbling and broken individuals, forced together by the promise of turkey and gravy, crash into each other, shaking the brittle crystal of their strained lives and initiating the inevitable explosion that accompanies any family reunion.

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Movie Man Mark Hay is back, with a vengeance.

A few days ago, a Columbia professor up and decked a female co-worker in the face. Totally uncalled for, totally unexpected, and totally scintillating violence. Somehow, as a result, your reviewer has spent the past week arguing the relative merits of violence in film and the qualifications of what makes a good gore-fest with just about anyone who will hear him out. And thus Bwog presents a list of films featuring totally unexpected violence, which are themselves totally unexpectedly good.

Murderball (2005)

If not for some explicit content, your reviewer would recommend that this film be shown in schools the nation over – it is one of the most handi-capable messages ever recorded to film. An unexpected treat shot on a low budget (and with a strange, but marvelous soundtrack) by directors Henry Rubin and Dana Shapiro, Murderball treats as its subjects a group of quadriplegic wheelchair-rugby (known as “murderball” for the utter brutality it involves) players and does so in a way that is absolutely non-exploitative. With the ideal bluntness and distance of a documentary, it explores every facet of handicapped life that one would fear to ask a stranger – sex, self-hatred, misery, phantom pain, and just getting around. But, as with most documentary gems, Murderball is most memorable for those human moments, transcending the sport and the facts of like without limbs, against all probability captured on film.

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Mark Hay may not be a native New Yorker, but he’s taking steps in the right direction.

Bloomberg wins New York. Sometimes it is hard to understand the city we live in. But certainly the last week, the introspection brought about by Bloomberg’s hegemony and victory, has given me the time to realize that, torn and confused as we are by this city, we cannot help but love it. So this week I honor New York City, despite mayor Bloomberg, with a love-letter to Woody Allen. I recognize that many movies could, and probably should, be put on a list of Allen, but I’ve specifically chosen his greatest love songs to New York City, our beautiful home.

Manhattan (1979)

The ultimate ode to New York, Manhattan backs almost all of its dialogue and human interaction with absolutely breathtaking, towering, and now iconic shots of the city. Without the cinematography of Gordon Willis – who, despite his focus on the urban over the human, does not drown out humanity, but rather melds it into the streets and bricks with perfect balance and accent – the film, for all the talents of Allen as a director, would be another notch of nothing on Allen’s bedpost. But likewise, without Allen’s characters and his knack (so strong during the late 1970s and 1980s) for a great story of snaking and seedy (but ultimately sympathetic) love, all of Willis’s work would amount to nothing more than a nice slideshow.

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It’s Halloween (cue spooky organ music riff du-da-duuuuuuu dudadalududu), so we all know what that means. Bwog’s Cinematic Summaries Bureau Chief Mark Hay is obligated by law (specifically, the infamous Carpathian Dracula Convention of 1935) to conjure up a spo-o-o-oky Halloween Netflix list, with  three spine-shivering tales of the supernatural. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

The Orphanage (2007)

The Orphanage is the final answer in the contest between dread and surprise. Director Juan Antonio Bayona has every opportunity to make his audience scream and bolt with a rush of adrenaline, and he knows it. He knows that his story, his imagery, and our horror film culture have all set us on the watch for the ghost or demon behind the stairs. We try to steel ourselves against it – but Bayona refuses to deliver it. Instead he favors slow, lightly eerie scenes, building a tie between audience and character, forcing the horror junkie to wait – holding his/her breath and chair with equal force. And then he delivers – and it will scare the daylights out of even the horror adept – and quickly sinks back into the walls, leaving you to wonder what just happened. Was it even real? Read more…

It’s another dark, grimy day in New York City, but Cinephile Extraordinaire Mark Hay thinks it’s a good night for a few sympathetically noir films.

Laura (1944)

Alright, so Laura isn’t exactly the pinnacle of noir. Rather than taking place on the grimy streets of New York, Otto Preminger limits the film to lavish penthouses. Instead of a bunch of grizzled informants and rough thugs, the majority of the films characters are rather floppy, upper-crusted dandies. But all that gilt and sheen just serves to hide the seedy motives, the greedy, hidden pleasure, of the proactive and powerful elite. It’s a fun experiment in noir without all the darkness and grime, all the overt symbolism and stock side characters, without all the, well, noir.

The story, though, maintains all the usually convolutions and crime of the average street-smart noir. We open with Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigating the death of the powerful and seductive advertising tycoon Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). McPherson goes by the book, grilling her mentor, the aging columnist (and the film’s narrator) Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), Laura’s fiancé, the pathetically blunt country-bumpkin Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), rich society Aunt Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), and a number of other equally blue-blooded and textbook individuals. But in the process of his investigations – reading her notes, smelling her perfume, sleeping in her bedroom – McPherson begins to fall in love with the deceased. Who, as it turns out, is not dead at all. Read more…

Yes, Mark Hay can!

This week the Senate Finance committee pushed out a neutered healthcare bill. And then thirty senators voted against a bill to block government contracts with companies that do not allow their employees to sue when raped by fellow employees. I guess last November’s hope water is wearing off, because it’s just getting harder and harder to stay optimistic. So, to give you a little political booster, here’s a list of Hope movies – the stories of a few men and a spoonful of justice standing up against injustice and illogical, greedy systems. It may not be realistic, but it’ll help to get you through another day.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

The ultimate Go America! film, Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington drips with the spirit of hope and change, yet it is not saccharine. Read more…

Bwog’s “surprised and humbled” film guy Mark Hay is back with this week’s movie recommendations.

So Obama got a Nobel Peace prize – how very strange. One might be tempted to say that the Norwegians are just trying to have a bit of fun at the expense of Americans by placing our wonderful, but rather green, president on a roster with such names as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Aung San Suu Kyi. Then again, if they can give the peace prize to Henry Kissinger, why should we be so surprised? Regardless, now that Obama has the honor, what should he do with it? What should we do with it? Here are three films about honors, deserved or otherwise, and the guilt and opportunity that they present, for better or for worse.

Barton Fink (1991)

Actually a side project of the Coen brothers during the writing and production of “Miller’s Crossing,” Barton Fink tells the tale of the young Broadway playwright (John Turturro), who, after early success with one great play, decides to cash in on his honors and sell out in Hollywood to finance a long artistic career. Read more…

Bwog’s Resident Deviant and Movie Master, Mark Hay, is back with this week’s film recommendations.

I was as surprised as anyone else to learn this Thursday that the beloved David Letterman does “terrible, terrible things.” What will happen to Letterman now that he has admitted to the depravities that most human beings keep locked away deep inside? I certainly don’t know, but to ponder that question (and in solidarity with Dave), I now presents three movies about the dirty, horrible, kinky things that people do and the ways in which these acts change their lives.

Magnolia (1999)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia is an epic of human nature. Unfolding over the course of one day in Los Angeles, the film consists of a series of roughly interlocking, but never clearly connected or sharply defined, episodes from the life of some-odd dozen people. In this world, there are three classes of people – the successful man full of regret for the evils he has committed, the abused children broken under the egos of their elders, and the tragic caregivers who hopelessly and suicidally attempt to rehabilitate child and elder alike.

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Bwog’s very own Christ-fearing cinephile Mark Hay is back (or resurrected, you might say) with this week’s film recommendations.

Bwog did not get a chance to talk with the Westboro Baptist protestors this Thursday – the police would not allow that simple liberty. Neither, one would expect, would these protestors have been willing or able to articulate themselves without some reference to Bwog as a godless heathen. Which is absolutely true, but one need not remind us constantly. It is in light of this inability to communicate with our dear Kansan friends that Bwog offers up three movies on religious extremism – one through the eyes of the believer, another the manipulator, and the last from the confused and out of place (just like us).

Jesus Camp (2006)

An astounding documentary by directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing in which the zealots get to speak their peace uninterrupted and unperturbed, “Jesus Camp” follows three devout Pentecostal evangelical children on their journey to and stay at Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire School and Ministry” in Devil’s Lake, ND. Read more…

In the name of frightening beginnings and questionable progress, Mark Hay, Bwog’s resident expert on movies, hotdogs, and the relations between the two, brings back his Netflix column with three film recommendations.

Would it be trite to use the start of the school year as the basis for a(nother) list of recommendations of coming-of-age films? Definitively, yes – but only so much as college life, for all its wonders, becomes horribly hackneyed all too soon. So instead of offering another veiled and self-indulgent reflection upon the new and exciting, here’s a list in honor of questionable progress. More specifically, here’s a list in honor of the sublime and awful glory that is the Lerner Hall Hotdog Machine and all the chance, turmoil, fear, and general existential crises that it undoubtedly represents.

 

Princess Mononoke (1997) 

 

It is hard to say which of Hayao Miyazaki’s achievements as a director/animator is more beautiful – his superlative animation or his rich and complex characters, simultaneously human and archetypal. Princess Mononoke carries through on all the promise of Miyazaki’s fanciful and blunt style, but it is the crowing achievement in his pursuit of morally conflicted characters, enabled in no small part by the chaos of the world they inhabit.

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Feeling broke?  Feeling angry?  Bwog’s Movie Marathon Man Mark Hay offers up three films about people who have even less money than you do.  Mmm…schadenfreude.

The Full Monty (1997)

The message of director Peter Cattaneo’s film wavers back and forth somewhat between a grim conclusion on the economic plight of the workingman and an uplifting assertion of man’s nature. On one side, Cattaneo’s Sheffield cannot support its population anymore and its citizens have been reduced to scavenging the corpses of their old workplaces. The characters in this film are all either desperate, deadbeats, or just defeated. Never does Cattaneo offer hope – there’s no economic stimulus cavalry charging into the pub after the men bare their bits to give them new jobs and resolve their crises. Their fate stays largely loose and dark. Read more…