So, writing about a movie star when they die isn’t exactly my thing, but Brittany Murphy dying got to me. And I wouldn’t write about it at all except that through random trolling for movies with Melissa, I saw a few of her lesser known movies that were interesting. To wit:

Sidewalks of New York was Ed Burns’ auteur turn as the post-milleneal answer to Woody Allen. Watchable but not fantastic. Murphy is decent and better than just watchable. She has a face that’s like a CNN crawl of her thoughts, and she’s a good enough actress that her thoughts when in front of the camera are what her character would be thinking.

In Ramen Girl, she plays an American girl stranded in Japan, who, for reasons not readily apparent to me, decides she must learn to become a Ramen Master. This was, I think, a movie originally for Japanese audiences (with Brittany’s English in subtitles) that got language-inverted and sent straight to DVD. She seems a little too gobsmacked and weepy in this movie, but she did her best to make an actual character out of a dishrag of a caricature. This reminded me of Tampopo, which had its basis in the same Japanese in-joke: Americans take at face value the reverence for ramen in the movie, but to a Japanese audience this is ridiculous — Ramen is fast food, and becoming a Ramen master is a little like becoming a French Fry master at Burger King.

The Dead Girl in which she plays the title role, is a movie that tells the story of a murder as the story of the people around the event. Murphy is only in the last segment, detailing her last day as a prostitute trying to deliver her child a birthday present, and of these three movies, this one is the best performance.

I’m sure in coming days we’ll find out all sorts of tawdry details of how she died, her less salubrious proclivities, her schlubby husband, etc. But for now I think it’s worth reflecting on her work, which on the whole was really good. A lot of mention has also been made of her voice work; her Luanne on “King of the Hill” was peerless. And if you peruse her filmography there is ample evidence (she worked A LOT) that she was without fear when choosing roles — she’d try anything once.

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.

I watched this the other night, and I found it … puzzling? It seems like alternating scenes — old lady losing her mind, kate winslet gets naked, rinse and repeat. Alzheimers, boobs, Alzheimers, boobs… but though I got what they were trying to do, it just seemed really disjointed and sketchy.

In the process, it pretty much tells you nothing at all about Iris Murdoch. And Jim Broadbent won for a grand job done as Iris Murdoch’s husband who nursed her in her latter years, but … he dodders, he stutters. So … he won an Oscar!

I’m sorry, but some movies try too hard to be serious, and forget to be satisfying entertainments. Sometimes even Kate Winslet getting naked isn’t enough.

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.

We watched this the other night, and it’s a complete piece of crap, but honestly I loved every minute of it. It’s about an Englishman, George Hogg, who was in China during the Japanese invasion before World War II, who ends up running an orphanage for young boys. It’s based on a true story.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays Charles Hogg, and Radha Mitchell plays Lee Pearson, a nurse of sorts. Leaving aside the fact that the movie white-washes Hoggs’ commitment to Communism, this film is marred by some of the worst dialog I’ve ever heard, and Meyers’ delivery of such claptrap as though it was Hamlet’s soliloquy is howlingly bad.

It reminded me of the animated Beowulf, that I saw the last night I was in Berlin. I should have seen it in German, which would have improved on the frightful script. “Huang Shi” would have been improved by being unintelligible. Not the least because the movie is visually beautfiul, and like every movie I’ve seen that features it, makes me want to visit rural China. The acting of the Chinese boys is so much better than the Hollywood stars they surround, not that Meyers and Mitchell are given much to work with.

The best part of the movie for me was the end, which features interviews with some of the boys from Hogg’s school. Their real-life admiration and gratitude to a man who saved their lives only underlines the tin ear of this movie’s writers. And it underlines what a great story the movie has to tell. Too bad it tells a different story entirely, and does so badly.

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.

Nothing Personal is on Encore, and it’s fucking insane. The description in the tv guide: “Donald Sutherland and Suzanne Somers vs. a giant corporation killing baby seals.”

With a tagline like that how can you resist? And if that doesn’t get you excited, it also has Dabney Coleman, Catherine O’Hara, and Roscoe Lee Browne. Those 3 are the the utility infielders of 80s and 90s cinema — rarely the star, but in dozens of movies and tv shows.

And what other movie has Donald Sutherland and Suzanne Somers laying in bed talking about how many orgasms they had? They also drive a VW bug into the Reflecting Pond in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Quit possibly a benchmark in cinematic absurdity.

Roscoe Brown — cast member of “Soap”, acted in Roots, was a voice actor for “The Real Ghostbusters!”

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.

The other night I watched, beginning to end the movie Faith Like Potatoes. It’s based on a ‘true’ story of a farmer who leaves Zambia for South Africa, and how he becomes a lay Evangelical preacher.

I liked the setting in Kwazulu Natal, and hearing Zulu spoken. It was beautifully filmed. Those two things kept me from getting up 20 minutes in and turning it off. After 40 minutes, I wanted to see if it ever found a way to redeem itself. In the end, though, it is an example of how fundamentally some people misunderstand how to make religious art.

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.