Movie Review: Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Rhymes for Young Ghouls
Directed by: Jeff Barnaby.
Written by: Jeff Barnaby.
Starring: Devery Jacobs (Aila), Mark Antony Krupa (Popper), Roseanne Supernault (Anna), Katie Nolan (Tammy), Glen Gould (Joseph), Brandon Oakes (Burner), Kent McQuaid (Milch), Cody Bird (Sholo), Miika Bryce Whiskeyjack (Young Aila), Nathan Alexis (Angus ).

There is a lot of anger in Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls. Set mainly in 1976, when every First Nations child in Canada under the age of 16 was required to go to the Residential Schools – places where they were often subject to horrific physical, mental and sexual abuse – Barnaby doesn’t shy away from showing what happened in those schools. Yet, Rhymes for Young Ghouls is not just a dry, depressing history lesson – it is more of a genre film than anything, one that used real life horror as the backdrop of an exciting revenge thriller. Obviously inspired by the films of Quentin Tarantino – notably Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, which did the same thing, Rhymes for Young Ghouls is exciting, funny, violent, horrifying and brutal at different times. Yes, it goes on too long for the little plot it has – and does try to jam a little too much into its runtime at the same time. Yes, Barnaby may go a little overboard on the style (particularly in the first act, with its numerous uses of slow motion, and blood splatter). It has its awkward moments, it instances of not very good acting, and other problems. But it is also an entertaining movie – one that has more on its mind than most films of its kind – and one that announces Barnaby as a new talent to watch.

The film opens in 1969, when Alia watches her drunken mother do something that results in a tragedy – and not being able to deal with that, kill herself. Her father is then taken away to jail – and she’s left with her uncle Burner (Brandon Oakes). Seven years pass, and Alia is making quite a little living dealing pot alongside Burner, and others – enough to pay Popper (Mark Anthony Krupa) a Truancy tax, which will allow her to stay out of the Residential School, that Popper runs, and abuses everyone in his care. But all at once, Alias (now played by the promising young actress Devery Jacobs) has her money stolen, and sees her father return from jail – turning her world upside down. If she cannot get the money, she’ll have to go to that school – and be abused – and now she has deal with her father, who seems to be a broken man. She hatches a plot to get everything she wants.

The movie is mainly well made by Barnaby – there is style to burn in the film, but never quite goes over the top. Like Django Unchained, some of the violence in the film is almost cartoonish in its extreme nature – like something out of an exploitation film – and at times almost too realistic to watch without being disturbed. It’s a difficult balance to get right – but Barnaby mainly nails it.

The film does try to do too much – mainly the various subplots, which take the movie off into unnecessary detours, and does kind of run out of steam in its second half (at least until the excellent finale). The acting is uneven through as well, something probably inevitable in a movie with so many non-professional actors. What keeps the movie hanging together is Jacobs performance as Aila. It is a wonderful performance, heartbreaking and subtle, as she struggles with the trauma of her past – yet tough as nails as she fights for her future. The movie may get lost at times, but Jacobs keeps getting it back on track.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is not a great film – but it is a good one, and it is a really good first effort. Films from Canada’s First Nations have been far too few and far between to begin with – and ones that take the legacy of violence inflicted upon its people, and turn it into something wholly different are even fewer. Rhymes for Young Ghouls is not a great film – but I think it could be the start of a great career for Barnaby and Jacobs.

Movie Review: Land Ho!

Land Ho!
Directed by: Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens.
Written by: Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens.
Starring: Earl Lynn Nelson (Mitch), Paul Eenhoorn (Colin), Karrie Crouse (Ellen), Elizabeth McKee (Janet), Benjamin Kasulke (Honeymooner), Christina Jennings (Honeymooner), Alice Olivia Clarke (Nadine).

How many movies over the years have we seen about people going on vacation in an attempt to recapture some of the magic in their lives – to get away from their hectic life and learn to enjoy the simple things once again? In short, hundreds. It is one of the most well-trod storylines, in Hollywood, indie and even foreign films. Land Ho, from directors Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens, is the latest film to go over this ground – and it never really does anything new with it, even if it’s an enjoyable little film as it plays.

Mitch (Earl Lynn Nelson) is a loud mouthed, over confident horny old man – divorced, forced out of his surgeon job, distant from his children – he is now retired, has a lot of money, but nothing really to  do. Colin (Paul Eenhoorn) is his former brother-in-law – they were once married to sisters, but lost contact when Mitch got divorced from the one sister. Collins first wife died, and he is now separated from his second wife – after she drained him of his savings in an ill-advised business venture. He was retired, from a job at a bank, after a career in music didn’t work out, but now may have to go back to work. He goes to visit Mitch – who has an intriguing offer for him. Mitch has bought them two tickets for a vacation in Iceland – and even if Colin can sometimes find Mitch a little tiresome, he goes with him anyway.

The film is pretty clear cut in two – with the first half Mitch and Colin hanging around the hotel, meeting up with Mitch’s much younger cousin (Karrie Crouse) and her girlfriend (Elizabeth McKee) – and tagging along with them on a night out partying – and feeling pretty ridiculous doing so, since they are decades older than anyone else out. The second half has the pair hit the road – going to see various natural wonders around Iceland – and then meeting up with another woman (Alice Olivia Clarke) – and sharing a little tenderness along the way.

The film is obvious in many, many ways – Mitch and Colin are polar opposites, with Mitch seemingly having no filter, who says horribly inappropriate things to people (including a young married couple), and pretty much every woman he meets. If he was younger, he would be creep – but because he’s older, everyone looks at him as just a funny older man. We know, eventually, the mask Mitch is putting up is going to have to fall a little bit – that were going to have to get something a little more real from him – and we do. Colin is the exact opposite – quiet, intellectual, a little embarrassed by Mitch, but also appreciative of him – after all, he’s paying for the trip and without him, Colin would simply be at home, alone and depressed.

The film has an improvised feel too much of the dialogue – as if Katz and Stephens had no more of a goal in mind for the film than to get two actors (or personalities) together, and putting them in a beautiful location to see what would happen. And the film looks beautiful – if nothing else, the film does make you want to visit Iceland as soon as possible.

The problem with Land Ho is that it is never really funny enough to make you laugh, and not really insightful enough to have anything new to add to the well-trod path the movie is taking. It’s not really a bad film – its 95 minutes that passes really pleasantly – but at the same time I just wish there was something more here.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: Magnolia (1999)

Magnolia (1999)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring: Julianne Moore (Linda Partridge), William H. Macy (Donnie Smith), John C. Reilly (Officer Jim Kurring), Tom Cruise (Frank T.J. Mackey), Philip Baker Hall (Jimmy Gator), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Phil Parma), Jason Robards (Earl Partridge), Melora Walters (Claudia Wilson Gator), Michael Bowen (Rick Spector), Jeremy Blackman (Stanley Spector), Alfred Molina (Solomon Solomon), Ricky Jay (Burt Ramsey / Narrator), Melinda Dillon (Rose Gator), April Grace (Gwenovier), Luis Guzmán (Luis), Henry Gibson (Thurston Howell), Felicity Huffman (Cynthia).

After making Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson pretty much had carte blanche to make any film he wanted to make – and he certainly used it with Magnolia. This is a film that only a director very confident of his own abilities – some called it arrogance – could possibly make. It is a film full of jagged emotions, that Anderson stages with operatic like flourishes. On the surface, it looks very much like a Robert Altman film – as Boogie Nights did – as it is another large mosaic of characters, who are somewhat connected. But it really resembles a John Cassevetes movie more. This is a film of big emotions, and wild flourishes – that starts with most of its characters at the end of their rope emotionally – and then pushes them even farther. If it didn’t work – as many of its imitators since have not – it would be insufferable. But Anderson pulls it brilliantly – making one of the best films of the 1990s.

The film is about a bunch of lost souls in Los Angeles. Frank “T.J.” Mackey (Tom Cruise) makes a good living hocking his “seduce and destroy” system of getting women, to pathetic, sex starved men. He gets on stage and spouts a lot of misogynistic bullshit, but does so with such confidence that people buy in. But his eyes are dead – there is nothing there – and eventually we’ll start to learn why. His father is Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) – who abandoned him years ago when his mother got sick – and is now on his deathbed, looking to reconnect. His nurse is Phillip Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who tries to get this done for him, while Earl’s trophy wife Linda (Julianne Moore) is stuck in a loop of drug induced grief and regret. Earl worked in television, and one of the shows he produced was a game show pitting children against adults, hosted by Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall). A current child contestant is Stanley (Jeremy Blackman), who is tired of all the pressure on him – a lot of it placed by his father, Rick (Michael Bowen). A former contestant, from 30 years ago, is Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), still trading on that little bit of fame, and reaching out for any sort of human connection – but has that constantly thwarted. Gator’s daughter is Claudia (Melora Walters), who will not talk to him anymore – and has fallen into a cycle of drug abuse and promiscuity – but may be able to break free of that with the help of Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) – a LAPD officer, and the only truly optimistic character in the movie, which helps in a movie this dark.

These characters circle each other, and Anderson cuts together their separate stories for maximum emotional effect, placing like scenes in different stories together. His style, like in Boogie Nights, favors a lot of long tracking shots – but because there are more stories here, his editing is almost montage like – and is tied together by the score by Jon Brion, and the songs of Aimee Mann, which run through the movie. At one point, late in the film, all the characters even sing along to Mann’s Wise Up – all while alone, basically singing to themselves.

Boogie Nights is, to me, a perfect film. It is a film that follows its premise straight from beginning to end, where everything makes sense, and is perfectly executed. Magnolia is a far more ambitious film – and it isn’t perfect – but it may in fact be an even greater film. In all fairness, this really shouldn’t work that well – it should come across as overly ambitious, overly serious and pretentious. But because Anderson – and his cast – is so committed to it, it comes across brilliantly. It’s jagged, and over the top and imperfect by design – and this simply adds to its greatness.

The performances are great. In his next film, Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson would brilliantly deconstruct Adam Sandler’s onscreen persona, to make it more disturbing and deeper than it has ever been before or since. In Magnolia, he does the same thing to the screen persona of Tom Cruise. Many have often joked that Cruise’s every character is defined by their “grim determination” – and that is certainly true in Magnolia as well. But here, it’s scary, disturbing and creepy – he isn’t a hero here, but a monster. But instead of leaving it there, like most would, Anderson and Cruise go deeper with Mackey – showing a human dimension to him (eventually). It may well be the best work Cruise has ever done. The rest of the cast is similarly wonderful – the deaths of Jason Robards (this was his last film), and Philip Seymour Hoffman make their scenes – where death is imminent anyway – hit even harder now than they did in 1999. Julianne Moore and Melora Walters both do great, drug addled performances of women who have simply had enough. John C. Reilly brings humor to the loneliness of his character, which makes him even more touching. Macy plays Donnie as pathetically human – he’s not all that much unlike Scotty, the Philip Seymour Hoffman character in Boogie Nights. A line that if repeated throughout Magnolia is “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us” – and that’s ultimately what the film is about. All of the characters are haunted by events that happened well before the movie began, and must find a way to move past them. Some of them will make it, and some of them won’t.

I suppose we have to address the strange ending to the film (SPOILER WARNING) where frogs rain from the sky. I know to many, this seemed downright strange and unnecessary – and to be fair, I think Magnolia could have been a great film without it. But it brings the film back to the beginning – where Anderson tells three, quick, short stories about coincidence (or maybe not) of things that you wouldn’t believe happened – but they did happen. Strange things happen all the time. Magnolia is a film with unending ambition – and a film that simply looks better and better each time I watch it. Boogie Nights is a perfect film – Magnolia isn’t – but it’s a better one.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: Boogie Nights (1997)

Boogie Nights (1997)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg (Eddie Adams / Dirk Diggler), Julianne Moore (Amber Waves), Burt Reynolds (Jack Horner), John C. Reilly (Reed Rothchild), Heather Graham (Rollergirl), Don Cheadle (Buck Swope), William H. Macy (Little Bill), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Scotty J.), Nicole Ari Parker (Becky Barnett), Luis Guzmán (Maurice TT Rodriguez), Robert Ridgely (The Colonel James), Ricky Jay (Kurt Longjohn), Melora Walters (Jessie St. Vincent), Philip Baker Hall (Floyd Gondolli), Thomas Jane (Todd Parker), Alfred Molina (Rahad Jackson ), Nina Hartley (Little Bill's Wife),Jonathan Quint (Johnny Doe), Robert Downey Sr. (Burt - Studio Manager).

It is impossible to overstate just how entertaining Boogie Nights is. It would certainly make my “desert island” list of movies that I could watch over and over again. The film is a classic rise and fall (and rise again) in the entertainment industry tail – the type that Hollywood has been making since its inception – with the twist being that it is set in the porn industry. This has certainly limited its audience – even after 12 years, I cannot convince my wife to watch it for this reason – but while there is certainly sex in the movie, it is played more for humor than anything else. What makes Boogie Nights special is how non-judgmental, yet clear eyed, the film is. Paul Thomas Anderson knows his characters are in many ways naïve, not very bright and have unrealistic dreams – and shows us that – but he loves his characters just the same. This is a movie that gives almost every character – however minor – a wonderful introduction, and then gives each of them a moment or two to shine – no matter how small their role is. When Philip Seymour Hoffman died earlier this year, one of the performances that I saw constantly referenced was his Scotty in Boogie Nights – a minor character no doubt, who makes his first appearance well into the movie, and has only a few short scenes, as the love-struck soundman, so shy and awkward around his crush – Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg). The same goes for pretty much every character in the film. Everyone in Boogie Nights will be remembered for Boogie Nights.

Wahlberg gained respect in the film industry – and went on to become a major star – because Anderson cast him in Boogie Nights (after Leonardo DiCaprio turned down the role to do Titanic – and suggested Wahlberg to Anderson). When we first meet him, he is “Eddie Adams for Torrance” – a “17 year old piece of gold” – who works in a night club, and meets Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), a famed porn director, who knows he has found something special in Eddie. Eddie has big dreams – but he’s still a kid, naïve and immature (the last time we see him with his mother, his argument is classic teenage impotent rage). Horner’s cast and crew is run like a family – with Horner as the stern, but loving, father figure, Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) as the “mother to all those who need love” (who cannot keep a relationship with her own son going), Reed Richards (John C. Reilly) as the goofy older brother, and Rollergirl (Heather Graham), like Eddie/Dirk as a teenage kid in search of a surrogate family to replace her real one. Other characters circle around – The Colonel (Robert Ridgeley), the financer, Buck (Don Cheadle), another porn star, a black man who loves cowboys, Little Bill (William H. Macy) as a crew member, repeatedly, and publicly made a cuckold by his wife until he snaps. And on and on and on. Anderson creates the world of porn, without judgment. The sex is fun for all involved, and so are all the drugs they do – until, of course, neither are as much fun as they once were.

The film is neatly split in two – the high flying ‘70s, when everything was fun, and the good times look feel like they will never end, and the money driven ‘80s, when everything comes crashing down around Dirk. He becomes the biggest star in porn, and his ego starts running away with him. He starts to believe that he is bigger than everyone else – and that his status as a porn star makes him someone that others respect, and look up to. This is similar to how Horner feels about himself as well. Both of these men have unrealistic dreams – Horner wants to make a porn movie that functions like a real movie – one that will make the audience stay to the end, even after they’ve, um, finished what they came for. The dream isn’t feasible – but Anderson kind of admires Horner for dreaming it anyway. There is even a little Anderson in Horner – as Horner initially rejects the idea of ever shooting on videotape, instead of film – and Anderson being one of the last holdouts for still shooting movies on film instead of digital.

The first half of the movie almost plays like one big party – the music is happy, and always pumping, and Anderson and cinematographer Robert Elswit, pull of several long, complicated tracking shots – like the opening, which introduces us to most of the major characters, and tell us what we need to know about them quickly, or another at a pool party that actually follows a woman under the water once she jumps into the pool. There are hints of the darkness to come – a woman ODs at that pool party – but for the most part, this half is just pure fun. It ends with another long tracking shot – but this one tracking a character descending into darkness for the film’s most shocking single moment of violence.

The second half details Dirk’s fall for grace – brought on by ego, drugs and the changing industry. He descends perhaps a little quickly (really, no other porn director would hire him?) – but Anderson wants to show how the industry changed – how it became more money driven, and how Horner – and Diggler himself, men who fancy themselves artists are no longer needed. It climaxes with what may well get my vote for my single favorite scene in movie history – a long, paranoid descent into hell as Diggler, Reed and another man (Thomas Jane), got to see the coked out of his mind Rahad Jackson (Alfred Molina) – in a scene that it set to Rick Springfield’s Jesse’s Girl, even as it turns dark.

The film just quite simply works on every level. When it came out, many compared it, and Anderson, to the films of Quentin Tarantino – and to be sure, the film has the same energy of a Tarantino film. But while Anderson wears his influences on his sleeve here – most notably Robert Altman – his film is hardly like the dozens, or hundreds, of late 1990s Tarantino clones that we all suffered through at the time. Anderson’s talent is all his own – and while others would try to do with Anderson did, no one really could match it. It takes ego and confidence on Anderson’s part to make a film like this – especially for a director in his late 20s, making only his second film – but Anderson dives headlong into it, and made a masterpiece.

Part of that credit belongs to the cast. Wahlberg is perfect as the naïve Diggler – who does some things we find questionable, yet never stop rooting for. He’s a little dim – but he’s lovable. Reynolds has never been better that he was here – Anderson smartly casting a ‘70s sex symbol to play the man, and Reynolds plays off his image well. Moore is a woman who truly does love everyone around her – even as the rest of her life is a mess. And every supporting performance is just about perfect. But part of it is a technical achievement as well. Anderson isn’t afraid of going over the top with the ‘70s fashion, decorating and music – and makes what could easily be mockable into something fun and energetic.

I will fully admit that it is perhaps impossible for me to me truly objective about Boogie Nights. It’s one of those films – like Stone’s Natural Born Killers, Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction the Coen’s Fargo – which made me fall in love with movies in the first place – and has been one of the films that I have watched more often than pretty much every other. After watching the film, I am never less than thoroughly satisfied – entertained beyond belief, and also emotionally drained – as the film hits pretty much every emotion you can think of. Often times, I think young directors try too hard, and try to do too much, and need to learn to scale a little bit before they make a truly great film. What makes Anderson, and Boogie Nights special, is that it tries to do everything – and succeeds. To me, Boogie Nights is a perfect film.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: Hard Eight (1996)

Hard Eight (1996)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring: Philip Baker Hall (Sydney), John C. Reilly (John), Gwyneth Paltrow (Clementine), Samuel L. Jackson (Jimmy), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Young Craps Player), Robert Ridgely (Keno Bar Manager), Melora Walters (Jimmy's Girl).

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight is an uncommonly subtle, quiet film – especially for a debut director. Often times, first time filmmakers try too hard – they cram their films with too much stuff – as if they want to ensure they get everything onscreen that they ever wanted to say just in case they never get to make another film. But Anderson’s films is quietly confident. It opens with Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) offering a cigarette and a cup of coffee to John (John C. Reilly), a younger man he sees in a state of distress. Why is he doing this? The movie will, eventually, tell us – but it strings us along for most of its runtime. After this introductory scene – and another, where Sydney shows John how to get a hotel room comped from a Casino, the movie flashes ahead two years. John now follows Sydney around like a puppy dog – looking up to the older man, wearing the same suits, driving the same car. The men spend their time in casinos as professional, but smalltime gamblers. They may have well stayed that way – and happy – had two other characters not entered their lives.

The first is Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waitress and sometimes prostitute, that Sydney takes a liking to – not in a sexual way, but more the way he sees John – as a surrogate child. There scenes together are rather sweet – but Sydney misjudges who Clementine is – and if she’ll be able to change her ways – or even if she wants to. John falls in love with Clementine – but he’s kind of a dim bulb, and cannot see her clearly either. The second character is Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson), a man who works casino security (in the parking lot? – Sydney asks, in a moment that could either be casual racism, or just a way to belittle a man he clearly does not trust). When John and Clementine get themselves into trouble – they call both Jimmy and Sydney to help – not realizing that while they can trust Sydney, they cannot trust Jimmy.

Philip Baker Hall is one of the best character actors in American movies – who has been given two great lead roles in the course of his career. The first was as Richard Nixon in Robert Altman’s great, one man movie Secret Honor, and the second is here as Sydney. He is a man who guards his secrets – he doesn’t let anyone in on all of them, but provides us with a few hints along the way. He is a man weighed down by regret – who is trying to do the right thing by John – for reasons we will only learn later. Reilly is fine as John – he plays him as a kind of clueless innocent – he doesn’t understand the world the way Sydney does, even after two years with him, and still basically acts like an overgrown teenager. Paltrow is great as Clementine – a woman who gains our sympathy, even if she doesn’t quite deserve it, as she is the one who gets everyone in trouble. Samuel L. Jackson is in fine form – adding another lowlife to his resume, and while he can (and often has) played these types of roles in his sleep, he doesn’t here.

Hard Eight remains the least ambitious film in Anderson’s filmography – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t wonderful in its own way. This is a Sundance film – but not a typical one. The mid-to-late 1990s were full of Tarantino knock-offs, and Hard Eight could have gone that way as well, but Anderson is too smart to allow that to happen. The film has a few of his trademark tracking shots, but it never feels like he is showing off. It takes place mainly in Reno – and Anderson finds the most rundown, unromantic casinos and hotel rooms he can find. Being a professional gambler is not fun – it’s basically a job like anything else, and the men go to work every day, hoping to just make enough money to make it to the next day.

Hard Eight is a notch or two below the rest of Anderson’s features so far – but it’s still a wonderful film in its own right. I saw it on VHS back in 1997, and I immediately took note of the directors name – knowing he was going to do something special. I didn’t know at the time that the something special was only a few months away.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: The Dirk Diggler Story (1988) and Cigarettes & Coffee (1993)

The Dirk Diggler Story (1988)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring: Michael Stein (Dirk Diggler), Robert Ridgely (Jack Horner), Eddie Delcore (Reed Rothchild), Rusty Schwimmer (Candy Kane), Ernie Anderson (Narrator).

Cigarettes & Coffee (1993)

Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring: Kirk Baltz, Scott Coffey, Miguel Ferrer, Bonnie Fidelman, Kim Gillingham, Philip Baker Hall, Michael Harris, Jennifer Kaplan.

When Paul Thomas Anderson was just 17 years old he made his first film – The Dirk Diggler Story. Inspired by a documentary he had seen about John Holmes (which I saw, years later, included on the Wonderland DVD, where Val Kilmer played the famous porn star), edited together using two VCRs, and narrated by his father, you cannot really say that The Dirk Diggler Story is a good movie – the acting is poor, and the visual quality isn’t very good (made worse by the fact that I saw it on Youtube, from a VHS rip) – but it is a fascinating movie – especially viewed in conjunction with Anderson’s first masterpiece – Boogie Nights, which he made just 9 years later. It’s interesting to see some of the changes in the basic story that Anderson made between the two films – Dirk and Reed are best friends in Boogie Nights, but actual lovers in the earlier film, the song, The Touch, is already here in its full form – but became a hit in the earlier film, and not just a joke like in Boogie Nights, and of course the ending is darker – ending with Diggler’s death. But for the most part, while he expanded Boogie Nights, and added many more characters, in many ways the two films are very similar from a story point of view.

The movie has a lot of limitations – Anderson clearly made it for nothing, and that is reflected in every scene, and the acting is not very good from anyone – not even Robert Ridgely, in the Burt Reynolds role, who would play a key role in Boogie Nights (as the Colonel). If Anderson had just left this story as it was in The Dirk Diggler Story, than I don’t think it would be anywhere near as interesting as it is now. It’s a view into the young mind of Anderson – who already knew what he wanted to do. It isn’t a great film, or even a good one, but it’s still a must for Anderson fans.

Much better was Cigarettes & Coffee (not to be confused with Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee & Cigarettes, which he was already working on when Anderson made this short for the Sundance Lab). Somehow, Anderson was able to convince Philip Baker Hall to play a key role in the film – and he, along with Miguel Ferrer, makes the acting in the film much improved from Anderson’s first short. He is also much more confident visually – it’s a simply shot film, taking place in and around a coffee shop, that follows three different stories. In one booth, Hall talks to younger man, who tells him a story of what just happened to him in Vegas – and a rash decision that he now regrets. In another booth, a young newly married couple argue over decisions they made in Vegas that didn’t turn out very well either. Then there is Ferrer, who pulls up in a car, makes a phone call, and comes into the diner. All of these stories hold off their shocking revelations until close to the end – culminating in a great finale.

In some ways, Anderson is trying a little too hard with Cigarettes & Coffee – especially in the writing, where he seems to want to show off a little too much – like he’s trying to be David Mamet. Like The Dirk Diggler Story, Coffee & Cigarettes is fascinating in that Anderson later spun it into his first feature – Hard Eight – concentrating on the Philip Baker Hall character, and jettisoning the other two storylines.

I don’t think either of these films are great – The Dirk Diggler Story isn’t very good at all, and Cigarettes & Coffee is little more than decent. But they are fascinating when viewed in the context of Anderson’s overall career – and are must sees for fans of the directors work.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: Introduction

I will admit that I am a Paul Thomas Anderson fanatic. Out of all the directors working today, I think he may well be the best – at least right now (Scorsese, for example, has had a better career – but the recent films of Scorsese vs. the Anderson ones, and Anderson comes out ahead). He is a director whose films I return to again and again – and always find something new to them. As well, through his first 6 films, Anderson has never repeated himself – never did what many directors do, and simply make variations on a theme (or make the same movie again and again). To me, this would make Anderson the new Kubrick – not that the two share much stylistically or thematically, but because he is willing to take new chances each time out, and yet make films that are undeniably his.

His latest, Inherent Vice, opens on December 12 in New York and L.A. I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to see it (I am planning a trip to Toronto the first weekend it comes out – I just don’t know when that is yet). Before I see that one, I figured I’d go make and watch the first six – and watch his two early shorts for the first time as well (a third short, Flagpole Special, made in between Boogie Nights and Magnolia, is as far as I can tell not available anywhere). Since I just compared him to Kubrick, I thought it would appropriate to follow-up my month long look at Kubrick, with a weeklong view of Anderson. Inherent Vice is Anderson’s 7^th feature in 18 years. Let’s hope he continues on a faster pace than Kubrick did – and leaves us with more films than that master by the time his career is over.