December 6, 2005
Just in time for St. Nick's day: brief reviews of two films ready made for family viewing: Syriana and the movie adapted from the first book I ever read after learning to do so.
Unreviewed but worth mentioning is Scott McGhee and David Siegel's Bee Season, which I caught last week the night before it vanished from local theaters. I disliked the trailer, and I certainly didn't trust Ebert's glowing review - but some vague quality hinted at in Karina Longworth's review made me think that I should give it a shot. I'm glad I did. The first forty five minutes or so is an awkward mess (with some of the worst editing I've seen in ages), and the last quarter is predictable and pat, but in between is about an hour of pretty extraordinary material. The film has an impressive theological bent, and had the quality of its middle sequences been constant, it might have warranted a spot on some future list of spiritually siginificant films.
The spelling bee did provide the filmmakers the opportunity for a few in-jokes: one of the words young Flora Cross (who makes the uneven bookends worth staying for) is given is 'suture,' which of course is the title of McGhee and Siegel's first film; and another is 'duvetyne,' which is a type of heavy black fabric used (as far as I know) almost exclusively on film sets.
One of the themes in Bee Season is ancient Kabbalistic mysticism, which is also an element in Aronofsky's Pi, which reminds me that this huge protrusive vein emerged from the side of my skull last night, bulging under my skin and completely freaking me out. It disappeared after about a half hour, at which point I ceased my search for an electric power drill.
Posted by David Lowery at December 6, 2005 2:36 AM