things i've been watching: february edition

Deep Water: (2006, dir: Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell) Startlingly poignant documentary about the vanishing of Donald Crowhurst. From the little I knew before, I'd supposed he was some kind of charlatan, and I could not have been more wrong. DVD includes great extras including separate pieces on each of the other sailors in the race and an exploration of his yacht, complete with personal tape recorded messages.

the Skeleton Key: (2005, dir: Iain Softley) Bad juju at the old plantation house. One assumes that Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Kate Hudson and Peter Saarsgard all signed on for a free trip to New Orleans, in what must have been one of the last films with pre-Katrina footage. Most of it takes place in a fantastic old house in Terrebone Parish, with trips into town. Great ending, great actors, great to be in voodoo country, but it's missing something crucial in its build-up. Too much flash, not enough creeping physicality, maybe.

Bullitt / Dirty Harry double-feature: THAT's what I'm talking about. How did I get so old without ever having seen the two classic SF cop films? There are times when Steve McQueen gets too cute for my taste, or too self-consciously cool. This, my friends, is not one of them; he gives us Frank Bullitt simply and seriously, without one muscle-movement too many or too few. Keep your eyes peeled during the famous car-chase sequence for the Little Green Volkswagen Bug, which shows up far more often than it ought to. There may be a drinking game in that somewhere. As for the Eastwood film, I have one question: what kind of asshole sends Harry Callahan up on a crane to talk down a jumper?

Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater: (2006, dir: Julie Anderson) The man who was once the leading liberal nightmare and the very face of conservative politics is examined in this documentary by one of his grandchildren. The upside of family involvement is the access: to home movies, to dream interviewees from Hillary Clinton to Sandra Day-O'Connor to John McCain to Al Franken. The downside is that everyone's a little more polite than they might otherwise be. It's an interesting portrait, particularly in that his own party would probably reject him today. Here's a man who's against anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation, against welfare, against the Civil Rights Act, all for the same reason: because the government should keep its grubby fingers out of our personal lives and leave the states to take care of themselves as they see fit. He makes it clear, too, that he's appalled by the flirtations between church and state he sees infiltrating the republican party. Even those of us who get jumpy about his policies (there was that "we've got it so let's use it" attitude toward the nuclear bomb, and... OK... he's AGAINST the Civil Rights Act?) will find the man a breath of fresh air in one respect: that he has so little Politician in him. It seems near impossible for him to say a thing he doesn't really think, and isn't that a mind-expanding idea? I dug it. Informative and nostalgic in equal measures.