things i've been watching: april edition

North Shore (1987. dir: William Phelps) You know the story: naive haolie survives wipeouts along with nosebleeds and "barney" taunts from locals, but charms the pretty native girl and hones his surfing talents under the tutelage of a reclusive master. Much of it is by-the-numbers (bad '80s pop and horrible neon pastel surf-gear), but it's got some fantastic footage (Mark Foo! Ken Bradshaw! Laird Hamilton!). You get to experience exactly what it's like to wipe out and get stuck in the caves beneath Pipeline, but also the rushing, ambient moment of green solitude when the tube curls over you and you are alone with the ocean. Gregory Harrison obviously loves playing the Mitch Yost/Big Kahuna character, an old-style board-shaper who teaches his charge that surfing is a thing to be done for itself, not for gain or adulation. So far so good, but then he sends the boy back to the mainland, to New YORK, for God's sake, to take advantage of a partial scholarship in design. Two problems with that: first off, you know how hard it is to find decent surfing in New York? It can be done, but the water's gonna be foul and the beaches dirty and crowded. And secondly, you know how hard it is to live in New York on a PARTIAL scholarship? You couldn't afford the gas money to get to the beach at all. Stay in Hawaii, son. Shape boards. Rise at dawn and catch waves. Live in a hut on the beach. Decorate it with seashells. WARNING: if you're not in love with surfing, there is absolutely no reason to watch this film.

Geronimo: an American Legend (1993. dir: Walter Hill) Gorgeous dip into frontier history, penned by crazy man John Milius and given the full studio whoopdeedoo in the wake of those monster hits Dances With Wolves and Last of the Mohicans. Wes Studi is spectacular, and the thing is full of fantastic moments by the likes of Scott Wilson and Stephen McHattie, both of whom have just one scene but fire their scraps of dialogue up into the realm of greatness, the realm of sublimity. Also, Jason Patric has a great bit where he pulls his horse down to use as a shield, then remounts it as it's rising back up. It probably sounds easier than it looks, and sure as hell it's harder to do than it looks. A million bucks says Patric's prouder of that stunt (you can tell it's him that does it) than anything else in the film. Kudos to the stunt-horse, as well. I tell you, there ought to be Horse Oscars.

Hell's Angels (1930. dir: Howard Hughes) It's always a little shocking to go back in time to when they were still inventing how movies would be made. There are moments in Hell's Angels when the acting is so bad, the dialogue so forced, the plot so melodramatic that it's downright embarrassing. But then, Hughes didn't give a crap about any of that. Look at the dogfights! It's the airplanes, man! It's still impressive, too, particularly the mid-film battle with the dirigible, which emerges from the clouds like a terrible god. The film renovation is strange, resulting in partial color for some scenes, brown or black and white for others, but the sassy, unmannered Jean Harlowe glows with the old flesh appeal in gowns so skimpy that when she says, "Do you mind if I slip into something more comfortable?" I crack up laughing.

Rowing With The Wind (1988. dir: Gonzalo Suares) Movies about what has come to be known as The Haunted Summer are problematic. Anyone who cares about the people involved (Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley and their circles) will know too much to enjoy a film full of falsehoods, which the films invariably are. Anyone who doesn't won't know enough to get the references and thereby become emotionally entangled. Every biodrama can go one of two ways: capture the forest at expense of the trees or get the trees just right but sacrifice the bigger picture. In Stoned, for instance, Stephen Woolley's love song to the early Rolling Stones, he made everybody nicer than they really were, but managed to get a piece of the forest pretty well. (Unfortunately, what he really wanted to make was a music video, or maybe a fashion shoot, but that's a whole other review.) Out of all the Haunted Summer movies, this is my favorite (although Ken Russell's Gothic has its own insane charm). Hugh Grant plays Byron very well; he's always at his best when playing a smart villain, and he's young enough here he hasn't yet fallen prey to his later twitch and stutter. The thing is gorgeously filmed on location from Lake Geneva to the Italian seashore. The Byron/Shelley "forest" gets better captured here than in any of the others, and the actors are better suited to their roles. It's filled with historical inaccuracies, but they're the Picasso kind (everyone learns it in sixth grade Art class. They show you a Picasso, you pipe up and say, that doesn't follow any of the rules, and what does teacher say? You have to learn the rules before you can break them). This guy knew the history, and rewrote it. Who can resist writing Mary's monster into reality, to account for the really staggering number of premature deaths that surround and infiltrate this circle? (Tim Powers perhaps approached it most brilliantly in the Stress of Her Regard, a great novel about a powerful and deadly muse. Why doesn't anyone ever make movies out of Tim Powers books?)