September 2005 Reviews

49. Napoleon Dynamite-- A-. The only other movie I can remember that captured the agony of junior high or high school as well as Napoleon Dynamite was Welcome to the Dollhouse. Other movies have tried, but most fall into three traps: 1) "teen horror" (e.g. Thirteen), in which the protagonist goes into a downward spiral of drugs and sex; 2) "blame the parents" (e.g. Breakfast Club); and 3) "no one understands me" (e.g. Sixteen Candles, Footloose), in which a basically popular and good-looking protagonist overcomes fatuous obstacles to get the girl/boy of his/her dreams. Napoleon Dynamite is quirky, as in the opening sequence, when Napoleon drags a plastic action figure on a string behind the school bus. That's good, and the meandering plot is too, but the portrayal of Napoleon's awkwardness and alienation is what makes the movie an A: so realistic without going over-the-top. A minor quibble is the relationship between the older brother and Lafawnda; it's a little too close to racial stereotyping for comfort.
51. Word Wars-- A. These are my people! The borderline between "avid hobbyist" and "so obsessed I can't hold a job" may be a little blurrier than I thought before I saw this movie.
As a movie, it is a lot like Spellbound, both in subject matter and documentary style, and in the way it engaged me so deeply in the personalities and lives of the contestants. The home footage (e.g. with the aunt and mother of one, the Tai Chi exercises of another, the gastrointestinal medications of a third) makes the movie very, very personal. Think of Capturing the Friedmans, one of my favorites last year.
Despite the obvious differences in look-and-feel and genre, I also thought of Pi, the 1998 mind-fryer by Darren Aronofsky, because both films delve into the absorptive process by which a fascination with numbers and symbols gradually transforms the protagonist into something like the Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
50. Napoleon-- B. PBS docu-history. Pretty textbook, but a good intro.
52. The Maigret Collection-- C+. I watched this BBC series from the 70s because I had just seen Michael Gambon in Layer Cake. It's not bad, especially if you like period pieces and Agatha Christie, but the plot lines are just too simplistic. It makes the eleventy-sixth season of Law & Order seem clever in comparison. Let's move on, people.