**.5 Tristram Shandy
*/**** Silk Stockings
*** Jane Eyre (1996)
**** The Hurt Locker

Tristram Shandy was funny but ultimately felt empty and disappointing. As Gillian Anderson says after the screening scene at the end, is that all? The movie has very little Tristram Shandy in it and a lot of Steve Coogan — which is okay, Steve Coogan is funny, especially playing a sort of exaggerated Steve Coogan (if it is exaggerated) — but it doesn’t really amount to much. I know this was kind of the point, Tristram Shandy being itself crazily postmodernally self-referential and so forth, but the ultimate question is whether I feel like I’ve had a satisfying interaction with some interesting people. I don’t really feel like I got much of either Tristram or Steve, and so the laughs I did get didn’t end up being that satisfying. I have trouble recommending it, but I have trouble giving it the pretty weak two stars too. I guess if you like Steve Coogan (which I do) and think he is funny (which I do) you will likely enjoy this.

Silk Stockings was pretty rotten. It’s got Cole Porter music, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and Peter Lorre and it’s still pretty rotten. It’s not so much they’re bad but that no one (except Cyd Charisse) really seems to be trying. It’s all bad music, bad lyrics, apathetic dancing, mediocre singing, forgettable choreography.. except Cyd Charisse. She’s terrific. Her character is the humorless Soviet kommissar and she plays it pretty much like Arnold as the Terminator. That part is awesome. And then as she lets Paris infect her, she has a wonderful dance scene with Astaire where she slowly unbends and they dance a duet. Then later, alone in her hotel room, she takes out the beautiful Parisian underthings she’s bought and hidden away and dances with them. If you just take the movie as the story of her finally letting go of her duty for the sake of pleasure, it’s appealing, and those two scenes are moving. Then she gets to tell off Fred and go back to Russia, where there’s a remarkable ensemble scene of a bunch of happy Russians dancing the “red blues”. If the movie had ended there, it would have been nice, but of course she has to end up back in Paris with the tasteless conniving Astaire, to be happily married. Truly, it’s a rotten movie, but if you like Cyd Charisse, you might find it worthwhile for those few scenes.

This is the 1996 William Hurt/Charlotte Gainsbourg Jane Eyre, which we thought was pretty good. We’re both big fans of the book, and were pleasantly surprised how well this one came out.

The Hurt Locker really deserved that Oscar.