Screen Log 16: The Insult; Happy End; Manhattan; Sid & Aya (Not a Love Story); Radio Days

"Manhattan."

THE INSULT, the Lebanese nominee in this year's Oscars for Foreign Language Film, is occasionally engaging, occasionally tedious, occasionally heavy-handed courtroom drama made for bored housewives in the late afternoon lull. The issues, the backstories, and especially the "insult" that starts off the entire narrative debacle, are all compelling. But the film has a tendency to be as hammy as the lawyer who can't help wetting himself in court, parading around like a peacock on uppers. The result is a film that pulls you in while the story takes place outside the courtroom, but has you wishing you were somewhere else once it plunges you back in there, with those judges and counselors and spectators all so primly directed. I liked this movie, but it could have used a little more discipline.

No use mincing words now: Michael Haneke's HAPPY END bored me to near-death. I was happy enough to emerge with my senses intact from this thinly composed drivel. The usual suspects were excellent, and by usual suspects, I just really mean Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Huppert breaking her son's middle finger mid-conversation just to end said conversation? Badass! And Trintignant's was really the only story within this humongous story that I actually wanted to follow; the rest of the film was kind of blah. I suspect a huge reason for that was that Haneke had to make the beginning of every scene a sort of guessing game, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it game, a you-have-to-stare-long-enough-at-the-screen-or-else-just-go-home game. It wasn't at all fun, mind you.

I love "Annie Hall," but I believe MANHATTAN is Woody Allen's greatest work. Those two, plus "Hannah and Her Sisters," "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and "Radio Days," which I also talk about below, constitute his five best works. I'm not here to talk about his sins; I think he is a sick man, and I don't mean "sick" as in "ill," but "sick" as in "burn-in-hell disgusting." But I also think he's made some of the 20th century's finest films, and those who think there's no separating the artist from his art are fully entitled to their opinions. Anyway, back to "Manhattan." I find it hard to believe it wasn't nominated for Best Picture back in its day, but then again, knowing the Academy and its proclivity for unpleasant--sometimes, as in this case, downright foul--surprises, I shouldn't be surprised. There is a little bit of a stumble towards the end, where you feel the conflicts sort of drift toward caricature, but that's all easily forgotten. This is just sublime filmmaking and storytelling.

Irene Villamor is on a roll. After "Meet Me in St. Gallen," she now gives us SID & AYA (NOT A LOVE STORY), starring Anne Curtis in fine form and an even finer Dingdong Dantes. How to describe this film other than "mumblecore on rock-and-roll drugs"? The last third of the movie I find hard to love, because it differs in tone and consistency from everything that precedes it. In fact, it's a surprisingly excellent film until Dantes punches his boss and the story moves to Japan. Then you just feel it become a lesser, altogether different movie.

RADIO DAYS is one of the best pieces ever made about the concept of nostalgia. There's just something new to discover with every viewing; that's how rich this seemingly superficial film is.