George Clooney & Lon Chaney Jr.

Stuck inside this week with blicky winter weather; not so bad to get snow days, but bad enough to wish it was worse so I would get a snow day. However, we did make it out to see Michael Clayton, the recent movie with George Clooney that has gotten a brief re-release thanks to some Oscar nominations. Clooney is a lawyer with a large firm who discovers some nasty goings-on by a multinational company which is fighting a major law suit over some damaging effects caused by one of their products. Tilda Swinton, brittle and nasty but vulnerable, is main counsel for the company; Tom Wilkinson is one of Clooney's fellow lawyers who has also discovered some secrets, goes a bit nuts in court one day (stripping naked and ranting), then goes on the run from both the corporation and his own law firm. The plot sounds a little complicated in summary, but it's easy to follow, despite a mostly unnecessary chronological disordering in the narrative structure. It's bleak stuff and feels fairly realistic until the ending, which takes a oddly Grishamesqe turn. Still, it's a solid adult movie--not as in sex and violence, but as in not about teenagers or superheroes or wizards. The characters all feel real and the acting is excellent. Even when Clooney is supposed to look tired and sweaty and done-in, he still never looks less than adorable, but frankly, that's a plus in my book.

We also watched a weird little cult item called Spider Baby, a mid-60's horror flick with Lon Chaney Jr. as the guardian for a family of inbred degenerate
cannibals--it's explained that they suffer from a "syndrome" that causes family members to regress into a "pre-natal" mental state (see a pic of the crazy sisters at right). The film feels like it must have been an influence on the later Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though it's not gory at all. In fact, despite the unpleasant subject matter (and a couple of deaths and a rape), the tone of the movie is rather light. Apparently it's being remade and will certainly be much more graphic in its gore, but there's something to be said for a film in which the goriest touch is a (patently fake) human ear lying on the floor--no blood, no connective tissue, no Dolby Digital skin-ripping sounds.