A Letter from Japan

Maybe it's a funk. Maybe it's a form of meditation. It doesn't help that I'm still jet-lagged, that I landed here just as Japan began it's "Golden Week" of enforced holiday, or that I have an apartment without Internet access or any of the books that I gave up in a momentary fever to purge myself of all things. It doesn't help that I have gone from a house crowded with kids and commitment to the equivalent of solitary confinement for unspecified white collar crimes.

But for seven, mostly rainy days in Tokyo, in between long naps and long walks full of self reproach, I have had the Star Channel.

Picture HBO without the original content and without the ability to pay licensing for any movie that isn't either decades old or an immediate tax write-off for its producers. (Star Channel: Home to dead and the duds.) Dispense with any pretense of curatorial intent, spin the wheel on what films air when -- "The Omen" at 8 on a Saturday morning, kids! -- add a Japanese-language  voice over and you have the curious cinematic calliope that is Star.

And Star has had me.

Partly it's the randomness of the offerings and the old-fashioned surrender to the will of the TV that intrigues. For whatever set of reasons and personal failures, over seven days, I have watched at least 19 movies. In fact, I've made it a rule to watch whatever was on at whatever hour I happened to tune in all the way to the -- often -- bitter end. (Consider: "Money Train," "Escape from LA," "Ironman 2," "The Punisher.")

Of course, Sky has delivered some great stuff I would not have sought or seen. That includes the moral nuance of "Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)," the spooky deadpan of "Bubble (2005)," and the good-natured fun of "Much Ado About Nothing," (1993). I enjoyed that last one even though Keanu Reeves plays Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington plays Denzel Washington playing Shakespeare.

It's also impossible to be a binge consumer of movies without trying to make sense of it all. The mind stumbles toward theory, sometimes in the face of questionable data.

For instance, in re-watching "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), you may find yourself noticing that all the characters that grin die on the mission along with scores of German officers and their wives. Telly Savalas grins. He dies. Granted that's not the only tell that he's doomed. He's also misogynistic sadist who kills a woman in cold blood. Also, his name is Maggot.

Still, Donald Sutherland grins, often, and dies for it. Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson never grin. They survive.

Or maybe you find yourself watching "Cyrus" (2010) and "Behind Enemy Lines" (2001) in quick succession and wonder if both movies wouldn't have been improved if John C. Reilly and Owen Wilson could have somehow magically switched roles.

Perhaps you watch "Avanti!" (1972), and find yourself thinking maybe it's possible that hair-trigger irascibility that people once considered funny about Jack Lemmon concealed something else. For instance, maybe he was just an irritable asshole.

But the biggest discovery for me was this: "All About Eve" (1950) and "Scarface" (1983) are really the same story about the underside of American ambition and the human toll of self-made success just imagined differently.

For one thing, it's easy to forget that Bette Davis is not the uber-bitch of "All About Eve." That's the scheming Ann Baxter, the young up-and-comer with big dreams and a total amoral regard for the consequences. Sound familiar? Baxter is Scarface, while Davis and her descent toward the Broadway scrap heap  is the equivalent of  the softer, gentler Miami cocaine magnate, Frank Lopez.

(Imagine "Scarface" redone with the Little League coaching Lopez as the central tragic figure and you have the arc of "All About Eve.")

Both movies show how the ruthless will be undone in a never-ending circle of ambition and how empty the promises of the bright lights can be, but importantly -- and this should be a lesson to all of the hip-hop impressarios who profess an admiration for Tony Montana's machismo -- when it comes to the prospect for redemption "All About Eve" is even more gangster than "Scarface."

Even though Tony Montana kills his best friend, torments his wife, ignores his mother, builds his fortune feeding the addictions of thousands and harbors an unresolved, incestual longing for his sister, in the end, when the Bolivian paramilitary is closing in, he is at least moved toward an accounting for his life.

Tony Montana is self aware, and, if he's not remorseful, he's close. He harbors doubts about whether he has chased the wrong dream: "Is this it?...Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking? Snorting? Then what? You're 50. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits. You need a bra." He also refuses to kill innocent bystanders, an almost heroic refusal that ultimately costs him his life.

There's nothing like those flashes of regret and humanity for that stone-cold Eve Harrington. She lies. She schemes. She seduces. And in the end, she's collapsed on a divan to be served until the next pretty young thing comes up from nowhere to cut her throat.

Eve, as Tony would say, breaks her balls for no one.

I have to go now. I know -- I don't write, I don't call and then it's a deluge.

 See you all after "Just Cause" (1995) and "The Bridges of Madison County" (Same year). Maybe there's something there about the zeitgeist of the Clinton years.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.