Although the film is a touch on the long side, there's enough jaw-dropping action crammed into its three-hour running time to satisfy all but the most demanding action junkies. I say a bit on the long side but it's really only in a few specific moments that some judicious editing would have made the film better (and even those elisions would only amount to a few minutes). For instance, as Ann and Kong watch the sun rise over the New York skyline, it takes Ann so long to figure out what the ape is trying to indicate that I started to worry that she was dim because she should have figured it out a full minute earlier.
But that minor grievance aside, I can't say enough about how spectacular the action sequences in the film are. One on top of the other (especially the scenes on Skull Island) and each one more spectacular than the last, there's never been anything like it in the modern computer-generated-character age. Kong's fight with the T-Rexes for instance takes them from the top of a mountain, down a crevasse and finally through the jungle with Ann balanced in between the entire time. This sequence (as well as the one in New York City and the Brontosaurus chase on Skull Island ) is like a complete film unto itself. It has separate acts and rising and falling action. It also has a distinct plot aside from just having cool shit happen. I just can't get over them.
Add to all this the fact that Jackson and company (Naomi Watts deserves a lot of the credit here) have created a real and deep emotional connection between Kong and Ann and you have one tremendous film. It's tremendous on an old school level. It works the way a John Wayne / John Ford picture works. And its also tremendous on an I-can't-believe-they-did-this level. It's a filmgoing experience unlike anything I've ever had, being completely enraptured with the film itself and simultaneously dazzled by the level of filmmaking prowess on display.
Interestingly, I think it's just that sort of enjoyment on two levels that has led to the less than stellar box office thus far despite unanimous critical acclaim. Critics and people involved with filmmaking can easily appreciate the film on both those levels but the average moviegoer is oblivious to that second level. And, that being the case, they just think it's too long and not interesting enough when Kong isn't kicking ass. I guess, then, that I feel sorry for those people because the film I'm watching is pretty damn good.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Saturday, December 10, 2005
SYRIANA - stephen gaghan - 5.7 / 10
There's just way too much going on in this movie; it's trying to do more than any film, even a ten-hour miniseries, would be able to do. It's not a bad film per se, but because of the amount of stuff writer-director Stephen Gaghan is trying to cram into the film, there's just no room for little things like character development and plot clarity. The real shame of it is that a lot of the stuff that pushed those essential elements aside is beside the main point of the film. For instance, why make room for Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) and his wife's marital troubles? For that matter, why does Gaghan bother having Woodman's oldest son killed in a freak accident? It wastes a lot of screen time and doesn't add anything at all to the oil discussion.
There's also the matter of the overwrought names. The surnames of the two CEOs of the oil companies are Pope and Killen. There's also Bennet Holiday, a lawyer, and the aforementioned Bryan Woodman, an oil analyst. The names and subject matter cry out that this is a capital "I" important film and must be taken seriously. The problem (besides trying to discuss a very complex issue from all sides in less than three hours) is that the film isn't any fun and lacks any real forward momentum.
As the film slipped past the two-hour mark, I started to wonder what would signal the end. There hadn't, as yet, been any sort of coherent plot whose conclusion would lend the film some sort of climax, so I had no idea what was going to happen to signal the end of this "story." It turns out, unfortunately, that some late in the game violence and a tacked on emotional moment serve as the climax to this opus. But these are both cheap and out of left field and, until this climax came, I had quite forgotten that the people involved were even in the film at all.
That being said, you do have to give Gaghan and his team (especially George Clooney who packed on thirty extra pounds for no reason for his role as Bob Baer) credit for trying to make a popular film that has something to say about our modern world. And I suppose some of the credit for that goes to Mark Cuban (who put up the money to make it), which is pretty much just bananas.
There's also the matter of the overwrought names. The surnames of the two CEOs of the oil companies are Pope and Killen. There's also Bennet Holiday, a lawyer, and the aforementioned Bryan Woodman, an oil analyst. The names and subject matter cry out that this is a capital "I" important film and must be taken seriously. The problem (besides trying to discuss a very complex issue from all sides in less than three hours) is that the film isn't any fun and lacks any real forward momentum.
As the film slipped past the two-hour mark, I started to wonder what would signal the end. There hadn't, as yet, been any sort of coherent plot whose conclusion would lend the film some sort of climax, so I had no idea what was going to happen to signal the end of this "story." It turns out, unfortunately, that some late in the game violence and a tacked on emotional moment serve as the climax to this opus. But these are both cheap and out of left field and, until this climax came, I had quite forgotten that the people involved were even in the film at all.
That being said, you do have to give Gaghan and his team (especially George Clooney who packed on thirty extra pounds for no reason for his role as Bob Baer) credit for trying to make a popular film that has something to say about our modern world. And I suppose some of the credit for that goes to Mark Cuban (who put up the money to make it), which is pretty much just bananas.
Monday, November 28, 2005
THE ICE HARVEST - harold ramis - 3.0 / 10
The only thing interesting about this run of the mill "thriller" with a stupid and predictable "twist" ending is the filmmakers' recognition that having the protagonist possess a working cell phone would eliminate the entire plot. So they have him break it very early on. That way he has to go to all these places rather than just call up the people he's going to see. I guess that's acceptable but it seems kinda cheap.
And besides, it turns the whole film into a cautionary tale about the bad things that can happen if you lose your cell phone. Which brings up the point that most movies more than ten years old have plots that would have been dramatically simplified if the protagonist had the use of a wireless phone. (As a side note, it makes me wonder if the book this film is based on was published before cell phones became so commonplace.) That getting the cell phone out of the equation thing has become very very popular over the last few years. And I, for one, am looking forward to the day when cell phones are incorporated into the plot in an effective way rather than done away with in increasingly silly ways.
And besides, it turns the whole film into a cautionary tale about the bad things that can happen if you lose your cell phone. Which brings up the point that most movies more than ten years old have plots that would have been dramatically simplified if the protagonist had the use of a wireless phone. (As a side note, it makes me wonder if the book this film is based on was published before cell phones became so commonplace.) That getting the cell phone out of the equation thing has become very very popular over the last few years. And I, for one, am looking forward to the day when cell phones are incorporated into the plot in an effective way rather than done away with in increasingly silly ways.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
DAYS OF HEAVEN - terrence malick - 5.0 / 10
The same lame ass voiceover and directionless storytelling that mar Malick's later work (The New World, Thin Red Line) is also present here. I suppose the predictably tragic nature of the story is supposed to lend it some gravitas, to make it allegorical for the impossible plight of the nation's poor during this period of American history. And maybe it does. But it's still a slow and boring film with a simultaneously cute and pretentious narrator who is speaking words that can't possibly be her own (and are therefore the words of the writer-director).
I don't mind a filmmaker taking a philosophical stance and having a point of view, that's the job of an artist after all. But Malick seems to be cloaking himself in aimlessness as if to say, "You can't pin this on me, this is how it was. And if you blame me for being aimless and pointless then you're also condemning the people of that time period and who are you to do that, you bourgeois prick." So I say, fuck Malick and his lovable pretensions. And fuck all the art school cineastes who would say that I just don't "get" Malick. His films are fucking boring. And I don't want to spend long hours in the dark studying something that's just plain boring. Any idiot can be pretentious but it's very hard to be entertaining. If you can be both you're a genius. But there aren't many of those. So if you have to be one or the other, I recommend the latter only because then you won't have pseudo-intellectuals following you around with their tongues hanging out. Oh, and you'll probably earn a hell of a lot more money that way, too.
I don't mind a filmmaker taking a philosophical stance and having a point of view, that's the job of an artist after all. But Malick seems to be cloaking himself in aimlessness as if to say, "You can't pin this on me, this is how it was. And if you blame me for being aimless and pointless then you're also condemning the people of that time period and who are you to do that, you bourgeois prick." So I say, fuck Malick and his lovable pretensions. And fuck all the art school cineastes who would say that I just don't "get" Malick. His films are fucking boring. And I don't want to spend long hours in the dark studying something that's just plain boring. Any idiot can be pretentious but it's very hard to be entertaining. If you can be both you're a genius. But there aren't many of those. So if you have to be one or the other, I recommend the latter only because then you won't have pseudo-intellectuals following you around with their tongues hanging out. Oh, and you'll probably earn a hell of a lot more money that way, too.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
DERAILED - mikael håfström - 1.5 / 10
Derailed offers one bewildering movie-going experience. You don't cast Jennifer Aniston (who's just plain not going to be a movie star) in a role unless you want the audience to have sympathy for her, even if you are casting her against type. She's America's other sweetheart (after Julia Roberts of course). But in Derailed she plays a double-crossing, cheating wife who is only ever an impediment to our hero (Clive Owen's Charles Schine). But she sure does seem nice. And further, her interactions with Charles, although they're later revealed to be an act, are sweet and playful and the stuff of which movie romances are made. These encounters are in sharp contrast to the stilted, pained interactions between Charles and his wife. So the audience is put in the very strange position of rooting for the relationship between the philandering husband and his mistress to be the one that prevails.
But then there's the big reveal that exposes the mistress (Aniston) as a con woman. And now the audience is completely lost with no relationship to root for (Aniston's character dies early and uselessly). The wife and sick child of our hero are annoying and having him and them return to normalcy isn't nearly interesting enough. And so, we're put in the position of wishing that somehow Charles and Aniston's Lucinda could have made it work. That's a very strange position to be put in and it's more than a little bewildering.
Also bewildering is the film's portrayal of black people. There are three in the film. One is an ex-con mailroom employee. One is a gun for hire. And the third is a policeman. (And for added fun, two of the three are played by rappers) So the good guy (Charles) has his black guy who can die in a dramatic way. And the bad guy has his black guy who Charles can kill to prove he means business. And then there's the black detective who can figure it out in the end and, although he has the power to do something to stop it, merely add a wink-wink nod of approval to our vigilante hero. How this paternalistic portrayal of black people (and foreigners and women) didn't ring any bells somewhere along the line should be shocking and offensive. Instead it's met with a shrug. This is the way it is in mainstream Hollywood, I guess.
But then there's the big reveal that exposes the mistress (Aniston) as a con woman. And now the audience is completely lost with no relationship to root for (Aniston's character dies early and uselessly). The wife and sick child of our hero are annoying and having him and them return to normalcy isn't nearly interesting enough. And so, we're put in the position of wishing that somehow Charles and Aniston's Lucinda could have made it work. That's a very strange position to be put in and it's more than a little bewildering.
Also bewildering is the film's portrayal of black people. There are three in the film. One is an ex-con mailroom employee. One is a gun for hire. And the third is a policeman. (And for added fun, two of the three are played by rappers) So the good guy (Charles) has his black guy who can die in a dramatic way. And the bad guy has his black guy who Charles can kill to prove he means business. And then there's the black detective who can figure it out in the end and, although he has the power to do something to stop it, merely add a wink-wink nod of approval to our vigilante hero. How this paternalistic portrayal of black people (and foreigners and women) didn't ring any bells somewhere along the line should be shocking and offensive. Instead it's met with a shrug. This is the way it is in mainstream Hollywood, I guess.
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
JARHEAD - sam mendes - 7.9 / 10
It's understandable why a looser and more casual film would appeal to Sam Mendes at this point in his career. His previous two films, American Beauty and Road to Perdition are two of the most carefully photographed films in recent memory made with the help of the best cinematographer who ever lived (Conrad Hall). But since Road to Perdition, Hall has passed away and left some people, me among them, wondering just how many of those perfectly composed shots were the work of Mendes and how many were the work of Hall. Additionally, such rigorously well-composed films take a lot of creative willpower to make. With these two factors in mind, is it any surprise that Mendes would make a looser and less careful film than his previous two?
And indeed he has. Jarhead is loose and fast with a constantly bobbing and weaving camera (courtesy new DP Roger Deakins, not a bad substitute). The problem with that, however, is that handheld camerawork and loose staging go a long way towards defeating analysis of a film. You can't look to any one shot in this film and say that it sums up the movie (or even the scene) because you can't say for sure whether everything in that frame was put there on purpose. You can't say for certain whether the sun glinting off the water bottle was done on purpose or if it was just a happy accident created by the fact that Deakins has the camera on his shoulder and can swoop down for that perfect shot whenever and wherever he sees it.
So Mendes has done an end run around the question of whether or not he can make another terrifically composed film without Conrad Hall. And on first viewing, that frustrated me to the point of nearly disliking the film. On second viewing, however, I began to look at the other areas in which Mendes creates subtextual and extratextual meaning in this film. There's not nearly as much of it in Jarhead as there is in American Beauty or Road to Perdition but it's there and it's worth discussing.
Foremost among these is the soldiers' use of (anti-) war films as violence porn. The marines in the film learn of their deployment to the Middle East during a screening of Apocalypse Now, a legendarily anti-war film that they're treating like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with cheering and pantomiming of the on-screen action. It's a clever subversion of the idea that a film about war can ever truly be anti-war. And it's also a lot like how you'd imagine these men would respond to a viewing of a pornographic film. Indeed, with women largely absent from their lives and pornography (obviously) not allowed in the barracks, these men more or less substitute blood lust for sexual lust. And later, when the troops gather to watch The Deer Hunter only to find that it has been taped over with real porn, Mendes makes this point abundantly clear. It's the best, most resonant moment in the film and it says the most about the situation these men are in.
The main problem with the film, however, is, to carry the violence as porn metaphor one step further, that this particular war is all foreplay and no climax. Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), the only member of his elite scout sniper unit to even see an enemy combatant, never fires his rifle. And while this only deepens the meaning and value of that particular metaphor (and indeed makes it the point of the whole piece) it isn't terribly compelling filmmaking. The audience, like the soldiers, have been craving the pink mist, the bloodletting, the violence of war. And denying us (and them) that violence aborts any sort of catharsis.
Certainly not all films have to be cathartic but this particular case of cinematic blue balls leaves the audience craving some sort of release. And if they can't have it through bloodshed, they need to get it in some other way. I think Mendes realized this and thus he tries to imbue the film with some sort of catharsis in the few short scenes after the soldiers return home from the desert. In these scenes, the characters, now quite different than we've seen them before, attend the funeral of one of their own. But this desperate grab for an emotional payoff is so far removed for the rah-rah marine life and feels so tacked on that the only real emotion engendered in the audience is apathy. It's too little, too late.
I can't help but think that if this film weren't based on a book some studio executive would have mandated that we see some bloodshed. And, although the filmmakers might have resisted, had that bloodshed made the final cut I think the film would have been the better for it.
And indeed he has. Jarhead is loose and fast with a constantly bobbing and weaving camera (courtesy new DP Roger Deakins, not a bad substitute). The problem with that, however, is that handheld camerawork and loose staging go a long way towards defeating analysis of a film. You can't look to any one shot in this film and say that it sums up the movie (or even the scene) because you can't say for sure whether everything in that frame was put there on purpose. You can't say for certain whether the sun glinting off the water bottle was done on purpose or if it was just a happy accident created by the fact that Deakins has the camera on his shoulder and can swoop down for that perfect shot whenever and wherever he sees it.
So Mendes has done an end run around the question of whether or not he can make another terrifically composed film without Conrad Hall. And on first viewing, that frustrated me to the point of nearly disliking the film. On second viewing, however, I began to look at the other areas in which Mendes creates subtextual and extratextual meaning in this film. There's not nearly as much of it in Jarhead as there is in American Beauty or Road to Perdition but it's there and it's worth discussing.
Foremost among these is the soldiers' use of (anti-) war films as violence porn. The marines in the film learn of their deployment to the Middle East during a screening of Apocalypse Now, a legendarily anti-war film that they're treating like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with cheering and pantomiming of the on-screen action. It's a clever subversion of the idea that a film about war can ever truly be anti-war. And it's also a lot like how you'd imagine these men would respond to a viewing of a pornographic film. Indeed, with women largely absent from their lives and pornography (obviously) not allowed in the barracks, these men more or less substitute blood lust for sexual lust. And later, when the troops gather to watch The Deer Hunter only to find that it has been taped over with real porn, Mendes makes this point abundantly clear. It's the best, most resonant moment in the film and it says the most about the situation these men are in.
The main problem with the film, however, is, to carry the violence as porn metaphor one step further, that this particular war is all foreplay and no climax. Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), the only member of his elite scout sniper unit to even see an enemy combatant, never fires his rifle. And while this only deepens the meaning and value of that particular metaphor (and indeed makes it the point of the whole piece) it isn't terribly compelling filmmaking. The audience, like the soldiers, have been craving the pink mist, the bloodletting, the violence of war. And denying us (and them) that violence aborts any sort of catharsis.
Certainly not all films have to be cathartic but this particular case of cinematic blue balls leaves the audience craving some sort of release. And if they can't have it through bloodshed, they need to get it in some other way. I think Mendes realized this and thus he tries to imbue the film with some sort of catharsis in the few short scenes after the soldiers return home from the desert. In these scenes, the characters, now quite different than we've seen them before, attend the funeral of one of their own. But this desperate grab for an emotional payoff is so far removed for the rah-rah marine life and feels so tacked on that the only real emotion engendered in the audience is apathy. It's too little, too late.
I can't help but think that if this film weren't based on a book some studio executive would have mandated that we see some bloodshed. And, although the filmmakers might have resisted, had that bloodshed made the final cut I think the film would have been the better for it.
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES - rob zombie - 3.7 / 10
I love The Devil's Rejects (the sequel to House of 1000 Corpses). That's just a fun, smart, sick film. But this, the one that came before and launched the sequel I so enjoy, is just lame. I kept waiting for it to get good but the longer I waited the more annoying the film got and the more annoyed I became. Every new wrinkle and twist of the plot is completely predictable and totally boring. The film is basically a group of freaks killing a group of normal people. They don't torture them very much and don't really seem to be having too much fun with the killings so I guess I'm wondering what the point of the whole thing is. In the second film, the twisted family of killers fully embraces their work and exploits their victims in horrible (but pleasant for viewing and analysis) ways. In this film, as often as not, they'll just shoot someone in the head without so much as a hello.
That being the case, my mind started to wander (never a good sign in a horror film) to thoughts of logic and common sense. Usually a horror film exerts enough grip on your fear receptors that you don't have time to consider the why's and wherefore's of the whole mess (which, if you were to actually do while watching most horror films would rob you of any pleasure. It's not that House of 1000 Corpses is unique in this department, it's just that I focused on it more than I'm normally inclined to.). Chief among the ridiculous implausibilities is the fact that the family kills people wantonly, whoever they may be and however they may have stumbled across their path (be they high school cheerleaders or law enforcement officers). The problem here is that this family could not do this for very long without people figuring out that something is amiss down by that crazy looking house.
Which leads me to the second major common sense lapse: the house. It's a fucking nut house. And while that might be scary and all, any sane person looking at that house would know some fucked up shit be goin' on in there. The fact that they've been committing murders left and right for years coupled with the fact that they've been doing it in this ridiculous house makes it impossible to believe that they could have gotten away with it for so long.
Finally, the most annoying logical lapse is the dozens of mutant creatures that live in the web of subterranean tunnels that snake all over the Firefly property. Who are all these people? How did they come to be this way? How has not one of them ever been noticed by a person who's just passing by? Why does the family even keep them around? And how did they get the technology to meld flesh with machine? That last question especially irks me because it comes out of nowhere and is never addressed but for god's sake they've built a Terminator down in that dungeon. I guess by the time you've gotten to this part of the film it's basically over and if you've gone with it this far I guess you can go with it a little more. What the hell?
However, what really turned me off the whole film in the first place was not the illogical nature of the plot (that came later when I got bored) but rather the silly interstitials of, alternately, Sheri Moon dancing half-naked, the brother looking crazy, or some half glimpsed negative image. These interludes are not scary so much as they are disorienting and annoying (not to mention pointless). That wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that, it seems to me anyway, the best violence is done in these little interstitials. You go to see a film called House of 1000 Corpses, you expect some serious grue, full-on and in your face. You don't expect it to be hidden in sepia-tinged, negative printed, shaken camera interstitials that come out of nowhere and return to the ether without making any real impression. That's just not good business sense. But I guess somebody liked it. And I'm glad because that meant Zombie got to make the sequel. And since I really liked the sequel, I guess I can't complain too much.
That being the case, my mind started to wander (never a good sign in a horror film) to thoughts of logic and common sense. Usually a horror film exerts enough grip on your fear receptors that you don't have time to consider the why's and wherefore's of the whole mess (which, if you were to actually do while watching most horror films would rob you of any pleasure. It's not that House of 1000 Corpses is unique in this department, it's just that I focused on it more than I'm normally inclined to.). Chief among the ridiculous implausibilities is the fact that the family kills people wantonly, whoever they may be and however they may have stumbled across their path (be they high school cheerleaders or law enforcement officers). The problem here is that this family could not do this for very long without people figuring out that something is amiss down by that crazy looking house.
Which leads me to the second major common sense lapse: the house. It's a fucking nut house. And while that might be scary and all, any sane person looking at that house would know some fucked up shit be goin' on in there. The fact that they've been committing murders left and right for years coupled with the fact that they've been doing it in this ridiculous house makes it impossible to believe that they could have gotten away with it for so long.
Finally, the most annoying logical lapse is the dozens of mutant creatures that live in the web of subterranean tunnels that snake all over the Firefly property. Who are all these people? How did they come to be this way? How has not one of them ever been noticed by a person who's just passing by? Why does the family even keep them around? And how did they get the technology to meld flesh with machine? That last question especially irks me because it comes out of nowhere and is never addressed but for god's sake they've built a Terminator down in that dungeon. I guess by the time you've gotten to this part of the film it's basically over and if you've gone with it this far I guess you can go with it a little more. What the hell?
However, what really turned me off the whole film in the first place was not the illogical nature of the plot (that came later when I got bored) but rather the silly interstitials of, alternately, Sheri Moon dancing half-naked, the brother looking crazy, or some half glimpsed negative image. These interludes are not scary so much as they are disorienting and annoying (not to mention pointless). That wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that, it seems to me anyway, the best violence is done in these little interstitials. You go to see a film called House of 1000 Corpses, you expect some serious grue, full-on and in your face. You don't expect it to be hidden in sepia-tinged, negative printed, shaken camera interstitials that come out of nowhere and return to the ether without making any real impression. That's just not good business sense. But I guess somebody liked it. And I'm glad because that meant Zombie got to make the sequel. And since I really liked the sequel, I guess I can't complain too much.
Tuesday, November 1, 2005
SAW II - darren lynn bousman - 4.5 / 10
Gotta love the concept: a killer gives people a choice, give in and die or struggle and live. That's a setup for a tremendous film. Unfortunately neither this film nor the one that preceded it is that film. I can get behind the logical inconsistencies and not get too bothered. I can even accept the very strange and uncharacteristic behavior of certain characters (assuming they're under pressure and might do the plot-convenient thing at a random moment). And, since I knew what I was getting into when I bought a ticket to see this film, I can accept the fact that there has to be a twist ending.
But with such a rich premise and basically nothing but places to go, I cannot accept that this is the story they chose to tell. It's just stupid. They have a bigger budget, access to actual actors (as opposed to using the screenwriter as the second lead in the first film) and they have the audience expecting that the killer will get away. You don't have that combination very often. And this garbage is the result? For shame.
I guess most of my ire here is over the basic set-up of the story. Five (or six or seven) people are locked up in a house and gradually exposed to a lethal toxin while the hero cop interrogates the killer and watches the proceedings on television monitors. It's like one of those bullshit romantic comedies wherein the entire world order is disturbed just so some schmuck can learn a lesson (Bruce Almighty, etc.). This whole elaborate set-up is just so Donnie Wahlberg's detective can play the game. Thus, I spent the whole film wondering why the hell Jigsaw didn't just kidnap him and make him play. Why go through the trouble of getting caught by the police and setting up this elaborate game and then having to rely on the detective doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment? Everything has to go exactly perfect for the killer (and it does) in order to pull this thing off. And that's just too much exposure for a guy who would surely know better. If he didn't, he would've been caught long before now.
The other major problem with the film is the twist ending. It's not bad, per se, it's just obvious from about five minutes in. Once Jigsaw says the object of the game is to sit and listen for two hours, the rest of the film is almost moot. There's a fun scare here or there but it's mostly just a way to pass the time until the detective is unable to wait out the two hours and does something stupid that plays right into Jigsaw's hands. Although the specifics of how this happens are interesting and not entirely predictable, the final plot development is greeted with a shrug. Still, there's great promise in this premise and I'd love to see somebody with a brain get in there and do something interesting with it.
But with such a rich premise and basically nothing but places to go, I cannot accept that this is the story they chose to tell. It's just stupid. They have a bigger budget, access to actual actors (as opposed to using the screenwriter as the second lead in the first film) and they have the audience expecting that the killer will get away. You don't have that combination very often. And this garbage is the result? For shame.
I guess most of my ire here is over the basic set-up of the story. Five (or six or seven) people are locked up in a house and gradually exposed to a lethal toxin while the hero cop interrogates the killer and watches the proceedings on television monitors. It's like one of those bullshit romantic comedies wherein the entire world order is disturbed just so some schmuck can learn a lesson (Bruce Almighty, etc.). This whole elaborate set-up is just so Donnie Wahlberg's detective can play the game. Thus, I spent the whole film wondering why the hell Jigsaw didn't just kidnap him and make him play. Why go through the trouble of getting caught by the police and setting up this elaborate game and then having to rely on the detective doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment? Everything has to go exactly perfect for the killer (and it does) in order to pull this thing off. And that's just too much exposure for a guy who would surely know better. If he didn't, he would've been caught long before now.
The other major problem with the film is the twist ending. It's not bad, per se, it's just obvious from about five minutes in. Once Jigsaw says the object of the game is to sit and listen for two hours, the rest of the film is almost moot. There's a fun scare here or there but it's mostly just a way to pass the time until the detective is unable to wait out the two hours and does something stupid that plays right into Jigsaw's hands. Although the specifics of how this happens are interesting and not entirely predictable, the final plot development is greeted with a shrug. Still, there's great promise in this premise and I'd love to see somebody with a brain get in there and do something interesting with it.
Monday, October 31, 2005
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR - luke greenfield - 6.3 / 10
Better than it has any right to be but not quite good enough to be recommended without reservation, The Girl Next Door is an interesting film nonetheless. The music selection is outstanding and goes a long way to making the film watchable. Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert are both extremely likeable and entertaining (although Cuthbert is terribly miscast and her fingernails draw my attention in the same way as a train wreck). And the supporting players are just a ton of fun.
That notwithstanding, the film still has some major flaws. Foremost among them is the two or three too many moments of cringe-inducing embarrassment for Hirsch's Joel Goodson--err Matthew Kidman (that name a very strange, sideways reference to Tom Cruise). A seventeen year-old boy dating a worldly and experienced porn star would, obviously, lead to a few sweaty palms moments for the boy. But there's a fine line between entertaining and amusing embarrassment and over the top, makes you want to look away from the screen embarrassment. The former, like when Danielle (Cuthbert) makes Matthew strip in the street as punishment for his having watched her undress, is cute and titillating and does a good job of dramatizing the awkward interactions of people just discovering their sexuality. The latter, like when Matthew, on ecstasy, gives a speech on moral fiber, is one of those only-in-the-movies moments that does nothing but make you think of all the other movies you've seen that have moments that are just like this one.
The end of the film also doesn't complete the action as well as it should. The quest to get $25,000 is like a misguided detour into another, much worse, film. It doesn't have anything in common tonally with the rest of the film and doesn't reveal anything interesting about the people in the film. It seems that this whole subplot is just a way to end the film in a grandiose way, as if just having the characters learn something about themselves wouldn't be big enough to hang the climax of the film on. The problem there is that the character problems, the problems of the mind, are what's interesting about the film in the first place. If I wanted to watch teenagers engaged in some ridiculous hijinx I'd watch American Pie. By making the final third of the film about an external conflict rather than an internal one, the filmmakers invalidate everything interesting that came before. And that's really a shame because the first two thirds of the film are resonant and entertaining.
That notwithstanding, the film still has some major flaws. Foremost among them is the two or three too many moments of cringe-inducing embarrassment for Hirsch's Joel Goodson--err Matthew Kidman (that name a very strange, sideways reference to Tom Cruise). A seventeen year-old boy dating a worldly and experienced porn star would, obviously, lead to a few sweaty palms moments for the boy. But there's a fine line between entertaining and amusing embarrassment and over the top, makes you want to look away from the screen embarrassment. The former, like when Danielle (Cuthbert) makes Matthew strip in the street as punishment for his having watched her undress, is cute and titillating and does a good job of dramatizing the awkward interactions of people just discovering their sexuality. The latter, like when Matthew, on ecstasy, gives a speech on moral fiber, is one of those only-in-the-movies moments that does nothing but make you think of all the other movies you've seen that have moments that are just like this one.
The end of the film also doesn't complete the action as well as it should. The quest to get $25,000 is like a misguided detour into another, much worse, film. It doesn't have anything in common tonally with the rest of the film and doesn't reveal anything interesting about the people in the film. It seems that this whole subplot is just a way to end the film in a grandiose way, as if just having the characters learn something about themselves wouldn't be big enough to hang the climax of the film on. The problem there is that the character problems, the problems of the mind, are what's interesting about the film in the first place. If I wanted to watch teenagers engaged in some ridiculous hijinx I'd watch American Pie. By making the final third of the film about an external conflict rather than an internal one, the filmmakers invalidate everything interesting that came before. And that's really a shame because the first two thirds of the film are resonant and entertaining.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
LOVING - irvin kershner - 7.2 / 10
They don't make 'em like this anymore. That's a common complaint that I've never quite understood. They don't make 'em like they used to because they can't, that era is over. And most of the time, when people say things like that (and it's usually someone like Ebert or Roeper) I think they're just being pointlessly nostalgic. And besides, for the most part, what they're lamenting is crap.
Loving, however, is a different animal. When I say they don't make 'em like this anymore, I don't mean that they don't make films with bastards as the main characters (because they often do in the indie world) and I don't mean that the film has a special realism about it that you don't find in today's films (look at something like Boys Don't Cry, it has the same type of "realism"). What I mean is that you don't see films today with the balls to have not particularly attractive people being the focus of lust and desire. This happens all the time in the real world (people are attracted to money, power, confidence, whatever) but in movies these days it's always the looks (or, if it's the other stuff, the looks are there, too). There's just something I love about the idea of an ugly man having his way with women who, for the most part, are attractive but could stand to lose a few pounds.
So, I guess when I say they don't make movies like Loving anymore, what I'm really referring to is the realism of people that the film has that you never see today. And that realism of people combined with the sort of slapdash realism of DP Gordon Willis's cinematography gives the film a voyeuristic attitude that is just so casually cool. I mean, the guy (who's a downright bastard) might just be walking along on the street but the way that he looks and the way that it's shot completely holds my interest. Yes, the story is somewhat interesting and the dialogue is passable but it's the way that Peter Segal and Eva Marie Saint move and just exist in the frames of this film that is the source of its pleasure for me. I guess that's a pretty boring reason to like a film but there you have it. It won't be enough for everyone but it was enough for me.
Loving, however, is a different animal. When I say they don't make 'em like this anymore, I don't mean that they don't make films with bastards as the main characters (because they often do in the indie world) and I don't mean that the film has a special realism about it that you don't find in today's films (look at something like Boys Don't Cry, it has the same type of "realism"). What I mean is that you don't see films today with the balls to have not particularly attractive people being the focus of lust and desire. This happens all the time in the real world (people are attracted to money, power, confidence, whatever) but in movies these days it's always the looks (or, if it's the other stuff, the looks are there, too). There's just something I love about the idea of an ugly man having his way with women who, for the most part, are attractive but could stand to lose a few pounds.
So, I guess when I say they don't make movies like Loving anymore, what I'm really referring to is the realism of people that the film has that you never see today. And that realism of people combined with the sort of slapdash realism of DP Gordon Willis's cinematography gives the film a voyeuristic attitude that is just so casually cool. I mean, the guy (who's a downright bastard) might just be walking along on the street but the way that he looks and the way that it's shot completely holds my interest. Yes, the story is somewhat interesting and the dialogue is passable but it's the way that Peter Segal and Eva Marie Saint move and just exist in the frames of this film that is the source of its pleasure for me. I guess that's a pretty boring reason to like a film but there you have it. It won't be enough for everyone but it was enough for me.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
THE SOPRANOS: SEASON TWO - 6.0 / 10
I'm beginning to see a pattern in The Sopranos. Apparently each season is ten or so middling episodes with the occasional flash of brilliance followed by two or three excellent episodes in which all the hanging plot threads are tied up in a nice neat bow. That's obviously not the most satisfying way to construct a show but it is a very effective way to keep the audience coming back for more. You watch the first few episodes of a season because the last few of the last season were so good. By the time you get halfway through the new season, you want to give up because it's boring but you sense that great things are around the corner so you stick it out and wait for them. Then, in the last few episodes of the season you get the greatness that you were hoping for. And so the cycle starts all over again.
That being said, the great episodes of the second season are far less entertaining than the great episodes of the first and fifth seasons. Nothing unexpected happens (despite promises to the contrary by the "Next On" voiceover) and the expected things are not done in any spectacular way. Big Pussy's murder and the Scatino bust-up in particular are the types of moments in which this series normally shines, but not so this time. I'm just hoping it gets more interesting in the next season. After all, the fifth season is pretty excellent.
That being said, the great episodes of the second season are far less entertaining than the great episodes of the first and fifth seasons. Nothing unexpected happens (despite promises to the contrary by the "Next On" voiceover) and the expected things are not done in any spectacular way. Big Pussy's murder and the Scatino bust-up in particular are the types of moments in which this series normally shines, but not so this time. I'm just hoping it gets more interesting in the next season. After all, the fifth season is pretty excellent.
Thursday, October 6, 2005
THE BROWN BUNNY - vincent gallo - 1.7 / 10
I think it might have been Hitchcock who first dispensed with showing characters going into and out of houses and rooms, assuming that if they just appeared in the room, the audience could fill in the blanks as to how they got there. The last fifty years of film history have proven him correct. But for The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo has apparently decided to see if those little in-between moments could become the central focus of a film.
I don't know if that's really what his intention was but that's sure as hell what most of this film is about. There are plenty of long wistful shots of the road or of Gallo's skull-like visage punctuated by a few random dialogue scenes in which people say nothing of any consequence while looking as ugly as Gallo can make them. What exactly the point of this is, I cannot say. But the better question is why do you need a whole film of the same three things (those mentioned above) when just a few minutes would make the same point? I mean, does it say something different to see one road for five minutes or five roads for five minutes each? I don't think it does and, further, I think the latter is just exceptionally boring.
So Gallo (maybe his character has a name but I doubt it, he's just that sort of asshole) travels across the country having various levels of sexual contact with women named after flowers. And, of course, these sexual encounters are unprovoked and come out of nowhere and are shot with a "realism" that is completely incongruent with the unrealistic nature of what is transpiring. No guy who looks like Skeletor and talks with a nasally whine (and repeats what you say right back at you all the time) would get random women to just start kissing on him everywhere he goes.
And that's all without mentioning the infamous blowjob that ends the film. Throughout the road trip, Gallo has flashbacks to times he's spent with his girlfriend Daisy (they're all sexual of course). Finally he reaches California (where Daisy is waiting) and she gives him head. So basically the whole film is this horny dude traveling across the country thinking about the awesome blowjob he's going to get when he comes home. To help blow off some of his sexual tension along the way, he picks up some other women named after flowers and fools around with them. But they're just appetizers for his lovely Daisy. And then he gets the long awaited blowjob and the film ends. Awesome.
I don't know if that's really what his intention was but that's sure as hell what most of this film is about. There are plenty of long wistful shots of the road or of Gallo's skull-like visage punctuated by a few random dialogue scenes in which people say nothing of any consequence while looking as ugly as Gallo can make them. What exactly the point of this is, I cannot say. But the better question is why do you need a whole film of the same three things (those mentioned above) when just a few minutes would make the same point? I mean, does it say something different to see one road for five minutes or five roads for five minutes each? I don't think it does and, further, I think the latter is just exceptionally boring.
So Gallo (maybe his character has a name but I doubt it, he's just that sort of asshole) travels across the country having various levels of sexual contact with women named after flowers. And, of course, these sexual encounters are unprovoked and come out of nowhere and are shot with a "realism" that is completely incongruent with the unrealistic nature of what is transpiring. No guy who looks like Skeletor and talks with a nasally whine (and repeats what you say right back at you all the time) would get random women to just start kissing on him everywhere he goes.
And that's all without mentioning the infamous blowjob that ends the film. Throughout the road trip, Gallo has flashbacks to times he's spent with his girlfriend Daisy (they're all sexual of course). Finally he reaches California (where Daisy is waiting) and she gives him head. So basically the whole film is this horny dude traveling across the country thinking about the awesome blowjob he's going to get when he comes home. To help blow off some of his sexual tension along the way, he picks up some other women named after flowers and fools around with them. But they're just appetizers for his lovely Daisy. And then he gets the long awaited blowjob and the film ends. Awesome.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
THE SOPRANOS: SEASON FIVE - 8.1 / 10
Far, far better than I had expected it to be, this season of The Sopranos proves to be the most satisfying yet. This is particularly surprising because I had already watched the first five or six episodes of the season when they first aired and was not that impressed. One second viewing, these episodes are still not very impressive, however, they are building to a truly great final three episodes that almost makes the hours of meandering worth it.
What really impresses about this season is the lack of hackneyed plot developments. The Sopranos is king of taking plotlines straight out of "lesser" network television series, dressing them up with some blood and cursing and passing it off as insightful and groundbreaking. In The Sopranos worst moments (so far for me that would be all of season two although I have not watched seasons three or four), there is nothing but daytime television quality plotlines going on. (More on this in my season two review because now the show has hooked me and I need to know how they got to where they've ended up in season five.)
However, the series still lacks the recklessness and sheer bravery of shows like The Wire, Oz, Nip/Tuck and The Shield. Those shows are in the pantheon. The Sopranos is just a spiffy pretender to the throne, all perfect plot geometry and studious acting. And although you can see the final plot developments coming from a mile away, the way they play out is still very interesting. So maybe The Sopranos isn't the best show on TV. And maybe it's just prettified soap opera writ large. But there's a reason One Life to Live has been on for fifty years, it taps a chord in all of us. It's the same chord struck by The Sopranos. And hey, the critical tongue-bath this show gets means you dont even have to feel guilty about watching it.
What really impresses about this season is the lack of hackneyed plot developments. The Sopranos is king of taking plotlines straight out of "lesser" network television series, dressing them up with some blood and cursing and passing it off as insightful and groundbreaking. In The Sopranos worst moments (so far for me that would be all of season two although I have not watched seasons three or four), there is nothing but daytime television quality plotlines going on. (More on this in my season two review because now the show has hooked me and I need to know how they got to where they've ended up in season five.)
However, the series still lacks the recklessness and sheer bravery of shows like The Wire, Oz, Nip/Tuck and The Shield. Those shows are in the pantheon. The Sopranos is just a spiffy pretender to the throne, all perfect plot geometry and studious acting. And although you can see the final plot developments coming from a mile away, the way they play out is still very interesting. So maybe The Sopranos isn't the best show on TV. And maybe it's just prettified soap opera writ large. But there's a reason One Life to Live has been on for fifty years, it taps a chord in all of us. It's the same chord struck by The Sopranos. And hey, the critical tongue-bath this show gets means you dont even have to feel guilty about watching it.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
CORPSE BRIDE - tim burton & mike johnson - 6.9 / 10
Stop motion animation and CG animation (and even hand drawn animation) have the same inherent problem, namely that each individual moment in the film is crafted to absolute perfection. There's no chance for improvisation or the random little moments that give life to a live action film. This is, of course, inherent in the medium but it still bugs the shit out of me. It makes animated films seem somehow lifeless even when they're crammed to the absolute breaking point with so many characters and gags that you can't even take them all in on one viewing.
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (how did he ever convince the studio to go with that title?) is no exception. In fact, there might be more going on in this little eighty-minute film than in most films twice as long. But that vacuum-sealed, lifeless sort of joy combined with the fact that the ending to this fable is a foregone conclusion only adds up to an enjoyable but forgettable film-going experience. To be sure there are many things in the film that delight (the maggot that lives in the corpse bride's eye and speaks with the voice of Peter Lorre is maybe the best) but they don't linger in any real way. Everything is just marvelously put together and cleverly stage designed. And while that's all well and good, it does not make for a lasting impression.
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (how did he ever convince the studio to go with that title?) is no exception. In fact, there might be more going on in this little eighty-minute film than in most films twice as long. But that vacuum-sealed, lifeless sort of joy combined with the fact that the ending to this fable is a foregone conclusion only adds up to an enjoyable but forgettable film-going experience. To be sure there are many things in the film that delight (the maggot that lives in the corpse bride's eye and speaks with the voice of Peter Lorre is maybe the best) but they don't linger in any real way. Everything is just marvelously put together and cleverly stage designed. And while that's all well and good, it does not make for a lasting impression.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
EAST OF EDEN - elia kazan - 3.9 / 10
Supposedly Elia Kazan and John Steinbeck were friends. Watching this film, I find that hard to believe (unless maybe Steinbeck was one of those authors that never watched the film adaptations of his work). This film is almost impossible to enjoy if you haven't read the book. But it you have read the book, it's maddening to watch the film because so much of what made the book great has been taken out of the film.
The novel relates the story of Adam Trask and his two sons. The moral center of the work is Lee, the Chinese valet that attends to the family after they make the move to California, and Samuel, the Trasks' neighbor who prods Adam into action whenever it is necessary. Both of these characters have been jettisoned in the film adaptation. But more egregiously, Kazan and his screenwriters have basically filmed one-fifteenth of the plot of the book. Although this is certainly the most interesting fifteenth of the book, if you don't know what exactly lead to the events depicted herein they more or less have no meaning in and of themselves.
But that being said, James Dean is truly impressive as Cal. I've never seen him on screen before and everything I'd heard was an underestimation of the kind of life that he breathes into the film. Without him, this would be unwatchable. With him, it's marginally interesting when he's on screen and impossibly dull when he isn't. (The filmmakers seemed to realize this and made Cal the center of the story despite the fact that he is not the center of the novel.) But as powerful as his presence may be, he's a bit out of place here. He is not the Caleb of the book and isn't fooling anybody into thinking he's seventeen. And, more harmful to the intent of the piece, he isn't fooling anybody into thinking he's a bad boy either. He's like the Brad Pitt of his day, commanding all eyes to look at him whenever he's on screen but completely unconvincing as anything other than exactly what he is.
The novel relates the story of Adam Trask and his two sons. The moral center of the work is Lee, the Chinese valet that attends to the family after they make the move to California, and Samuel, the Trasks' neighbor who prods Adam into action whenever it is necessary. Both of these characters have been jettisoned in the film adaptation. But more egregiously, Kazan and his screenwriters have basically filmed one-fifteenth of the plot of the book. Although this is certainly the most interesting fifteenth of the book, if you don't know what exactly lead to the events depicted herein they more or less have no meaning in and of themselves.
But that being said, James Dean is truly impressive as Cal. I've never seen him on screen before and everything I'd heard was an underestimation of the kind of life that he breathes into the film. Without him, this would be unwatchable. With him, it's marginally interesting when he's on screen and impossibly dull when he isn't. (The filmmakers seemed to realize this and made Cal the center of the story despite the fact that he is not the center of the novel.) But as powerful as his presence may be, he's a bit out of place here. He is not the Caleb of the book and isn't fooling anybody into thinking he's seventeen. And, more harmful to the intent of the piece, he isn't fooling anybody into thinking he's a bad boy either. He's like the Brad Pitt of his day, commanding all eyes to look at him whenever he's on screen but completely unconvincing as anything other than exactly what he is.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
RED EYE - wes craven - 6.9 / 10
Better than it has any right to be, Wes Craven's Red Eye still peters out long before its conclusion. But the things that work about it work very well. For instance, the heroine (played by Rachel McAdams) has previously been assaulted and raped. And that previous attack causes her to fight viciously against ever being made a victim again. Thus her attempts to defy the villainous Jack (Cillian Murphy) play not as unbelievable, only-in-the-movies developments but as vital to her character's mental survival. She can't allow herself to be a victim again and thus must resist at every turn. Her actions are entirely believable and motivated. And that makes her one of the strongest women characters in recent film history.
Her character's history of being raped also functions as a metaphor for our collective wounding by the attack on the World Trade Center. With most of the film set on an airplane and involving a plot to kill the Director of Homeland Security, Wes Craven is certainly gunning for our post-9/11 anxieties. The first act of the film plays as a romantic comedy, never hinting that something sinister and dangerous is lurking around the corner. Although that surprise is ruined by the film's trailer and advertising campaign, the idea is that America, pre-9/11, lived the same sort of charmed existence, never thinking anything bad could happen. And when the shit hit the fan on September 11, as in this film, we Americans had a hard time believing that it was really happening. But slowly our resolve hardened just as McAdams's character's does in this film. She and we attack blindly when reflection is probably the safer and more levelheaded course of action. Furthering the 9/11 metaphor, when the terrorists of the film finally mount their attack against the Homeland Security director, the effect of their strike looks eerily similar to the damage inflicted by the planes on the World Trade Center.
So yeah, there's a lot of heady stuff going on underneath the surface of this film. The problem is that most of the stuff happening on the surface isn't that interesting. It's the kind of film I could talk myself into liking but won't really have any interest in ever seeing again. Mostly that's because by the last twenty minutes the film has turned into the standard crazed-killer-with-a-knife-stalking-the-heroine thing. It's just not that interesting at this point because the outcome of this sort of thing is never in doubt in mainstream American pictures.
Her character's history of being raped also functions as a metaphor for our collective wounding by the attack on the World Trade Center. With most of the film set on an airplane and involving a plot to kill the Director of Homeland Security, Wes Craven is certainly gunning for our post-9/11 anxieties. The first act of the film plays as a romantic comedy, never hinting that something sinister and dangerous is lurking around the corner. Although that surprise is ruined by the film's trailer and advertising campaign, the idea is that America, pre-9/11, lived the same sort of charmed existence, never thinking anything bad could happen. And when the shit hit the fan on September 11, as in this film, we Americans had a hard time believing that it was really happening. But slowly our resolve hardened just as McAdams's character's does in this film. She and we attack blindly when reflection is probably the safer and more levelheaded course of action. Furthering the 9/11 metaphor, when the terrorists of the film finally mount their attack against the Homeland Security director, the effect of their strike looks eerily similar to the damage inflicted by the planes on the World Trade Center.
So yeah, there's a lot of heady stuff going on underneath the surface of this film. The problem is that most of the stuff happening on the surface isn't that interesting. It's the kind of film I could talk myself into liking but won't really have any interest in ever seeing again. Mostly that's because by the last twenty minutes the film has turned into the standard crazed-killer-with-a-knife-stalking-the-heroine thing. It's just not that interesting at this point because the outcome of this sort of thing is never in doubt in mainstream American pictures.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
STEALTH - rob cohen - 0.7 / 10
Updating the Top Gun style men-and-their-planes film for the new millennium is not, in itself, a terrible idea (although it's unlikely that doing so would result in a decent film). However, grafting onto the genre some nonsense about an artificially intelligent plane is just stupid and, more damningly, pointless. Even the most gullible conspiracy theorist doesn't imagine that we're anywhere close to being able to create artificial intelligence. Besides which, if you're gonna make the plane behave and sound like HAL 9000, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the plot's headed.
I guess it's a function of having no real enemies to fight. Rather than create some believable geopolitical conflict to give our flyboys something to fight (and possibly alienate some of that international audience looking to drink from the trough of American special effects extravaganzas) Cohen and Co. needed to make the conflict internal within the Navy. (After all, terrorists, the only politically correct villains out there, don't have any planes.) So they came up with this nonsense about the AI plane. But at least that plot development is understandable (stupid, but understandable). Having Jessica Biel (one of the top three fighter pilots in the Navy... uh-huh) shot down in North Korea so that the AI plane and her boyfriend can make a dramatic landing and save the day is just laughable. Taking this film out of the sky is a terrible mistake. The only thing it has going for it are the flying sequences that, being the first of the digital age, are at least noteworthy and startling. To turn the movie into a search and destroy mission near the Demilitarized Zone makes no sense. And besides, since there's no possibility that she's going to be harmed in any significant way, it also robs the film of any tension.
Rob Cohen makes movies to make money. He's said so in countless interviews and on the commentary track of his magnum opus The Fast and the Furious. But his last two films (XXX and Stealth) have tanked. I don't believe this means anything about the American movie-going public at large but at least the bean-counters in Hollywood are going to hesitate before handing this idiot a hundred million dollars again.
I guess it's a function of having no real enemies to fight. Rather than create some believable geopolitical conflict to give our flyboys something to fight (and possibly alienate some of that international audience looking to drink from the trough of American special effects extravaganzas) Cohen and Co. needed to make the conflict internal within the Navy. (After all, terrorists, the only politically correct villains out there, don't have any planes.) So they came up with this nonsense about the AI plane. But at least that plot development is understandable (stupid, but understandable). Having Jessica Biel (one of the top three fighter pilots in the Navy... uh-huh) shot down in North Korea so that the AI plane and her boyfriend can make a dramatic landing and save the day is just laughable. Taking this film out of the sky is a terrible mistake. The only thing it has going for it are the flying sequences that, being the first of the digital age, are at least noteworthy and startling. To turn the movie into a search and destroy mission near the Demilitarized Zone makes no sense. And besides, since there's no possibility that she's going to be harmed in any significant way, it also robs the film of any tension.
Rob Cohen makes movies to make money. He's said so in countless interviews and on the commentary track of his magnum opus The Fast and the Furious. But his last two films (XXX and Stealth) have tanked. I don't believe this means anything about the American movie-going public at large but at least the bean-counters in Hollywood are going to hesitate before handing this idiot a hundred million dollars again.
Monday, August 8, 2005
LOST HORIZON - frank capra - 5.3 / 10
This is the film that finally got Frank Capra's name above the title. Unfortunately, it's also his most boring. Ridiculously slow paced with no propelling action of any sort, the film is such a slog to get through that I couldn't make it. Despite three attempts to watch it, I couldn't get more than halfway in. And maybe the argument could be made that had I seen it through to the end my opinion might have changed. But I doubt it. It's not like you can't see where this is going from the first frame. And that place isn't particularly compelling.
But the problem with this film isn't really the plot. Rather it's the meandering conversations that get in the way of the plot. After his plane crashes in the mountains, heroic Conway and various other people (the head of a monastery, his fellow crash survivors, local women, whatever) have very lengthy, quasi-philosophical talks about all manner of topics. But these conversations are not really about anything. If they were, they might be compelling in and of themselves. But they aren't. And the viewer is left watching the same two or three shots for five minutes as two decent ordinary characters talk about how great everything is and how much they agree with one another about the greatness of said things. It's dreadfully boring. I'd rate it lower but having not seen the end I'm giving good ol' happy ending Capra the benefit of the doubt.
By the way, it seems that Spielberg's had two legendary precursors (Capra and John Ford). I'd only thought he'd had the one. That makes me think there might always be a Spielberg out there, a great visual stylist who, under the aegis of "giving the people what they want," makes a bunch of good films that shoot themselves in the foot with too much sentimentality and a basic unwillingness to closely examine the failings of their society and their government. Conservative mouthpieces, I guess you'd call them. Just really really talented ones.
But the problem with this film isn't really the plot. Rather it's the meandering conversations that get in the way of the plot. After his plane crashes in the mountains, heroic Conway and various other people (the head of a monastery, his fellow crash survivors, local women, whatever) have very lengthy, quasi-philosophical talks about all manner of topics. But these conversations are not really about anything. If they were, they might be compelling in and of themselves. But they aren't. And the viewer is left watching the same two or three shots for five minutes as two decent ordinary characters talk about how great everything is and how much they agree with one another about the greatness of said things. It's dreadfully boring. I'd rate it lower but having not seen the end I'm giving good ol' happy ending Capra the benefit of the doubt.
By the way, it seems that Spielberg's had two legendary precursors (Capra and John Ford). I'd only thought he'd had the one. That makes me think there might always be a Spielberg out there, a great visual stylist who, under the aegis of "giving the people what they want," makes a bunch of good films that shoot themselves in the foot with too much sentimentality and a basic unwillingness to closely examine the failings of their society and their government. Conservative mouthpieces, I guess you'd call them. Just really really talented ones.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
ENDURING LOVE - roger michell - 6.5 / 10
This is one fantastic looking film. Nearly every single shot is gorgeous and many are borderline breathtaking despite the fact that most of the film is handheld. That's pretty damn high praise from me seeing as how despicable I find handheld camerawork in film (television is a bit different; I'm willing to cut it a bit more slack given the time and budget constraints). I just can't get over how fucking orgasmic every shot in this film is. And it's not even a very good film. Make a print from any single frame and you could hang it on your wall but I doubt there are very many people in whose DVD collection you'll find this one. I suppose it'll reside in mine but I'd almost rather watch it in silence.
That's not to say that there isn't some good stuff in the film. But it's an "adult" film. The sort of thing that critics like to say we need more of but that mostly just bore the shit out of everyone. All the leads give great performances. And the tone is creepy as all get out. But in the end, Enduring Love is more interested in its pat ruminations on the biological imperative towards love than it is in the visceral shock value of its stalker plot.
There's also the fact that Samantha Morton pisses me right the hell off. There are certain actors (or writers or directors or producers, I'm looking at you Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer) whose name on a film is a clear signal that this is a certain type of film. The genres may be different, the settings may change, even the tone may be different, but if you walk into a Kevin Costner film you know you're going to get some overly sentimental ode to living well in later life. And if you sit down to watch to a Clint Eastwood film you'd better be prepared for a quasi-spiritual meditation on death wrapped in a crowd-pleasing piece of populism. And then you have Samantha Morton who is always and unfailingly in a film that requires her to be long suffering and cut off from the world so she can hang her head and avert her eyes. Maybe, just maybe, she'll have a few moments of joy but everything must always be tempered with sadness because no film that features Samanatha Morton will ever fully embrace happiness 'cause the world's just so durn sad. If I happen to go into a film not realizing that she's in it (as I did Enduring Love), my heart sinks to find her big forehead and droopy eyes waiting to tell me how horrible the world is. Maybe that's unfair. Or maybe right now I'm just more interested in films that embrace the joy of storytelling. Or maybe she's just one of those people I don't like looking at. Whatever the reason, her presence makes the film that much harder to love and that's an additional hurdle this already overburdened film cannot clear.
That's not to say that there isn't some good stuff in the film. But it's an "adult" film. The sort of thing that critics like to say we need more of but that mostly just bore the shit out of everyone. All the leads give great performances. And the tone is creepy as all get out. But in the end, Enduring Love is more interested in its pat ruminations on the biological imperative towards love than it is in the visceral shock value of its stalker plot.
There's also the fact that Samantha Morton pisses me right the hell off. There are certain actors (or writers or directors or producers, I'm looking at you Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer) whose name on a film is a clear signal that this is a certain type of film. The genres may be different, the settings may change, even the tone may be different, but if you walk into a Kevin Costner film you know you're going to get some overly sentimental ode to living well in later life. And if you sit down to watch to a Clint Eastwood film you'd better be prepared for a quasi-spiritual meditation on death wrapped in a crowd-pleasing piece of populism. And then you have Samantha Morton who is always and unfailingly in a film that requires her to be long suffering and cut off from the world so she can hang her head and avert her eyes. Maybe, just maybe, she'll have a few moments of joy but everything must always be tempered with sadness because no film that features Samanatha Morton will ever fully embrace happiness 'cause the world's just so durn sad. If I happen to go into a film not realizing that she's in it (as I did Enduring Love), my heart sinks to find her big forehead and droopy eyes waiting to tell me how horrible the world is. Maybe that's unfair. Or maybe right now I'm just more interested in films that embrace the joy of storytelling. Or maybe she's just one of those people I don't like looking at. Whatever the reason, her presence makes the film that much harder to love and that's an additional hurdle this already overburdened film cannot clear.
Saturday, July 9, 2005
FANTASTIC FOUR - tim story - 0.9 / 10
Fantastic Four is the filmic equivalent of how I imagine most people think of superhero comic books. It's entertaining if you can manage to shut off the reasoning part of your brain, but not one thing in the whole film holds up to any sort of scrutiny. The Fantastic Four's costumes mutate along with their bodies because the DNA in the clothes has been altered along with the people inside them (except that clothing doesn't have DNA). Our heroes are introduced to the world at large when they save the victims of a multi-car pileup that they just happened to instigate. During the film's climax, the Thing is unable to turn back into Ben Grimm because there isn't enough power (until Dr. Doom comes along and charges the machine) but is able to turn back into the Thing without his aid.
And while this is all stupid, it's not quite insulting. No, that comes when you realize that they've made the most evil, destructive mortal in the Marvel Universe (Dr. Doom) into a super-powered buffoon who's pissed cause Reed swiped his girlfriend. Or, if that hasn't done it, maybe it's when you realize that if Ben can turn into the Thing and back again at the flip of a switch then why wouldn't they just go ahead and create a whole race of super-people. And if that still hasn't gotten you angry, well, maybe the fact that Jessica Alba plays a nuclear physicist will. But if all of these things haven't put you off the film, then Fantastic Four is probably going to be your favorite film of the summer.
And while this is all stupid, it's not quite insulting. No, that comes when you realize that they've made the most evil, destructive mortal in the Marvel Universe (Dr. Doom) into a super-powered buffoon who's pissed cause Reed swiped his girlfriend. Or, if that hasn't done it, maybe it's when you realize that if Ben can turn into the Thing and back again at the flip of a switch then why wouldn't they just go ahead and create a whole race of super-people. And if that still hasn't gotten you angry, well, maybe the fact that Jessica Alba plays a nuclear physicist will. But if all of these things haven't put you off the film, then Fantastic Four is probably going to be your favorite film of the summer.
Friday, July 1, 2005
WAR OF THE WORLDS - steven spielberg - 4.9 / 10
H.G. Wells's 1898 novel on which this film is based basically birthed the modern science fiction genre. A classic it may be but the ending is still one of the worst cop-outs in the history of literature. That being said, I can perhaps forgive Wells seeing as that was 1898 and we didn't really know all that much about the makeup of our bodies or our planet (I mean, we only figured out that the heart was the organ that pumped blood through our bodies fifty years earlier). And maybe I could even forgive Spielberg for recycling that lame ending seeing as how he'd probably not want to enrage the people who want movies based on books to share as many plot points as possible. But nothing can forgive the last two minutes of the film in which Tom Cruise's Ray Ferrier and his daughter walk down the picturesque and completely untouched upper class Boston neighborhood and find his ex-wife, her parents and his estranged son all alive and completely unharmed. No one else is anywhere to be seen. It's like a postcard. It's so ridiculously perfect that it should be a dream. But, unfortunately, it isn't. It's more of the same Spielbergian bullshit. Like John Anderton caressing his pregnant wife's belly at the end of Minority Report and David spending one last day with his mommy in A.I., this last scene takes everything that was beautiful and visually exciting (and there's plenty) that came before and rubs it in shit.
One great scene ruined by this ending (well, more precisely, ruined by the knowledge that this awful ending was imminent) finds Ray and his son fighting over the son's desire to witness the aliens' destructive power firsthand before he's killed and Ray's desire to stop him. The son, understandably, doesn't want to die hiding in a basement without ever having seen the awesome power raining destruction all around. And the father, also quite understandably, doesn't want his son to give up. They square off midway up a hill with the sounds and sights of nuclear catastrophe just over the ridge. It's a great idea for a scene and the execution is visual magic. But, and it's a big but, anyone even remotely familiar with a Spielberg film knows that there's no real danger. It doesn't really matter whether the son stays on the hill or goes with the father, they're both going to be fine because Spielberg doesn't have the balls to kill any main character ever. And frankly that just sucks.
But enough about the last half of the film, let's move on to the brilliant first hour or so. Some reviews have complained about the use of various touchstones from 9/11 and its aftermath that appear in the film (namely the dust that covers Ray after the aliens first appear, the posters of missing loved ones that line the walls of a subway station and the debris that rains down from the sky in the wake of the tripods). And while I suppose I understand being a bit touchy about it, as I watched the film I couldn't help but think that Spielberg had finally brought the events of 9/11 to film the way they should have been. I always felt, watching the actual footage, that it should have been filmed better, that we should have had a better angle on everything. Perhaps it's the long training I've had in the creation of emotion and nuance in film, but the images of 9/11 never resonated with me. Sure they were "real" but I've seen plenty of documentaries that manage to utilize a certain amount of film technique. And besides, I wasn't personally involved in that day's events and so they are no more "real" to me than the events of Hoop Dreams. But here, finally, a filmmaker with skill has tackled the events surrounding the collapse of the Twin Towers and done it in such a way that it gets to even me.
I suppose it's funny that a fictional film that draws its production design from real events would be more powerful than the images of the actual events. But in this case, Spielberg has so exactly portrayed the horror and grief of these events that even a person uninvolved in the whole mess can understand why this was how we dealt with the tragedy. And to those reviewers that are upset about the film's borrowing of 9/11 imagery, well, if youre mad about that you might as well be mad about CSI showing what happens to a body when a bullet passes through it or Law and Order when a woman who's just been made a widow starts sobbing uncontrollably. We learn how people deal with events only by actually witnessing them. Without the events of and around September 11, 2001, how the characters in War of the Worlds would have dealt with the catastrophic alien attack would have been conjecture based on the way people have dealt with catastrophes in the past. Post 9/11 we know how people deal with a massive tragedy. We've seen it. And there's not a decent filmmaker alive who wouldn't incorporate that into their film. But because Spielberg is so expert with these visual touches they resonant more than even the actual real events of 9/11 that were caught on tape. And I think that's where the betrayal these reviewers feel really comes from. Spielberg, at least for me, has, with this film, supplanted the images actually recorded on September 11 and replaced them with his own far superior ones. This is tantamount to sacrilege and cannot be allowed to stand (for some). But for me, I'm glad somebody had the balls to take this national tragedy and use it for some purpose other than misguided calls to patriotism or war. And I'm doubly glad that it was a filmmaker whose consummate visual skills achieved resonance with these images that the real ones never quite attained. If only the projector had broken when the film was an hour old and that goddawful ending had never unspooled and ruined everything that came before.
One great scene ruined by this ending (well, more precisely, ruined by the knowledge that this awful ending was imminent) finds Ray and his son fighting over the son's desire to witness the aliens' destructive power firsthand before he's killed and Ray's desire to stop him. The son, understandably, doesn't want to die hiding in a basement without ever having seen the awesome power raining destruction all around. And the father, also quite understandably, doesn't want his son to give up. They square off midway up a hill with the sounds and sights of nuclear catastrophe just over the ridge. It's a great idea for a scene and the execution is visual magic. But, and it's a big but, anyone even remotely familiar with a Spielberg film knows that there's no real danger. It doesn't really matter whether the son stays on the hill or goes with the father, they're both going to be fine because Spielberg doesn't have the balls to kill any main character ever. And frankly that just sucks.
But enough about the last half of the film, let's move on to the brilliant first hour or so. Some reviews have complained about the use of various touchstones from 9/11 and its aftermath that appear in the film (namely the dust that covers Ray after the aliens first appear, the posters of missing loved ones that line the walls of a subway station and the debris that rains down from the sky in the wake of the tripods). And while I suppose I understand being a bit touchy about it, as I watched the film I couldn't help but think that Spielberg had finally brought the events of 9/11 to film the way they should have been. I always felt, watching the actual footage, that it should have been filmed better, that we should have had a better angle on everything. Perhaps it's the long training I've had in the creation of emotion and nuance in film, but the images of 9/11 never resonated with me. Sure they were "real" but I've seen plenty of documentaries that manage to utilize a certain amount of film technique. And besides, I wasn't personally involved in that day's events and so they are no more "real" to me than the events of Hoop Dreams. But here, finally, a filmmaker with skill has tackled the events surrounding the collapse of the Twin Towers and done it in such a way that it gets to even me.
I suppose it's funny that a fictional film that draws its production design from real events would be more powerful than the images of the actual events. But in this case, Spielberg has so exactly portrayed the horror and grief of these events that even a person uninvolved in the whole mess can understand why this was how we dealt with the tragedy. And to those reviewers that are upset about the film's borrowing of 9/11 imagery, well, if youre mad about that you might as well be mad about CSI showing what happens to a body when a bullet passes through it or Law and Order when a woman who's just been made a widow starts sobbing uncontrollably. We learn how people deal with events only by actually witnessing them. Without the events of and around September 11, 2001, how the characters in War of the Worlds would have dealt with the catastrophic alien attack would have been conjecture based on the way people have dealt with catastrophes in the past. Post 9/11 we know how people deal with a massive tragedy. We've seen it. And there's not a decent filmmaker alive who wouldn't incorporate that into their film. But because Spielberg is so expert with these visual touches they resonant more than even the actual real events of 9/11 that were caught on tape. And I think that's where the betrayal these reviewers feel really comes from. Spielberg, at least for me, has, with this film, supplanted the images actually recorded on September 11 and replaced them with his own far superior ones. This is tantamount to sacrilege and cannot be allowed to stand (for some). But for me, I'm glad somebody had the balls to take this national tragedy and use it for some purpose other than misguided calls to patriotism or war. And I'm doubly glad that it was a filmmaker whose consummate visual skills achieved resonance with these images that the real ones never quite attained. If only the projector had broken when the film was an hour old and that goddawful ending had never unspooled and ruined everything that came before.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
THE MACHINIST - brad anderson - 4.1 / 10
What to make of a film that names its protagonist Trevor Reznik (basically the same as Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor) and has a mystical guru with supernatural abilities dressed up like Morpheus? Obvious isn't really the word. Self-conscious gets closer. Silly's probably the most accurate. But calling a film for which the lead actor lost sixty pounds to become so emaciated as to threaten his own existence silly just seems like bad form.
What mostly makes the film silly is that from nearly the first frame Anderson is setting the audience up for the Big Twist. But twist endings are hard to pull off. They have to be completely unexpected but at the same time they must also provide the only resolution that makes any sense. And to be most effective they have to cast everything that has come before in a new light. If you don't have the balls or the ability (Anderson and writer Scott Kosar (who tellingly wrote this script straight out of film school) have neither) to pull off an effective twist, choice number two for this sort of film is to make everything a mystery so that the twist really just provides a solution that the audience has been guessing at the whole film. This, however, also has its problems, namely that if the filmmakers don't make the mystery itself compelling, the audience essentially stops watching the film and instead is just waiting for the answer to the riddle. This can, of course, be effective, especially if the answer is completely unexpected yet still makes total sense. But again, we are not dealing with that level of filmmaker here.
No, in The Machinist you have a lot of mood and basically nothing else. It took most of my willpower (or laziness) not to reach for the remote and jump to the end to see what the big damn deal is. And, unfortunately, when the twist is revealed it turns out to be quite ordinary and boring and, most damningly, it fails to provide a motivation for the extreme emaciation of the protagonist. At least if it had done that I might not have been pissed off at the film. But goddammit, if Christian Bale is going to put his life on the line for this part, there'd better be some compelling reason for him to do so. But instead it's just more of that mood nonsense.
And so The Machinist really boils down to being just about that weight loss and how alien Bale looks. His character is trying to lose weight for some indeterminate reason and keeps track of his progress with Post-Its on the wall. If his wasting away physically was supposed to be some sort of metaphor for his wasting away mentally, it seems pretty silly that he would be wanting to lose that weight. (In fairness there's no evidence that he's trying to lose weight. He could just as easily be documenting it. But in a country in which people only ever weigh themselves to see how much they've lost, this is certainly not perceptive filmmaking.) Having Reznik keep track of his weight like this also removes the only plausible reason for his weight loss, that he is dead and disintegrating. The weight loss in that scenario would make sense but would, I guess, have been too predictable so that is not the Big Secret.
No, the Big Secret is that he killed someone and that the grief is killing him. Brilliance. Glad I saw a hundred minute movie to tell me that killing a person would make you sick with guilt. I could never have figured that out on my own.
What mostly makes the film silly is that from nearly the first frame Anderson is setting the audience up for the Big Twist. But twist endings are hard to pull off. They have to be completely unexpected but at the same time they must also provide the only resolution that makes any sense. And to be most effective they have to cast everything that has come before in a new light. If you don't have the balls or the ability (Anderson and writer Scott Kosar (who tellingly wrote this script straight out of film school) have neither) to pull off an effective twist, choice number two for this sort of film is to make everything a mystery so that the twist really just provides a solution that the audience has been guessing at the whole film. This, however, also has its problems, namely that if the filmmakers don't make the mystery itself compelling, the audience essentially stops watching the film and instead is just waiting for the answer to the riddle. This can, of course, be effective, especially if the answer is completely unexpected yet still makes total sense. But again, we are not dealing with that level of filmmaker here.
No, in The Machinist you have a lot of mood and basically nothing else. It took most of my willpower (or laziness) not to reach for the remote and jump to the end to see what the big damn deal is. And, unfortunately, when the twist is revealed it turns out to be quite ordinary and boring and, most damningly, it fails to provide a motivation for the extreme emaciation of the protagonist. At least if it had done that I might not have been pissed off at the film. But goddammit, if Christian Bale is going to put his life on the line for this part, there'd better be some compelling reason for him to do so. But instead it's just more of that mood nonsense.
And so The Machinist really boils down to being just about that weight loss and how alien Bale looks. His character is trying to lose weight for some indeterminate reason and keeps track of his progress with Post-Its on the wall. If his wasting away physically was supposed to be some sort of metaphor for his wasting away mentally, it seems pretty silly that he would be wanting to lose that weight. (In fairness there's no evidence that he's trying to lose weight. He could just as easily be documenting it. But in a country in which people only ever weigh themselves to see how much they've lost, this is certainly not perceptive filmmaking.) Having Reznik keep track of his weight like this also removes the only plausible reason for his weight loss, that he is dead and disintegrating. The weight loss in that scenario would make sense but would, I guess, have been too predictable so that is not the Big Secret.
No, the Big Secret is that he killed someone and that the grief is killing him. Brilliance. Glad I saw a hundred minute movie to tell me that killing a person would make you sick with guilt. I could never have figured that out on my own.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
BATMAN BEGINS - christopher nolan - 8.7 / 10
There's an Adolphus Meekus quote that adorned the wall of Francis Ford Coppola's office in the early seventies that goes something like, the best films are made in Hollywood. And once every year, twice if were lucky, Hollywood proves that adage correct. This year, that film is Batman Begins.
Unfortunately, it's not quite as good as that hyperbolic statement might make it seem. Most of the blame for that falls at the feet of the too slow (and yet somehow very quickly paced) opening act. An awful lot of information is crammed into the first twenty minutes of the film but it's just a long parade of scenes in which the scene begins, something important is said and then the scene ends. There's no air in any of these first scenes. I'm sure that was done to make the parts before there's a Batman in the film move as quickly as possible but it seems that this over-editing might have had the opposite effect. Peter Jackson's theatrical cuts of the Lord of the Rings films had the same affliction and, when compared to the longer versions found on the special editions, makes me long for an extended cut of this film.
That aside, there is some very good stuff in this film. The focus on fear, for instance is borderline brilliant. Batman operates on the principle of fear. He is, after all, a man running around in a giant bat suit. If he doesn't scare the shit out of people, he's going to be laughably ineffective. Not coincidentally, that's the same dilemma facing the filmmakers. They have an actor dressed in a bat suit hanging from wires trying to look badass. They have to convince the audience in the same way that Batman has to convince the criminals. And how both parties achieve this effect is by showing the man in the suit as little as possible. Batman hides in the shadows and is, in turn, hidden by Nolan's choice of camera angles. He strikes out quickly, violently and without remorse or compassion and the audience sees these actions in the quickest of flashes. In the action sequences, very few shots last longer than half a second. I don't know if this is the only way Batman could be rendered effectively on film but I do know that this way certainly works.
Back to fear. The main villain of the piece is the Scarecrow. At first this seemed like a terrible idea. Fear toxins and a man in a stupid suit don't, at first, appear to be the most effective villainous elements to legitimize the Batman mythos. But, surprisingly, they are. They make the people of Gotham (and the viewers since they see this world through the eyes of the Gothamites) see the Batman in the same way the bad guys do. It also allows the characters to ruminate on the nature of fear and the ways that fear affects people's behavior without veering too far from the plot (and therefore sounding ridiculous). It's no accident that the film's best sequence features Batman as the predator in a horror film.
Add to this the fact that Nolan and Co. have gotten all the little things right (Gordon and his relationship to Batman, the Bruce Wayne love interest that could never really be, etc.) and you have one fine film that should please fans of Batman both old and new. And that's an incredibly hard task because he is, after all, a guy in a suit hanging from wires.
Unfortunately, it's not quite as good as that hyperbolic statement might make it seem. Most of the blame for that falls at the feet of the too slow (and yet somehow very quickly paced) opening act. An awful lot of information is crammed into the first twenty minutes of the film but it's just a long parade of scenes in which the scene begins, something important is said and then the scene ends. There's no air in any of these first scenes. I'm sure that was done to make the parts before there's a Batman in the film move as quickly as possible but it seems that this over-editing might have had the opposite effect. Peter Jackson's theatrical cuts of the Lord of the Rings films had the same affliction and, when compared to the longer versions found on the special editions, makes me long for an extended cut of this film.
That aside, there is some very good stuff in this film. The focus on fear, for instance is borderline brilliant. Batman operates on the principle of fear. He is, after all, a man running around in a giant bat suit. If he doesn't scare the shit out of people, he's going to be laughably ineffective. Not coincidentally, that's the same dilemma facing the filmmakers. They have an actor dressed in a bat suit hanging from wires trying to look badass. They have to convince the audience in the same way that Batman has to convince the criminals. And how both parties achieve this effect is by showing the man in the suit as little as possible. Batman hides in the shadows and is, in turn, hidden by Nolan's choice of camera angles. He strikes out quickly, violently and without remorse or compassion and the audience sees these actions in the quickest of flashes. In the action sequences, very few shots last longer than half a second. I don't know if this is the only way Batman could be rendered effectively on film but I do know that this way certainly works.
Back to fear. The main villain of the piece is the Scarecrow. At first this seemed like a terrible idea. Fear toxins and a man in a stupid suit don't, at first, appear to be the most effective villainous elements to legitimize the Batman mythos. But, surprisingly, they are. They make the people of Gotham (and the viewers since they see this world through the eyes of the Gothamites) see the Batman in the same way the bad guys do. It also allows the characters to ruminate on the nature of fear and the ways that fear affects people's behavior without veering too far from the plot (and therefore sounding ridiculous). It's no accident that the film's best sequence features Batman as the predator in a horror film.
Add to this the fact that Nolan and Co. have gotten all the little things right (Gordon and his relationship to Batman, the Bruce Wayne love interest that could never really be, etc.) and you have one fine film that should please fans of Batman both old and new. And that's an incredibly hard task because he is, after all, a guy in a suit hanging from wires.
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
HOOP DREAMS - steve james - 7.6 / 10
Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel's favorite film of 1994 (over Pulp Fiction!) and Ebert's favorite film of the 1990's turns out, not surprisingly, to be only marginally great. To be sure there's plenty to love in the film but the back cover of the DVD's claims to shocking twists and turns are greatly exaggerated. The only thing that would have been really shocking would have been seeing one of these kids in the NBA. The funny thing is that's how the Hollywood version of the film would have ended. And in that case, critics would have been lining up to decry the Hollywood ending as being too Pollyanna-ish.
What really interested me about the film were the suspenseful moments in which one of the boys had to make some clutch free throws or a key play late in the game with the clock running down and then failed to do so. It fascinated me that this is more often the ways things really play out. Conditioned as I am (as we all are) to the Hollywood version, it was almost startling to see these boys fail. Mainstream films have moved so far away from depicting reality that it would be neigh impossible to find funding for a film that had as its script the events in this film. Indeed, I myself would never even think to write a film in which the hero of the piece misses the free throw that could have won his team the championship. I know fiction films (and documentaries to a lesser extent), by their very nature, distort and contract reality to make it more interesting. But in truth, they very rarely reflect anyone's experience of reality at all.
This is not necessarily a condemnation of fiction films or even of Hollywood films but rather an observation about what sort of films most people are interested in seeing. Compare, for example, this film to Cinderella Man. Which do you suppose is more interesting to the average filmgoer? It's a thorny proposition, the idea that we shun reality with our popular culture; more of the same "everyone's a winner" crap that has overtaken our society. But when even I would rather see the hero victorious, who still carries the banner for realism and darkness in our popular entertainment?
What really interested me about the film were the suspenseful moments in which one of the boys had to make some clutch free throws or a key play late in the game with the clock running down and then failed to do so. It fascinated me that this is more often the ways things really play out. Conditioned as I am (as we all are) to the Hollywood version, it was almost startling to see these boys fail. Mainstream films have moved so far away from depicting reality that it would be neigh impossible to find funding for a film that had as its script the events in this film. Indeed, I myself would never even think to write a film in which the hero of the piece misses the free throw that could have won his team the championship. I know fiction films (and documentaries to a lesser extent), by their very nature, distort and contract reality to make it more interesting. But in truth, they very rarely reflect anyone's experience of reality at all.
This is not necessarily a condemnation of fiction films or even of Hollywood films but rather an observation about what sort of films most people are interested in seeing. Compare, for example, this film to Cinderella Man. Which do you suppose is more interesting to the average filmgoer? It's a thorny proposition, the idea that we shun reality with our popular culture; more of the same "everyone's a winner" crap that has overtaken our society. But when even I would rather see the hero victorious, who still carries the banner for realism and darkness in our popular entertainment?
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