Is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen the worst movie ever made? Probably not (though it definitely deserves to be part of the conversation). It is, however, profoundly unsatisfying, deeply stupid and painfully unfunny. It’s as if, when the script was being written, the filmmakers asked themselves, ‘What would be the most obvious, most stereotypical thing to do in this situation?’ and then proceeded to do exactly that. The film makes no sense whatsoever, has no compelling action scenes (none that I could follow for more than a couple seconds at a time, anyway), no believable characters, nothing at all at stake and overstays its welcome by at least half an hour. In other words, Michael Bay’s latest is a complete and total failure on every level.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
ROAD TO PERDITION – sam mendes – 9.8 / 10
Given that it was shot by perhaps the greatest cinematographer in the history of the medium (Conrad Hall), it’s no surprise that Road to Perdition is among the best-looking films ever made. That alone would be enough to secure it a place in cinema history, but what makes this film truly remarkable is the assuredness of the direction (which is all the more amazing given that this is only Sam Mendes’s second directorial effort). Every scene-- indeed every shot-- is so perfectly composed, so flawlessly executed, that the film achieves a level of visual sophistication that prompted, in this viewer anyway, cautious use of the M-word after only one viewing ('masterpiece,' that is).
From the opening scenes (wherein Michael Sullivan Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) rides his bike through town, sells some newspapers and returns home), it’s clear that the viewer is in for something special. What appears to be, on the surface at least, a somewhat subdued title sequence has an ulterior motive. The real purpose of this sequence is to firmly entrench the audience in Michael’s point of view. This is his story. The audience sees what he sees and hears what he hears, experiencing the world as he does. That is, until he hides in the back of the family car so that he can tag along on one of his father’s late night ‘missions.’
In the subsequent scene at the warehouse, everything is shown from Michael’s point of view. The confrontation between Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig) and Finn McGovern is filmed just as Michael sees it, through a hole at the base of a wall. But once the shooting starts and Michael witnesses his father (Tom Hanks) shoot Finn’s henchmen, the perspective suddenly shifts. Seeing his father kill another man is such a profoundly traumatic event that it not only changes Michael’s life forever, it also alters the entire structure of the film. The effect of this shift in perspective, though subtle, heightens the emotional impact of that moment in a way that is only possible because, prior to that, the audience spent every minute of the film firmly in Michael’s point of view.
But, again, the effect is subtle, a trait shared with the rest of the film. Though it involves multiple murders and some very dark twists and turns, Road to Perdition is not a film that wears its emotions on its sleeve. There are no high-speed car chases or knockdown drag-out brawls. It’s a controlled, almost rigid film that relies on much less demonstrative means of eliciting an emotional response. But when every action, word and movement in the film means something, even the smallest gestures carry a lot of weight. Eventually, as these small moments begin to accumulate, the film earns a far greater emotional impact than would be achieved by a fistfight or a shouting match.
The stately precision of the film is only interrupted twice. In both instances, handheld cameras are employed to draw a parallel between the two father-son relationships at the center of the film. In the first such scene, John Rooney chastises and physically assaults his son Connor because he has disobeyed him. In the second scene, Mike Sullivan yells at his son Michael for not immediately doing as he says. Both scenes, obviously, are about the frustration a father feels when his son doesn’t do as he would like. But more than that, these scenes also mark a turning point in these two relationships. Although John Rooney begins the scene by berating Connor, he ends it by hugging him close. Without actually saying it, he’s acknowledging that, if forced to, he would choose Connor over Mike, a decision that ultimately costs him his life. In the other scene, Mike begins the confrontation by commanding Michael to listen to him from now on. But by the end of the scene, Mike has realized that there was much more to Michael’s disobedience than he thought. And from that point on, he makes his son a partner in their endeavors in a way that allows Michael to eventually become the man Mike wanted him to be. These two scenes are where the father-son relationships around which the plot turns are solidified. By using a handheld camera in both instances, Mendes links the scenes together, asking the viewer to compare and contrast them and, through those scenes, the central relationships themselves.
Clearly, Road to Perdition is a film with a lot on its mind. But the pleasure to be had in watching the film has as much to do with the beauty and intricacy of the images as it does with the thematic elements. Take, for instance, the way the film pings off of our collective memory of that period in America. Almost no one now living can personally attest to what life looked like in the early 1930s. A modern audience’s ideas of that period are refracted through the paintings of artists like Edward Hopper and the photographs of people like Weegee. And so Mendes composes shots that look like Hopper paintings and has one of his characters take photos akin to Weegee’s. Whether or not this accurately depicts the period is beside the point. It gets at what we think the period was like, making the film resonant more than it would if it were merely historically accurate.
Mendes also continuously uses the visual frame to comment upon the action and the relationships in the film. For instance, after Michael has witnessed his father kill three men at the warehouse, Mike tries to explain himself as best he can. The scene takes place in the car and is shot in such a way that the column of steel that divides the windshield from the passenger window draws a line directly between them. This is a subtle visual cue pointing out the split that has just formed in their relationship. Later in the film, after Mike has completed his quest for vengeance, he returns to the hotel where his son is waiting for him. During this shot, the frame is neatly divided in half with the entrance hall on one side and the bedroom on the other. On the left stands Mike, representing the life they used to have and the violence upon which that life was built. On the right sits Michael, representing a new start both to their relationship and their lives. By crossing from the left to the right of the frame, Mike is making the choice to finally leave the old life behind and embrace the new life.
Those sorts of directorial flourishes are present throughout the film, deepening and enhancing the viewing experience even if the audience is never consciously aware of them.
Another visual cue used throughout the film to great effect is the way water is equated with death. Established early on in a funeral at the Rooney house where the body is packed in melting ice, the symbol reappears every time a character is killed on screen. Connor murders Finn McGovern while Michael watches in the pouring rain. Mike shoots Tony Calvino in the back of his speakeasy while water drips from a leaky pipe overhead. Connor murders Peter and Annie while she is toweling him off after a bath. Mike shoots John Rooney and his henchmen in a torrential downpour and kills Connor Rooney as he sits in a bath. And Mike is himself killed as he watches his son play with a dog on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Mendes is hardly alone in using water as a metaphor for death (see also: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). But what’s interesting about its use in Road to Perdition is that, by the end of the film, it has been repeated so many times that the audience has unconsciously come to associate water with death. Thus an overwhelming sense of foreboding accompanies the shot of Mike standing in his sister-in-law’s house watching the gently lapping waves on the shore of the lake. There’s nothing in the way this moment is filmed or in the music or even in the look on Mike’s face that would indicate anything bad is about to happen. And yet, because water has been present at every death in the film, the audience can’t help but feel afraid. The real trick of it is that they probably don’t even know why. Through careful and rigorous use of this metaphor, Mendes has provoked a genuine emotional reaction without having to resort to any of the more conventional methods filmmakers usually employ (ominous music, unbalanced compositions, etc.). And because of that, this moment catches the viewer off guard and unprepared, affecting them more than if he had used one of the more traditional methods.
Manipulation of the visual medium in such a complex and multi-faceted way marks Road to Perdition as a uniquely accomplished piece of filmmaking. That Mendes achieves that level of visual sophistication (on only his second outing as director, no less) while also maintaining a sense of forward momentum in the film is remarkable. Add to that Conrad Hall’s breathtaking cinematography and you have a film that deserves consideration for best film of the last decade. It’s the sort of film that alternately enthralls and impresses, both a masterpiece of the craft and a damn fine piece of entertainment. There are any number of films that do one or the other but precious few that manage both. And for that, seven years (and a dozen screenings) after that first viewing, Road to Perdition has unquestionably earned the use of the M-word.
From the opening scenes (wherein Michael Sullivan Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) rides his bike through town, sells some newspapers and returns home), it’s clear that the viewer is in for something special. What appears to be, on the surface at least, a somewhat subdued title sequence has an ulterior motive. The real purpose of this sequence is to firmly entrench the audience in Michael’s point of view. This is his story. The audience sees what he sees and hears what he hears, experiencing the world as he does. That is, until he hides in the back of the family car so that he can tag along on one of his father’s late night ‘missions.’
In the subsequent scene at the warehouse, everything is shown from Michael’s point of view. The confrontation between Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig) and Finn McGovern is filmed just as Michael sees it, through a hole at the base of a wall. But once the shooting starts and Michael witnesses his father (Tom Hanks) shoot Finn’s henchmen, the perspective suddenly shifts. Seeing his father kill another man is such a profoundly traumatic event that it not only changes Michael’s life forever, it also alters the entire structure of the film. The effect of this shift in perspective, though subtle, heightens the emotional impact of that moment in a way that is only possible because, prior to that, the audience spent every minute of the film firmly in Michael’s point of view.
But, again, the effect is subtle, a trait shared with the rest of the film. Though it involves multiple murders and some very dark twists and turns, Road to Perdition is not a film that wears its emotions on its sleeve. There are no high-speed car chases or knockdown drag-out brawls. It’s a controlled, almost rigid film that relies on much less demonstrative means of eliciting an emotional response. But when every action, word and movement in the film means something, even the smallest gestures carry a lot of weight. Eventually, as these small moments begin to accumulate, the film earns a far greater emotional impact than would be achieved by a fistfight or a shouting match.
The stately precision of the film is only interrupted twice. In both instances, handheld cameras are employed to draw a parallel between the two father-son relationships at the center of the film. In the first such scene, John Rooney chastises and physically assaults his son Connor because he has disobeyed him. In the second scene, Mike Sullivan yells at his son Michael for not immediately doing as he says. Both scenes, obviously, are about the frustration a father feels when his son doesn’t do as he would like. But more than that, these scenes also mark a turning point in these two relationships. Although John Rooney begins the scene by berating Connor, he ends it by hugging him close. Without actually saying it, he’s acknowledging that, if forced to, he would choose Connor over Mike, a decision that ultimately costs him his life. In the other scene, Mike begins the confrontation by commanding Michael to listen to him from now on. But by the end of the scene, Mike has realized that there was much more to Michael’s disobedience than he thought. And from that point on, he makes his son a partner in their endeavors in a way that allows Michael to eventually become the man Mike wanted him to be. These two scenes are where the father-son relationships around which the plot turns are solidified. By using a handheld camera in both instances, Mendes links the scenes together, asking the viewer to compare and contrast them and, through those scenes, the central relationships themselves.
Clearly, Road to Perdition is a film with a lot on its mind. But the pleasure to be had in watching the film has as much to do with the beauty and intricacy of the images as it does with the thematic elements. Take, for instance, the way the film pings off of our collective memory of that period in America. Almost no one now living can personally attest to what life looked like in the early 1930s. A modern audience’s ideas of that period are refracted through the paintings of artists like Edward Hopper and the photographs of people like Weegee. And so Mendes composes shots that look like Hopper paintings and has one of his characters take photos akin to Weegee’s. Whether or not this accurately depicts the period is beside the point. It gets at what we think the period was like, making the film resonant more than it would if it were merely historically accurate.
Mendes also continuously uses the visual frame to comment upon the action and the relationships in the film. For instance, after Michael has witnessed his father kill three men at the warehouse, Mike tries to explain himself as best he can. The scene takes place in the car and is shot in such a way that the column of steel that divides the windshield from the passenger window draws a line directly between them. This is a subtle visual cue pointing out the split that has just formed in their relationship. Later in the film, after Mike has completed his quest for vengeance, he returns to the hotel where his son is waiting for him. During this shot, the frame is neatly divided in half with the entrance hall on one side and the bedroom on the other. On the left stands Mike, representing the life they used to have and the violence upon which that life was built. On the right sits Michael, representing a new start both to their relationship and their lives. By crossing from the left to the right of the frame, Mike is making the choice to finally leave the old life behind and embrace the new life.
Those sorts of directorial flourishes are present throughout the film, deepening and enhancing the viewing experience even if the audience is never consciously aware of them.
Another visual cue used throughout the film to great effect is the way water is equated with death. Established early on in a funeral at the Rooney house where the body is packed in melting ice, the symbol reappears every time a character is killed on screen. Connor murders Finn McGovern while Michael watches in the pouring rain. Mike shoots Tony Calvino in the back of his speakeasy while water drips from a leaky pipe overhead. Connor murders Peter and Annie while she is toweling him off after a bath. Mike shoots John Rooney and his henchmen in a torrential downpour and kills Connor Rooney as he sits in a bath. And Mike is himself killed as he watches his son play with a dog on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Mendes is hardly alone in using water as a metaphor for death (see also: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). But what’s interesting about its use in Road to Perdition is that, by the end of the film, it has been repeated so many times that the audience has unconsciously come to associate water with death. Thus an overwhelming sense of foreboding accompanies the shot of Mike standing in his sister-in-law’s house watching the gently lapping waves on the shore of the lake. There’s nothing in the way this moment is filmed or in the music or even in the look on Mike’s face that would indicate anything bad is about to happen. And yet, because water has been present at every death in the film, the audience can’t help but feel afraid. The real trick of it is that they probably don’t even know why. Through careful and rigorous use of this metaphor, Mendes has provoked a genuine emotional reaction without having to resort to any of the more conventional methods filmmakers usually employ (ominous music, unbalanced compositions, etc.). And because of that, this moment catches the viewer off guard and unprepared, affecting them more than if he had used one of the more traditional methods.
Manipulation of the visual medium in such a complex and multi-faceted way marks Road to Perdition as a uniquely accomplished piece of filmmaking. That Mendes achieves that level of visual sophistication (on only his second outing as director, no less) while also maintaining a sense of forward momentum in the film is remarkable. Add to that Conrad Hall’s breathtaking cinematography and you have a film that deserves consideration for best film of the last decade. It’s the sort of film that alternately enthralls and impresses, both a masterpiece of the craft and a damn fine piece of entertainment. There are any number of films that do one or the other but precious few that manage both. And for that, seven years (and a dozen screenings) after that first viewing, Road to Perdition has unquestionably earned the use of the M-word.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 – tony scott – 2.9 / 10
Tony Scott’s films have a completely unique look, feel and sound, so much so that by this point in his career he could almost trademark his style: sickly green, yellow and red color palette, abrupt (and random) zooms, pans and changes in film speed and stock, and handheld camerawork featuring lots of close-ups. The shame of it is that this extremely distinctive style isn’t very appealing and is employed in the service of some of the most ardently middlebrow films of the last twenty years (e.g. Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, Domino, Enemy of the State, Days of Thunder, etc.). Scott’s remake of 1974’s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is no different. If anything, it’s worse. There’s so much wrong with the film, in fact, that cataloguing its failings would probably take longer than actually watching the film.
First and foremost among the film’s many faults is the way it deals with its female characters. There are only four women with speaking roles in the entire film and one of them, the conductor of the subway train hijacked by John Travolta’s Ryder, is gone from the film before giving any indication as to her character. The other three (not counting a couple reporters who yell questions at the mayor) are all reprehensible.
The woman given the most screen time is the wife of Denzel Washington’s Walter Garber who’s given a whopping two scenes, both of which are on the phone (therefore disconnected from every other major character and plotline and thus feeling completely superfluous). She doesn’t care about anyone other than her husband, going so far as to say, when Garber tells her that he’s delivering the ransom money himself because otherwise Ryder will kill a hostage, ‘then someone has to die because you can’t go down there.’ At which point she then goes on and on about how they need milk and Garber should make sure to pick up a gallon before he comes home. She’s keeping him from getting in the helicopter to go save the day because she wants to talk about milk? I can’t imagine that Scott would intend for the audience to hate Denzel’s wife, but if that was the goal, mission accomplished. No wonder the film ends with Garber on his doorstep smiling to himself rather than following him inside to see his wife.
One of the other two female characters is a passenger on the train who, along with her young son, eventually becomes a hostage. She basically does nothing except cower in fear and fail to shield her son from what’s going on around him. That, of course, makes her a terrible mother, and makes me wonder whether or not Scott has kids himself, but it really isn’t reason to indict the film for anti-feminism, just stupidity.
It’s the third ‘major’ female character that really galls. She’s the teenage girlfriend of one of the hostages who, through a video chat that was left open when the gunmen took over the train, gets to watch most of the crisis unfold on her computer. During the occasional stolen moments of conversation between the two of them, this girl harangues her boyfriend into declaring his love for her. She’s so completely self-absorbed and clueless that she uses this most inopportune time to emotionally blackmail her douchebag boyfriend into a (probably false) declaration of love. It’s a moment that, I guess, is supposed to be funny but it’s so crass, tone deaf and insulting that it beggars belief.
Taken together these three characters paint a pretty clear picture of the filmmakers’ attitudes about women. At best, they seem to be saying, women are an annoying distraction and, at worst, they’re clueless, stupid, emotionally needy bitches who have to be placated so that they’ll shut up and leave the men alone.
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 doesn’t treat the men of the NYPD much better. The first time they appear on screen, they can’t even park their cars outside the entrance to the subway station without hitting each other. Then, tasked with getting the $10 million ransom from Brooklyn to Midtown in half an hour, they decide to drive it rather than take a helicopter and proceed to crash into enough obstacles that the money is delayed and a hostage is killed as a result. And then, on top of that, one of the ESU snipers accidentally shoots one of the gunmen because a rat in the subway tunnel momentarily startles him. A rat in a New York City subway tunnel? Unheard of.
Eventually, after a lot of back and forth between two guys on microphones (Garber at the MTA headquarters and Ryder in the motorman’s cab of the hijacked train) that Scott heroically tries (and fails) to make interesting by zooming and panning his camera all over the damn place, a couple of supposedly interesting tidbits come to light. See, Garber used to be a bigwig at the MTA and is only working as a dispatcher because he’s under investigation for taking a bribe. (It’s okay, though, because the company that gave him the bribe, a Japanese train manufacturer, really did make the best trains and he was going to recommend the MTA buy them anyway, even if he wasn’t bribed.) And Ryder used to be a stockbroker (before bilking the city pension fund for millions and going to prison) who is using the dramatic stock market drop induced by his terrorist action to make a killing in gold futures (or something).
These pieces of information are supposed to both humanize the adversaries and piggyback on our recent financial troubles in a blatant grab for topicality, but all they really do is muddy the waters. I suppose there are circumstances in which taking a bribe might be acceptable (not that I can imagine any right now) but the one offered here severely taints Garber’s character to the point where the only reason to root for him is because he’s played by Denzel Washington. And the stuff about Ryder being a former stockbroker doesn’t jibe with the only other piece of information we know about him: that he met the rest of his team of gunmen in prison. In what world do white-collar criminals and murderers serve time in the same cellblock? For that matter, I can’t imagine white-collar criminals growing ridiculous facial hair (like Ryder’s Fu Manchu) or giving themselves neck tattoos either.
It should be no surprise by now, after almost three decades of mediocre movies, that the new Tony Scott film isn’t very good. What’s surprising is that there really isn’t anything about it that’s entertaining or interesting. Usually Scott’s films can be counted on to have a bunch of ridiculous stock characters, some borderline racist or misogynist undertones, an annoyingly in your face aesthetic and one or two decent action scenes. If you can get past the silliness of everything else, the action is usually enough to sustain at least one viewing. Not so in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. The action scenes are rote and boring, offering few surprises and nothing that hasn’t been done at least a dozen times before. Add that to all of the other failings of the film and there's really no reason at all to see this one. In fact, if you’ve seen another Tony Scott film, you’ve really already seen this one. Save your money and go see Up again.
First and foremost among the film’s many faults is the way it deals with its female characters. There are only four women with speaking roles in the entire film and one of them, the conductor of the subway train hijacked by John Travolta’s Ryder, is gone from the film before giving any indication as to her character. The other three (not counting a couple reporters who yell questions at the mayor) are all reprehensible.The woman given the most screen time is the wife of Denzel Washington’s Walter Garber who’s given a whopping two scenes, both of which are on the phone (therefore disconnected from every other major character and plotline and thus feeling completely superfluous). She doesn’t care about anyone other than her husband, going so far as to say, when Garber tells her that he’s delivering the ransom money himself because otherwise Ryder will kill a hostage, ‘then someone has to die because you can’t go down there.’ At which point she then goes on and on about how they need milk and Garber should make sure to pick up a gallon before he comes home. She’s keeping him from getting in the helicopter to go save the day because she wants to talk about milk? I can’t imagine that Scott would intend for the audience to hate Denzel’s wife, but if that was the goal, mission accomplished. No wonder the film ends with Garber on his doorstep smiling to himself rather than following him inside to see his wife.
One of the other two female characters is a passenger on the train who, along with her young son, eventually becomes a hostage. She basically does nothing except cower in fear and fail to shield her son from what’s going on around him. That, of course, makes her a terrible mother, and makes me wonder whether or not Scott has kids himself, but it really isn’t reason to indict the film for anti-feminism, just stupidity.
It’s the third ‘major’ female character that really galls. She’s the teenage girlfriend of one of the hostages who, through a video chat that was left open when the gunmen took over the train, gets to watch most of the crisis unfold on her computer. During the occasional stolen moments of conversation between the two of them, this girl harangues her boyfriend into declaring his love for her. She’s so completely self-absorbed and clueless that she uses this most inopportune time to emotionally blackmail her douchebag boyfriend into a (probably false) declaration of love. It’s a moment that, I guess, is supposed to be funny but it’s so crass, tone deaf and insulting that it beggars belief.
Taken together these three characters paint a pretty clear picture of the filmmakers’ attitudes about women. At best, they seem to be saying, women are an annoying distraction and, at worst, they’re clueless, stupid, emotionally needy bitches who have to be placated so that they’ll shut up and leave the men alone.
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 doesn’t treat the men of the NYPD much better. The first time they appear on screen, they can’t even park their cars outside the entrance to the subway station without hitting each other. Then, tasked with getting the $10 million ransom from Brooklyn to Midtown in half an hour, they decide to drive it rather than take a helicopter and proceed to crash into enough obstacles that the money is delayed and a hostage is killed as a result. And then, on top of that, one of the ESU snipers accidentally shoots one of the gunmen because a rat in the subway tunnel momentarily startles him. A rat in a New York City subway tunnel? Unheard of.
Eventually, after a lot of back and forth between two guys on microphones (Garber at the MTA headquarters and Ryder in the motorman’s cab of the hijacked train) that Scott heroically tries (and fails) to make interesting by zooming and panning his camera all over the damn place, a couple of supposedly interesting tidbits come to light. See, Garber used to be a bigwig at the MTA and is only working as a dispatcher because he’s under investigation for taking a bribe. (It’s okay, though, because the company that gave him the bribe, a Japanese train manufacturer, really did make the best trains and he was going to recommend the MTA buy them anyway, even if he wasn’t bribed.) And Ryder used to be a stockbroker (before bilking the city pension fund for millions and going to prison) who is using the dramatic stock market drop induced by his terrorist action to make a killing in gold futures (or something).
These pieces of information are supposed to both humanize the adversaries and piggyback on our recent financial troubles in a blatant grab for topicality, but all they really do is muddy the waters. I suppose there are circumstances in which taking a bribe might be acceptable (not that I can imagine any right now) but the one offered here severely taints Garber’s character to the point where the only reason to root for him is because he’s played by Denzel Washington. And the stuff about Ryder being a former stockbroker doesn’t jibe with the only other piece of information we know about him: that he met the rest of his team of gunmen in prison. In what world do white-collar criminals and murderers serve time in the same cellblock? For that matter, I can’t imagine white-collar criminals growing ridiculous facial hair (like Ryder’s Fu Manchu) or giving themselves neck tattoos either.
It should be no surprise by now, after almost three decades of mediocre movies, that the new Tony Scott film isn’t very good. What’s surprising is that there really isn’t anything about it that’s entertaining or interesting. Usually Scott’s films can be counted on to have a bunch of ridiculous stock characters, some borderline racist or misogynist undertones, an annoyingly in your face aesthetic and one or two decent action scenes. If you can get past the silliness of everything else, the action is usually enough to sustain at least one viewing. Not so in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. The action scenes are rote and boring, offering few surprises and nothing that hasn’t been done at least a dozen times before. Add that to all of the other failings of the film and there's really no reason at all to see this one. In fact, if you’ve seen another Tony Scott film, you’ve really already seen this one. Save your money and go see Up again.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
TAKEN – pierre morel – 4.3 / 10
Considering that it’s well plotted and features a rather compelling lead performance from Liam Neeson, and especially considering the film has such a large female following (giving the lie to the idea, expressed by many a studio and network executive, that women won’t watch movies about men), it’s a shame that Taken is so incredibly misogynistic. Rarely do you come across a mainstream film that hates women this much. It’s tempting to blame at least a little of that on cultural differences (director Pierre Morel and co-screenwriter Luc Besson are French) but there really is no excuse. Every single woman in the film is either a harpy, a cowering damsel in need of saving, a clueless airhead, a spoiled brat or a pawn to be used as leverage. There’s not one female character in the entire film who has more than one dimension or who matters to the story in any real way. Even Kim, the kidnapped daughter Neeson’s Bryan Mills is tearing up Paris to find, is little more than a MacGuffin. She’s the thing that makes the story go and nothing more.
More damning even than not featuring a single strong female character, is the fact that the filmmakers go out of their way to get the audience to dislike many of the women in the film. Bryan’s ex-wife, Lenore, for instance, takes Bryan to task for his hesitancy to let Kim go to Paris with her friend. But since the audience already knows that Kim is going to get kidnapped, and thus that Bryan’s fears are very warranted, it makes Lenore look like a stuck up, ignorant moron. And when Bryan eventually has to tell Lenore that Kim’s been taken, there’s a weird feeling along the lines of ‘serves the bitch right.’
The only other female character of any real note in the film (aside from Kim and Lenore) is Amanda, the friend with whom Kim goes to Paris. Amanda is little more than a stereotype of the stupid American tourist, obnoxious, annoying and anxious to get it on with a Frenchman because ‘they’re good in bed.’ When Bryan eventually finds her dead from an overdose in a rundown apartment complex, the audience’s reaction, if it has one at all, is not one of sadness or sorrow but a shrug, as if to say, ‘She sucked anyway.’
Despite being the object of our hero’s attention, Kim doesn’t fare much better. Played by the twenty-six-year-old Maggie Grace, Kim behaves more like a pre-teen than the seventeen-year-old she's supposed to be. Dressed in incredibly conservative and childish clothes (especially considering that she lives in Beverly Hills), Kim is constantly running everywhere, hopping up and down when she gets her way and declaring her love for her father and stepfather only after they give her gifts. It’s the sort of behavior one would call childish in a fourteen-year-old. I’d be terrified to let someone like that go to Europe unsupervised too.
That European trip is another example of where the film is inexplicably out of touch with reality. Though she tells Bryan that she’s just going to visit museums in Paris, Kim’s secret plan is to follow U2 around the continent for a couple weeks. U2? Really? What year is this, 1987? What teenager in 2009 is that into a bunch of past their prime rockstars from the 80s?
You could say I’m making too much out of what turns out to be a relatively minor plot point (especially considering that Kim and Amanda never actually make it to a single concert) but it’s indicative of the lazy writing all around. Any time one of the characters opens their mouths (as opposed to just bashing each other with their fists, in which case the film usually satisfies), anything that comes out is incredibly banal and nowhere close to how people actually speak. Take, for instance, an early scene where Bryan hangs out with his old CIA buddies. The point of the scene is to establish that Bryan used to be a CIA operative and that he gave it up so he could be closer to his daughter. If that last sentence was an actual line of dialogue, it would have sounded more natural than the clumsy way those two points are inserted into the conversation. And it only gets worse from there.
What then to make of the film’s massive popularity? The action sequences, while directed in that inexplicably popular, shaking-camera, no-sense-of-geography, impossible-to-tell-what’s-going-on sort of way, are effectively suspenseful and brutal. Liam Neeson’s performance is committed and compelling. And the actual plot of the film is pretty smart for a standard genre film. But none of that sufficiently explains why people like the film as much as they do.
I think there are a couple reasons for this. The first is that Neeson is a very unlikely actor for the role. He looks and acts just like any other average middle-aged guy. So it’s something of a thrill to see him being such a bad ass. And since the audience never sees what he was like back when he was in the CIA, they can almost imagine that this quest for his daughter has given him these abilities. After all, we’d all like to think that if we were in his shoes, we’d be capable of doing what he does. And since Neeson looks like an average joe, that feeds into the audience’s delusion just enough so that they get more of a kick out of the film than if, say, Bruce Willis was in the lead role.
The second reason I think the film has connected with audiences is that the steps Neeson takes on his quest to get his daughter back are smarter and more interesting than what you’d expect from a film like this. (Mills’s hiring of a translator to decipher the bugged conversations of a couple of Albanian gangsters is a particularly clever highlight.) Even stupid thrillers tend to be at least a little entertaining because, whatever their faults, they’re suspenseful and action packed. But the fact that Taken’s plot mechanics are smart, allows the audience to unapologetically enjoy the film. And that’s a crucial difference. Thrillers of this sort always have an audience (or else people like Luc Besson, responsible for the abhorrent Transporter films, wouldn’t have a career), but if you can trick people into thinking there’s more to the film than the standard thriller machinations, people turn out in droves. Even the cineastes, who love to abhor most films like this, can support it because it has the illusion of being intelligent.
Unfortunately, when you look a little closer at Taken, you find a film that’s a whole lot uglier than most others of its ilk. In fact, were it not for the effectively rendered thriller aspects, the film would have long since been vilified for its rampant misogyny and promptly forgotten. I guess it just goes to show you that a little bit of intelligence and a couple decent action scenes cover up a multitude of sins.
More damning even than not featuring a single strong female character, is the fact that the filmmakers go out of their way to get the audience to dislike many of the women in the film. Bryan’s ex-wife, Lenore, for instance, takes Bryan to task for his hesitancy to let Kim go to Paris with her friend. But since the audience already knows that Kim is going to get kidnapped, and thus that Bryan’s fears are very warranted, it makes Lenore look like a stuck up, ignorant moron. And when Bryan eventually has to tell Lenore that Kim’s been taken, there’s a weird feeling along the lines of ‘serves the bitch right.’The only other female character of any real note in the film (aside from Kim and Lenore) is Amanda, the friend with whom Kim goes to Paris. Amanda is little more than a stereotype of the stupid American tourist, obnoxious, annoying and anxious to get it on with a Frenchman because ‘they’re good in bed.’ When Bryan eventually finds her dead from an overdose in a rundown apartment complex, the audience’s reaction, if it has one at all, is not one of sadness or sorrow but a shrug, as if to say, ‘She sucked anyway.’
Despite being the object of our hero’s attention, Kim doesn’t fare much better. Played by the twenty-six-year-old Maggie Grace, Kim behaves more like a pre-teen than the seventeen-year-old she's supposed to be. Dressed in incredibly conservative and childish clothes (especially considering that she lives in Beverly Hills), Kim is constantly running everywhere, hopping up and down when she gets her way and declaring her love for her father and stepfather only after they give her gifts. It’s the sort of behavior one would call childish in a fourteen-year-old. I’d be terrified to let someone like that go to Europe unsupervised too.
That European trip is another example of where the film is inexplicably out of touch with reality. Though she tells Bryan that she’s just going to visit museums in Paris, Kim’s secret plan is to follow U2 around the continent for a couple weeks. U2? Really? What year is this, 1987? What teenager in 2009 is that into a bunch of past their prime rockstars from the 80s?
You could say I’m making too much out of what turns out to be a relatively minor plot point (especially considering that Kim and Amanda never actually make it to a single concert) but it’s indicative of the lazy writing all around. Any time one of the characters opens their mouths (as opposed to just bashing each other with their fists, in which case the film usually satisfies), anything that comes out is incredibly banal and nowhere close to how people actually speak. Take, for instance, an early scene where Bryan hangs out with his old CIA buddies. The point of the scene is to establish that Bryan used to be a CIA operative and that he gave it up so he could be closer to his daughter. If that last sentence was an actual line of dialogue, it would have sounded more natural than the clumsy way those two points are inserted into the conversation. And it only gets worse from there.
What then to make of the film’s massive popularity? The action sequences, while directed in that inexplicably popular, shaking-camera, no-sense-of-geography, impossible-to-tell-what’s-going-on sort of way, are effectively suspenseful and brutal. Liam Neeson’s performance is committed and compelling. And the actual plot of the film is pretty smart for a standard genre film. But none of that sufficiently explains why people like the film as much as they do.
I think there are a couple reasons for this. The first is that Neeson is a very unlikely actor for the role. He looks and acts just like any other average middle-aged guy. So it’s something of a thrill to see him being such a bad ass. And since the audience never sees what he was like back when he was in the CIA, they can almost imagine that this quest for his daughter has given him these abilities. After all, we’d all like to think that if we were in his shoes, we’d be capable of doing what he does. And since Neeson looks like an average joe, that feeds into the audience’s delusion just enough so that they get more of a kick out of the film than if, say, Bruce Willis was in the lead role.
The second reason I think the film has connected with audiences is that the steps Neeson takes on his quest to get his daughter back are smarter and more interesting than what you’d expect from a film like this. (Mills’s hiring of a translator to decipher the bugged conversations of a couple of Albanian gangsters is a particularly clever highlight.) Even stupid thrillers tend to be at least a little entertaining because, whatever their faults, they’re suspenseful and action packed. But the fact that Taken’s plot mechanics are smart, allows the audience to unapologetically enjoy the film. And that’s a crucial difference. Thrillers of this sort always have an audience (or else people like Luc Besson, responsible for the abhorrent Transporter films, wouldn’t have a career), but if you can trick people into thinking there’s more to the film than the standard thriller machinations, people turn out in droves. Even the cineastes, who love to abhor most films like this, can support it because it has the illusion of being intelligent.
Unfortunately, when you look a little closer at Taken, you find a film that’s a whole lot uglier than most others of its ilk. In fact, were it not for the effectively rendered thriller aspects, the film would have long since been vilified for its rampant misogyny and promptly forgotten. I guess it just goes to show you that a little bit of intelligence and a couple decent action scenes cover up a multitude of sins.
Friday, June 12, 2009
THE HANGOVER, LAND OF THE LOST & EASY VIRTUE
none of these films warrant spending more than a couple paragraphs on, so i've grouped my thoughts on them together
Thursday, June 11, 2009
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON – david fincher – 9.7 / 10
More than simply an investigation of what would happen if youth weren't wasted on the young (though it's certainly that as well), David Fincher's technical marvel of a film attempts to deconstruct what we fear about old age and death and what we celebrate about youth and life. We celebrate the promise of youth while simultaneously lamenting that it can't be properly appreciated until it’s been squandered. And we fear death because we have no idea what it holds in store for us until it’s too late to do anything about it.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
BAND OF BROTHERS – 8.1 / 10
Every war has certain elements, plotlines and characters that are nearly universally depicted in the various films, books and television shows about that conflict. After a while, these specific traits begin to take hold of our collective consciousness such that the mere mention of a particular war evokes a certain set of images and characteristics for the audience whether or not they were alive during the time of that conflict. The Vietnam War, for instance, conjures images of draftees, soaked by unending rainstorms, out of their minds on hash, lost in an unforgiving jungle wilderness where the rules no longer apply. World War I evokes images of men huddled in the cold damp mud of the trenches forced to summon the courage to mount the walls and attack the enemy in a futile charge that is sure to take the lives of at least half their number for no discernible gain in territory.
World War II, of course, is no different. But what separates Band of Brothers from other depictions of WWII on film is not that it portrays the war in a way that’s all that different from what we’ve seen countless times before but rather that, because it’s based entirely on the recollections of men who were actually there and goes out of its way to be as historically accurate as possible, it breathes new life into some of the more hoary clichés of the World War II film. Even though we’ve seen the gung ho private hell bent on bringing a German Luger back to the States for his younger brother or the reluctant hero whose quiet strength is ideally suited to leading men into combat, Band of Brothers manages to evoke these clichés in a way that rings truer than most similar films, even ones lauded for their realism such as Saving Private Ryan.
Some of that, of course, is borrowed pathos. World War II so fundamentally shaped twentieth century American life that any audience sitting down to watch this miniseries brings with it at least a cursory understanding of why this war was fought and the toll it took both at home and abroad. For instance, the viewer knows, even if the soldiers don’t yet, that while they were landing at Normandy the Germans were busy trying to exterminate an entire race of people. The viewer knows that the eventual loss of life due to this war was staggeringly high, reaching well into the tens of millions. And that the toll this conflict took on anyone who lived through it, whether they fought in the war or not, was felt for years to come, such that it shaped the character of two generations of the population of the entire world and was the defining moment of the last century. With that sort of backdrop always present somewhere in the back of the audience’s mind, the events of the Band of Brothers miniseries take on an emotional weight that they almost certainly would not otherwise have.
That added pathos, together with the fact that the events depicted on screen are as close to real as they could possibly be (a fact that is cleverly evoked by having the men upon whom these characters were based interviewed at the beginning of each installment), creates in the audience the sense not that they’re watching some filmmaker’s idea of what the war was like but rather that they’re watching the actual war. Because of that, the characters and events of the film become real in way that no other war film can even come close to. The virtuoso D-Day sequence that opens Saving Private Ryan, for instance, might get as close to the experience of war as cinema is capable; but the emotional impact of that admittedly powerful sequence pales in comparison to watching two beloved characters blown in half by artillery fire seven episodes into Band of Brothers.
The emotional impact of the deaths and catastrophic injuries in Band of Brothers owes its weight to a number of factors. Knowing that these men were real and that this really happened is a big part of it. Having been with them through training and D-Day and countless skirmishes and night patrols is part of it. And listening to the men who actually knew and were friends with the soldiers who died is part of it as well. Taken together, these elements add up to an emotional impact far beyond what's usually possible in a war movie. To even attempt to conceive of what that must have been like to live through is almost impossible. And yet these men managed to continue to fight, to pick up and move on despite such debilitating loss.
It’s commonplace to call the soldiers of World War II heroes. Tom Brokaw wrote a book calling them The Greatest Generation, an appellation that has since entered common usage as a way of describing anyone over the age of eighty. Predictably, of course, they all shirk that label, saying instead that though they served in the company of heroes, they themselves were not. To me, the real heroism on display here is not that these were mostly uneducated men— boys, really— who knew little of the world or what was in store for them but chose to go anyway. That’s courageous, of course, but can also be chalked up to a sense of honor or duty, or even just plain naïveté. What I find heroic about these men is that they kept on going. Seeing what they saw on D-Day, they still managed to fight on through France and into Holland, where they suffered unimaginable loss during the long winter in Bastogne. And still they kept on and continued into Germany and then Austria. It’s hard not to imagine giving up and packing it in after even one of those experiences. Hell, even one single day of what they saw would be enough to make anyone want to head for home. But they didn’t. Surrounded and all but engulfed by pain and fear, they kept on.
If there’s one thing that stands out at the end of Band of Brothers it’s the immeasurable sense of loss hanging over these men. More than just the lost friends and fellow soldiers, more than just the loss of innocence, there’s the very real sense that, by the end of 1945, these men had lost something ineffable about being human that they would never quite be able to recover. Though obviously none of us can know what it was like for these men, it certainly appears that much of their idealism died on the battlefields of Europe. Seeing what they saw, the pain and death, the horrible torture one group of people inflicted upon another and the way that a whole country stood by and watched it happen, they lost their faith in mankind. With that faith gone, all they had was each other.
At the close of the tenth and last episode of the miniseries, a voiceover describes the lives of each of the surviving members of Easy Company after they returned home. To a one they lived simple, modest lives, lives that today, in our celebrity obsessed, everyone is special and important culture, might be looked down upon as being normal, ordinary and, well, boring. But maybe those men learned something on the beaches of Normandy and the forests of Bastogne that only the experience of war can teach. When death closes in all around you and is ever present just over the next hill, all you really have to hang on to are the relationships you have with those closest to you. Maybe what you do isn’t nearly as important as how you do it and who you do it with. Maybe that’s the lesson these men took away from the war. It might have cost them their innocence, their youth, their idealism and their faith in their fellow man, but it certainly gave them a clear idea of what was important. It’s a lesson probably unknowable to those who were never there, but the fact that Band of Brothers drives that point home is what elevates it above other films of its kind. There might be nothing in the miniseries we haven’t seen before, but nothing before it has made that point so clearly and so forcefully.
World War II, of course, is no different. But what separates Band of Brothers from other depictions of WWII on film is not that it portrays the war in a way that’s all that different from what we’ve seen countless times before but rather that, because it’s based entirely on the recollections of men who were actually there and goes out of its way to be as historically accurate as possible, it breathes new life into some of the more hoary clichés of the World War II film. Even though we’ve seen the gung ho private hell bent on bringing a German Luger back to the States for his younger brother or the reluctant hero whose quiet strength is ideally suited to leading men into combat, Band of Brothers manages to evoke these clichés in a way that rings truer than most similar films, even ones lauded for their realism such as Saving Private Ryan.
Some of that, of course, is borrowed pathos. World War II so fundamentally shaped twentieth century American life that any audience sitting down to watch this miniseries brings with it at least a cursory understanding of why this war was fought and the toll it took both at home and abroad. For instance, the viewer knows, even if the soldiers don’t yet, that while they were landing at Normandy the Germans were busy trying to exterminate an entire race of people. The viewer knows that the eventual loss of life due to this war was staggeringly high, reaching well into the tens of millions. And that the toll this conflict took on anyone who lived through it, whether they fought in the war or not, was felt for years to come, such that it shaped the character of two generations of the population of the entire world and was the defining moment of the last century. With that sort of backdrop always present somewhere in the back of the audience’s mind, the events of the Band of Brothers miniseries take on an emotional weight that they almost certainly would not otherwise have.That added pathos, together with the fact that the events depicted on screen are as close to real as they could possibly be (a fact that is cleverly evoked by having the men upon whom these characters were based interviewed at the beginning of each installment), creates in the audience the sense not that they’re watching some filmmaker’s idea of what the war was like but rather that they’re watching the actual war. Because of that, the characters and events of the film become real in way that no other war film can even come close to. The virtuoso D-Day sequence that opens Saving Private Ryan, for instance, might get as close to the experience of war as cinema is capable; but the emotional impact of that admittedly powerful sequence pales in comparison to watching two beloved characters blown in half by artillery fire seven episodes into Band of Brothers.
The emotional impact of the deaths and catastrophic injuries in Band of Brothers owes its weight to a number of factors. Knowing that these men were real and that this really happened is a big part of it. Having been with them through training and D-Day and countless skirmishes and night patrols is part of it. And listening to the men who actually knew and were friends with the soldiers who died is part of it as well. Taken together, these elements add up to an emotional impact far beyond what's usually possible in a war movie. To even attempt to conceive of what that must have been like to live through is almost impossible. And yet these men managed to continue to fight, to pick up and move on despite such debilitating loss.
It’s commonplace to call the soldiers of World War II heroes. Tom Brokaw wrote a book calling them The Greatest Generation, an appellation that has since entered common usage as a way of describing anyone over the age of eighty. Predictably, of course, they all shirk that label, saying instead that though they served in the company of heroes, they themselves were not. To me, the real heroism on display here is not that these were mostly uneducated men— boys, really— who knew little of the world or what was in store for them but chose to go anyway. That’s courageous, of course, but can also be chalked up to a sense of honor or duty, or even just plain naïveté. What I find heroic about these men is that they kept on going. Seeing what they saw on D-Day, they still managed to fight on through France and into Holland, where they suffered unimaginable loss during the long winter in Bastogne. And still they kept on and continued into Germany and then Austria. It’s hard not to imagine giving up and packing it in after even one of those experiences. Hell, even one single day of what they saw would be enough to make anyone want to head for home. But they didn’t. Surrounded and all but engulfed by pain and fear, they kept on.
If there’s one thing that stands out at the end of Band of Brothers it’s the immeasurable sense of loss hanging over these men. More than just the lost friends and fellow soldiers, more than just the loss of innocence, there’s the very real sense that, by the end of 1945, these men had lost something ineffable about being human that they would never quite be able to recover. Though obviously none of us can know what it was like for these men, it certainly appears that much of their idealism died on the battlefields of Europe. Seeing what they saw, the pain and death, the horrible torture one group of people inflicted upon another and the way that a whole country stood by and watched it happen, they lost their faith in mankind. With that faith gone, all they had was each other.
At the close of the tenth and last episode of the miniseries, a voiceover describes the lives of each of the surviving members of Easy Company after they returned home. To a one they lived simple, modest lives, lives that today, in our celebrity obsessed, everyone is special and important culture, might be looked down upon as being normal, ordinary and, well, boring. But maybe those men learned something on the beaches of Normandy and the forests of Bastogne that only the experience of war can teach. When death closes in all around you and is ever present just over the next hill, all you really have to hang on to are the relationships you have with those closest to you. Maybe what you do isn’t nearly as important as how you do it and who you do it with. Maybe that’s the lesson these men took away from the war. It might have cost them their innocence, their youth, their idealism and their faith in their fellow man, but it certainly gave them a clear idea of what was important. It’s a lesson probably unknowable to those who were never there, but the fact that Band of Brothers drives that point home is what elevates it above other films of its kind. There might be nothing in the miniseries we haven’t seen before, but nothing before it has made that point so clearly and so forcefully.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
UP – pete docter – 8.3 / 10
The bar for a Pixar film is set pretty high-- perhaps unreasonably so-- but personally I’ve only really loved the Brad Bird entries in the Pixar catalog (The Incredibles and Ratatouille). Last year, I was particularly annoyed that the general consensus seemed to be that Wall-E was Pixar’s best film to date. Seeing as it had major problems in its last third, a completely predictable (not to mention poorly thought out) ending and a couple of action sequences that seemed more suited to something in a Dreamworks animation film, I couldn’t see how anyone could think it the best film Pixar had yet made.
Even though I only really enjoyed the first forty minutes or so of Wall-E, I was still heartened by the fact that Pixar didn’t seem to be resting on any particular formula or taking the easy way out and making more films about talking animals, toys, cars and other inanimate objects; something they could probably do for decades with great financial (and possibly even critical) success. Indeed, it almost seems as if they've purposefully decided to make films centered on topics and ideas that, on the surface, appear least likely to produce great films. Three years ago they made a film about a rat, possibly the most hated creature ever to get a starring role in a major film. They followed that with a story about the last inhabitant of a blighted earth, a robot without a voice. And now, with Up, they’ve made a film about a cantankerous old man biding his time on his porch as he waits to die.
And yet, somehow, Up turns out to be the funniest and possibly most moving Pixar film yet. And while it isn’t my personal favorite from the studio (that would be Ratatouille), it gets pretty close. Much of the emotional heft of the film owes to the incredible, wordless, ten-minute sequence that comes near the beginning of the film wherein we see young Carl and Ellie grow from young children into senior citizens, facing some serious (and very adult) problems along the way. Aside from the incredibly assured storytelling on display in this sequence, you also have to love the fact that the film doesn’t pander to the children in the audience. There’s no way, for instance, that a child of eight or nine would understand, from the quick shot we see here, that Carl and Ellie can’t have children. But rather than explain it with dialogue, the filmmakers (Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson) seem fine with the kids not getting it and seem to think it won’t impact their enjoyment of the film negatively. The level of confidence that choice displays is truly remarkable.
That moment is also, in a nutshell, the difference between a Pixar film and an animated film from one of its rivals (Dreamworks especially). Whereas in a film like Shrek or Kung Fu Panda, the stuff for adults is simply a random smattering of pop culture references, with Up the adults in the audience are experiencing the film in a whole different way than their kids. That difference in approach tells you everything you need to know about what sort of films Pixar is making (and, conversely, it also says a lot about what sort of films Dreamworks is making).
Whatever I might have thought of the ending of Wall-E, the first, mostly wordless half of the film works spectacularly well. It’s emotionally affecting, highly entertaining and remarkably assured. Aside from the aforementioned ten-minute wordless sequence at the start of Up, the best moment in the film is a similarly wordless sequence wherein Carl empties his house of all the worldly possessions acquired in his life with Ellie. It’s both a way of saying a last goodbye to his beloved wife and of finally choosing to begin the next phase of his life. In particular, the shot of their favorite chairs sitting side by side on the plateau just as they had sat for so many years in their living room is heartbreaking.
That the filmmakers at Pixar can achieve such poignancy without employing a single word of dialogue is extraordinary. And it’s become pretty clear after these last two movies (plus their last few short films (Lifted, Presto and Partly Cloudy) which have all been free of dialogue) that Pixar has a command of the visual medium that surpasses just about anything since sound first entered the picture in the late 1920s. That’s a tremendous achievement for any filmmaker but for a group who-- ostensibly at least-- make kids’ movies, it’s downright incredible. In fact, you could probably watch Up with the sound off and not miss out on any of the emotional impact of the film.
That’s not to say that the voice acting in Up is without merit. Indeed, the voices of the various dog characters are used to great comedic effect. In particular, Dug (voiced by co-director Bob Peterson who also voices Alpha) is given just the right mix of silliness and pathos that he stands out as one of the more memorable talking animals in a genre overrun with them. My personal favorite Dug moment comes right at the end when Carl and Russell (the stowaway on Carl’s floating house) are playing a game involving spotting different colored cars. Dug, color blind obviously, shouts out that he sees gray cars. It’s a moment that probably (though obviously I can’t say for sure) works for the kids in the audience just because Peterson’s deliver of the line is funny on its own. But it’s an added treat for the adults, one more way in which the filmmakers refuse to pander to their audience.
Up is not, however, without its problems. Perhaps owing to the fact that it’s more aggressively comedic than any film Pixar has yet produced, Up falters a little by telegraphing its jokes and repeating a few of them one time too many. Whereas with the dramatic elements the film is assured and nearly flawless, the comedic elements seem forced and occasionally labored. One such example is the bit where the dogs become distracted by the sight of a squirrel. Though it’s paid off pretty well in it’s final iteration, the joke becomes a little annoying after the second or third time it’s employed.
There’s also the clumsy way in which the film deals with its cartoonish, capital 'E' evil villain, especially since this is the first Pixar film that has resorted to such a stereotypical villain. There’s nothing redeemable about Charles Muntz and no sense of what might have made him the way he is (that the world didn’t believe his discoveries were real is not sufficient motivation for becoming a old Hollywood style, scenery chewing villain). He’s just a plot device to kick off the really nifty jungle chase sequence in the middle of the film and the elaborate airborne battle at the close of the film. And he’s dispatched in a rather bland and predictable way, almost as if he’s beside the point. And, really, I guess he is. The film isn’t about him. It’s Carl and Russell’s journey. Muntz is just there so that we can get some cool action. There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but I’ve come to expect more from a Pixar film.
But comparing Up to other Pixar films is a little unfair. After all, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and the first half of Wall-E set the bar so high that a failure to clear it seems like something of a disappointment when the fact that Up even gets close to scaling those heights should be celebrated.
Besides the obvious jokes and stereotypically cartoony villain, perhaps what most keeps Up grounded where other Pixar films soared is the smallness of the story it has to tell. Up is the story of one man coming to terms with the death of his wife and finding his place in a world without her. And while that’s certainly a resonant story to tell (and one that's told with incredible grace and skill), it’s not exactly an earth-shatteringly important story. It’s a modest movie I guess is what I’m saying. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. And the film tells its modest story extremely well. It’s really only in comparison to other Pixar films that Up falters. And while that’s incredibly unfair (after all, nobody judges Terminator Salvation on how it compares to The Dark Knight just because they were produced by the same studio), that’s just the way it is sometimes.
Even though I only really enjoyed the first forty minutes or so of Wall-E, I was still heartened by the fact that Pixar didn’t seem to be resting on any particular formula or taking the easy way out and making more films about talking animals, toys, cars and other inanimate objects; something they could probably do for decades with great financial (and possibly even critical) success. Indeed, it almost seems as if they've purposefully decided to make films centered on topics and ideas that, on the surface, appear least likely to produce great films. Three years ago they made a film about a rat, possibly the most hated creature ever to get a starring role in a major film. They followed that with a story about the last inhabitant of a blighted earth, a robot without a voice. And now, with Up, they’ve made a film about a cantankerous old man biding his time on his porch as he waits to die.
And yet, somehow, Up turns out to be the funniest and possibly most moving Pixar film yet. And while it isn’t my personal favorite from the studio (that would be Ratatouille), it gets pretty close. Much of the emotional heft of the film owes to the incredible, wordless, ten-minute sequence that comes near the beginning of the film wherein we see young Carl and Ellie grow from young children into senior citizens, facing some serious (and very adult) problems along the way. Aside from the incredibly assured storytelling on display in this sequence, you also have to love the fact that the film doesn’t pander to the children in the audience. There’s no way, for instance, that a child of eight or nine would understand, from the quick shot we see here, that Carl and Ellie can’t have children. But rather than explain it with dialogue, the filmmakers (Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson) seem fine with the kids not getting it and seem to think it won’t impact their enjoyment of the film negatively. The level of confidence that choice displays is truly remarkable.
That moment is also, in a nutshell, the difference between a Pixar film and an animated film from one of its rivals (Dreamworks especially). Whereas in a film like Shrek or Kung Fu Panda, the stuff for adults is simply a random smattering of pop culture references, with Up the adults in the audience are experiencing the film in a whole different way than their kids. That difference in approach tells you everything you need to know about what sort of films Pixar is making (and, conversely, it also says a lot about what sort of films Dreamworks is making).
Whatever I might have thought of the ending of Wall-E, the first, mostly wordless half of the film works spectacularly well. It’s emotionally affecting, highly entertaining and remarkably assured. Aside from the aforementioned ten-minute wordless sequence at the start of Up, the best moment in the film is a similarly wordless sequence wherein Carl empties his house of all the worldly possessions acquired in his life with Ellie. It’s both a way of saying a last goodbye to his beloved wife and of finally choosing to begin the next phase of his life. In particular, the shot of their favorite chairs sitting side by side on the plateau just as they had sat for so many years in their living room is heartbreaking.
That the filmmakers at Pixar can achieve such poignancy without employing a single word of dialogue is extraordinary. And it’s become pretty clear after these last two movies (plus their last few short films (Lifted, Presto and Partly Cloudy) which have all been free of dialogue) that Pixar has a command of the visual medium that surpasses just about anything since sound first entered the picture in the late 1920s. That’s a tremendous achievement for any filmmaker but for a group who-- ostensibly at least-- make kids’ movies, it’s downright incredible. In fact, you could probably watch Up with the sound off and not miss out on any of the emotional impact of the film.
That’s not to say that the voice acting in Up is without merit. Indeed, the voices of the various dog characters are used to great comedic effect. In particular, Dug (voiced by co-director Bob Peterson who also voices Alpha) is given just the right mix of silliness and pathos that he stands out as one of the more memorable talking animals in a genre overrun with them. My personal favorite Dug moment comes right at the end when Carl and Russell (the stowaway on Carl’s floating house) are playing a game involving spotting different colored cars. Dug, color blind obviously, shouts out that he sees gray cars. It’s a moment that probably (though obviously I can’t say for sure) works for the kids in the audience just because Peterson’s deliver of the line is funny on its own. But it’s an added treat for the adults, one more way in which the filmmakers refuse to pander to their audience.
Up is not, however, without its problems. Perhaps owing to the fact that it’s more aggressively comedic than any film Pixar has yet produced, Up falters a little by telegraphing its jokes and repeating a few of them one time too many. Whereas with the dramatic elements the film is assured and nearly flawless, the comedic elements seem forced and occasionally labored. One such example is the bit where the dogs become distracted by the sight of a squirrel. Though it’s paid off pretty well in it’s final iteration, the joke becomes a little annoying after the second or third time it’s employed.
There’s also the clumsy way in which the film deals with its cartoonish, capital 'E' evil villain, especially since this is the first Pixar film that has resorted to such a stereotypical villain. There’s nothing redeemable about Charles Muntz and no sense of what might have made him the way he is (that the world didn’t believe his discoveries were real is not sufficient motivation for becoming a old Hollywood style, scenery chewing villain). He’s just a plot device to kick off the really nifty jungle chase sequence in the middle of the film and the elaborate airborne battle at the close of the film. And he’s dispatched in a rather bland and predictable way, almost as if he’s beside the point. And, really, I guess he is. The film isn’t about him. It’s Carl and Russell’s journey. Muntz is just there so that we can get some cool action. There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but I’ve come to expect more from a Pixar film.
But comparing Up to other Pixar films is a little unfair. After all, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and the first half of Wall-E set the bar so high that a failure to clear it seems like something of a disappointment when the fact that Up even gets close to scaling those heights should be celebrated.
Besides the obvious jokes and stereotypically cartoony villain, perhaps what most keeps Up grounded where other Pixar films soared is the smallness of the story it has to tell. Up is the story of one man coming to terms with the death of his wife and finding his place in a world without her. And while that’s certainly a resonant story to tell (and one that's told with incredible grace and skill), it’s not exactly an earth-shatteringly important story. It’s a modest movie I guess is what I’m saying. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. And the film tells its modest story extremely well. It’s really only in comparison to other Pixar films that Up falters. And while that’s incredibly unfair (after all, nobody judges Terminator Salvation on how it compares to The Dark Knight just because they were produced by the same studio), that’s just the way it is sometimes.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
DRAG ME TO HELL - sam raimi - 3.5 / 10
It’s reassuring, in a way, that even after achieving massive success in mainstream action movies (the Spider-Man franchise) Sam Raimi is still capable of delivering the same sort of movie he used to make on a shoestring budget with a couple friends at a cabin in the woods. The director’s latest, Drag Me to Hell, is tonally and thematically very similar to his horror comedies from twenty years ago (Evil Dead and Army of Darkness). That said, I still didn’t enjoy Drag Me to Hell all that much. I guess I should have expected that since I really didn’t care for Evil Dead or Army of Darkness all that much either. But the one new element Raimi adds to Drag Me to Hell is the one that really turned me off to the film, and that’s the cringe-inducing comedy of the Ricky Gervais / Danny McBride / Will Ferrell school. And since I generally hate that sort of humor, it’s no surprise that I was pretty much repulsed by Drag Me to Hell.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
THE JERK - carl reiner - 4.6 / 10
Comedy is one of those things that, for whatever reason, often just doesn’t age well. No one watches Charlie Chaplin films today and thinks they’re hilarious. Critics like them and film students respect them but I find it impossible to believe that either of those groups really thinks they’re all that funny. And you don’t have to go back nearly that far to find something that was once beloved but no longer makes anyone laugh. The TV show M*A*S*H, today known mostly as the signal for a whole generation of twenty- and thirty-somethings that it’s time for bed (because reruns aired every night at 10:00 when we were kids), was thought to be pretty outrageously hilarious in its day. But to almost anyone under the age of thirty-five, the show falls completely flat. For whatever reason (socio-political, cultural or just because the way stories are told on television has evolved), the show didn’t age well.
That’s not to say that no comedies age well. I still found Annie Hall hilarious the first time I saw it more than twenty-five years after it was first released. New and younger viewers discover the Monty Python films everyday and think them uproarious. But by and large comedy is measured in dog years. The pop culture references and in-jokes that litter even solid comedies like Role Models are going to be seem hopelessly dated in five or ten years. And though the film will still work for those of us who remember those jokes, to a younger generation they will be lost. And so our kids will look at us with amazement as we laugh our asses off at old South Park reruns (though I hold out hope they might still enjoy The Simpsons).
All that’s a long way of saying that despite its reputation as one of the best comedies of the past half century, The Jerk is pretty boring to a modern audience. This has less to do, I think, with the jokes in the film and more to do with the way in which the story is told. If it were made today, The Jerk would probably have employed a different structure and would have been a little less crudely produced. Those two things might add to the charm of the film for those who grew up with it, but for someone coming to the film now, it’s a fatal flaw.
The structure, in particular, is the film’s Achilles’ heel. It opens on Steve Martin’s Navin sleeping on the street outside a theater. The camera tracks over to him and he begins to tell his story, saying that he was once rich, powerful and famous but is now a bum. Then the story proper begins. But because the viewer knows Navin ends up penniless and sleeping on the street, there’s always a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. And because of that, a weird sort of tension is created in which the audience can’t fully enjoy what they’re seeing on the screen because they’re thinking about how this could lead to Navin’s downfall.
Whatever you might think of Forrest Gump (a film that seems to have borrowed quite heavily from the structure of The Jerk), the film only works because the framing story (the one where Forrest sits on the park bench and talks to strangers) takes place before the end of the main story. If Forrest had been telling his tale after having visited Jenny, found out she was dying and that her son was his, a lot of air would have been let out of the film. There would've been much less to hold the viewer’s interest and the film would certainly have been long forgotten by now (though I suppose you might think that would be a good thing).
The Jerk, of course, is primarily a comedy so aside from getting in the way of the humor, the clumsy structure really shouldn’t matter all that much. But because the comedic parts of the film have aged poorly and are no longer all that funny to a viewer who didn’t come of age during that period (or at least it’s not funny to this viewer anyway) all that’s left is the story. And what could have been a compelling tale is robbed of any emotional weight by the knowledge of how it’s going to end. Thus the film is pretty much a failure for a modern audience. It’s easy enough to see why audiences at the time thought it a classic, but comedy’s a very fickle thing. Here’s hoping that The Simpsons ages better.
That’s not to say that no comedies age well. I still found Annie Hall hilarious the first time I saw it more than twenty-five years after it was first released. New and younger viewers discover the Monty Python films everyday and think them uproarious. But by and large comedy is measured in dog years. The pop culture references and in-jokes that litter even solid comedies like Role Models are going to be seem hopelessly dated in five or ten years. And though the film will still work for those of us who remember those jokes, to a younger generation they will be lost. And so our kids will look at us with amazement as we laugh our asses off at old South Park reruns (though I hold out hope they might still enjoy The Simpsons).All that’s a long way of saying that despite its reputation as one of the best comedies of the past half century, The Jerk is pretty boring to a modern audience. This has less to do, I think, with the jokes in the film and more to do with the way in which the story is told. If it were made today, The Jerk would probably have employed a different structure and would have been a little less crudely produced. Those two things might add to the charm of the film for those who grew up with it, but for someone coming to the film now, it’s a fatal flaw.
The structure, in particular, is the film’s Achilles’ heel. It opens on Steve Martin’s Navin sleeping on the street outside a theater. The camera tracks over to him and he begins to tell his story, saying that he was once rich, powerful and famous but is now a bum. Then the story proper begins. But because the viewer knows Navin ends up penniless and sleeping on the street, there’s always a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. And because of that, a weird sort of tension is created in which the audience can’t fully enjoy what they’re seeing on the screen because they’re thinking about how this could lead to Navin’s downfall.
Whatever you might think of Forrest Gump (a film that seems to have borrowed quite heavily from the structure of The Jerk), the film only works because the framing story (the one where Forrest sits on the park bench and talks to strangers) takes place before the end of the main story. If Forrest had been telling his tale after having visited Jenny, found out she was dying and that her son was his, a lot of air would have been let out of the film. There would've been much less to hold the viewer’s interest and the film would certainly have been long forgotten by now (though I suppose you might think that would be a good thing).
The Jerk, of course, is primarily a comedy so aside from getting in the way of the humor, the clumsy structure really shouldn’t matter all that much. But because the comedic parts of the film have aged poorly and are no longer all that funny to a viewer who didn’t come of age during that period (or at least it’s not funny to this viewer anyway) all that’s left is the story. And what could have been a compelling tale is robbed of any emotional weight by the knowledge of how it’s going to end. Thus the film is pretty much a failure for a modern audience. It’s easy enough to see why audiences at the time thought it a classic, but comedy’s a very fickle thing. Here’s hoping that The Simpsons ages better.
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