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.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
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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