Blue Collar Film Scholar

Pina

2012-01-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

Philippina "Pina" Bausch, one of the major figures in the landscape of modern dance, founded her Tanztheater in Wuppertal, Germany in 1972, and for anyone whose only encounters with European modern dance is catching a bit of Mummenschanz on PBS, Pina’s work is staggering stuff.

In Pina, German director Wim Wenders tells the story of Pina’s Tanztheater though the voices and movements of the dancers whom Pina directed, and through the alternately whimsical and serious pieces they created collaboratively for nearly forty years.

The dances, which occupy the vast majority of the film, build on repetitive gestures and rough staccato motions that look wrenching and at times painful. Modern dance often seems concerned with death, and Pina's are no exception (one dance even features an older dancer shoveling dirt onto a younger as she slowly dances away.) Many (if not all; the film certainly feels comprehensive) of Pina's earliest collaborators share space with newer dancers, and the film finds something in the interplay between young and old, suggesting the passage of time.

It's often very serious, and Wenders lightens the mood when he can, but eventually all that we are left with is a long procession of dancers, who each appear briefly as a talking head before Wenders gives us their dance. As dancer after dancer has their moment onscreen, most of them offering only mournful platitudes, sincere as they may be, the film starts to feel a little stale.

Bausch died suddenly of Cancer in 2009, just a few days after diagnosis, and a few before Wenders was set to begin this film. Unavoidably, there is an air of melancholy about the whole film, often examining the work as something in the past, the future uncertain.

Wenders' takes a welcome, hands-off approach, never inserting himself as a presence, and keeping his focus squarely on the work. It should go without saying that a film about dancing can never quite achieve the visceral feeling of seeing a dancer live on stage, so, to his credit, Wenders abandons the stage as often as possible, bringing the dancers to locations such as industrial parks, forests, and even a quarry.

It's practically impossible not to compare Pina to Werner Herzog's recent 3D documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Both Herzog and Wenders have traditionally been equally at home in fiction and non-fiction, but whereas Herzog’s films are lately given to rampant flight of fancy and arcane bits of oddness and forced eccentricity, Wenders film, like his subject, feels measured and restrained (though there is one dance scene that feels like it could have been lifted a Herzog film of the same material, involving, of all things, a hippopotamus.) Both films find more than a few interesting ways to use the 3D technology, but if you weren’t convinced of 3D’s merits before, there’s little here to change your mind.

Though it might disappoint those looking for a more cohesive through-line, Pina is at its best when it examines the role of dance in the lives of the dancers, allowing their movements to tell Bausch’s story as much as their words. It’s a film for, not about Pina, as Wenders instructs us at the beginning, and in the end, what we are left with is not so much a sense of who Pina was, but who she was to her dancers, and what they were to her.

Cold Weather

2011-05-17T23:34:00.000-07:00

(originally published in the Roosevelt University Torch, 3/20/11.)

Cold Weather, which opened in Chicago last week after premiering at the Chicago International Film Festival last October, is a bit of a mystery. That is to say, there’s a bit of a mystery, which the characters are tasked with unraveling. But only when the film finds time to get around to it.

The film opens on a wet windowpane, giving the viewer a chance to luxuriate in the ultra-crisp images captured by the Red One Digital Camera, the same camera used by David Fincher to shoot The Social Network. These images have much of the same chilly, ultra-crisp character of Fincher’s film, which suits this story equally well.

The film’s plot concerns Doug, a twenty-something forensics school dropout, who has returned home to Portland to live with his sister. Terminally listless, he accepts a low-wage job at a local ice packaging plant with a shrug, and the movie takes its time painstakingly detailing Doug’s shallow, boring existence before finally dragging its feet into “whodunit” mode.

When writer-director Aaron Katz lets the movie simply be a movie, his characters, along with the film, are invigorated. Just about the time you’re wondering when (If ever) the mystery element will come into play, it finally does. The twist goes like this: Doug’s ex-girlfriend is in town, but when she fails to show for a meeting with friends, things take a suspicious turn, and Doug, an avid reader of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, finds himself in the middle of a caper.

Even in its high points, though, Cold Weather is annoyingly anachronistic. The jaunty musical score juxtaposes oddly with the dreary, wet color palette of rainy Portland, and visually stunning landscape portraits are too-often butted up against lazy, boring two-shots.

Cold Weather has occasionally been lumped in with the so-called “Mumblecore” movement—a recent slew of American films which feature awkward, non-communicative post-grads fumbling quietly through early adulthood. Admittedly, this film does fall prey to many of the same tropes. Many viewers might find themselves resistant to the idea of these supposedly college-educated characters expressing themselves in a manner just a few IQ points away from mouth breathers. I assume these filmmakers are aiming for an ultra-realistic style, but I have to wonder—is anyone actually this awkward in real life?

Doug, his sister Gail, and his Ex-girlfriend Rachel all seem to be cluelessly stumbling from one encounter to the next. To its credit, the film never tells us how were supposed to feel about these characters, but my guess is Katz is plenty sympathetic to their plight.

Stripped of their “umms” and “I dunno’s”, there are likely interesting characters buried under the actors in Cold Weather. Unfortunately, we only get to see them in too-fleeting glimpses. Cold Weather is a pretty crackerjack little thriller when it wants to be, but that’s clearly not what Katz is interested in, which is a shame.

True Grit

2010-12-21T08:20:00.000-08:00

At some point over the Thanksgiving holiday, as my family waited impatiently in the living room for the turkey to roast, the TV spot for True Grit came on.

               "Looks interesting." someone said. (It wasn't me.)

               "Yeah.. but it's by the Coen Brothers!" my father blurted out in disgust.

               Knowing my dad, this unprovoked burst of poorly articulated grumpiness didn't faze me. Nor did I feel the need to counter (my dad couldn't name three films by the Coens if his second helping of pumpkin pie depended on it.) Anyway, I had a pretty good idea why he felt compelled to voice his skepticism. He seemed to think a pair of artier-than-thou writer/directors in their $500 penny loafers were out to track fresh mud all over the hallowed grounds of his cinematic hero, one John "Duke" Wayne. And THAT he simply could not stand for.

               It's doubtful that too many would share his vague angst, though. After all, who could think of a more audience-friendly replacement for Wayne's Rooster Cogburn than Jeff Bridges? Having long ago endeared himself to generations of movie fans, last year Bridges cleared the final hurdle to American film immortality, successfully courting the don't-rock-the-boat crowd and snaring an Oscar for his role in Crazy Heart. That film played by the Academy rules, alright, and for the most part True Grit does as well. As usual, however, the Coens ennoble the film with the formidable strengths of their direction and writing, and with their choice of collaborators.

               In True Grit, the Coens have everything and nothing up their sleeve. The film is a tale of man-hunting in the Old West. Young Mattie Ross (played with convincing, plucky bravado by Hailee Steinfeld,) has lost her father at the hands of a bandit named Tom Chaney. She recruits Bridge's drunken Marshall Cogburn to find Chaney and bring him to justice. Matt Damon's LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger, completes the posse. Chaney is wanted in Texas, too, and LaBoeuf is out to see him caught as well.

               True Grit is more spared-down than any western in recent memory. There are a few gunfights, and a chase or two, but more often the Coens are content to lean on their strengths, filling the screen with oddball characters and darkly funny encounters. This lends a welcome tone of playfulness to a story that might otherwise have been an austere guilt-and-redemption-fest, like John Ford's The Searchers. Cogburn and Company are out for blood alright, but they're not filled with bloodlust.

It’s a canny little film--It feels small and insular, even as it unfolds against vast western landscapes. It is frequently hilarious, occasionally violent, and it doesn't hit any wrong notes. If it has anything bigger on its mind, however, it's not giving it away. But if you’re desperate for some kind of deeper meaning, it's likely right there in the title. Cogburn, in the employ of the 14-year-old Hattie, and Damon's LaBoeuf, all are working for what is clearly the right cause, and each has a separate burden to bear. But the ways in which their various axes do and don't get ground may have something to say about revenge and redemption.

There's no denying that, on first viewing, True Grit has a distinct air of slightness to it. Coens diehards will probably like it, not love it, if they're being honest with themselves. But mostly, True Grit is a satisfyingly tasty meat-and-potatoes affair. The Coens, like their contemporary Steven Soderbergh, have proven themselves expert craftsmen, able to churn out well-crafted, often excellent work even in the employ of the major studios. Their well-realized hybrids of brilliance and accessibility have endeared them to a diverse crowd of film-goers, and their careers are all the better for it.

Roger Deakins is a legend in his time, incapable of lensing an uninteresting shot. The music, by frequent collaborator Carter Burwell, is occasionally cloying but mostly standard issue. None of the actors are in particularly unmapped territory, excepting possibly Bridges, whose vocal gymnastics in gargling out Cogburn's guttural expectorations are as impressive as they are entertaining. Coens fans will ultimately return first for the screenplay, packed to the brim (as usual) with dazzling and arcane yokel-isms.

Would my dad actually hate True Grit? It's possible. The dialogue is a far cry from John Wayne's slow-as-molasses drawl, and he'd probably have a hard time keeping up. Apart from that, however, the structure is neat and tidy, the film closes with actual closure (he hates those damn indecisive endings,) and the Coens don't directly impose anything on the viewer that they might not want to deal with.

True Grit is product, no question--but it's excellent product. Think of it as a really choice cut of Grade A, organic, grass-fed steak. If you're inclined to notice, you'll quickly pick up on the superior flavors, and you'll patiently savor every bite. But if you just came to scarf down a big steak? Well, you'll go home happy too.

Catfish

2010-11-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

     If you’ve seen the much-derided trailer for Catfish, you’ve already seen too much. The film tells the story of Yaniv, a handsome young New York City photographer, who is befriended via Facebook by an 8-year-old painter from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her name is Abby, and she loves his photos. They forge an unlikely artistic partnership, and before long Yaniv is receiving paintings in the mail, fielding phone calls from Abby’s mother, and “friending” Abby’s entire family online. Gradually, though, things start to feel amiss.

     Much more than The Social Network, which was mainly concerned with the genesis and business undertakings of the site, Catfish is a film about Facebook. Specifically, Catfish is about the ways in which people present themselves virtually, and the dangers of putting emotional stock in virtual interactions. Yaniv goes on a whirlwind virtual journey with Abby and company--posting, liking, texting, tagging, and eventually even talking. But the folks on the other end of the wires may not be exactly as they say they are. Something doesn’t add up.

     This is where reviewers of Catfish generally shut up, as a good amount of the pleasure of watching the film comes from the anticipation and tension of not knowing what will happen when Yaniv and his cohorts finally decide to investigate the matter (he is accompanied throughout the film by two friends, filmmakers who are documenting the event.) The film builds terrific tension as it approaches this reveal. In fact, it’s so good you begin to wonder if, perhaps, the film itself is not exactly telling the full story.

     Catfish presents itself as a product of the information age, constantly referencing the gadgets and widgets that fill our lives, like Google street view, Facebook, YouTube, Google Chat, and others. The secrecy surrounding the film had me wincing a bit when it failed to deliver the over-the-top, twisty turns it seemed to promise. It has only one twist, but it's a doozy, if not all that outlandish or outrageous.

     So—is it “real?” Certainly, some elements of the film are wholly verifiable (characters, names and places; others far more intrepid than me have already done that leg work,) but the events are staged and staggered in such a way as to often feel a bit too crafted. It seems incredibly likely that the filmmakers knew exactly what they were getting into, and molded their filmmaking style to accommodate their ideas for a story arch. It’s not acting, exactly, but it’s not far off.

     In the end, though, it really doesn't matter. It's a great fiction film, masquerading as documentary, and the ways in which it masterfully blends fact and fiction only bolster its ideas about the nature of “truth,” online and otherwise. Often, the filmmakers skirt the line well enough that even hardened cynics will briefly second guess their skepticism.

     Far more than The Social Network, Catfish thoughtfully comments on the way we invent personalities for ourselves and people we don't know online. It’s a film about the difference between our virtual selves and our actual selves, and the way our human desire for contact can manifest itself in disturbing ways, particularly in the often consequence-free virtual world. We often do and say things on the web that we would never do or say in real life. Why? What do our virtual selves say about our real selves?

     "There were moments when it really felt genuine," Yaniv says at one point in the film. It’s not stranger than fiction. It's just fiction. ( ..I think.)

     But, given the subject matter, it really wouldn’t have done it justice any other way.

Machete

2010-09-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

When “Grindhouse” hit theaters in 2007, the twin-bill offering from directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez came equipped with its own set of fake trailers in between the two features. Though “Grindhouse” wasn’t a hit theatrically, the trailers were often the best remembered parts of the film. One of those trailers was for “Machete;” the story of a Mexican vigilante who is forced to fight against injustice in America. The original trailer was a hoot, and all of the jokes and characters it contained are recycled in this full-length version. But unfortunately, as is often the case, the stuff that’s in the trailer is all the best stuff in the movie.

“Machete” presents us with a laundry list of characters, among them Robert De Niro as a right-wing senator, Michelle Rodriguez as a taco truck operator, and even Cheech Marin as a cursing, pot-smoking priest. Danny Trejo plays the burly, stoic Machete, and spends most of the film in a growling-and-scowling competition with Jeff Fahey, a dirty businessman who approaches him to assassinate De Niro’s senator. The attempt goes bad after a series of double-crosses more complicated than a good recipe for flan, but along the way there are lots of gruesome kills, and also a fair amount of nudity, courtesy of Jessica Alba and Lindsey Lohan, playing Fahey’s aloof daughter.

Rodriguez is a talented filmmaker who nonetheless owes much of his career to his ties with Quentin Tarantino, who was an early champion of his first film “El Mariachi.” While “Machete” played marvelously as a fake trailer, ultimately the director squanders a golden opportunity to comment on the plight of Mexican Americans (and Mexicans in America) by making something completely disposable and forgettable. Coming from Rodriguez, “Machete” might have had some real staying power if it had anything remotely adult to contribute to the immigration debate, but it never gets its thoughts together long enough to complete a sentence. Trejo, ostensibly the film’s star, only gets about 150 words to say, which breaks down to roughly a word per minute in the film, and that doesn't give him much upon which to build a character. De Niro, like Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando before him, has completely gone adrift and checked out, having not given anything resembling a “performance” in a film since, by my judgment, 1997 (when he made “Wag the Dog” and “Jackie Brown.”)

The film is not without bright spots, however. Jessica Alba (who is currently dueling with Eva Mendes for dibs on being the next Julia Roberts) is excellent as an immigration officer and Machete’s would-be love interest. But ultimately, it is Rodriguez who sinks his own ship. Much as we might admire his 'handmade films' approach, the film is in desperate need of a screenwriter (the dialog is heavy-handed,) and an editor, too (his edits flow like an episode of CSI: Miami.) And, though Jimmy Lindsey is credited as the cinematographer, Rodriguez clearly taught him everything he knows (Lindsey was the camera operator on nearly all of Rodriguez’ previous films,) and his shot selection is downright boring. All this was fine when Rodriguez was making films for kids, such as his please-make-it-stop “Spy Kids” movies (a fourth installment is on the way,) but in “Machete” it’s way too pedestrian, and as a result the film collapses way too quickly.

If “Machete” had been made as part of a second “Grindhouse,” it would have no doubt mercifully been hacked down to 90 minutes or so, which would have been a marked improvement. And, if there's truly justice in cinema, one day we'll start seeing shorter director’s cuts of these popularly over-long films. In the end, though, it’s no coincidence that Rodriguez’ best films (“From Dusk ‘Til Dawn,” “Sin City”) are also the ones on which he worked from someone else’s script, enabling him to focus his craft in one direction, rather than in all directions. Rodriguez has built his career on being a jack of all trades, but just because he can do everything behind the camera doesn’t necessarily mean that he should.

LOG: Trash Humpers

2010-06-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

It's 2010, and there are plenty things to be terrified about in today’s world. Trash Humpers throws one more log on the fire: old white people. Harmony Korine's latest nut-punch of a film is the story of three plucky 70-somethings (2 men and a woman,) wreaking havoc on what is ostensibly the very dirty south. Our heroes go around grinding on garbage bins, breaking shit, swearing in a ear-piercing, glass shattering shrieks, bellowing obtuse catchphrases like insane parrots ("Make it, don't take it, make it, don't take it!!!") and generally behaving like hooligans 50 years their junior. Season all this with a dash of good old fashioned southern deep-fried hatemongering, and voila! Along the way, they also encounter an endlessly colorful coterie of lowlifes and degenerates (including a wholesome evening of ass-slapping with a trio of call-girls.) But tempting as it is to label the film as shit for shit's sake, Korine somehow earns this outlandishness by fashioning the ugly circus into a kind of a warped morality tale.

It’s (probably?) a critique on the trailer trash culture of the Deep South (one character regularly sports a confederate flag t-shirt,) and as such, it’s poignant and truly frightening. One scene finds the three old folks gathered around on a rooftop to watch a scrawny, bearded drifter in a maid’s outfit deliver an impassioned nonsense soliloquy in nursery school rhyme. I couldn’t help but be reminded of a bunch of retirees at a dinner theater as they cackled wildly at him, breaking bottles on the ground, amused not by the words he spoke but with their own authority to make him dance and sing and talk for their disinterested pleasure.

Other moments (such as when a two-headed man servant makes them pancakes, which they flatly refuse to eat) are harder to decipher. But as a portrait of sub-suburban (nearly rural) decay, the nauseatingly intimate tone of the film is effective. The directors hope for the feel of 'found footage' is never totally realized, as he can't resist framing his shots, if ever briefly, and even (*gasp*) holding his camera relatively steady (thank God.) It's to his credit that he doesn't push the grim aesthetic any further, as it would only provoke many more viewers out of their seats and further obfuscate his ideas, which are a tough enough nut to crack as it is.

Trash Humpers ends with a compellingly bizarre and grotesque ending, as inscrutable as it is haunting and scary-sick. Korine's a polarizing figure, and for good reason, but though Trash Humpers is not an enjoyable watch, you may find it, as I did, strangely cathartic and well-aimed. These people do exist, if only in the barely-buried ids of thousands of uneducated, unwashed Americans, their evilness often thankfully reigned in by the chorus of bible-thumpers which overwhelm them in their little backwater towns. Trash Humpers doesn't mock its subject; it's serious as a heart attack about them, illuminating their disgustingness in a surprising and affecting way. It reminds you you're fighting the good fight.

In a cinematic year packed to the brim with shock cinema (The Killer Inside Me, The Human Centipede,) this is comparatively small potatoes (there's only one murder, which occurs off-screen.) But seeing that Korine’s film at least has some kind of discernable thesis behind it, it will probably end up being my favorite of the bunch.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans

2010-06-03T21:48:00.000-07:00

Werner Herzog gets off on making you wonder if he's finally lost it. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans (punctuate it how you will, it hardly seems to matter,) directed by Herzog from a screenplay by former cop-show scribe William M. Finkelstein, is as inscrutable and superfluous as its deliriously stupid title suggests, and equally grating. Towing the line between sublime subversion and paycheck-cashing , the film exists as a bizarre, ill-advised lark on the part of Herzog, but one nonetheless rife with critical armor chinks. The film is, in its way, as much a blatant provocation as Von Trier's Antichrist. Herzog’s reputation has buoyed him this time, but wrongly so; Bad Lieutenant is trifling and puffy, and it deflates at every turn at the hands of its own dopey bravado.

The original Bad Lieutenant, an excellent if somewhat self-serious cult noir starring Harvey Keitel and directed by Abel Ferrara, does not figure one way or another in Herzog’s film. What Werner lays on us is (as it has rightly and loudly been touted in the press) not a remake or a reimagining of the original film, except perhaps in the hoping eyes of its producers. It is a film with a stupid name that follows with a stupid plot, of Cage’s bad lieutenant working his beat in the Big Easy and juggling his hooker girlfriend (Eva Mendes, who is a surprisingly great bright spot, very reminiscent of Erin Brockovich-era Julia Roberts) and his drug addictions, crack cocaine being principal among them. Right here we can gauge a big part of your tolerance for this dalliance. If you're OK with the idea of Herzog making a wacky, totally-tripped-out-man cop movie with Nicolas Cage pinballing around the screen like a Vaseline-coated superball, then you'll probably love it and not think twice about why. For me, however, it's like getting talked into sprinting through the funhouse when you'd rather be chilling with a few rounds of ski-ball.

Nicolas Cage remains a problem for which there is no solution. As has been noted, this is a performance he has been building up to for decades, and undoubtedly a new modern watershed in American screen-actor ridiculousness. The question is: where does he go from here? The comparisons to Klaus Kinski, Herzog’s long-time co-conspirator and also a noted basket case, only get you so far. (Although I would concede that both men often found work in spite of their limited abilities as actors.)

The cavalcade of ridiculous merry-go-rounding that must have had to take place for this film to become what it became is astonishing. First, Finkelstein writes his lame NY cop movie script and lobs it into the no-doubt waiting jaws of Hollywood. It's formulaic and easy and, with his background writing for TV, it gets purchased in no time. Somehow it ends up in the lap of Edward R. Pressman, who owns the title rights to the original Bad Lieutenant, having produced Ferrara’s original. Looking to snowball the uninterestingness of the script into even greater uninterestingness, he, in a flash of brilliance, decides to marry the two. They start pitching it around to actors, and Nicolas Cage gets it. They start pitching it to directors, and Werner Herzog (?) gets it (I would pay money to see the contents of his PO Box...) Neither agrees to commit to the film until, apparently, they hear of each other’s involvement and get a hard-on for working with eachother. Yet **STILL** what we have on our plate is a dumb-as-shit cop movie mindlessly pimping the title of a bonafide non-classic in a crystal clear attempt to hatch a franchise so ill-conceived it makes Steve Martin's Pink Panther remakes look like works of genius. But Cage is never one to give pause when a producer waggles a check in front of his face. And Herzog, obviously enamored with the luxury of basically picking his leading man, signs on as well with a toothy grin.

I must impart what I took away from having the good fortune of seeing this film in a preview screening, as introduced by its two producers, Gabe and Alan Polsky. Even they seemed at a loss for what they had. Well, their stupidly brazen devil-may-care shot in the dark has paid off, as critics have lined up in neat little rows to smooch at the feet of their beloved Herzog. It's as if American critics are so glad to now have this master working in their native idioms that they are inclined to lick up anything Herzog might deposit, as long as he can summon up another of his patented irreverent apologies, fellating his own film in the press like a tarted-up Red Light District madame, as if he somehow needs to.

It's almost as if Herzog has grown tired of serving up slices of his patented ecstatic truth pie. Fair enough. Fair enough too that we may be disposed to like or dislike it as we see fit. He's following his whims, and that's why we love him, right? Well.. Yeah.. But I reserve the right not to like the direction he may be pointed in at any given time. Certainly it is true that all sacred cow directors have dusty skeletons in their cinematic closets, and that no director worth anything in the grand scheme of cinema has ever batted a thousand. But I think it is the duty of those who might cherish his work to inform him when he has possibly lost his way.

As long as it's all hypothesizing anyway, let us attempt to wade into the mind of the 70 year old Herzog. Burden of Dreams comes quickly to mind, Les Blank’s documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo. I have surmised before that were Fitzcarraldo to have been made as originally intended with Jason Robards and Mick Jagger, Herzog's career might have taken a sharp turn right then and there. Burden of Dreams is, in a way, a document of Herzog's shot at the big time being pulled out from under his feet (although this is not the primary focus of Blank's film.) So, in a way, Herzog has been fishing for a wider audience since nearly the very start. He now has it. And yet, there is still that compulsion in him, as can be seen from some of his very earliest filmic experiments all the way to recent films like Encounters at the End of the World, to document some kind of ecstatic truth. Bad Lieutenant is nothing if not an ecstatic lie; the tacky turns of the American cop movie subverted with a casual flip of the wrist.

I find myself interested in Herzog's already completed follow-up picture, produced by David Lynch, called My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. My gut tells me that it will be played more for keeps, contrasting and emphasizing the comedy of Bad Lieutenant. The question will be, even in the absence of the wackiness: does it work? Don't we ask the same of journeymen or even hack directors working in these genres? Don't we expect certain things, a certain standard of quality? If Herzog's goal is to subvert the American cop film genre, I guess my question would be, why? It's as simple a target as the broad side of a barn.

At the very least, Herzog has given us a film to be argued about, although, at the moment, no one seems up to the task. In his director’s statement, he all but begs for our scorn, preemptively scolding: "I challenge the theoreticians of cinema to go after this one. Go for it, losers." Umm.. I'm sorry.. What?? Werner, you have made some of the greatest movies of all time. Why bother with this skanky posturing if you yourself weren't in some way concerned about the film's reception? Would YOU watch your Bad Lieutenant? Are you so enamored with Cage's recklessness?

In his great films (of which there are so many,) Herzog does not have time for the sloppy scenes this film and its screenplay saddle him with. When things are superfluous in a Herzog film, they are generally mood-invoking or at least beautiful, not formulaic and lazy, like many of the beyond-standard cop drama moments in Bad Lieutenant. And, at the absolute end of the day, though we might enjoy ourselves with this one to a point, how much can we really allow ourselves to like it? I’ve seen the film three times now, and I have found myself laughing at it at various points each time. But I am certainly not going to force its tired ideas and sloppy executions on myself on principal alone (and believe me, if any director could inspire me to drink their Kool-Aid, no questions asked, it's Herzog.) It's funny and it's somewhat memorable, but unfortunately it’s just not that good.

Maybe Herzog is genuinely up to something I'm just not picking up on. But I've got even money that he's just playing with his food. It's Herzog 2.0, expatriate German maverick turned American, well.. “maverick,” bringing home the bacon on thirty year old stories that still get printed ad infinitum. Bad Lieutenant is just a new craziness for us all to marvel at, so go ahead and marvel. It's his American Even Dwarfs Started Small, I guess. But, lest we forget, he followed up that film with Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and that is why we know his name, and his films.

Here's hoping that Herzog has got a few American masterpieces in him to go along with his German ones. So far, I haven't seen one. And I've been looking.

Log: Beeswax

2010-04-22T20:38:00.000-07:00

Somewhere between The Puffy Chair and Cyrus (due in 2010 from director Mark Duplass,) mumble-core, as it is or ever was (big question mark there,) hit a fork in the road. By then, the critics and audiences had acknowledged it, and dismissed and embraced it in equal measure. But where was it headed? How much could be milked from this aesthetic? Boldly, the filmmakers pressed on. But much as we all might have held hope for some kind of Cassavetes-style American indie new wave thing to happen, it didn't, really. A few unqualified hits (Humpday) left a lasting impression, but that was all.

The dregs of upper-middle-class humanity are on display in Beeswax. It's a story about a pair of sisters who run a boutique, which may be being shutdown due to a disagreement between the business partners. In between, of course, there's plenty of room for ugly sex scenes, meandering conversations and superfluous exposition. The dialogue is drowning in a sea of "umms" and "yeahs," leaning on that old "well we just improvised everything" crutch. But this is nails-on-chalkboard awkward. It hurts.

I'd like to give the film credit in some backhanded way, as many no doubt have (it's sitting at 92% from Top Critics at Rotten Tomatoes,) by saying that draining the emotion from its characters and story makes some kind of higher statement about the emotionless-ness of people in today's world. And the film does manage to work up a smidgen of dramatic tension near the end, and, in lock step with tradition, ends with a spectacular whimper. But in the end, I have to say--people quite simply aren't actually this fucking awkward in real life. To me, it's just a cheap substitute for having to actually portray the emotions a person might be feeling in a given moment. People have feelings, dude. REAL feelings. And often times, they can actually be articulate about them. There's your movie, man. Get to work.

My Year at the Movies: 2008

2010-03-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Let's Do It Again: 2008 in theaters:

I could have back-dated this, but I didn't. I'm honest. Very, very late, but better than than never.
My yearly escapade into the year that was--last year.

No Country For Old Men

Grade: A-

I saw two of big Oscar Horses of 2007 in theaters in 2008 (No Country and There Will Be Blood.) Of the two, it seems that Blood has slid nonchalantly into a "bonafide classic" slot, finding itself on many a reputable critic's Best of the Decade list (myself included. Am I reputable?) No Country, however, continues to spark debate. As for me, my initial reaction to the film was overwhelmingly positive. But as I found myself reflecting in the days after, I was nagged by a realization that the film is among other things, almost totally emotionally non-resonant. I admire Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, as ever, and the film in worth seeing for the totally solid performances alone. I like the movie a lot, in fact. But There Will Be Blood can now be said to easily stand head and shoulders above it.

Sweeney Todd

Grade: A-

I don't actually remember the circumstances under which I saw this in the theater.. Strange. I do remember the movie, however, which I found to be a decent Burton vehicle, if still a mostly lousy musical. I can't compare it to the stage version, as I've never seen the production. As a movie musical, it's a little too drab and unexuberant to register much longer than the time it takes to walk back to the car, or the fridge. Hard to say if this is due to Burton's waning talent/drive, or the source material's nature. Unfortunately, I would guess at the former, as Burton's current project, Alice in Wonderland, seems hellbent on cementing him as a Disney for-hire moneymaker. Look for the DVD, t-shirt, bobble-heads and Nintendo DS game at your local Hot Topic.

Bluebeard's Castle

Grade: B+

Seen at Gene Siskel Film Center, as a one-off showing. Powell's made-for German TV production of the opera, replete with his trademark visual sparkle and emotional heavy-lifting. Though the narrative is sung entirely in German, Powell's knack with musical styling remains eloquent and immediate. A treat, if only for its relative unavailability. Pretty Technicolor candy. I felt like a real movie snob, sitting there amongst a crowd of mostly older, professor types, going on about their favorite and least favorite Powell films.

Animal House

Grade: A+

Shown at the Hollywood Boulevard Cinemas in Woodridge, IL. This is the former home of the Woodgrove General Cinema, where I worked for a year or so in my youth, shilling out bags of popcorn wet with extra butter and large Mountain Dews to eager viewers of the latest Schwarzenegger opus. The theater has since (mercifully) transformed into Hollywood Boulevard, a cinema/eatery, which also occasionally books revivals, with guests. (I worked at this incarnation, also, for a total of approx. three shifts, but I'd rather not discuss that.) On this night, Karen Allen, Peter Riegert, and other players of note were on hand to give a Q & A and sign autographs.

There Will Be Blood

Grade: B++ (revised: A+)

I'm not sure what exactly held me back from totally wrapping my arms around There Will Be Blood and giving it a big, wet kiss upon first viewing. Maybe it was the performance of Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, which, rightly or not, I now find unsettling and strange as opposed to ill-measured and jarring. Maybe it was the deliberately wonky ending, which I now find delightfully dark and perfect, as opposed to just plain weird. Whatever it was, I take it all back. I don't know if it's perfect, but There Will Be Blood is probably a masterpiece, and easily one of the best films of its decade, and the best epic since God knows when. Daniel Day-Lewis gives what he always gives--the best acting on planet earth. There Will Be Classes. People are going to teach this thing. Kudos, PTA. You made a fucking barnstormer.

W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism

Grade: B+

Shown at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with introduction and afterword by Jonathan Rosenbaum, the great, former head film critic at the Chicago Reader. I attended many of these. I really, really hope he gets to program another series/class there, and soon. We're friends on Facebook now.. so maybe I'll just ask him! Anyways.. a weird flick. Very weird. Check it out.

Redbelt

Grade: A

Mamet gets on his high horse again about honor and integrity, dragging out most of the old faces (Mantegna, Ricky Jay, Ed O'Neill,) and a lot of what by now, to Mamet fans, are his same old thematic tropes. Though, I can see why Mamet wears on some people, I still admire the film. Undistinguished as it is, resting beside better films like Spartan, The Spanish Prisoner and Homicide, Redbelt is still a cut above standard fare, and Mamet's love of the MMA sport shines through. Tim Allen is great here, somehow. More, please.

The Fall

Grade: A-

What The Fall lacks in a believable, well-acted story arch (which is quite a lot, unfortunately,) it easily, EASILY makes up for in its unprecedentedly breathtaking visuals. As far as empty screen-painting exercises go, especially compared to a certain box-office mega-blockbuster of 2009, I'll take Tarsem over Cameron any day. AND, by the way, this film was actually PHOTOGRAPHED. With a camera. No CGI. Zero. Watch it and see if you believe that. Cuz I didn't. But it's true.

Encounters at the End of the World

Grade: A

Herzog has continued to remain enigmatic and often frustrating in the new millennium. This film is for me one of his more successful efforts, treading familiar water such as it is. Critics were quick to sharply pick out the familiar tropes (isolation, mad genius, eccentricity, etc.) and more and more, I was quick to see it that way as well. Particularly in light of his later The Bad Lieutenant film, whose agenda remains ever dodgier and inscrutable. Has my main man Werner been selling us snake oil all the time? I'm inclined to think not, but the next few years will tell.

The Happening

Grade: F

Easily, far and away, the absolute and undisputed WORST movie of the 2000's. Why does it trump such spectacular crap-storms as Glitter or Gigli? Because of the unbelievable earnestness by which it nosedives. Not a single line, moment or scene resonates, but all is played as somber and stone-faced as a funeral. Truly one of the epic blunders of cinema history. Not so bad it's good, but so bad it's the worst, most easily and justly hated, and most personally insulting film I have ever seen. M. Night: go back to Pennsylvania and open a cheese steak stand or something. I'm gone for good.

The Dark Knight IMAX

Grade: A

From worst to best, Nolan makes a supreme triumph, every bit as engaging and "game-changing" as "Memento." It's too long, and the false-endings did frustrate me some, particularly on repeat viewings. But not enough for me not to proclaim this film quite possibly the greatest comic book movie of the last twenty years. Chicago has never looked greater or grimier.

WALL-E

Grade: A- (corrected: A+.)

Back to back masterpieces clearly demonstrate that 2008 was not nearly as weak a film year as those with lousy memories will attest. I have a feeling Pixar's long term legacy will shake out much in the way that classic Disney's (which they are so clearly modeled after) does; everybody admires everything, but everybody has their favorites. The purists will likely never break free of Toy Story or Finding Nemo. But for me, WALL-E will likely never be topped. Like it or not, the way Pixar handles real-life problems in fantastic ways (i.e.; the death of a parent in Finding Nemo, earth sickness in WALL-E, even miscarriage and aging in Up,) Pixar have proven themselves braver even than most companies making films strictly for adults. And better, too.

Tropic Thunder

Grade: B+

Whatever ill-will There's Something About Mary and Meet the Parents might have instilled in me with regards to Ben Stiller, the actor quickly undid, with roles in favorites such as The Royal Tenenbaums and Anchorman. Tropic Thunder is fairly throwaway, and will no doubt be mostly remembered for the loony black-face performance of Robert Downey Jr. as a white thespian "blacking up" for a role in a film. Jack Black simply should not be here, as he's practically non-existent anyway save for a couple of lousy fat jokes. Stiller is funny enough. And Tom Cruise, paying penance for his crazy couch-jumping ways, officially ushers in the trend of hush-hush uber-celeb cameos in comedies that The Hangover and Zombieland would ape. Destined to repeat ad-nauseum on cable for decades.

Pineapple Express

Grade: A- (corrected: A.)

This, however, is a cut well above. David Gordon Green breaks out of the drama-heavy vibe of his previous three features and cranks out the best stoner comedy since "Up in Smoke." James Franco is the standout. Watching this again recently, I was inclined to remark that the film was near-perfect; it maintains a consistent and hilarious tone throughout, a rare feat. And David Gordon Green is still my pick for best of his generation.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Grade: A

Considering the shit-tastic, insert-pistol-in-mouth atom bomb of bullshit that was Whatever Works, perhaps we should be greatful that Woody still gets about one in three right these days. Has he just lost grip on his judgement, or does he truly just not care anymore? Either way, Vicky Cristina Barcelona should hold up fairly well. In ten years, when Woody's dead (or very near death) and we have the benefit of a bit of distance, I wonder--will we still hold up Match Point as his last great picture? I kinda doubt it. But as of right now, this one still sits a few rungs beneath it on the ladder.

Religulous

Grade: B++, (corrected: C-)

I laughed my butt off, no doubt about it. But Religulous has about as much to say regarding religion as Borat did about the middle east (a film, not coincidentally, by the same director.) It's broad-as-a-board comedy with an angry edge that tips its hand much to heavily (and without recourse) into vitriol and diatribe, thereby effectively stymieing Maher's point. It doesn't sit well, basically, Maher's "problem of religion." If you want to be all 'holier-than-thou,' it helps to have some kind of conception of what being holy really is. Maher seems much happier just pointing and laughing.

W.

Grade: A-

Halloween night! Coming on the heels of Religulous, W. struck me as fairly even-handed, although I suppose that it really isn't. Stone's ideas are clear, but he is very careful to avoid including anything that might be pot-stirring, instead focusing mainly on the events, as they occurred or are said to have occurred, in the Bush 2.0 Presidency which was, at the time of the film's release, still just barely alive. An amazing cast makes this one worth returning to, as does the sure hand of Stone, who seems legitimately interested in figuring out and depicting exactly what made this man tick. Fascinating? Absolutely. True? Maybe. (Probably.) And I loved the ending. A great image that has stayed with me.

The Mummy/The Man They Could Not Hang

Grade: A-/B.

Karloff double-feature, Halloween weekend, Bank of America Cinema. Was this my first time to this theater??? I think it may have been. One of the jewels of Chicago, which may be doomed to close (pending a building sale) in the middle of this year. God, I hope it doesn't.

Synecdoche, NY

Grade: A? (corrected: A+)

Ahhh.. Sin-eck-duh-key. How you bring out the best and the worst in people. Ebert thinks you were the best film of the decade. I disagree, but my love for you is strong. The buddy I dragged along to see this with me will not let me live it down to this day. It's become kind of a punchline, as I imagine it has for many people. It will be interesting to see how this film ages. Overambitious indulgence or uncompromising vision? Right now, it's about a 50/50 split. Maybe it will remain so. Maybe.. that's OK. Viva Tom Noonan. He's amazing.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Grade: B++.

Fincher fan though I am, this film looks pretty weak in hindsight. Cate Blanchett and especially Tilda Swinton made it for me, but all else was essentially effects-laden filler. Pitt is good enough, as usual, but no better. Definitely deserved the "Forrest Gump Redux" stamp that got dumped on it.

------------------------------

And then,
it was 2009.

Whew. That was a busy year.

Screen Shots: The Room

2010-02-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

@ The Music Box Theatre, Chicago. 2/12/10

NJAFBIT: Greenberg

2010-02-06T21:42:00.000-08:00

WHY I'M INTERESTED:
Baumbach's latest features Ben Stiller as a stalled, semi-matured bachelor, newly arrived in Los Angeles from New York, sleepwalking a fine line between clueless lost soul and listless old soul. Stiller is certainly capable of good acting, especially in this type of role (see: Flirting with Disaster) and, as a trailer, it's a wonderfully evocative grouping of scenes.

Baumbach has had no trouble keeping himself in my good graces, through both his scripts with/for Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Life Aquatic) and his writer-director gigs (Margot at the Wedding, Squid and the Whale.) Greta Gerwig, who I like perhaps a little too much considering how well she slips time and time again into the now-fabled "manic pixie dream girl" role (albeit each time with a hint of not-so-pureness,) plays Stiller's love/like interest. And Mark Duplass, on the heels of success in Humpday and Baghead, also makes an appearance, perhaps signaling the final death knell and assimilation of 'mumblecore' (whatever the hell it was, anyway) into the Hollywood machine.

Baumbach, having already tread the post-collegiate transitional blues in Kicking and Screaming, appears to be filing another report from the frontlines, this time from post-career, non-committal flailing middle-aged-dom. He's about as qualified as anybody. Throw in Rhys Ifans, and Jennifer Jason Leigh in horn-rimmed glasses (she is also co-writer,) and a tantalizing soundtrack by LCD Soundsystem genuis James Murphy, and I'm sold.

PREDICTION:
Two parts mumble-something, one part jittery NYC entitlement, one part Sundance-y sparkle.

RELEASE DATE:
3/26/2010

The Most Dangerous Decade

2010-01-14T22:54:00.000-08:00

The era of the 'oughts' has ended. 2010 is upon us, and this is no small milestone.

For me, it represents my first opportunity to analyze a specific decade in an adult way (at least such as decades are commonly bookended, in ten year chunks, starting at a zero year.) Fittingly, for me personally, the ‘oughts’ provide a fine capsule of time, a nicely ordered and packaged progression, particularly as they relate to my education in the world of movies. To look back--I graduated High School in the class of 2000. Unkempt and uninterested, and swept up in real drama at home, going away to school was not an option. Pondering (read: avoiding) my community college destiny, I took a job, and sat by helpless as my friends shipped off and away to University, and I remained a lowly ‘townie.’ The job? Blockbuster Video. This, you remember, was the video industry’s moment of middle-age, its adolescence having only recently faded. I still remember putting up the store's first shelf of DVDs not long after I started, alien in their slim paper snap-cases, and marveling at the menus, chapter stops and (gasp!) bonus features. It would not be long before the new format was ubiquitous, and VHS was in a fight for its life. I watched it all pass before my eyes, friends. I ate Kit Kats and drank Fruitopias, and got paid eight bucks an hour for it. It was glorious, to a point. But it was not to last.

---

Some ancient history.. My ‘a-ha!’ moment in film (every moviehead has one,) was with Magnolia, which I first watched by myself in the basement of my father’s house, sprawled out with a pillow and a blanket on the floor. I can still picture its two-tape clamshell VHS rental case, held together through the middle by a rubber band. To an eighteen year old kid who grew up on John Wayne, Mel Brooks and bad Nineties sci-fi, it was a capital-R Revelation. My education then grew the way most’s do; I gradually started thumbing through the VideoHound book we kept in the store, putting names to coverboxes, learning the difference between a Producer and a Director, etc. And, above all, watching more movies. This was before the Internet took over everything--which is not to romanticize the time, exactly. But it was different. I didn't own a computer until about 2002. By then, things were beginning to come together for me a little bit. I heard about Kazaa. Armed with the world’s shittiest dial-up, I excitedly downloaded the Pixies version of the song from Eraserhead, and Roy Orbison (en espanol) from Mulholland Drive. The movie world was revealing itself to me, and in conversation I could pretty well hold my own.

I banged around in the video world for nearly half the decade, running the gamut of rental chains (Blockbuster, then to Hollywood, then to Lion,) and then finally to a quaint little outlet store for DVDs, which I ran for a year and a half or so out in Itasca. It was like a secret club for movie collectors; everybody who knew about it checked it out, and they always came back (the prices were unbeatable.) I remember fondly some of my loyal customers, a colorful lot. There was Ray, the truck driver, who loved old horror flicks and stopped by often on his lunch break, and who dubbed me a copy of The Skull on VHS (years before it came out on DVD,) which I still have. There was Nick, lanky and wild-haired, a lover of all things vintage, and always with an amusing anecdote about whatever I had playing on the TV (on Duel in the Sun; "’Lust in the dust!’ they called it!”). There was Big Bill, who never bought much, but always came to see me and bring me a small container of pipe tobacco (he knew I was a smoker.) And of course Barry, the filthy-rich lawyer with the sports cars, in leather jacket and shades, who collected so obsessively he would literally call in a weekly list of new releases (never less than fifty titles) to be pulled for his review and approval. They were good people. At this point, the DVD collector’s market was in full, beautiful bloom, and interesting titles were being released at an unsustainable clip. And there I was, with a box cutter and a DVD player in store, and access to them all. It was a fine education, indeed.

A lot of bartering went down there; I was free to administer a lot of off-the-books discounts, and my generosity never went unreturned. They all stopped by with something: a book on Buster Keaton or a card at Christmas, a gift card, an old poster. I'm glad to have experienced that old-fashioned style of retailing, but it was clear even then that the moment was not to be forever. Our little corner store just wasn't shifting the units the way top brass wanted. They shoveled me up to a desk job, which my poor brain tried on for size but ultimately violently rejected. And that was the end of that (the store itself was shuttered not long after.) But I kept up with movies, and with writing, and soon enough the two met and fell in love, and, um, here we are. True story.

Now, it’s a new decade, and I find myself in the position of seeing that world fade away before my very eyes. At 27, already my old stomping ground has become a rundown, abandoned lot. Blockbuster hasn’t been relevant in years, and the stores are dropping like flies (the one I cut my teeth in, in Lisle, is an awkward-looking Auto Zone now.) Movies on discs feel more and more passé every day. Retailers struggle to navigate the waters of digital downloads and super High Def. And movie lovers? Left somewhere in the fray, for now.

---

But what of the films themselves? Make no mistake; this decade will prove a marker. Already in the films I’ve experienced in 2010, I've begun to sense what the shift will be. An easy and all-too-perfect poster child is the recent Up in the Air, this year’s presumed Oscar horse. For all its pretensions of insight and lack of answers, Up in the Air does manage to convey quite nicely a fitting obituary to the death of the American happy ending, marking the moment when mainstream cinema officially divorced itself and split off from that haggard old Hollywood dinosaur—the ‘feel-good’ picture. Up in the Air enjoys a built in alibi for its bleakness; the global recession, which it exploits in its plotline as well, aping but not in any way commenting on the unfortunate realities of today’s economy. Notably, it does not even attempt to offer refuge. Why not? In the 40’s, Frank Capra, that grand chronicler of small-town America, at least had the good sense to send his viewers off with a smile. By comparison, Jason Reitman, who has ridiculously and completely prematurely been lauded by some as Capra’s second-coming, is content to simply identify the problem. It is here that he somehow endears himself to the new-age ‘cinerrati,’ even as he reveals his dearth of emotion. He really put his finger on it! Yeah, well, I’ve got a finger to offer in return.

I'm not OK with Up in the Air’s depiction of America in 2009. Does that mean, by proxy, that I’m not OK with America itself in 2009? I suppose it does. I'm not OK with posterity looking back and finding an era of wandering ghosts. I desire integrity, especially in the movies. Up in the Air has about as much to say about integrity as a tattered old pair of underwear. And the comparisons to Capra seriously make me want to puke. We watch Capra now (like we watch most old films now, those few of us that still do,) to drink in some small drop of the HOPE that they convey. The hope that, in fact, most films used to convey. But now, happy endings are viewed as trite, and in all but the most very trite of films, they are non-existent. The closest we get these days is the now- ubiquitous ‘dangling-thread’ ending, wherein filmmakers allow their viewers to, ahem, decide for themselves the fate of these characters, in whom it has been their job to invest us for the past 90 minutes or longer.

This seems to me to be a natural outgrowth of our modern life; too few experiences are thoughtfully mediated for us by a person these days. We check ourselves out at the grocery store; we pay our bills by automatic debit. Our cars can give us cross-country driving directions. We wish our friends and family members good morning and good night on their respective web profiles. We are no often required to rely on another person for anything in a given day. And when we do, it’s invariably an inconvenience. Who wants to wait for a bank teller when I can have my paycheck electronically beamed into my wallet? So too then—who wants to see a movie that gives me ideas about how to think? (That is, unless that’s already the way I think, a la Michael Moore, et.al.) Even the Oscar-bait feel-gooders are becoming harder and harder to find. Slumdog Millionaire lost most of its rags-to-riches luster when it was revealed that the film’s child star, a non-actor, had remained living in squalor in the Mumbai slums, even as the film (itself a horrendously sugar-coated depiction of the place) raked in millions at the box office. This is to say nothing of love stories, a practically non-existent genre, just as it often remains in modern life. It’s no wonder that (500) Days of Summer garnered so many sloppy comparisons to Annie Hall; it’s probably the closest thing our decade has given us, at least in the mainstream, but it’s still light-years away. Of course, I’m aware that these trends by no means began in the ‘oughts,’ but the global recession, born here in America and radiated outward across the globe, seems to have put the final nail in their musty coffins. But still I wonder--will we someday miss our happy endings? Will they now truly be forever doomed to dopily inhabit the dime-a-dozen Rom-Coms and Lifetime movies of the week? Is there room for resonant love stories, or any film born of integrity, in the high-brow film world?

---

Also appearing at the dawn of the new decade is James Cameron’s Avatar, raucously heralding a new day of techno-beefcake-panache destined to muscle its bloated, still-born visage onto movie screens for generations to come. Inhabiting at the same time the tiny fraction of cinemas not being devoured by Cameron’s mongrel techno-beast, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is by comparison a kind-of anti-Avatar, its effects looking as dated as Up in the Air’s supposed depression-era blueprints. As we watch an old trick crumble into dust before our eyes and behold its new embodiment (much like the ‘avatars’ of Cameron’s film) so too can we wonder: will we miss our old foe CG as well? That cursed demon, which we battled so mightily to extinguish, and which Cameron has now so thoughtfully taken upon himself to put a final bullet in its brain. Will we later long for the days when we didn't have to pay close attention to see what is real and what isn't? Will Starship Troopers, Men in Black and even that old sacred cow Jurassic Park feel charmingly quaint and old-fashioned, the way Them! and Invasion of the Body Snatchers do to us now? Yes, sooner than later, certainly they will.

It's an easy observation, but how fitting that the decade might be forever shorthanded as the 'Oughts,' a pair of big, fat, empty g00se eggs, waiting to be filled up with something. Are we up to the challenge in the new decade? Or will the ‘Oughts’ collapse deflated upon themselves? Will our emptiness be filled? Is a new era of integrity, fidelity and love on the horizon? And, if it isn't.. are we totally screwed?

I've got a 'Best of the Decade' list, which I'll be posting, with commentary, shortly. But I thought it only fitting first to give a goodbye to the decade itself. If the movies have endeavored to teach us anything at all in this decade, it's that we can always retreat to indulge in our passions, however vague or ill-conceived they might be. How we indulge them, what we make of them, and the ways in which they affect us remain open possibilities. But we are allowed our passions.

And it may well be that, in life as in the movies, we are not often predestined a happy ending, but will instead have to thoughtfully seek it out. Perhaps it’s still out there, buried somewhere in the electro-miasma of rental queues and digital streams, waiting, calmly and silently, to embrace us.

Screen Shots: The Big Lebowski

2010-01-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

@ Lincoln Hall, Chicago. 1/6/10

7-7-7 (Day 3)

2010-01-03T23:11:00.000-08:00

Two days in, I was rejuvenated, and about as excited as a person can be to go see a 50 year old movie at an 80 year old theater in a sleepy little suburb. Tonight, it was 3 Godfathers at the Tivoli. In Downers Grove, my old hometown.

Well, actually, my old adopted hometown. I lived in Woodridge, which is one town over, for about five years during high school. But Woodridge was (and still is) just houses and White Hen Pantries- DG was where the action was. And the Tivoli is right in the heart of it. Steps off the Metra stop in downtown Downers, in an old building which also houses a downstairs bowling alley, and a pizza joint. Straight up suburbs. Small Town, USA, with just a hint of white-folk ritz.

When I called it home, Downers was good to me. I drove my cars up and down its streets in summertime, to park in front of friends' houses, lugging bass amps down cramped stairwells and back up again. We drove down Ogden Avenue to the Omega restaurant at 3 AM, for free bread and hot coffee and dirty looks. We watched movies, too. In basements and living rooms, drinking liquor we shouldn't have had, laughing and smiling with that old, ecstatic purity of teenaged-ness. Lots of memories. Very few bad ones.

These days, the Tivoli spends most of its days (as it did then) sadly relegated to second-run movie house duties. On the day I visited, Monsters and Aliens (in 2D, sadly,) had just finished a run, and something else lousy was coming in behind it. The Tivoli used to have a sister theater, Tivoli South, which was on the other side of town, and about as ratty and run-down as they come (side note: it's under new ownership and has been converted into a movie house for exclusively Bollywood/Indian language movies. The delicious Sher-a-Punjab buffet and Bombay Bazar grocery are just a few steps away. It's like Mumbai, DuPage Co. edition.) But the Tivoli is no typical cheap theater. Not by a mile. Built in 1928 at the dawn of the sound era, when the huge, sprawling movie palaces were giving way to smaller (by comparison) and more plentiful theaters. By today's standards, it might as well be Carnegie Hall. Easily the most spectacular room in Downers Grove, the Tivoli has benefited from some loving care and restoration in recent years (no doubt there are quite a few patrons of the arts with deep pockets still left in town.) It's really something. Here's hoping that the Tivoli can keep its mojo forever.

I arrived a bit early, somewhat on purpose, as I wanted to grab a pint at Emmett's Ale House, one of the first micro-breweries I ever visited, at the dawn of my drinking years. Hitting the suburbs is a funny thing when you have the benefit of a few years mainly in the city to color your perspective. I suppose if you're looking for it, you're going to find people that annoy you anywhere you go. But that night, in that bar, I was surrounded by a flock of rapidly aging yuppies, with $50 haircuts, $500 jackets and $50,000 cars. I ordered my doppelbock, and it came in a snifter (?). Five years ago, I might have thought it was the best thing I ever tasted. Not so much any more. I paid and headed down to the show, and the soft din of the high-priced dinner conversation faded out of my ears. What a relief.

I've seen 3 Godfathers plenty of times; it's a nice choice to bust out around Christmas time. A loose retelling of the "three wise men" bible story, filtered through Ford's trademark Monument Valley/cowboy lens, and it has a universal appeal and an easy charm that suits most tastes. Was this my first Ford in the theater? Apart from Young Mr. Lincoln at the Chicago Outdoor Film Fest this Summer, I think so. It's late, minor Ford, to be sure; the great director is painting with a broad brush here (something about the size of a push-broom,) and nuance goes out the window pretty quick in favor of tear-jerky chest-grabbing moments, which are pulled off pretty admirably by the three godfathers of the title: John Wayne, Harry Carey Jr., and Pedro Armendáriz. Never one to leave us hanging, Ford's story of three men in search of new souls pushes (sometimes mashes) all the right buttons, and by the end, by trial and tribulation, they, like their unexpected child companion, have been reborn. Drinks are poured, songs are sung. What a yarn. So great.

The news had broken earlier in the month that Downers' annual summer hooplah, Heritage Fest, had been cancelled. The city couldn't afford it. Could it be true? Heritage Fest was like a high school reunion where your friends parents might show up. Seemed like we went every year, whether we wanted to or not. And we paid $6 a cup for Michelob, and ate the elephant ears. Cuz that's what the townie kids do. But were all grown up now. Very few of us left in Downers Grove proper. No more Heritage Fest? Shame for somebody, I guess. But I won't miss it.

The Tivoli, on the other hand, is a treasure. And worth the drive.

History of the Tivoli Theatre: http://www.classiccinemas.com/history/tivoli.asp

(images: click to enlarge)

7-7-7 (Day 2)

2009-12-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

The Red Shoes
@ Music Box Theatre
12/14/09

Monday felt a lot shittier than it actually was. It wasn't very cold, but it might as well have been. I was slogging my way through the end-of-semester doldrums, having just completed a final which I was forced to wait half an hour to begin. Also, I had gotten back an assignment I thought for sure I was done with (it's a 100 level course, lady. If you want a works cited page, put that in the assignment sheet. It's a blowoff.) But the sojourn would not wait. The Red Shoes at the Music Box was on tap, showing at 5 and 8 (and for the MB's new discounted Monday ticket price of $5!) I walked out of class at 4:30, seemingly bound for the five o'clock show. My trusty iPhone calculated I would arrive at 5:05 via CTA. I took that as a challenge. I zipped up Washington, down the tunnel to the Red Line and made it down the steps... just in time to watch a train bound for Howard pulling slowly away. I cursed. (Specifically, I said "F*ck.")

This, plus the annoying developments at class, was enough to officially put me in a 'bad mood,' which is pretty rare for me. I hated every perfect, painted, peacoated yuppie mannequin in that tunnel, cooing emptily into their blackberrys about dinner reservations and primping themselves. I wanted to punch the sing-songy "spaare change, maaaaan" homeless guy standing a couple feet behind me. And when the next train north finally came and I squeezed in, every loudly rattling fixture in that train car made me want to smash the hell out of it with a ball-peen hammer. It did not look good. I stepped of the Red Line at Addison at 4:59. There was no way I could walk it. I needed a bus to save me, as I had to cut up a good 5 or 6 blocks to Southport. And there it was! Right as I came through the doors... four carlengths away and pulling out of sight. Again.

I smiled and stood, quietly enraged. These are the CTA moments. God. F*cking. Damnit. 5 o'clock was not happening. Even worse.. that was the bus I needed to get home. Seething, I waited for the next one. The wind picked up, of course, and it got colder. I put the closest thing I had to metal on in my headphones. I resolved to go home and catch the 8 o'clock. Via (*gasp*) my CAR.

Having a car in Chicago is something that I struggle with. In theory, I feel inclined to utilize CTA as often as possible, for reasons both economic and environmental. But tonight, I couldn't WAIT to get in that thing, crank up the heat, pop on a podcast, drive my happy ass warmly and quickly down to the Music Box, park right in front, take ten steps and be inside. And that is exactly what I did. Eco-babble be damned; sometimes you need to get a little selfish. Sometimes, you don't want the faux-company of the noisy, anonymous bus and train riders. Sometimes you just want to be left to your own crankiness.

The Red Shoes is a bonafide masterpiece- every inch as profound as The Seventh Seal or Rashoman, and twice as beautiful as both. The central conflict- the push and pull of love versus career, resonates more each time I see it. I may never have another chance to view it on the big screen, with its vibrant, lively colors splashed across a thirty-foot canvas. But its importance and beauty are absolutely certain to live forever. By the time it was over, any hint of my bad day bitching and moaning had long melted away. The dancing and the music had lifted my spirits. Movies can do that to you sometimes. They offer humanity in a box--all the tender moments, none of the difficulties of all those disappointing, annoying reactions. Good, cheap medicine for discomforted souls.

THE RED SHOES
Grade: A+

(images: click to enlarge)

7-7-7 (intro & Day 1)

2009-12-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

A Serious Man
@ Landmark Century Cinema, Chicago
12/13/09

2009 had been another year of movies. Most of them solo.. But that's a different story. I had not at all reluctantly come to the realization during the course of the year that movies were to forever be, if not in some way a vocation (a guy can dream, right?) then at least a full time hobby for me. For life. I'm a movie guy. That's my thing.

It had been a long year and a short year. I had learned a lot and probably already forgotten most of it. I had moved back home, enrolled in a University. I was making progress. Some days were great, and some were lousy. Same as it ever was. But I was moving ahead, and the year was ending.

As finals time approached, I looked ahead to a personal end of semester tradition of mine- I always see a movie on or around the last day of class. Last semester, I saw Gran Torino, which I paired with a sit-down meal at Portillo's so sinfully gluttonous that it may have single-handedly condemned me to purgatory (or at least to my size 38 waist.) With the semester nearing an end, I began to scout for a movie to see. So much stuff was playing, and I wanted to see it all. Fantastic Mr. Fox. A Serious Man. A restored print of The Red Shoes. After I considered each one, I felt less inclined to let it go. Somehow, it turned into a list. Well.. I guess I could see a couple.. right? Why shouldn't I? Hadn't I worked hard? Wasn't I entitled? Of course I was, goddamnit. The more I looked, the more I found. 3 Godfathers was showing at the Tivoli in Downers. Wow. Couldn't pass that up. And A Christmas Carol (my favorite- the Alastair Sim version) at Bank of America on Saturdaqy night. I stopped at seven, and it hit me- 7 movies in 7 days. I paused and thought a moment. Wow. What a trip. Could I? Should I? It was so damn tantalizing. There they were, lining themselves up in front of me. Somehow I knew I couldn't talk myself out of it. I rearranged the movies around my work schedule, and amazingly, everything still fit. It was a puzzle that refused to go unsolved. I had to do it.

I needed a haircut. I needed a workout (or seven.) I had the finishing touches to put on one final, and another I hadn't even started. There was no milk in the fridge. I hadn't bought a single Christmas present, for anyone. And the contents of my bank account was rapidly approaching single digits. Could I even afford it? It didn't matter. None of it mattered. It was time to go to the movies. The schedule was set. No backing down. I would begin on Sunday.

Thanks to a couple of slow-as-molasses customers at work, who kept me a little later than I had hoped, I got out a few minutes late, and after valiantly taking to the streets and catching what I've no doubt was the slowest bus in town (Diversey, heading east,) I arrived at the Landmark Century about ten minutes too late to catch the 5 o'clock showing. Damn. No worries; it was playing again at 7:30. But I had some time to kill. Rather than overhear the annoyingly urban-sheik conversations of the patrons and wait around bored at the Borders across the street, I went for a long walk. It was cold, but not uncomfortable. Just brisk. I walked up Broadway, past the carolers out in front of one of the pubs. Past Aldine, the street my father and his brothers and sisters grew up on. And past the Treasure Island grocery store, where he used to walk, to his first job when he was a young man. By some small miracle, it had survived all these years. Before I knew it I was at Irving Park, so I cut over and back down Clark. I could have hopped a bus, but I didn't I peeked into the Full Schilling to see if a friend was there (he wasn't, amazingly.) Then on past Wrigley Field, and the hordes of meatheads and sorority flakes clogging the bars, screaming at each other on their cell-phones and smoking $10 packs of cigarettes. Past the makeshift Christmas tree lots, in the parking lots of McDonald's and Jewels, hemmed in by wrought-iron fences and strung-up lights. I overhear a woman ask if they accept credit cards. "Nope.. cash only, ma'am." She smiled and darted her head around for an ATM.

Chicago felt small, and it was small. And it was a beautiful night.

When I took my seat for A Serious Man, I knew from its opening shot of falling snowflakes that my plan was a good idea. Endearingly enigmatic, typically and wonderfully Coens-esque in its precision and economy, the film captivated me. It was funny, too, if tempered with sadness, as indeed most great comedy is. Chalk up another fine one for the brothers from Minnesota.

I could have stopped there. It would have been fine. But I didn't. I had six more to go.

A SERIOUS MAN
Grade: A

(stay tuned for six more entries to follow)

Log: Up

2009-12-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

On second viewing, Up still strikes me the same- fun but flawed. The complete tonal shift that goes down when the the talking birds and talking dogs show up remains a big problem for me. While I admit that these bits are some of the best and funniest in the movie (Doug in particular is hilarious and adorable, and easily the best character in the movie,) it knocks me off balance just enough to put a kink in my enjoyment.

Great Pixar, like great Disney as a whole, makes its living on hearty helpings of pathos, and while it tries to bookend it on the front and back, Up's middle stretch is pretty much pure comedy. While I give them big props for stepping outside of their box, what we end up with is basically a Saturday morning cartoon on steroids; it goes great with a bowl of Cookie Crisp, but by the afternoon you'll be ready for bigger and better things.

PS- Disney/Pixar Exec's: I understand your (greedy) rationale, but not including the short film (the beautiful Partly Cloudly) on your Netflix DVD copies is nothing less than a cardinal sin. For shame.

Log: The Relic

2009-12-09T22:04:00.000-08:00

The Relic is a real relic, alright. An artifact of a bygone era when movies had the balls to go for an R rating on the basis of language and gore alone. I remember it fondly... (**dream hands, tinkling sound..**)

The year was 1997. After her spectacular star-making turn in Big Top Pee-Wee, Penelope Ann Miller had flirted briefly with stardom at the dawn of the 90's, with roles in The Freshman and Carlito's Way. But with the breakout success of TV's "The X-Files," along with the dino-sized hit of Jurassic Park a few years before, a brief (but glorious) genre of B movie silliness had been born. The various cinematic gems/time capsules this movement produced, titles such as Sphere and Congo (both Michael Crichton adaptations,) as well as The Ghost and the Darkness, Contact, and Outbreak, were mainly action-y guy movies, either with a sci-fi/gore spin, or a creepy cool vibe with the requisite monster twist.

Producers were hungry to get their hands on the next Crichton, and here they stumbled onto the work of Douglas Preston and Lincold Child, and their series of novels based on the character of Pendergast. So what's the first thing they do? DELETE THE MAIN CHARACTER. I never read the books, but even so it's obviously an amazingly blockheaded move. Penelope Anne Miller is hot in that just-right, Dana Scully sort of way. In fact, the whole thing plays (as was no doubt intended) like a spooky/goofy "X-Files" episode.

Director Peter Hyams was a mini-fixture of this 90's scene (he also directed Time Cop and End of Days,) and rightly so, and his contemporary, Roland Emmerich, has continued to carry the torch. Every single scene in The Relic is lifted from something better, but the preferred franchise seems to be Aliens (and actually, the two films share a producer.) There's a monster at the end, and lots of ominous moments in the dimly-lit after hours of an old museum (Chicago's Field Museum, in fact.) But mostly it's just a lot of shots of people evaluating scientific data and looking through microscopes. Science is cool, kids. Or at least it was then.

The genre quickly spun off into the similarly short-lived "disaster flick" boom (think Twister, Volcano, Dante's Peak) and was lost forever. Not long thereafter, Duchovny left "The X-Files," and the genre had come full circle. This film is forgotten now, as are the rest of the films of this short-lived burst. In fact, you can't even get The Relic on DVD any more, unless you get it on a bargain-bin double feature flipper-disc with Pet Semetary 2. But I remember them all. And oh, what a time it was. (**end dream sequence**)

(even more appropriate: I watched this on Laserdisc!)

Now.. what's this about Avatar? Oh... I see. Never mind.

Screen Shots: Chandu the Magician

2009-11-10T07:33:00.001-08:00

Bank of America Cinema, Chicago. 11/7/09

LOG: All My Friends are Funeral Singers

2009-10-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

Musicians sometimes decide that they want to make movies. It just happens. There are at least two approaches they must first consider when this urge strikes. The musician can either step out of the band and away from their music to make a film (or films,) or they can create a film designed to compliment their previous work in the music world. Of this first approach, a few have come away with some mild success (Rob Zombie?), but more often they flounder in this new world of clapboards and boom mics (see: Ice Cube, Madonna, Prince, et. al.)

The second approach, whereby a musician creates a film to in some way accompany their own music, has proven a somewhat more lucrative and safer bet, and many fine examples exist (True Stories, Christmas on Mars, The American Astronaut, etc) All My Friends are Funeral Singers, a film by Tim Rutili, main brain of the uber-venerable Chicago-founded rock band Califone, falls into this latter category, and ranks fairly highly within it.

The film's star power (if you can call it that) comes courtesy of Angela Bettis, whose name rings strangely familiar, considering she has never really had any kind of 'breakout' role (her claims to fame would be her major role in Girl, Interrupted and later her starring role in the recent lo-fi horror favorite May.) Bettis plays Zel, a youngish woman earning a living as a psychic, inviting her sparse clientele into her home, which she shares with a ramshackle collection of (unseen to all but her) spirits, whom it seems play some part in her clairvoyance. The part is well cast and well acted, and her performance is memorable and rings true. As writer and director, some of Rutili's ideas play marvelously well (I love the idea of a widowed woman summoning her dead husband from beyond just so she can bicker with him the way she did when he was alive,) and some fall more flat (the mockumentary-style 'interviews' with the spirits felt strange and unnecessary.) But he is a gifted visual artist, and truly every frame of this film is thoughtfully crafted and gorgeous to look at. Fittingly given his band's rootsy, Americana foundations and tendency toward fiddles and banjo blues, Zel's woodsy old house gives off a southern gothic vibe. And although the film does not even for one frame break free from the house and it's immediate exteriors, the effect is not claustrophobic, but rather intimate and alive. Indeed, even though the film at times suffers from a lack of narrative propulsion, the same could be said of Califone. Rutili has transplanted the entire aesthetic of his band into this film.

In a mild spin on the traditional forms of the idiom, Rutili and the members of Califone are featured, quasi-Greek Chorus style, as characters in the film, a faction of Zel's in-house coterie of benevolent spirits. It is hard to say whether the film is better or worse for the inclusion of Califone, both as the music composer and as 'characters' in the film. I am tempted to believe that, with a little tweaking (which the film is still fairly likely to receive) and even minimal music, All My Friends could stand up fairly well on it's own as a sturdy little piece of festival fare. However, much as I truly enjoyed the visuals and the character of the film, I can't exactly guarantee that non-Califone fans would get as much out of the film as others. Though Rutili clearly wants the film to exist separately from his band (and their concurrently released album of the same name,) there's no way that they can, really; nor should they, as neither piece is as strong without the other.

As of now, the film is flying way below the radar, with no specific release or festival appearances yet announced (not even a measly IMDB page,) apart from the band's current tour, which features screenings of the film accompanied by a performance by Califone, playing (in remarkable sync) with both the incidental and song music in the film.

Califone have been accused of making the same record over and over again (see HERE.) If Rutili has another film in him (and I hope he does,) perhaps we'll find out how one note he really is.

(more images:)

LOG: The Shark is Still Working

2009-09-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

I guess it was bound to happen. The Shark is Still Working is perhaps the first ever sequel to a DVD extra. In 1995, Laurent Bouzereau changed the face of video forever when he produced The Making of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, one of the first super-in-depth making-of documentaries of a contemporary film. Bouzereau's film accompanied Jaws' initial release on Laserdisc, and thus the template for extras-laden video releases was officially born (Bouzereau had also secured himself work for life, creating similar companion pieces for Spielberg and others.) So beloved to Jaws fans was this doc that Universal caused a minor uproar when, upon releasing the original DVD of Jaws in 2000 they chose to include an edited version of the making-of, rather than the full 125 minutes. (The full run time was later restored in a subsequent release.)

Still Working, which clocks in at 120 minutes (Jaws' runtime was 124 minutes, by the way,) presents itself as both indebted to and in reverence of Bouzereau's original making-of. At times, you can feel the filmmakers skating on thin ice; careful to maintain some fidelity to the tried-and-true fabric of established Jaws lore, whilst also laboring admirably to inject new mythos into its blood. By necessity, it treads a lot of the same water (( p u n ? )) as Bouzereau's film, displaying all of the old behind the scenes faces (Carl Gottlieb, Darryl Zanuck, Peter Benchley, David Brown,) as well as nearly all of the principal cast, and even quite of few of the many memorable non-principles. If you ever thought to yourself “I wonder what that fat guy who says ‘A Whaaaa??’ on the wharf is doing now..” Now is your chance to find out.

Still Working boasts lots of fun little nuggets like that. But where it finds its best target is in describing the films legacy, making the closing arguments in the case for awarding Jaws with the dubious distinction of being not only the first “Summer Blockbuster” of all time, but perhaps even today the only one whose hook, line and sinker ( ( P U N ? ? ? ) ) ad campaign hyperbole actually paid off. Zanuck is candid about his marketing/merchandising ambitions for the film, and Still Working handles this lovingly, but not without at least a little backhanded denouncement.

The filmmakers seem perhaps partly bent on ennobling their work with higher esteem; the film is currently hitting the small time festival circuit, as it was when I saw it as part of the Chicago United Festival at the Music Box Theatre. However, the clear value of the film does not escape them. Writer James Gelet, who was present at the screening, bragged of learning that Spielberg was a 'big fan,' promising him that 'conversations would be had with the right people' to hopefully include the film in the inevitable Blu-ray release of Jaws. Strangely candid and un-indie words to hear at a midnight screening at a film festival, but nothing to frown upon I suppose.

Jaws has some of the best back stories of any film since Apocalypse Now, and with Scheider and Benchley both gone, this film will have to stand as a final, definitive statement. Though The Shark is Still Working would quickly benefit from screenings at home, rather than in the stiff-back of a theater chair, it does deserve to be seen (and if Gelet & Co. are gunning for a shot a being the next Bouzereau, they're off to a good start.) It’s in depth, but not academic. Like the Bouzereau film, it's the ultimate DVD extra.

Again.

At The Movies - Redux

2009-09-06T09:26:00.001-07:00

NJAFBIT: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans / My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

2009-08-31T21:35:00.001-07:00

WHY I'M INTERESTED:
Sadly, in film there all too often is such a thing as the oft-mentioned "law of diminishing returns." Many would say that Werner Herzog has fallen prey to it, and although I am not exactly among them, I admit to some casual misgivings of late. But- say what you will about Herzog's post-millennial films (his 1999 documentary on Klaus Kinski proved to be the last film he would make entirely in German, officially ringing in his "American" period,) the guy is keeping himself busy. And, to be fair, he hasn't laid any massive stinkbombs just yet, even if he hasn't really equaled much of his earlier work, to say nothing of his earliest (and acknowledged) masterpieces, which now seem light years away. So, we take a deep breath, muddle through the internet rumblings, and wait for the next one to come out, ever fearful of that one giant misstep that could land him in America's bad graces, where he seems to have ended up in Germany.

Well.. Here they are. Both of them. He's got two in the pipeline. Both have annoyingly long titles, and both would seem to be, at least in so far as what is perceptible in these trailers, 'crime' movies. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you:

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

And,

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Aaaaaand... I'm already lost.

I can hear the faint praise damning these two already. "Herzog riffs on the American cop movie." I can hear his voice in the interviews. "These were the films I was watching as a young man." BL:POCNO has got The Cage himself, Eva Mendes showing a little skin, and Val Kilmer. MSMSWHYD has got Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, and David Lynch himself on as producer (oh, and Udo Kier!) Both, wonderfully, have Brad Dourif, Irma P. Hall, guns, B+/A- list casts, a hint of marketability, and all sorts of baffling, tantalizing potential, so expect these two to be paired for a long time to come. Both will hopefully be out this year, but neither has an official release date announced (although both will be showing at the Toronto International Film Festival in just a few days, so keep your eyes peeled for the early reviews.)

Will Nick Cage bring the new Herzog to a big shiny multiplex near you? Let's hope not. But it might happen. Let's be real, though; Kinski (and, to a lesser extent, Bruno S.,) were Herzog's true muses in the fiction film. He seems to know this. Maybe he's shopping for a new one? If so, let's hope he chooses Shannon over Cage. Or that he has a clue what to do with either of them.

Either way, it's new Herzog. Two of them! You gotta get excited.

PREDICTIONS:
Not going there. Not this time.

RELEASE DATE(S):
see above

LOG: The Hurt Locker

2009-08-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know if The Hurt Locker simply caught me at a particularly raw moment, or what exactly the explanation is, but I’ll be totally honest: this film sent me into a two-hour fit of knee-hugging, violent discomfort. It's merciless, offering the viewer ZERO comforts. Exiting the theater, I was deeply shaken, taking deep breaths, rubbing my eyes. Honestly, I don't think I have been this affected by a movie since Requiem for a Dream. And that is very high praise indeed.

While I would fully concede and even warn anyone that a film this visceral and intense can be a difficult experience in the dark enclosure of the theater, where there is no pause button to allow you a moment to catch your breath, I urge you to catch The Hurt Locker on the big screen. It’s the best movie I've seen all year, and the worst time I've had in a theater in quite a while (If that makes any sense..) Also, if you're anything like me, it's the only Iraq war movie you'll ever need.

Even more, this film is the perfect counterpoint to the phony, ridiculous pro-military flag-waving bullshit I can only imagine a movie like G.I. Joe is currently vomiting up onto the waiting laps of its legions of audiences. The Hurt Locker is definitive proof that, when done correctly, (i.e. with an eye toward realism,) an 'action' movie, particularly a war movie, is about the least fun, least escapist, most claustrophobic genre of film that there is. And that is how it should be.

To be fair: I have a tendency to oversell movies that kick my ass (most people whom I hyped up Audition to found it to be less than earth shattering,) so take my huffing and puffing with a grain of salt. But if nothing else, I am certain you will enjoy the experience of seeing this film.

See you in five years, THL...

(500) Days of Summer

2009-08-04T21:27:00.001-07:00

(500) Days of Summer is a movie that is desperate to relate to you. Yes, you. It is a film, following in a grand and old tradition, which attempts to define and condense a generation's romantic zeitgeist into a tidy, ninety-minute package. In this case, it's aiming at our generation. And at our hearts. Does it hit? Regardless of some of the careless comparisons being thrown around, 500 Days is not nearly on the same plane as something like Annie Hall. It takes fewer chances, and its story is less remarkable. But on the whole, it's almost as irresistible. Very good, not great, even if the punches it lands are often clock-cleaning knockout blows. Still, it's a little tough when a not-all-that remarkable movie quickly reduces some of the deepest feelings of your life into a neat little pigeon hole of a character, without a whole lot of effort. But that’s exactly what 500 Days does, and does well. Let's consider how. And why that sucks.

First, let me level all the way: I had big fat ulterior motives for seeing this movie. There's not a lot I can do for 'objectivity' on this one, and so I'm not going to try all that hard. I wanted to see this film because I've been living some all-too-similar situations this year. And because I knew it would hit home in some way, and I felt like I was interested in having that experience, for better or worse.

As we begin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a weary and worn-down twenty something, biding his time at a menial job at a greeting card company in L.A. He subsists, without very much apparent resistance, on occasional bar nights with the office crew, work time, home time, and some kind of very vague, loose grip on his former high hopes of a career in architecture. Right off the bat, a sign of the times; how many of these people (us) are there? Slaving away at some laughably uninteresting and unworthy drone work, sheepishly sidled into arrested development, personally and professionally, by the nagging realities of the paycheck life. If you don’t know this guy’s life, you know someone who knows it. And if it all feels a little mundane, that's because it is, but that certainly does not make it any less true. It does explain why these types of revelations have so often failed to make their way onto movie screens. Audiences, generally speaking, are not headed to the movies to feel like they are staring into a mirror. For this bravery, 500 Days is laudable.

Here we find a suitable point to begin to pick at this film’s myriad comparisons to Annie Hall, a bold and, frankly, lazy proclamation with which I take some umbrage. It’s an interesting exercise to examine the films’ differences. On their surfaces, the dual plot lines (guy meets girl from out of town, unlikely romances blooms, flourishes, sours, ends) would certainly seems quite compatible. They even employ (500 Days straight up quotes) a lot of the same filmic quirks (direct-to-screen dialogue, animation, etc.) But there are key differences.

First and foremost, and crucially, Allen’s character in Annie Hall was a lot more likable of a guy. As Alvy Singer, Allen’s hero-self at least had delusions of himself as partly remarkable, which ingratiated that film further to those males (read: all of us) who have a hard time letting go of the idea they truly are the best thing that could happen to anybody, including pretty ladies. Indeed, Joseph Gordon-Levitt only partially steps out of the slimy shadow of Keanu Reeves he has been crouched under for the last few years. As a performance, it’s probably perfect. He does major justice to the role, but alas, the film affords him precious few opportunities to show us much other than what we have already seen from him.

Ditto and likewise for Zooey Deschanel, whose character remains the most troubling, if perhaps for reasons which remain mostly unclear, by design or otherwise. For all the films perceived posturing about how right everything could have been, Summer, as a character, is nowhere near as memorable to us as should perhaps could or should have been. The script seems to too often hedge its bets, perhaps an attempt to bridge the audience through generality; get too specific, and it's not relatable anymore, apparently. Contrast this with Annie Hall's various very specific, very pointed moments; Annie on stage in the noisy restaurant, or Alvy on her bed after a late night call to kill a spider. Woody, for all the other misgivings that have been laid on him, at least had the balls to get real with us. 500 Days mostly just wants to approximate real, or perhaps wholly underestimates its audience’s capacity for anything outside the straight lines of Tom and Summer. Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe Annie Hall’s realities were too heightened, too elevated, removed from truth. Can you decide?? I sure can’t.

Even within the kept realm of Woody Allen, love this grand always was a young man's (read: fools) game. Compare Annie Hall to more recent Allen films, such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, with Scarlett Johanssen vamping her way across Spain, or even worse, to Whatever Works, which casually bandies around some of the most ridiculously unearned and unnecessary sexual motifs since Caligula. Even Allen himself, it seems, has given up on all his old romantic preoccupations. He’s moved on. And yet.. Annie Hall is still the one we talk about.

On one hand, we should perhaps be at least somewhat grateful that our generation’s seemingly ubiquitous, (??) fumbling journey toward Gen-Y love has been cataloged, imperfectly or not, and committed to celluloid for posterity. For all its inviting of your personal baggage to color the frames, 500 Days remains on track, telling the story it needs to tell, and telling it well. More than a few moments will ring more than true for nearly any viewer who has ever found themselves in any kind of similar predicament. It's like a choose-your-own old adventure. If this scene doesn't remind you of When, the next one probably will. There is a lot of awful, messy truth about love in this movie. But if it really is the truth, how bad is it, really?

Marc Webb’s direction is good, in an average, tentative sort of way. Rightfully, his focus remains on the story, and so we are spared all but a few super-cutesy, gratingly zany moments, and they are paced out well enough that it never gets to be too much. Contrary to the buzz, 500 Days is actually remarkably unflashy for at least 70% of its run time. The flairs that do turn up mostly work, even if it's clear that music video director-cum-filmmaker Webb certainly does not possess the brilliance of a Gondry or a Jonze, try as he might to emulate their quirky sensibilities. If 500 Days is his flash in the pan, I wouldn't be that surprised. When the kookiness fades out and the movie shows us its true feelings, it's all about Summer and Tom. And that's good. A couple of very nice, bravura moments, particularly the much talked about split-screen “expectations/reality” scene, will certainly be enough to place this film firmly in the hearts of many. Including myself.

Now, to get personal.

It's probably not fair, but it's more than a little nice that the movie takes Tom's side through all this. After all, all the Summers in the audience aren’t paying attention anyway. Guess what? It takes balls to be Tom. For every Tom, a genuine, if imperfect, and totally normal guy, there are a hundred other guys out on the fringes that would be more than happy to give Summer the no-strings-attached attention she so adamantly proclaims she wants. And why not? What’s wrong with all that? What the hell does a guy like Tom have to offer, anyway? (Um.... don't get me started.)

Being so close to it, I can quickly pick apart 500 Days’ many misdelivered arrows, like a Star Wars fanboy maniacally spotting the shot-for-shot differences in Boba Fett's face masks. If I may- *ahem:*

If we want to believe that a certain one is 'the one,' then we will believe it.

And if we believe that they are 'the one,' then.. They are.. Aren’t they?

I have no doubt that I will return to 500 Days, and I have no doubt that there is much truth in what it conveys. How and why the things it portrays do or do not apply to my life (or yours) is certainly a fair question. But, if you're anything like Tom (or me,) you'll have no trouble figuring out where the movie ends, and what you lived (or are living) begins. If nothing else, it may be of some comfort to know that, yup.. You’re not alone, cowboy.

I say- be proud, Toms. Stay the course. Your day will come, and so will mine. And if, when it does, it ends up being some version other than that pie-in-the-sky one you dreamed up with your Summer, that is a reality you will simply have to deal with. For, as you know, the alternatives will certainly not suit you any better. In the meantime, there are lots of morals you can pull out of a film like 500 Days of Summer. It’s quite malleable, actually. Take the pieces you want, and leave the rest. That’s what Tom and Summer did. Well, Summer did, anyway.

Now it’s your turn.

NJAFBIT: 500 Days of Summer

2009-07-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

WHY I'M INTERESTED: Good cast, great looking soundtrack. A former music video director at the helm. A few good reviews that peaked my interest. That'll do the trick. (Although, I'm really praying that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has not morphed into the second coming of Keanu Reeves.) I'm a sucker for Zooey D., anyway. Bigtime. What can I say.

This is flirting dangerously close to "too close for comfort." Maybe it will put my summer in perspective. Maybe it won't.

PREDICTION: Whatever. I'm seeing it.

RELEASE DATE: 7/17/09

LOG: The Merry Gentleman

2009-06-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

If Die Hard is a Christmas movie (a claim which I now reluctantly accept,) then The Merry Gentleman is as well. But that's not all it is. It's also a romance, a cop movie, and a pretty damned good Chicago movie, too. And it's got Micheal Keaton! 'Nuff said?

The easy gravitas and charm of Micheal Keaton simply cannot be overstated. He is a five star actor, and although his widow's peak has slowly inched back into a kind of Mohawk over the past few years, his panache remains as fresh and fun as ever, even when he is saddled (as here) by a role which in and of itself demands that his performance be almost wooden. It's a joy to watch and listen to him. He's one of the best.

The Merry Gentleman also has the distinction of being Keaton's directorial debut, and as such, it's a pretty sound success, with a few minor caveats. It's hard to say if Keaton deliberately limited his screen time as some sort of ill-advised, self-deprecating directorial choice or if it was simply a symptom of the script, but I wanted more of him in this film. Also, Keaton executes a couple of bafflingly strange camera movements and scene progressions. But certainly no one could accuse him of not taking chances, and indeed a lot of the flourishes he goes with work quite nicely. Watching Keaton in the few films in which he has appeared in the last five or so years, a big part of me wishes that he would just reach back, one more time, and let loose to become again the bonafide movie star he once was. His sparse appearances are unbecoming of his massive talent. But I have resolved to take what I can get.

I can sympathize with some of the review judgments of this film as too sappy, too somber. It certainly can be both, in spots. Though it does fall prey to a few of the more annoying indie-flick trends of the moment (minor spoiler alert: the "thoughtfully ambiguous loose-string ending" is employed here once again, maddeningly.) But it's hard to get too upset at this film, which has quite a lot going for it. To it's credit, it never prods for emotions it doesn't earn. And anyway, it's a lousy target to pick to bemoan the ever-present tide of indie flicks where no one ever smiles (I could think of a few far better choices.) The film redeems itself very well with its unstylized, believable and interesting portraits. Especially interesting is newcomer Tom Bastounes, who plays his very juicy part (as a cop involved in the investigation of a murder) like a young Joe Mantegna. Kelly MacDonald too does a fine job with her lovably distant Scottish emigre, alone and vulnerable in the big city.

Very worthy of a watch, The Merry Gentleman should transition especially well to the small screen, where the (admittedly) gloomy tone will feel a little less claustrophobic. See it for Keaton. There is no better reason. All the rest is icing.

Gran Torino

2009-05-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino could be your dad. He sure is mine, or some version of mine, anyway. And if he's not your dad, he's your friends dad, or your girlfriend's dad. Trust me. He loves his dog, not his kids. His house is cleaner than it needs to be. Everything is organized and arranged just-so. He uses arcane expletives. Takes great pride in his lawn. And he's got a souped-up old car in the garage that he never drives. Sounding familiar yet? Perfectly rounding out this laser-etched archetype, Walt is a man filled up to the brim with a vaguely defined hatred of just about everything he encounters in his daily life. His kids and grand kids have been spoiled by his meager success and are now too busy for him. His neighbors, whom he calls 'gooks' and 'zipperheads' (as if those were still the preferred slurs even amongst racists..) are immigrants from Laos with a strange way of life that he tells himself he has no tolerance for or interest in. And his wife (whom we do not have the pleasure of meeting in Gran Torino,) has just died. Walt is a man isolated with his own rage.

The film opens on a cookie cutter Catholic funeral, one like we've all been to, where the Pastor has nothing new or extraordinary to impart, and everyone knows it, but plays along in some kind of vague spirit of honoring the dead, even as the kids fumble with their video games, and the adults mumble quietly to themselves about it all. Walt stands up front, greeted passively by each visitor, seething with resentment. He sees the moment for what it is; an empty ritual more useful for assuaging the guilt of the attendees than for condoling his loss. From here, we begin our journey with Walt, which will end up in unexpected and barely believable places. Walt will do things that ordinary men, even desperate, challenged or 'brave' ordinary men, do not do in today's world. And we, the audience, will lap it all up. Why? Because Walt is played by Clint Eastwood.

In anyone else's hands, Gran Torino would probably be dismissed as just a bit too drama-by-numbers. A bit too easy and a bit too safe. But in Eastwood's, it's a portrait of a generation. HIS generation? Clint's charms, even at 79 years old (which he will be at the end of this month) are many. In Gran Torino, he growls a lot, and his scowl, decades removed from his Spaghetti-western roots, is as gruesome and gnarly as ever. Even all these years later, Eastwood is still delighting in his badassness. He's the "Last Cowboy," and he knows it. But lest we forget, Clint is also a cultured man, and he has let in show more and more in recent years. A lover of music, particularly jazz, Eastwood has hopped into and out of various genres in his career, ever since his white-knuckle directorial debut Play Misty For Me. Mystic River in 2003 proved a milestone, earning numerous awards and a renewed interest in his filmmaking, as well as signaling a shift towards the more bracing, "serious" dramas he continues to produce. His films since have not disappointed, and Gran Torino proves to be no exception.

Walt is a reverse-Peter Pan, a fully grown-up man who refuses to grow up into any other kind of man. Or does he? (dot dot dot... the film plays on.) About halfway through Gran Torino, glugging down a Tsing Tao, now slowly warming to the affections of his immigrants neighbors, Clint/Walt lets his guard down and cracks a smile. So it's the 'old bastard with the heart of gold' story, right? Fine, but should we really swallow that pill so easily? We have by now come to grips with the nature and implications of Walt's various ill-defined hatreds and prejudices. Some are bullshit, just talk and nothing more. Some are very real, very deserved, and totally logical. And so we, as viewers, must allow ourselves a moment to determine for ourselves if we really can excuse Walt these myriad imperfections. But before we can muster up our argument, we are swept up into some unpleasantly violent circumstances, which of course serve to hammer home the "we're all in this together,' flag-waving banner that Gran Torino seems to have no qualms about shoving down our throat.

Maybe Eastwood doesn't apologize for Walt. But true to his Hollywood roots, Clint can't resist a few hilariously easy and uber-schmaltzy pock shots to tug at the heartstrings. A true blue entertainer, just givin' us what we want. But in the process, the 'message' one might take from Gran Torino loses most of its credibility. Are we are allowed to ponder how all this relates to Clint himself? To the characters he has made a living playing for 50 years? To Dirty Harry? If I had to guess, seeing as Eastwood himself has never been necessarily averse to change, enduring at least three career 'revivials' and reinventions, I would say that Eastwood is not 100% sympathetic to Walt. Walt is a man, a part of a generation, who's lives, actions and demeanors might just have been influenced by the tough-as-nails portrayals of such characters as Clint practically invented. In this way, Gran Torino can be cautiously viewed as some sort of back-handed denouement, a conscience-clearing admission on the part of Eastwood that being a cranky, snarling son-of-a-bitch is only as good as the baggage you bring along to it. But didn't he already handle that in Unforgiven?

In the end, as an entertainment, Gran Torino is a complete success and a film to relish, even though Eastwood (and screenwriters Nick Schenk and Dave Johansson) mostly just hint at the real emotions at play in these very real scenarios. When push comes to shove (and, in Gran Torino, it very literally does,) Walt just wants what's right in the world. Or so we are led by the hand to believe. It's worth asking why these emotions had laid dormant in Walt for so long. Why, in fact, he gives what he gives, when he gives it, to his sons, to his Pastor, and to Tao, the neighbor's young son whom he takes under his wing. And whether or not any of that is actually OK. But Gran Torino doesn't approach these details. It offers only the things we want to see, the things we WANT to believe about Walt. Perhaps even about our own fathers. And, let's be fair; Eastwood never did play no angel, did he?

Make no mistake, this is not realism, and not fantasy. It's Hollywood, Eastwood style. Where boys become men, and men.. are men. Everybody learns their 'valuable lesson,' and Walt (and Clint) have their last laugh, their scripted version of 'justice,' all the way up to the films laughably corny ending moment. And then, the credits roll.

Whatever you say, Clint. You nutty-ass Mick bastard. Tell me another one.

(note: I am well aware that I am writing reviews of movies on this site that are already well past the sights of the movie reviewer world. There is a multi-faceted explanation for this: 1.) It takes me a while to catch up to these movies, sometimes. 2.) I like the idea of being able to review something a little bit past it's buzz-generating opening. I like to let the dust settle and then see what I see. So.. stay tuned for my review of Iron Man! (you think I'm kidding..)

CLICK HERE

2009-04-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Blue Collar Film Scholar will be on semi-temporary hiatus as I wrap up my semester at school and continue sorting through bags, boxes and totes. So, in the meantime:

The Substance of Style

I had been planning for some time to write a piece entitled "In Defense of Wes Anderson" for this site, but Mr. Zoller Seitz does a pretty damn good job here. (Also - GOD DAMN IT I WANT AN AMBERSONS DVD. I WANT IT. YOU GIVE IT.) Watch all five parts. Will somebody give this guy a show on IFC or something? Speaking of which:

Green Porno

Issabella Rossellini is a freaky, hilarious chick. Watch both seasons. It'll take like twenty minutes.

"If I were a firefly, I would light up my ass at night..."

Not Again: 24 Films Too Painful To Watch Twice

This is old, but I somehow stumbled onto it recently. I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't have the balls (or the stomach) to put in Requiem again. It just sits there on my DVD shelf, menacingly. (PS- A.V. Club is the real deal.)

Criterion Collection: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Benjamin Button gets the Criterion treatment right out of the box. The first since "The Life Aquatic," I believe.

Thinking back on this film, I remember quite a bit, and this release especially has me excited to revisit it. The women in this film were remarkable. Tilda Swinton probably gives the best performance in the film, as she so often does (see: Michael Clayton,) and Blanchett too was memorable. So what if it's Forrest Gump? I liked Forrest Gump. Didn't you? (Also, for the requisite 8 pages of "OMG wHy iS TCCOBB oN cRiteeeRiON?" click HERE.)

Where the Wild Things Are

In place of a full NJAFBIT posting, click here to check out the trailer for Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. Best trailer song ever? It works fantastically well. This trailer is awesome, and Jonze has never made a bad movie (they're.. *cough..* both good.) Nuff said. This is a twenty-something indie-kid's Halloween wet dream. These damned hipster filmmakers just refuse to force us all to grow up. (Early contender for trailer of the year. Last years winner was Pineapple Express, btw.)

in the pipeline: LOG on The Relic. Seriously. Check back often!

LOG: The Reader

2009-03-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

Upon entering my local, neighborhood cheap (*AHEM* 'second run') theater this evening, I was struck with a dilemma; I had purchased my ticket for Doubt at 9:40, but found that The Reader was also playing at 9:45. I paused between the two theaters a moment, and weighed my options. Two hand-wringing dramas, neither of which figured to hold me a very captive audience. After a bit of thought, I decided that even the vaguest prospect of hot-and-heaviness courtesy of Kate Winslet was enough to undo my admittedly weak desire to watch Streep and Seymour-Hoffman act it up, Nazi subplot be damned

Well, I got my hot-and-heaviness. And I also got a by-the-numbers literary adaptation, co-starring that most by-the-numbers actor of them all, Ralph Fiennes. Even its most moving moments were badly contrived. Winslet does a nice job with her haggish, slightly sexy hausfrau, no question, but that whole Nazi business just felt tacked on. More than once I wondered if I had picked the right movie.. but I'm pretty confident I did. I'd rather watch Winslet over-compensate for an underwritten role then watch the Doubt folks do it the other way around.

I left as I entered, unenthused, unmoved, and ready to go home. A glance at the "coming soon" posters, however, with such future presentations as Milk and Coraline, was just enough to lift my spirits.. Indeed, thankfully, there will be better days.

NJAFBIT: Inglorious Basterds

2009-02-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

WHY I'M INTERESTED:

You gotta hand it to Brad Pitt; he's making it almost impossible to hate him these days. Realistically, if you look at his output as a whole, he's pretty much ALWAYS been in cool movies. It's easy to forget how many. Since his breakout in Thelma & Louise (itself nothing to scoff at,) he's bounced from Cool World to Kalifornia, to Se7en, to Fight Club, to last years fantastic Burn After Reading and Benjamin Button, never going more than a couple years without appearing in something great. He's co-starring with (WTF?) Mike Myers, straight off his blockbuster star-making turn in The Love Guru.

The trailer shows shades of both Tarantino's lamer side (Pitt's lousy, boring monologue,) and awesome side (some fun, Kill Bill-ish action moments.) Worth betting that both sides will turn up in the finished film, but in what proportion, who can say. The problem I'm having more and more with QT movies is my inability to just listen to what these people are saying, without picturing it coming from the mouth of QT himself. This is the major problem with outspoken, wordy filmmakers (ie. Kevin Smith, et al.)

But, much as I may try to resist, I end up seeing every Tarantino movie in the theater. He is one of the defining filmmakers of our generation, and I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt until he gives me reason to think otherwise. For a 'teaser,' this gives a pretty damn good indication of what we will be getting. I'm intrigued enough not to immediately dismiss it.

PREDICTION: Imperfect, funny, weird, awkward.

RELEASE DATE: 8/21/09

LOG: Targets

2009-02-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Boris Karloff is, and will ever be, my favorite actor. I love him. He had the greatest voice, and one of the greatest presences in all of the movies. Targets was, by all accounts, his last important (read: good) film, finished and released less than a year before he would succumb to emphysema-related pneumonia at age 81. Famous names surround the production; Roger Corman produced, and Bogdanovich took the script to Sam Fuller for some uncredited rewrites. Karloff made $22,000 dollars for appearing in this film, refusing to accept pay for the additional time he worked (past the 2 days he owed Corman from a previous commitment.)

I could sing the praises of Bogdo all day long, but mostly as they relate to his excellent writing abilities. As a filmmaker, apart from this and The Last Picture Show, his output borders on dreadful, and in recent years he has retreated into menial acting jobs. But he is an ever-present, if oft-maligned, force on DVD and in film scholarship, and I say let him talk.

If Targets isn't a masterpiece, it's because the parallel plot lines (1- Karloff as washed up horror star, 2- Young man goes on rifle-fed killing spree) don't necessarily pair all that well. But they do pair well enough intellectually that you can concede the idea of the film, particularly knowing the restrictions that Bogdo had handed down to him from Corman. As meta-Karloff, the film succeeds, but only because Karloff was exactly the kind of man who could own up to the biographical aspects of Bogdo's script. When Boris is not on screen, however, the film suffers badly. What would you expect?

Putting what you know will be considered your film 'epitaph' in the hands of a young, unproven director? That's just Karloff doing what he always did- being the greatest professional of his time.

Strangely, this DVD has gone out of print. It's a gem at it's original $5.99 asking price (I think I bought it at a K-mart.)

NJAFBIT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

2009-01-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

WHY I'M INTERESTED:

Well folks, you certainly don't need me to tell you that 2009 is looking grim. But what you might not know is that it's looking awfully grim in the movie world as well. Even after we endure the annual pre-Oscar famine currently plaguing multiplexes, the horizon still looks dreadfully bleak. So bleak, in fact, that there is not a single movie currently announced that I can get excited about until May 29th (Pixar's Up). But hey, what's this... a Street Fighter movie..?!?

Chances are you forgot about 1994's original Street Fighter, perhaps as an act of self-mercy. To refresh your memory, it featured Raul Julia and JCVD hamming it up in what turned out to be the first ripple of water in a tidal wave of crappy retro video game-turned-movie cash grabs. This time, Michael Clarke-Duncan leads a cast of nobodies, including Hinsdale's own Chris Klein (not heard from since his sparkling lead turn in Rollerball,) who has amazingly not yet commited suicide even after his fiancee dumped him and briskly went on to spawn the demonseed of Tom Cruise.
Director Andrzej Bartkowiak, who was actually the DOP on a few semi-prestigious pictures, made the leap to directing about ten years ago and promptly fell into a ditch, first directing that legendary thespian DMX three times (THREE TIMES) and then moving up the ladder to guide The Rock through another ten-years-too-late video game adaptation (Doom.)

But, let's keep things in perspective. We beggars must not be too choosy. It's gonna be desperately slim pickings for a couple months, kiddos. We've got a couple groan-worthy horror remakes, a massive heap of lame looking at best comedies, and.. this. Sadly, horribly, we might actually end up seeing this. Will it suck? Oh yes, it will suck (not a good sign: the film's "blog" has not been updated since June..) But hey, if it sucks in a good way, then at least we know we can look forward to the super-secret He-Man and Voltron adaptations that are supposedly being penned as we speak by the same writer.. (GULP)

PREDICTION:
The ultimate test of "so bad it's good."

RELEASE DATE: February 27th

My Year at the Movies: 2007

2009-01-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

Yes, you read that right. I have decided to do my "Year in Reviews" one year late. I find that a year of hindsight affords films some much deserved time to age, settle in in your brain and be reflected on with the benefit of hindsight. So, without further ado, in five sentences or less each and in chronological order, my take on 2007 at the movies.

Pursuit of Happyness

Grade: C+

A feel good story. I remember being impressed with his son's performance. Other than that, I draw a blank.

Children of Men

Grade: A+

I was floored by this in the theater. Amazing action, design and vibe. It has held up well on repeat viewings. It's like Spielberg but with a very artful touch. Perhaps not an 'important' movie but about as good as one can be without any super-serious pretensions.

Volver

Grade: A

My first Almodovar in the theater. Penelope Cruz is so vibrant and so sexy. So fun to watch. I could watch this right now.

Inland Empire

Grade: A+

Best movie experience of the year, and the best film that I saw. Showed at the Music Box Theater, with introduction and Q & A by David Lynch. Favorite moment- Q: "What is it about?" A: "It's on the poster." Read my review HERE.

Pan's Labyrinth

Grade: A-

Thoroughly enjoyable, and Del Toro's best yet. The night I went to see this, I was dealing with some serious bad news. A nice way to take my mind off. Maybe not the pitch-perfect masterpiece is was made out to be, but very strong and very successful nonetheless.

El Topo

Grade: A

Another night at the Music Box. Brilliant and bizarre. I'm convinced Jodorowsky is just a lunatic, and this film means nothing, but it is so damn fun to watch.

Zodiac

Grade: B++ (edit: A+)

Much like There Will Be Blood, this was a film whose greatness crept up on me. Fincher is building quite a body of work these days, and here he crafts another truly great crime movie.

Grindhouse

Grade: B- (Planet Terror/Trailers B+/A, Death Proof D)

A sadly failed experiment by capable filmmakers. At the time, I enjoyed Planet Terror quite a bit, and hated Death Proof. Now, I couldn't tell you one thing that happens in Planet Terror, but I do remember the chase 'scene' (if you can call 45 minutes a scene..) in Death Proof. Call it a wash, I guess.

Drawing Restraint 9

Grade: A+

Indescribable and wonderful. Bjork and Matthew Barney on a creepy whaling ship, engaging in some strange rituals. Underwater seashell flesh carving, anyone? Yes, please. I understand his motivations, but it's a travesty that these are not available on video.

Hot Fuzz

Grade: A-

Hilarious. Major Wicker Man vibe was off-putting at first, but it works. Maybe not as great as Shaun of the Dead. But what is?

Rescue Dawn

Grade: B+(!)

A superfluous film, but a good superfluous film. Herzog, sadly, announces the twilight phase of his career. I'm over it, and he's gone on to better (and also much worse) things.

Killer of Sheep

Grade: A+

Music Box again. This time in the little room. This release will surely realign this film's place in history, as it should. Need to check out more Burnett.

Ratatouille

Grade: A-

Pixar continues their unparalleled run of absolute greatness. Patton Oswald makes some real money. The world rejoices. People get tired of saying "Pixar has topped themselves." They would officially give up in 2008 thanks to a movie about a robot.

30 Days of Night

Grade: D

Great idea for a horror movie. Worst execution imaginable. Danny Huston is sadly reduced to playing a brooding blood-sucker with a fake accent in a trendy eurotrash suit. Then they lock him up in the local jail. Such total crap. How sad.

The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D

Grade :o)

$15 well spent. Obviously, the movie is a legend. The 3D was impressive and really cool. This could become a fun technology. Any reason to get the kiddies to actually care about what is on the screen is good enough for me. (Now, Coraline, please don't let me down.)

The Darjeeling Limited

Grade: A+

Thank you, Wes Anderson. In a world where filmmakers let you down again and again (M. Night Shamalan,) you stay true. I will defend you to the end.

Across the Universe

Grade: B

I don't know. Maybe I expected too much. But Moulin Rouge it ain't. Eddie Izzard provides some of the year's strangest on-screen mugging. See my review HERE.

"Blade Runner: Final Cut" A,

My first digitally projected film (at Muvico Rosemont,) and WOW. Particularly for a film released in 1982. Eye-popping.

"Curse of the Demon" A

Jacque Tourneur's neglected monster movie. Showed at Gene Siskel, with introduction and afterword by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Worthy of the Lewtons, if maybe just barely.

2008 advance preview:

Looking back on my year at the movies in 2007, I would have to say unequivocally that 2008's offerings were superior in every way (in point of fact, however, I saw two films technically released in 2007 second-run in 2008.) Hope you got to the theater in 2008, folks. With things being the way they are in the world, 2009 could be some seriously rough sailing. But, if there ever was a recession-proof business, it's the movies. Here's hoping we get some good efforts in theaters to take our mind off things. Suddenly, $9.50 a ticket doesn't sound so bad.

2009-01-01T22:08:00.000-08:00

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Full Reviews -
Long-form reviews of films.

Log -
Screening Log. Short (often very short) reviews.

NJAFBIT -
Stands for "Never Judge a Flick By It's Trailer." A lousy acronym. I could spell it out, but that might be even lousier. These are reviews of trailers, and musings upcoming films.

My Year at the Movies -
Annual rundown of the films I saw "last year." Meaning, one year ago (i.e., I wrote about my year at the movies in 2008 at the end of 2009.) I do this because I find that a year of hindsight makes all the difference in the world in assessing movies. And because I think it's funny.

Idiot Ego -
Reviews which were written for the (now sadly defunct) Elgin-area Music & Arts 'zine Idiot Ego. The captain of that ship was Mr. Jim Miller, who is now occuiped in other, equally worthwhile pursuits. (SEE: Cassette Deck Media.)

THE DVD -
DVD reviews. I think there is only one. Maybe there will be more?

Essays -
Other stuff, usually long-form, that pertains to movies.

On Second Thought -
Re-reviews of films I did not initially like upon their release. Only a couple here as well, but I like this idea, so hopefully more will follow.

ALSO:

7-7-7 -
This was meant to be the chronicle of a seven day straight movie marathon I did in December '09. It's not finished yet. Hopefully it will be. For better or worse.

Screen Shots -
Actually photographs (from my iPhone 3GS,) of movie screens. Lame? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. However, I am always leery of holding up a camera in a movie theater. Don't need to go to prison.

LOG: Adaptation

2008-12-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

I have watched this film twice this month. There is so much here to digest. The pursuit of meaning, in life, in writing. Self-doubt and self-loathing. The yin and yang of painful change and new discovery. The ability of people to inspire and catch each other when they fall. Ambition. When Donald starts getting in on the screenplay, and the alligator attacks LaRoche in the swamp, Kaufman fictionally slaps himself, and we reel for him. And it sees the film through, just as he hoped it would.

I am, however, unable to decipher the riddle/problem that is Nicolas Cage. For every Leaving Las Vegas or Raising Arizona there seems to be at least four Snake Eyes or Ghost Rider's. Is he really not capable of figuring out the difference? He's amazing in this film. How, damnit? HOW? Also, after years of resistance, I am ready to submit that Meryl Streep is, indeed, THAT good.

John Laroche: You know why I like plants?
Susan Orlean: Nuh uh.
John Laroche: Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.
Susan Orlean: [pause] Yeah but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever's next. With a person though, adapting is almost shameful. It's like running away.

This movie could be the soundtrack to the new year, or every year. Charlie Kaufman has made a living out of fascinatingly restating, over and over again, in the grandest and most ridiculous and wonderful terms possible, that "Life sucks. And, it's great." He's right, of course.

WALL-E

2008-12-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

Once in a great while, the cinema is graced with the works of a pure poet, for whom filmmaking is less about storytelling than about conjuring the most breathtaking visuals and surreal environments that they can muster (Jean Cocteau is the standard example.) More often, however, discerning movie-goers are left to hunt for sparse parcels of poetry in more traditional "commercial" cinema offerings. Of this, Pixar studios is perhaps the reigning champion. The majority of their nine feature films (from Toy Story up to Finding Nemo and The Incredibles) all feature beautiful landscapes, artful storylines, and at least one supremely sad sequence. Pixar may have hit critical mass in this trend, however, as it's hard to imagine how a G-rated film could incorporate any more heartbreak, foreboding and despair than WALL-E does and still somehow remain fun. But WALL-E is fun.

And that's not all it is. The film has broken new ground for Pixar (and for family films) in several ways perhaps never to be breached again. Consider the elements. Our hero, WALL-E, is a robot. Right off the bat, Pixar has denied the kiddies something soft and cuddly, the plush doll they can ask for for Christmas. No, WALL-E was not commissioned to be a Happy Meal toy. Cute as he is, there's no snuggling up to this dingy, dented little dude. Call that Strike One. The film opens on a desolate landscape, barren and dry, with mustard-discolored soil whipping up and swirling around in the wind. Not a word is spoken. WALL-E enters alone, spins, shrieks, beeps, jumps, and so on, but he doesn't speak. Thus, there's no words for the kiddies to listen to. No catch phrases, no "To Infinity, and Beyond!" Strike two. Then, the story follows WALL-E as he is unwittingly caught up in the battle over (*gasp*) ..a plant. Who cares about a stupid plant!? That's gonna save the world? Strike three. And just like that, the kiddies, I suspect, are back to their Wiis and their text messaging. But not so fast, mom and dad. Don't pop that Blu-ray disc just yet. Even if the kids don't get it, sit back and let it spin. It's really quite good. Romantic, too. And very beautiful.

So what is WALL-E, anyway? Actually, you'd better ask 'who,' as Pixar endows WALL-E with the full spectrum of human emotions; fear, longing, a sense of pride in his work, etc. Take equal parts Johnny Five, R2D2, and E.T., and you'll have a pretty good idea of his demeanor. He's been outfitted with a quaint little cargo hanger for a house, filled with shelves of bric-a-brac he collects with wonder from the heaps of rubble just outside. He's even somehow found a working VCR (!) and a tape of "Hello, Dolly," which sends him into little robot fits of forlorn longing as he sings along and blips around the room. He's the last left of his kind, and apart from his cockroach buddy (ha ha), his is a lonely life. Until, at last, a ship lands, depositing EVE, a robot on a mission. EVE falls for the sheepish little WALL-E, of course (I will not attempt to detail their courtship, as it is best experienced with rapt wonder and disbelief). And after that pesky little plant arrives on the scene, WALL-E gets caught up chasing EVE through space and onto the Axiom, the massive space cruiseship which now harbors the former human inhabitants of planet earth.

WALL-E is absolutely dripping with barely-buried eco-socio-political commentary. It's not overbearing, but it's kind-of unrelenting. The Axiom is a full-out attack on the lazy consumerism of America, and it's a bulls eye. Basically, if Costco built a flying shopping mall/cruise ship and launched it into space, it would be the Axiom. It's passengers all float around on hoverchairs, complaining about the food, fat, lazy and unquestioning. Just the way they like 'em. Indeed, the act of depicting a story where robots, not humans, are the heroes, exhibiting emotions, saving the day, shows a remarkable dissatisfaction and separation from the human race as a whole. WALL-E never really comes right out and states it, but the implication is clear as day; this is the world that could exist if all these experts predicting grave consequences for the future of Earth are correct. This, children, is what could happen. It's almost become fashionable to include (or base a film on) grave prophesizing about the pitfalls of man, but no film has yet put it in terms such as these, and no film has targeted this message to those who will need to hear it most: future generations.

Progressive and forward-thinking as the film is, it does shy away from a few punches it could have landed. I wondered at first if Pixar might have the balls to leave gender out of the equation in the romance of WALL-E and his paramour, Eve. Alas, his maleness and her femininity are made very clear. It's a slight shame that they didn't, as I can't think of a better way for Disney to make it's first tiny step into acknowledging non-hetero relationships without having to really own up to it (robots ARE genderless, are they not??) Even so, in the end it's hard to argue, as the play of the two robots is irresistible, even downright romantic.

WALL-E is as memorable as Toy Story, as thrilling as The Incredibles, and somehow even more beautiful than Finding Nemo ( it cost nearly twice as much.) Got a Blu-ray player and a nice big TV? Buy it. It's beauty is simply unparalleled. This is perhaps the first film that even die-hard fans of old school hand drawn animation cannot deny to be absolutely stunning, a work of art the equal of anything in the Disney canon. It is, however, somewhat less fun and certainly more cerebral than it's older siblings, and perhaps less attractive for the little ones. Though I feel certain that any thoughtful, attentive young movie watcher will find themselves just as glued to the screen as I was.

The films of the Pixar studios exhibit a wonderful old-fashionedness found almost nowhere else in current family entertainment. This is most likely a credit to John Lasseter and his cabal of talent, who possess a childlike sense of wonder which seems totally out of step with today's fast-paced youth culture. It's as if they cradled the spirit of classic Disney, carefully and lovingly extracted it from that studio, took hold of it and raised it up once again as their own. Today, Pixar IS Disney. The torch has been passed, and Disney proper has become something else.

Pinning down exactly what makes WALL-E the best Pixar film yet (and perhaps the best movie of the year) is nearly impossible. To say that it is a combination of irresistible charm, tender budding emotion and effective commentary is to barely scratch the surface. WALL-E screams and demands to be experienced. It took a huge leap of faith to make this film, as seemingly unpalatable and uncommercial as it is. And its bigger ideas will not be lost on many. What does it say about us as a society, that we are able to produce great art such as this about our impending demise, yet still somehow seem unable to prevent it? While every Pixar movie succeeds in being some degree of wonderful, WALL-E is perhaps first that can be called not only essential, but also truly important.

DOUBLE FEATURE: An Inconvenient Truth/Who Killed the Electric Car?

2008-12-11T11:03:00.001-08:00

ARCHIVE: from Idiot Ego Issue 2 (reprinted without permission)

The ways people exchange information are changing. Just as so many Americans now rely on The Daily Show for their political coverage and other news, documentaries are becoming a serious medium by which to mass distribute important information. The Thin Blue Line helped reverse a court decision and set an innocent man out of jail. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 broke box office records for a documentary, and Super Size Me put enough pressure on McDonald's to have them effectively phase out their upsizing campaigns. They have become an effective method of socially conscious propaganda, doubling (sometimes posing) as entertainment, and vice-versa. This is admittedly a dangerous concept, but for the moment they seem to be doing more good than harm.

Here then are two unapologetically biased, heartfelt and American documentaries pertaining to issues of the environment. An Inconvenient Truth offers a glimpse of exactly what we lost when Bush was declared winner of Florida (and subsequently won the Presidency) in 2000. His then-opponent Al Gore has a public image of being dry and humorless, but An Inconvenient Truth paints Gore as a family man, dedicated forward thinker and activist. In his way, he wants to change the world. A hero for DIY policits and reform, An Inconvenient Truth is Gore's desperate plea for Americans to stand up and take notice of global warming, because it is HAPPENING. He bombards you with the facts. They are totally stunning. Gore asks plainly, "Is it possible that America as a nation should consider addressing global threats other than terrorism?" America wanted a fighter in the White House, and they got one, but what Gore lacks in fierceness he makes up for in integrity and intelligence. Alas, these are not the kind of qualities that win elections, but forget the politics. This is a film of facts. There are lots of charts and graphs and a lot of them are glanced over rather quickly, but we never get the sense that we are being misled. If anything, An Inconvenient Truth blushes and whispers in your ear when it should probably be berating you. The cold hard indicators are the facts that Gore drops on you. They speak for themselves.

Who Killed The Electric Car? examines the birth, life, and subsequent extinction of electric cars, which were first launched by General Motors (the EV1) in 1996. They leased 800 of the cars in the 2 years that they were publicly available (there were only 1100 produced,) even with GM's weak promotion and the resulting limited consumer knowledge about the car. Those who bought the cars were later denied the option to renew their leases, and the cars were all ultimately impounded by GM and destroyed. The film largely skirts the issue that electric cars do, in fact, produce some emissions, by virtue of the coal-burning power plants which currently create more than half of America's electricity. Thus, this one is less clear cut than An Inconvenient Truth, but it is made abundantly and inarguably clear that there is more to GM's decision not to produce more EV1's than simply 'insufficient consumer demand' as they claim.

Some might label these films "progressive," and that's not such a dirty word, but the sad truth is that neither of these films by themselves will motivate the giant cogs in place in these issues to move or turn any less laboriously. It is not hard to follow the dotted lines between these two films. The reason that you cannot buy an EV1 is the same reason that global warming has systematically been "repositioned" as a debate and not a fact in the media: there is too much money at stake. It's bad for American business. You can follow that dotted line further, past these films, into the oval office and 10.000 miles over the Atlantic to the deserts and oil fields of Iraq and Kuwait, if you wish. Its not hard.

Both films promote their accompanying websites, which aim to help viewers take things to the next level, and both are equally conscious of the fact that they have essentially failed unless they are able to motivate audiences in a way that they had not been motivated before. It's great if you feel impassioned after seeing these films, but it's got to move beyond that.

If nothing else, I recommend these documentaries as superior entertainment. They are, at their core, gripping human interest stories. I hope, as the filmmakers clearly do, that they might also help to reposition the environment in your list of political agendas, and perhaps renew your faith in a country which, when operating in a bi-partisan and "progressive" way, can accomplish great things. We can't let earth die screaming. These films implore you. We have to change. How could it possibly be the wrong thing to do?

LOG: Snow Angels

2008-12-08T23:00:00.000-08:00

There's a word for what David Gordon Green has that so many others don't: Taste. He's just so damn TASTEFUL. Even when he's being distasteful (Pineapple Express,) he's tasteful. A classy dude. And young, too. Best of his generation.

I'm not sure this film ends up being everything it wants to be, but do any of his films? Until he somehow fucks it up (see, perhaps, HERE) I'll watch every movie he ever makes.

+2 for casting Amy Sedaris and Griffin Dunne, even if they don't get to do all that much. -1 for Kate Beckinsale, who is certainly excellent, but probably doesn't belong in this movie, or role.

Green has cornered the market on touching, deliberately (lightly) enigmatic, thoughtful indie dramas. Just the way I like 'em.

LOG: Paths of Glory

2008-11-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

Is Paths of Glory the Talkiest War Movie Ever? I can't think of a talkier one. In fact, I think it would actually make an excellent stage play. Watching this for the first time, Paths of Glory feels like Dr. Strangelove's more serious older brother, hearkening back to an earlier time when war (even when waged by blind cowards) was still thought to be conducted with some kind of fleeting sense of valor. By the time of Strangelove (released three films and seven years apart in 1964,) the war mongers had devolved into full-on, raving comic madmen, and there was nothing left to do but laugh at them. The photography is much like Strangelove too, with big cavernous rooms and echoing voices, beautiful in black and white. But somehow, Paths is actually breezier.

Sometimes I think the act of disdainfully dismissing Stanley Kubrick as an overhyped, dickhead blowhard has become even more of a right of passage for film fans than simply discovering him in the first place (watching Rose McGowan of all people smugly bitch about him on TCM made me seriously want to slap her.) Folks, 9 of his 11 major features are in the imdb top 250. Maybe Kubrick is overwatched and underscrutinized. But of all the other directors who might appear on that dubious, imaginary list of so-called "sacred cows," I'll take him over Coppola, Tarantino, or Spielberg any day.

Paths of Glory reinforces the sad truism that evil warmongers are as timeless as war itself, and that killing eachother or getting ourselves killed in their service is completely stupid and unacceptable. It's heroic, manipulative, agenda-fueled filmmaking at it's best.

Redbelt

2008-11-10T10:47:00.000-08:00

The hero of David Mamet's film Redbelt is Mike Terry, a man with an abnormally high moral code. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are not many men like him. Mike ekes out a meager existence running a studio for training fighters. He is studied, a black belt, nearly a master. We know this implicitly. The film opens on a training session, with Terry as benevolent teacher, hovering over his fighters and firing sage bullets of spoken advice. "You train people to fight?" someone asks him early on. "I train them to prevail," he replies. It's not hard to quickly understand and appreciate this philosophy. In his studio, with this students, Mike is absolutely at peace. But when trouble very literally walks in through the door, he finds his simple existence disrupted and slowly poisoned by the outside world. Not so much a fight movie as a movie about a fighter, Redbelt is the journey of Mike Terry from a place of comfort to a place of intense compromise, and though the film ends in a victorious moment, his journey surely does not.

To detail the plot of Redbelt would be a chore, and this should be taken as a compliment. It is not a chore to watch, however, as the labyrinthine twists and turns (which are extensive even by Mamet standards) are all richly dependent on one another. Suffice it to say, Mike is broke, and his wife dissatisfied. The studio cannot pay it's own bills. Enter a movie star, who befriends him first by accident, then by way of lavish promises. Mike does not resist. He is then pulled into a myriad of doublecrosses, betrayals, challenges and surprises. The fodder of samurai films and boxing noirs, Mamet's acknowledged influences. To reveal anything else is not neccessary.

Looking at Redbelt from the movie snob POV, there are many joys to behold. Tim Allen is a remarkable choice, perfectly in line with the kind of underutilized personnel Mamet has always employed (like Ed O'Neill.) Though he has no staggeringly big moments, he plays the alcoholic movie star Chet with ease (apparently Mamet's love of Galaxy Quest is genuine.) We also, as usual, get a look at most of the old Mamet gang, his cast of loyal company players like Ricky Jay, Jack Wallace, J.J. Johnston, etc., whose faces only get better as they age. Chiwetel Ejiafor, as Mike Terry, has exactly the calm, deliberate, zen quality the role requires. He makes us believe that a man of these convictions could actually exist. But this belief is pretty far removed from reality, and Mamet in fact spends most of the second half of the film showing us why. He tears down Mike's cherished ideas and drops him, unapologetically, into the crooked, business-driven world. Everyone else in the movie is making money. And finally, at his lowest, after being beaten and stolen from, Mike attempts to join their ranks.

The film is interesting to ponder at a few meta-levels. Mamet's distaste with the Hollywood system is hardly a secret, and it is on display here in the contrast between the grand spectacle of the MMA circuit and the untainted artistry of Terry's studio. Terry's struggles with money also smartly predated our current financial crisis, with the elite ring bosses and deciders passing their greed and power lust on down to the working class "fighters." There may even be some incredibly buried political commentary in there as well (Tim Allen as Bush? Any takers?)

But the simple lesson to be learned is that everything that came down on Terry from above was poison. He was happy in his simple, pure way of life. But forces pulled him away. We see the beauty of his teachings turned into spectacle and corrupted for monetary gain. We feel Mike's shame. When the night of the big fight comes, even the grandmaster, the Redbelt himself, is in the audience. Everybody, it seems, is doing business. Still, Mike refuses to let go. It's him versus them, and Mike fights back. He fights for what he believes, and he clings to what he knows. Right up to the end, Mamet correctly refuses to reconcile these two corners of the ring.
A supremely poetic fantasy, as all great fight movies are, Redbelt is also a fine lesson in realist ethics. You can hide from dishonor, it says, but dishonor will only seek you out. You can attempt to live by a strict moral code, but life, with all it's complications, is nothing but a crooked fight. Believe in something, however, and, just as in the ring, there will always be an escape.

LOG: W.

2008-11-05T20:22:00.000-08:00

I have never seen an Oliver Stone movie. Nor have I ever much been interested in one. Actually, I may have watched U Turn quite a few years ago. And for a time I wanted to track down The Hand. That would be the extent of my knowledge. I never really had a reason to dislike him. That is, until World Trade Center, who's very existence offended me on every level. "Too soon," everyone said, and it sure as hell was. 2050 would have been too soon. Well, if WTC was too soon, Stone has indeed trumped himself.

But somehow I couldn't resist the idea of a liberal director's supposedly fair and balanced take on the Bush administration. So what do we get? Fair? I suppose. Stone shows us where W. came from, ponders his possible motivations, and it's all very hard to dismiss. Ebert's description was "fascinating," and that is about perfect. There has never been a movie like this. So, finally, we approach this as fun, which it somehow is, even though the events and characters portrayed are so painfully real and unfunny. Stone seems to understand this, as he makes almost no attempt to judge the Bush presidency in any specific way other than to present the possible private scenarios (alongside many actual documented meetings and actions) that may have been it's impetus.

The casting is pretty great. I'll pay to see Dreyfuss do anything worthwhile, and his smarmy, growling Cheney is perfect. I've heard a lot of complaints about Thandie Newton as Condie, but I thought she was just fine. And Brolin, whom the film hangs on, shows some massive chops. He plays G.W. as he surely is; an entitled rich kid from Texas, sucking on Lone Star beer in honky tonks, slurping down sandwiches in the White House. A jealous, power-lusting, unloved president's son. So why is this OK and not World Trade Center? Well, because the events of 9/11, unlike the presidency of George W. Bush, deserve immense reverence.

In the end, could there be any more damning statement than to simply portray the events in such a way that even Bush supporters could not decry it? I doubt it. But can you laugh at it? I don't blame you if you can't. But what else is left?

He lost in in the lights. What are you gonna do... ?

Log: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

2008-10-30T21:28:00.001-07:00

I've made a pretty decent run of Halloween movies this year (Black Sabbath, Suspiria, Frailty) and this may end up being the last of the bunch. And I'm not complaining.

This may be the perfect Halloween movie. It starts out in a weird house with a bunch of weird people you don't really know. You're not even sure you wanna be there. There's a bunch of half naked people running around. Someone takes your coat. You're pulled in. Then, music. Laughter. Creepiness. Lust. Liaisons.. Jealousy. And when it ends, it's a real bummer. What else could Halloween be about??
Have a great one tomorrow, whoever you are, however you can.

"Don't dream it - be it." -Dr. Frank-N-Furter - A Scientist

Religulous

2008-10-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher is a guy whom I've always enjoyed, but never given a lot of credit to. I'm not sure why, exactly. When I watch his show, I can easily judge him and relate to him as a man of good character and simple integrity, who values intelligence and passionate discourse, and who's values and beliefs lie, safely and squarely, right smack-dab in the middle of mine. Awesome! Once in a while, it's fun as hell to hear him tear down a conservative pundit or a gay-basher or two. But for some reason, particularly as I have gotten older, I have tended to tune out personalities like Maher and seek out media that omits their own or other's biases entirely (or, at, least pretends to omit them.) Maybe it's the NPR lover in me, but I think it's easier to absorb the material when you take all the passion out. Whether or not that's a cop-out, I'm not sure.

Anyway, Bill Maher decided to make a movie, and I decided not to care. "What," I rhetorically asked myself, "could be even remotely cinematic about Bill Maher and his desperate need to espouse at every possible opportunity his own misgivings about the global phenomenon of religion?" If anything, this was maybe a rental, a project obviously built for the small screen, where Maher is comfortable preaching to his followers. But, there it was in the theater, and, as I had been convinced into taking in a showing, there I was watching it. Right from the start, Maher seemed way out of his league and out of his element, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just plopped down ten big ones to watch him prance around and laugh at people, like some kind of mean-spirited, agenda-clad vanity project. Could Maher's persona alone sustain this film? Turns out it could, and very well, too.

Maher's film, during which he travels the world far and wide, seeking out dozens of folks of varyingly obtuse and unusual religious backgrounds, is as completely successful as an entertainment as it is a failure as a documentary, or "message" film. The laughs come most often at the expense of the easiest targets, mixing in subtitled overdubs or spliced footage to back up his very funny on screen jabs. Maher does save some reverence for his more articulate interviewees (all of whom, not surprisingly, only speak in support of his agenda.) And, on the basis of laughs and laughs ALONE, this is a fantastic movie. Let it serve as a point of reference that Religulous is directed by Larry Charles, whose last film, Borat, was also a highly edited composite of cheap shots and low blows at intended targets, sought out and filmed in such a way as to engender the biggest gut-busting laughs. Charles is a real talent (having also written for Seinfeld,) and it's to his credit that the film does not seem overly concerned with hiding the fact that these people were chosen purely BECAUSE of their strange, hilarious, sometimes terrifying agendas. This is not a representative sample, much as Maher would have us believe it is.

Religulous also reinforces the now-tired trend of film essays posing as documentaries. Films that tell, not show. From Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock to Expelled, there is now a full-fledged genre of films that might well be referred to as unabashedly opinioned filmed feature journalism. I don't think this trend is necessarily bad; it gives a lot of good minds a viable vehicle to get their ideas out to people in an entertaining way. But, in a way, it's exactly the same kind of opinionated media I have grown to leave behind.

Religulous very skillfully highlights and has a lot of fun with some of the furthest absurdities and most far-out stupidities of religious faith. But is that really so hard? I suspect that Maher knows it is not. But in the end, when he concludes his successful comedy with a stone-cold serious 5 minute lecture on the pitfalls and catastrophic consequences of world faith, it's a bit like he's cutting and running. OK Mr. Maher, but your film did little if anything to support your claims, even if I do agree with them in principal. Showing me a preacher in alligator shoes or the crucifiction of Christ in a musical theme park show does not exactly drive home anything more than the preposterousness, AT IT'S EXTREMES, of organized religion. Perhaps there is more value to be found in simply observing and, yes, laughing as hard as we can at these examples of religion gone horribly bad. I'm all for pointing out flaws, when necessary. But how can you ask me to take so seriously that same thing which you have asked me to laugh at for the last 90 minutes? Either it's a curio or it's a debilitating menace and a plague on humanity. It can't be both. And let's be honest; the one thing making this film should have taught you (as if you didn't know it already,) is that, no matter how infallable your argument is, THESE PEOPLE AREN'T BUDGING. And if nobody's budging, then your just preaching to the choir. But, in all due respect and seriousness, NOBODY does it better than you.

I mean that. Swear to God.

The Dark Knight

2008-09-25T18:30:00.001-07:00

For my money, Batman is the super hero. I just don't need any others. Ever since Micheal Keaton donned the cape in '89, sexing up Kim Basinger and layin' the smack down on Nicholson's creepy-cool Joker, I've been totally hooked. I was seven. It was an awesome movie then, and it's an awesome movie now. It was dark, gothic, and straight as an arrow. I watched it endlessly. The film was the product of Tim Burton, who was then unproven as a helmer of big budget projects, and it turned out to be his first major breakthrough, and a major, major hit to boot.

From there, as with most movie franchises, Batman's panache slowly began to wane. Batman Returns took a strange (if fun) turn, and the others that followed only continued the trend, slowly sinking into schlocky awefulness. But, as nearly all failed franchises do, Batman was given a reprieve. Warner Brothers again put the fate of their beloved Batman in the hands of a competent, fairly green director, Christopher Nolan. The resulting film, Batman Begins, successfully reinvigorated the character's reputation. Christian Bale was Bruce Wayne, and Nolan put Batman back in the seedy, corrupt Gotham where he belongs. But it was 2005, not '89, and Batman Begins showed the effects of the fifteen years in between, cramming in as many characters (remember Rutger Hauer? Ra's Al Ghul??) and weird subplots as possible, extending it's runtime well past the 120 minute mark, and clearly laboring to supply it's viewers as much bang for their buck as plausably possible. In the end, though roundly excellent, the film strained credulity just a touch. Either way, Batman was back, and we were glad to have him.

Starting out with a weird whimper, with Batman encountering the now docile Scarecrow from the first film (?), The Dark Knight quickly picks up where Begins left off, and we plunge into the labyrinthine story. We are introduced to Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart,) Gotham's new District Attourney and "white light," ready to take on the unruly mobsters who hold control the city. Eckhart, unfortunately, is one of those actors (like Nicholas Cage) who can really only play one person: himself. Thus, Dent comes off like a soulless puppet, even though I think we are meant to take his talk of cleaning up the town to heart. The part needed a touch of boyish altruism, but instead Dent merely competes with Batman for the affections of his city, and of his fiancee (Bruce's former girlfriend, Rachel.) I can't buy Eckhart as Gotham's saviour, and the character falls totally flat. But the film presses on, quickly relieved by it's other excellent performances. Gary Oldman, reprising as Chief Gordon, is the heart and soul of the film. His cop 'stache and straight talk keep everything grounded, and keep Gotham feeling like a real place. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman again return, dependable as ever. Maggie Gyllenhall is given the seemingly simple task of replacing Katie Holmes in the role of Rachel Dawes, but though I know Gyllenhall to be an infinitely better actress, and much more attractive than Holmes (I'm not sure why, exactly, but she is,) Rachel is sadly boring as ever. Then, of course, we have.. the Joker.

At one point, the Joker enters a scene and announces himself as "tonight's entertainment." This introduction may as well be directed at the viewer, as a more perfect description can't be penned. Heath Ledger's performance elevates the film from a perfunctory sequel into a riveting, thrilling entertainment. Though I still feel Ledger takes most of his cues from Nicholson, his Joker is absolutely spellbinding, and remarkably consistent. You can't take your eyes off him, and he imbues the film with it's rousingly troubled soul. Hollywood seems to be painting itself into a corner offering up super-dishy parts for villians (see: No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood) and leaving the straight (read: hero) parts to a lesser caliber of actor. To his credit, Bale's performance is efficient but unremarkable. Certainly he lacks the goofy, funny side that was Keaton's trademark. But, after all, perhaps Batman purists would prefer him this way.

The action, of which there is much, is equal parts hit and miss. The parade of fistfights, though competent, are easily the least interesting scenes of the movie. The stunt setpieces, however, are mostly fantastic, particularly the absolutely apeshit armored vs semi truck chase through the heart of Gotham (or, for attentive Chicagoans, lower Wacker Drive. Chicago hasn't looked this gritty and fantastic in a film since The Fugitive.) The script, even in it's talky moments, is actually pretty impressive and fun to listen to. Like the Joker, The Dark Knight has a bunch of nasty little tricks to play on you. For two and a half hours, it just keeps throwing shit at you.

In this way, the film is a product of the current movie climate, where every big movie with big expectations (ie; Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, James Bond ) is guaranteed to arrive in theaters equally big in size, it's producers injecting artificial "value" in the form of extended run times. This has made for an abundance of overlong (if sometimes excellent) films, of which The Dark Knight is certainly one. After the first fully satisfying climax, the movie just refuses to die, setting up another round of Joker play that, while plenty of fun, is just too much already. If you know anything about Batman (or have overheard any of the millions of people who have seen the film except you talking about it,) you know who Harvey Dent eventually is to become. So, he becomes him. Eckhart is especially awful in these scenes, and I was left hoping that Nolan and company had squeezed the character into this film in order not to have to depict him in the next one. After Ledger's magnificent turn as the Joker, any new villian is almost guaranteed to feel like a tremendous letdown.

Eventually, finally, the film ends, and you are free to relieve your overworked bladder and ponder Ledger's spectacular performance. I can understand people's complaints about this film. In my heart, I may share them. But The Dark Knight does a lot of things right, and it is surely a marked improvement from its predecessor, which was itself an excellent exercise. Not every scene plays, but it's a 152 minute movie, and there are plenty that play just fine, and more than a few that are wonderful. For my money, I'll gladly plunk down $11 every three years or so for another one of these (trust me, IMAX is worth the extra.) Basically, you either respond to it or you don't. And if you've ever liked a superhero movie in your life, you will respond to it. If you haven't.. why did you buy your ticket?

LOG: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

2008-09-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

I am continually dumbfounded and encouraged by the amazing crossover appeal of this movie. I watched this last night (for the fifth or sixth time) with my 67-year old, Southern Baptist christian Grandmother. She loves it. She just grins at Clooney, silently mouths along the words to "I'll Fly Away" ("My mother's favorite hymn" she tells me, every time) and chuckles at all the constant mugging and corniness. Meanwhile, I marvel at the photography, and the unbelievable believability of the period that the Coen's seem to conjure with such minuscule effort, time after time.

It's a little tough to try and comprehensively rate the Coen's oevre, and I'm not that interested in trying. But for my money, as much as I know it is not exactly their "best" film (Miller's Crossing is,) this is probably my favorite.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2008-09-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

"It's a new day for Woody Allen."

(Or is it the same day? Hang on, we'll figure it out..)

So proclaimed the headlines on high upon the release of his dour, very un-Woody Match Point just a scant two years ago. The then-seventy year old director found himself in a minor spotlight, after a five year lack of critical interest following the lauded Sweet and Lowdown. During this time, the director could be found fumbling around with his old familiar modes, turning out disappointingly uninspired films such as Small Time Crooks and Hollywood Ending. But Allen, having decades ago grown accustomed to the highs and lows of a life in the movie business, took the accolades in stride, seeming not particularly hell-bent on keeping up the trend. A pair of comparably disposable follow-ups (Scoop and Cassandra's Dream) left his so-called resurgence in possible jeopardy, with more than a few wondering if it had in fact been a premature diagnosis, Match Point being the last gasp of the once great director. But, as ever, Woody just kept working. Now, Vicky Cristina Barcelona has arrived, ready to be judged. And Woody, done with London but not with Europe, flies us to Spain.

At the start, a narrator's bracingly pedestrian voice guides us into the story of Vicky and Cristina, a pair of American friends traveling to Barcelona for equally insignificant reasons to stay with family friends (a nervous Patricia Clarkson and her husband, Kevin Dunn (the guy from Ghostbusters!) Maybe I'm just sentimental (surely, I am) but I couldn't help thinking that the choice of narrator was a concrete example of Woody's films suffering from him removing himself. I hope not every future Woody Allen film will by necessity be devoid of screen time for Woody Allen (you couldn't even give him a Spanish accent, Woody?) The drama calmly kicks in when a hunky native artist, Juan Antonio, in his plain and charmingly Spanish way, propositions them to join him for a weekend of kicks and sightseeing. And sex. He says, as open and honest as an angel.
The pair are torn. Vicky, engaged to a New York professional named Doug, scoffs and sneers, rebuking Juan Antonio with a venomous zeal. But Cristina, unattached and more breezy and open than Vicky, already partially seduced by the romance of the Spanish countryside, agrees. This moment both sets up the dramatic hinge of the film and reveals to us the essences of the two leads. Before we are through, Allen will have sent both of these women and their dearly held values on a long ride. Both women will seek out happiness, find it, reject it, and then go seeking again. And both will learn what so many often do from a trip to a foreign land: that there is so much to see, and to learn.

From the outset, Allen is in new territory, melding the successful dramatic tone of Match Point with an air of happiness (something which was lacking profoundly in that film.) Even at its most painful depths, Vicky Cristina Barcelona finds a bit of joy and hope in its longings. Much as his idol Bergman once did (compare The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander,) Allen has progressed from dour drama to a joyful and comic heartache. Also as in Match Point, Woody's alter ego, present for years in most of his movies, is nowhere to be found. Instead, he seems to have doled out his personal quirks in bits and pieces, perhaps finally realizing that his own nebbish nature and habits are a lot to swallow coming all from one character.

His two leads, Vicky and Cristina, convey the essence of two very elemental female counterpoints. Both women are deeply flawed. One too open, one too closed. One thinks she has it all figured out, one knows she has no idea, but is hardly wise. And, as Allen quickly shows us, both can be had by the same man. Vicky and Cristina, though they exude personal confidence and self-assurance, are indeed very confused. Allen uses Juan Antonio as a means to show the different ways both of these women can be perceived. Vicky's initial appeal to Juan Antonio is her resistance. When this has evaporated, she is shown to be, in fact, quite insecure and even desperate. Whereas Cristina, more wild and adventurous, devolves from playfully sexual and exciting to unfulfilled and jealous. In both cases, perceptions change. "Yes," says Juan Antonio, taking it all in stride, "life is short, and painful." But you, like every man, want what you cannot have; both of these women in one.

When all is said and done (and, for once, more is done than said,) in a way it's the antithesis of a Woody Allen film. After years of talking and talking, he finally says, "the talky guy is a tool," (Vicky finding a new dissatisfaction with her now very boring husband to be.) Is he? In many ways, yes. But is the grass really greener, now or ever? The ability of the hunky guy to make women topsy-turvy might seem out Allen's league, but his story is convincing. And lest you think he is focusing solely on the intellectual inadequacies of women, Juan Antonio gets his due turn to be upended. This task is assigned to Penelope Cruz, who plays Juan Antonio's unstable ex-wife Maria Elena with bewitching electricity. Bardem and Cruz shine here, brilliantly enforcing the emotions of the now-obsolete Americans, who, after being so keenly observed, have now resumed the role of spectators in a foreign land. (Speaking of obsolete Americans, Bardem and Cruz are part of an increasingly large group of Spanish-born actors in ultra-high demand for American movies. Does it ever work the other way around?)

This all may sound very sophisticated and ponderous, but it isn't. In Woody's hands the story is clear, and very emotional and compelling. Give him major props for finding and retaining Scarlett Johannsen, who has brought a much-needed youthfulness to his latest films. Rebecca Hall, too, is a fantastic choice, practically stealing the movie in a part that might have gone to Barbara Hershey 20 years ago. Basically, everyone drinks wine and does exactly what you would want them to do in a movie about American women in Spain: make love and look at pretty buildings. But not without some hang-ups. Maria Elena calls it "chronic dissatisfaction," and nearly everyone in this film suffers from it.

The film finishes without any spectacular reveals or gut-punches (excepting perhaps one final moment of hysteria,) and we exit, ready again to bring down our gavel in judgment of Allen's latest effort. And we find that Woody has hit all the right notes. That he has crafted another film, as he did with Match Point, that can hold it's own with all the critical darlings of old (Crimes & Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, etc.) Surely, these new films are as good now as those were then. They are less stuffy, less dated. They are, in more ways than one, very young.

Yes, his "resurgence" is real. But, mostly, the "resurgence" is false. Allen, who by my count has made 37 films, cannot be evaluated in terms of resurgences and disappearances. Maybe Cassandra's Dream is better than Another Woman. Maybe Scoop is better than A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy. And maybe, finally, it doesn't matter. Let's just all let Woody Allen be Woody Allen. And in twenty or thirty years, when he is gone and all we have is his memory and his films, we can get down to the real business of anointing him one of the great American filmmakers of his time. But for now, let's just let him work.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, like so much great art, wants us to question our lives. Ourselves. To embrace our yearnings. They are perhaps not so unspeakable, it says. But be prepared for what they bring with them. Memories, like everything worth having, come with a price. Maybe happiness can be found on either side of these great moments. But the baggage of life's greatest and most revealing moments is the destructive proposition of more to come.

CLICK HERE

2008-08-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

Since I haven't written much in the past few weeks, I instead present a little compendium of some writings on or in regards to film that have been holding my interest of late. This may be a recurring thing, maybe not. I decided to give it a name, anyway.

Woody Allen's Spanish Diaries

This is hilarious. Truly, hilarious. I remember a good friend in high school loaned me a book of all three of Woody's early humor collections (Without Feathers, Getting Even, Side Effects.) This was my first taste of the man, and had me aching from laughter during study hall on many a school day. That friend is a bartender now or something now. Haven't seen him in years. God bless him, anyway.

Manny Farber: In memory

Who is Manny Farber??? Until he died, I had no idea. So it goes. A universe of people and things to know, and we all cling on piece by piece as they fly by, or we don't.

Games Cinephile's Play

A fabulous essay, and another newish name that I will have to investigate. I have observed this back and forth behavior many times, and I completely disdain and reject it. Can't people talk seriously and naturally about serious matters without having to engage in some kind of petty duel for intellectual superiority? It's so counterproductive.

By George, Give Up!

A lengthy (lengthy) and academic discourse on why George Lucas sucks. I have not seen Kingdom of the Crystal Spider, but if it's anywhere near as ridiculous as the title (and everyone who saw it) suggests, then this needed to be written.

Herzog and the forms of madness

Yes, yet ANOTHER writing on Herzog by Ebert, cinema's foremost artist/critic butt-buddy duo. But scroll down to to the comments section to find a reply by.. Werner Herzog. Seriously. He has the internet, apparently. Lively discussion commences.

Anyone who doubts the viability of blogs as legitimate and important carriers of language and ideas can now shut the fuck up. They're not just for weirdos, folks.

Not much else to report. Will see Vicky Cristina Barcelona very soon. I'll be taking notes. Have decided to wait for a second viewing to write up Redbelt, Encounters at the End of the World, and WALL-E (but they're all great, by the way.) -GH

THE DVD: Dazed and Confused (Criterion)

2008-08-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

(NEW FEATURE: DVD reviews. This is an old one, from Idiot Ego issue one. Reprinted, again, without permission.)

By now, it's practically a cliché to fawn all over DVDs by the Criterion Collection. But it's a necessary evil for any serious film fan, or DVD fan for that matter. If you wanna see some of the greatest movies ever made (8 1/2, Tokyo Story, Rashomon) you're going to have to watch them on a Criterion DVD. Criterion also has the ability to take even the weakest and most shameful pieces of cinematic tripe (Armageddon, The Blob,) somehow elevate them into art, and make you proud to have them on your shelf.. which I do. Here then comes a long-rumored edition of what by general consensus the best movie yet made about kids in the seventies: Dazed and Confused. Director Richard Linklater's best work (Waking Life, Slacker, Before Sunrise/Sunset) is responsible for more than his share of "This will change your life" moments that I have yet experienced in film. And I'm sure I don't have to sell you on this one. You've seen it. Loved it. You listened to the soundtrack on the every morning sophomore year on the bus home (your brother thought one of his friends stole it.) That disc probably doesn't even play anymore.

The film was only Linklater's second full-length feature, after the talky vignettes of Slacker (also available via the Criterion Collection, and perhaps even more highly recommended.) Produced by a major studio, Linklater curtails his wordiness somewhat in Dazed, but it's still driven by dialogue, and it comes equipped with a stash of one-liners and truisms that actually ring true. But, the DVD is the thing. The paper slipcase packaging feels like an LP, and the Zeppelin III-style artwork (with cutouts, ala Physical Graffiti) is well designed, and a nice fat booklet of essays and a foldout of the original poster (!) help it earn it's $30 asking price. And, as ever, the supplements are everything you want and nothing you don't. A 50 minute "making of," an excellent commentary by the always chatty Linklater, and plenty of deleted scenes and extra footage to keep you busy a couple of extra hours.

In the end, what's it about? The days when you had everything you needed: Your friends, a car, some beer, some drugs and of whole lot of time. Don't smoke dope, readers. But you might want to buy this for someone who does.

NJAFBIT: Pineapple Express

2008-08-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

WHY I'M INTERESTED:

The stoner movie has been a genre for a long time, at least since the days of Cheech and Chong, but the majority just don't give stoners very much credit. I'm not much of a pothead myself (years of menial occupations have kept me wary of possible drug tests,) but I've seen enough to know that not all fans of the sweet leaf are slobbering, lowlife video game heads. This trailer definitely makes getting high look fun again.

Judd Apatow has sadly devolved from an earnest, take-it-or-leave-it everyman writer into a bonafide brand name, but this seems to have all flavor without the issues. Seth Rogen was basically the only funny part of Superbad, and James Franco (who was already a part of the Apatow clan from Freaks and Geeks) just looks perfect.

David Gordon Green now has five feature length films under his belt, and the three I have seen (George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow) are wonderful. Born in 1975, he is surely the youngest director I can think of that I am comfortable calling "great." Already the best of his generation, if Pineapple Express is as good as it looks, he may be one of the best around.

Plus, this is without a doubt the best trailer I have seen for any movie in a hell of a long time. I can no longer disassociate the MIA song from the movie.

Also- title song by fucking Huey Lewis!

PREDICTIONS: Fun, Hilarious.

RELEASE DATE: 8/6

The Happening

2008-07-27T21:16:00.001-07:00

Scene: A man approaches a young couple and asks:

"You look like a happy couple. Are you?"

Woman: (smiling, nodding) "Yeah."

"So, uh, how do account for it?"

Woman: "Uhh.. .I'm very shallow and empty, and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say."
Man: "And I'm exactly the same way"

(from Annie Hall)

I've been thinking about this scene a lot lately. One of my favorite moments from one the great movies of all time. It speaks hilariously to a phenomenon which has surely only grown more widespread since Annie Hall's release in 1977: the sad, overwhelming stupification of the American masses. The Happening arrives on a mainstream American movie scene awash in a dead sea of mediocrity. Television shows and video games are the creative fodder for one in every three Hollywood hits, with the rest stemming from a soft but steady diet of sequels, prequels, and not-so-new stabs at old genres. Meanwhile, directors like M. Night Shamalan, claiming to be outsiders, sit idly by and bemoan "the death of the cinema." Positing itself as set apart from this tide of detritus, The Happening actually rests comfortably and depressingly within it, skimming the surface and settling in nicely with the rest of this summer's usual duds. The only thing distinguishing The Happening from the rest of the heap is that it also officially signals the end of one man's career.

Watching Shamalan's new film, I found myself scrutinizing all the things I ever liked about his movies in the first place, and discovered that very little holds up anymore. Right from the start, James Newton Howard's score, all angry violins and trumpet blasts, which to my ear used to evoke Bernard Herrmann, now just feels redundant and cheap. Before long, Shamalan's poking away at our fear of the unknown, another of his usual suspects. Then, as it always does, something "happens." Panic. Peoples staring at TVs. Staring at phones. Once more to the well.

Let me be absolutely clear: I fucking hate Mark Wahlberg. . so much. That being said, I have concluded with some disbelief that he has never been worse, nor has he ever had to play such an unlikeable loser of a character. John Leguizamo, playing his math teaching co-worker, honestly looks like the second coming of Olivier by comparison. His performance, the only one in the entire film which seems to express real, human emotion, is the Elmer's glue barely keeping the film from falling to the floor right from the start. But it doesn't last, which is to say (SPOILER alert, although they probably give it away in one of the trailers, anyway) the movie, like Leguizamo, dies in the first reel.

Zooey Deschanel, a reliable indie-flick face (and the bait that helped me get over Wahlberg when I heard about the casting) gets blindsided into playing Wahlberg's distant, immature and possibly unfaithful (who could blame her) idiot of a wife. Even the countless closeups of her gorgeous eyes can't save her from the vapidity of Shamalan's script. She gives a performance more awful and unfocused than I ever imagined she was capable of. And when the couples few moments of paper-thin, forced relationship drama unspool, they are laughable. Eventually, one must throw their hands up and realize that these are not even characters. They are caricatures of characters. Together, Wahlberg, Deschanel and a catatonic kid stowaway left over from Leguizamo's demise combine to form perhaps the most unappealing movie ensemble of this or any year.

By now you know the cockamamie nuts and bolts of the "terror"; it's being caused by plants. Maybe. At least that's what the hillbilly gardener they encounter on the road thinks, so the movie picks up and runs with it. The Happening's villain is the Earth. And while we all can surely grasp the concept of eco-terror and appreciate Shamalan's obvious point of view, a defensible concept does not a good film make. What I thought would turn out to be an extended poo-pooing of the disconectedness of people in the internet age instead becomes an incoherent mess of vague eco-babble designed to hammer home an idea that any sixth grader could already spew out verbatim: we poisoned the earth and now it's sad. Every point the The Happening attempts and fails to make has already been stated convincingly (and by better filmmakers) elsewhere.

In other words: The Happening is irredeemably bad. Shamalan writes dialog like an eighth grader, and the deaths he comes up with are equally childish and lame. Given his first chance to play with an R rating, Shamalan clearly has no idea what to do with it. He somehow finds a way to make even gratuitous death seem uninteresting, and panic seem fake. Cautionary tales tend to work best when the teller can actually explain why there is a need for caution. But Shamalan seems content simply to make up a silly story and try to force it down your throat as realistic and scary. It comes off as trite and funny instead, and (worst of all,) unentertaining. He loves to write dialog for newscasters, which is the cheapest method of exposition imaginable. And he directs actors like a retarded Roger Corman, which is to say, he doesn't. This is the worst kind of empty exploitation. When the movie arrives at one of it's final resting places (an old farm house with a strange inhabitant,) and the three refugees, having just pilgrimaged bedraggled through miles of rural Pennsylvania, still manage somehow to produce a change of clothes, I just felt insulted. Part of my brain would like to know what you were thinking, Night. But part of me just doesn't care.

With The Happening, Shamalan at last completes his epic nosedive from Time Magazine wunderkind to complete and total irrelevance. I have cautiously stood by his side since Unbreakable, but this movie alone deserves all the vitriol that has ever been spewed at him and more. Damn you, sir. I will no longer be your sole surviving apologist. You are challenging, no doubt, and that is good. But your challenges no longer deserve to be met. You insult me with your upper-class, holier-than-thou suburban bravado. I took those science classes, too, pal. We all did. Turns out I actually liked you better when you didn't have the balls to stick to your guns. Now instead of pulling the big punches, you pull none. Oh, except for the ending, which is more painfully gutless than anything that has come before it. Turns out the punches you throw are all whiffs. Maybe you should work in TV or something.

The only thing I can remotely connect with in this film is the hopeless, apocalyptic feel it manages to convey. That something horrible is approaching. That humanity has doomed itself. This is another in a growing list of films which plumbs this milleau (see also: Encounters at the End of the World,) and Night's version is surely horrifying and effective, but perhaps for reasons that he did not intend. For only the emptiest heads could be convinced by this cheap, phony stab at an Inconvenient Terror. Only people as dim and hopeless as his cast of characters could manage to see eye to eye with this story and it's hokey, spineless methods. Is Night awkwardly pandering to these fools, who (perhaps not coincidentally) still go to see his films? Or, more likely, is he revealing himself as one of them?

Even humanity's worst moments of helplessness and failure bring with them a faint glimmer of newness, and of queasy new beginnings ahead. But in the end, all Shamalan's yarn leaves us with is the same dead souls inhabiting the same dead world, the same newscasters squawking on the idiot box, the same trees, the same grass. Our resilience is false, he says. We are doomed. I'm not ready to buy into that just yet, but for everyone who is, The Happening is just for you. Have fun awaiting your inevitable demise. In the meantime, M. Night Shamalan will surely dump a few more films of homespun, hopeless (and pointless) advice into theaters for your enjoyment.

LOG: Casa de Lava

2008-07-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

What a beguiling and completely fascinating movie. This was my second time through, still no closer to deciphering very much, but having an easier time not caring. It's like if David Lynch made a movie in Portuguese, maybe with a shot of Von Trier or something else equally challenging and unforthcoming. First remembered hearing about this as "a very personal remake of I Walked with a Zombie." The two perhaps share a lot of their moodiness, but little else.

What I can say for certain is that the look of this film is appropriately bewitching and isolating, and that it is memorable and gripping, for reasons mostly unclear.

A beautiful little puzzle.

Read Rosenbaum's extensive thoughts.

Caché (Hidden)

2008-07-21T17:32:00.000-07:00

ARCHIVE: from Idiot Ego Issue 1 (reprinted without permission)

You can only go so far when writing about a film like Caché (Hidden). Traditionally, a suspense film (a la Hitchcock, De Palma) is built mostly around a promised great "reveal," a final visual gut-punch from the screen which at last relinquishes that final crumb of information and provides the viewer with a satisfying, if often contrived, "answer." Making that comparison, Caché's final shot has more in common with Citizen Kane than it does with Rear Window. In fact, by virtue of it's plot device, Caché comments directly on the "whodunit" genre as a whole. Austrian director Michael Haneke has built a career out of expertly subverting the preconceived notions of his audience. As a director, his skill lies in removing himself from the spotlight, and allowing his camera to observe "what is happening," rather than "what the director is showing us." His camera does not guide or force our eye, nor do his stories steer our brains. In Caché, there are trails for us to follow, but what we follow and what we dismiss along the way remains our responsibility.

Georges lives with his wife and son in a small flat in France. Someone is watching him. Someone is leaving videos of him and his family on his doorstep. Who? Why? The information on the tapes begins to suggest things. It leaves the viewer clues. Georges follows these clues. What will he find? There is a very powerful undercurrent of paranoia running throughout Caché, which gradually evolves into the film's central and unnerving theme. Scenes and events are presented ambiguously. We are very often shown an image, but given no context.. What are we looking at? Flashbacks are shot and appear almost identical to the main narrative scenes. Haneke brazenly challenges us to know the difference, to break apart from his influence as director and find our way to the conclusion ourselves. And even then, Haneke denies you the satisfaction of knowing if you are right. Caché comments grandly and with cold force on the horrifying sensation of paranoia. Is Haneke making a broader statement here? That we can't always trust the images we see on the screen? Georges seems to be very content in taking the tapes as a real document of a place and time.. And yet they remain unexplainable and mysterious. Dig deeper, into what may lie in George's subconscious, into what even HE may not know, and perhaps there we find a plausible solution to Caché's buried secrets.

NJAFBIT: Baghead

2008-07-09T22:08:00.001-07:00

WHY I'M INTERESTED:

Actually, I don't know exactly. This movie could be many things. For one thing, it hasn't really opened yet, but it's got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. And the Michelle character looks a lot like the chick from High Tension. I guess I am completely intrigued by the ambiguity, which the reviews would indicate exists in the film as well. It's not a horror movie, not a comedy, not a drama. What is it? Even the trailer keeps you on your toes.

I haven't seen The Puffy Chair (mostly because it looks extremely good in a wrenching, non-feel good kind of way,) but I probably should. And Mumblecore is as stupid a non-word as emo, if not worse. Yes, the shaky cam is getting really, really old. But we should all be prepared to deal with it in the event that it enables actual "indie" film making (i.e. low cost, high concept.) If it's good, then it's good. Right?

PREDICTION: Scary? Funny? Awesome?

RELEASE DATE: 7/25 (limited)