Movies At Random

Avatar

2010-09-10T00:23:00.000-07:00

Avatar is possibly the biggest film ever. It's long, it's expensive, it pushes the boundaries of what's visually possible, it's a technological tour de force and single handedly justified the push for 3D visuals in absolutely everything. It also made a simply preposterous amount of money.

It's also not that great.

This isn't to say it's bad, necessarily. It's highly polished, tightly plotted - it's to its credit that it's almost three hours long and also rarely boring - and comes with those visuals. The visuals are a celebration of the power of CGI, creating landscapes and geography that is completely impossible but nonetheless breathtaking. From floating mountains to detailed phosphorescent landscapes, the film is a fountain of visual imagination. The closest one can get to criticizing the view is that they are quite reminiscent of more than a few JRPGs - I'm sure I visited every location in FFXII - but they're so vividly realized that it doesn't matter.

Unfortunately, the visuals contain the only imagination. The story itself is a clichéd environmental allegory. The story's center is Jake Sully - Sam Worthington, who cannot maintain an American accent and show emotion at the same time - a former Marine who can't use his legs. With the death of his twin brother, he's directed to become part of the Avatar program, where he controls a big blue dude to interact with the Na'Vi, the indigenous population which has a connection with nature - literally, with some sort of hair USB cable - and is a not very subtle lift of magical Native Americans who show up in these kind of things. He's directed by trigger happy space marine Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and weaselly corporate guy Norm Spellman (Joel Moore) to get intelligence about the place the Na'vi live, so they can blow it up and mine some stupidly named "unobtanium". Unfortunately, he falls in love, with the Na'vi culture but mostly with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and decides that he's got to protect them forever. Also present are Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), the gruff scientist with a heart of gold, and Michelle Rodriguez, playing a Michelle Rodriguez role. Guess what happens to her!

The characters are a grab bag of old ideas we've seen before a million times. The plot develops predictably, every plot development is predictable from the moment the film starts, and not one surprise happens in the three hour running time. The sole unique factor for the big battles is the switch between avatar and human, and how it affects the characters' reactions. The big bad just wants oi...I mean "unobtanium" - was there seriously no better names? - and that concern overrides. There are some less than subtle digs about colonialism and US foreign policy, the army guy just wants to blow stuff up and looks for flimsy excuses to do so, and in spite of the vibrant visuals the film is stock black and white - there is good, there is bad, and nothing in between.

It's a case where it's possibly the best film of the type possible - sorry, Fern Gully, you've been eclipsed - and it is so pretty it's tempting to just ignore the number of flaws in the picture. It's such a technological tour de force that it's easy to ignore that it has nothing unique or interesting to say. It's all visual, and while they're good visuals, there's more to film than that.

Business of Fancydancing

2010-09-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I suspect Sherman Alexie didn't see himself making many movies. This is possibly correct, since The Business of Fancydancing is his only film. I say this because it plays like Alexie had to say as many things as he could, filling the film with daisy chains of ideas and commentary.

The film is about Seymour (Evan Adams), a celebrity poet and public speaker, who is also aboriginal, and also gay. It's about his struggles to be himself, his cultural identity, his sexual identity, his struggles with his past, his discomfort with the reserve. Back on the reserve is Aristotle (Gene Tagaban), who had potential but is done in by substance abuse, and Mouse (Swil Kanim) who is really good at fiddling but killed by substance abuse. So it's about their struggles too, the problem of reserve life, their identity...

That's a lot of ideas for 106 minutes. Plus there are moments of traditional dance and heavy use of rather good music. So it could be argued that the film is overstuffed.

Which isn't to say it's bad, of course. Alexie has a lot to say, and he tries a number of different experiments in order to say it. The film, in spite of it's clearly minuscule budget - a wild bar is very obviously a high school gymnasium, and all the trick lighting and hints towards the abstract cannot hide this - dabbles in different styles and different ways of storytelling. Yes, this is another symptom of Alexie wanting to get every idea he can compressed into one film, but it helps the end result immensely, bringing to life what amounts to a very internal journey for the characters.

There's a glimmer of brilliance in there, but at the end I hoped that Alexie would just settle down. He has some talent, and he can coax some effective performances out of his actors. He's also got a great deal of things to say, he just stumbles over himself trying to say them all at once. Many brief vignettes and passages rushed through could be the basis for an entire other film, and the struggles with identity can be explored in a much more thorough manner apart from the other stuff that happens.

I found that just saying everything, all at once, diminished the power of the many individual statements made throughout. In his struggle to say everything he wanted, it seems as though Alexie couldn't quite form coherent sentences about the rest of it. Too bad, it is, after all, a mostly good movie.

Better Luck Tomorrow

2010-09-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about squandered potential. It's sort of relevant to today's movie, Better Luck Tomorrow, plot-wise, but it's much more relevant when it comes to that film's director and co-writer Justin Lin. Here's a movie that showcases lots of potential, from a director with a interesting and uniquely Asian American point of view. That's a good point of view! We should see more movies from that point of view.

The film is about a group of kids of Asian descent - mostly Korean from what I can tell - who are all associates in their school. The main character is Ben (Parry Shen) a slightly shy, slightly oblivious, but mostly intelligent young man who, along with aggressive and slightly annoying friend Virgil (Jason Tobin) and Virgil's cousin Han (Sung Kang) are roped into an elaborate test cheating and ultimately drug dealing scheme by Daric (Roger Fan). In the periphery, Ben wants to pick up Stephanie Vandergosh (Karin Anna Cheung), who happens to be dating the obscenely rich Steve (John Cho). Eventually these plot threads collide violently and the entire thing ends with a bit of superficially happy ambiguity, similar to the look of slight regret right at the end of the Graduate.

In spite of Ben being the main character, focus, and narrator, the real driving focus of the film is Daric, and his obsessive need to be respected and belong. He drives the events, from writing an article about Ben being a "token Asian" on the basketball team to introducing the group to all the schemes. The main group is clearly marginalized within the school system, though this is not always explicit, and Daric does everything he can to get the approval, or at least begrudging respect, of the people around him.

That thread of needing to prove something to the people around them is something common to the characters. They struggle for good grades and Ivy League scholarships to prove their value, either to themselves, their peers, or their parents - which are never seen on screen. They enter into criminal activities to prove that they aren't just the good smart kids, but have a violent streak, an aggressive streak, or to simply get the approval of their peers. Virgil, for example, flashes a gun around constantly in order to seem tougher than he is, though when actual violence appears he cannot handle it.

I won't claim to know the struggles of Asian people in a western society - I'm as white as the driven snow - but of course Lin does, and he makes a film that could only have been made by someone experiencing this kind of life. Lin clearly has a lot to say about growing up, and growing up in the shadow of great expectations and subtle discrimination.

So, naturally, I'm rather disappointed that Lin has abandoned meaningful and interesting films and has become the series director for Fast and the Furious. Much of Better Luck Tomorrow makes me curious about what he's going to do next, but his filmography in subsequent years has been by the book action films and, well, the Fast and the Furious. Maybe that spark of creativity is still there, but I wonder if Lin has been done in by his expectations of himself.

Das Experiment

2010-08-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Stanford Prison Experiment is quite famous in the annals of psychology, in spite of being fairly poorly run and executed. Making one group prisoners and the others guards, it all quickly got out of hand, with rampant mistreatment of prisoners by the guards ensuing. It was inept, poorly handled, and unethical. So, imagine if it got even worse! That's the motive behind Das Experiment, a German film inspired by the events.

Here, we have taxi driver and sometimes journalist Tarek (Mauritz Bleibtreu) as one of the prisoners, attempting to get things completely out of hand in order to get a better story. He gains the attention of guard Berus (Justus von Dohnanyi), who is in the process of going quite literally mad with power. Their antagonism is one of the drivers of the story, though eventually Berus just goes completely nuts, kills a guy, kidnaps most of the scientists, and gets all the guards to go along with him because they think this is all part of the experiment. It gets out of hand.

Also, Maren Eggert is Dora, she wanders around in her underwear. Her characters has no purpose whatsoever.

For the most part, the movie is a pretty interesting tale of psychological warfare. The Berus/Tarek conflict is a strong base for the film to build on, contrasting Berus' pathological need for control nicely with Tarek's need to get a good story. It's an interesting attempt to get to the psychological implications of the experiment, and by telling the story through the perspective of someone trying to ratchet up the intensity, it has a compelling anti-hero at its core.

In the need to keep continually raising the stakes, it also wanders in the river of implausibility. It's not so much implausible because of the treatment prisoners receive, nor is it implausible that some guards would develop sadistic tendencies. No, what's implausible is that the guards would turn on the bosses themselves. See, in the experiment, the people in charge of payment are the scientists. Locking up the scientists and assaulting them? Not going to happen, for the same reason the wardens at real prisons aren't locked up and assaulted: If you do that you're going to get fired and go home without pay.

The last act is meant to ratchet up the tension, but it just becomes completely unbelievable. Is it seriously going to get to the point where the guards even turn on the scientists in charge? Even if the lead guard is in it to beat guys up and overcompensate for smelling bad, the others will remember that he's not the boss, the scientists are, and beating up the scientists is a bad idea.

Also, real prison guards tend to not kill the prisoners. That's a pretty basic part of prison guarding, don't kill anyone.

It's not like the ineptitude of the inspiration needs to be enhanced anyway, and it could become just as compelling a film even without the outlandish last act. The need to ratchet up the tension does not serve the story, because it is unnecessary. Why do we need more than the regular batch of inhumanity? It's good enough to make the real story compelling, and at least it doesn't tread deeply into the realm of implausibility.

District 9

2010-08-27T01:03:00.000-07:00

Science fiction is often used to give a little distance between the viewer and a hot button topic. Sometimes it doesn't work, such as in Star Trek VI, which was such a heavy handed allegory about the collapse of the USSR it rang false throughout. Sometimes it does, such as the best film about immigration and racism I've seen all year, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/">District 9.

So, here we're in South Africa, where a big alien ship has stalled, and the passengers have been moved to a slum called District 9. They're treated poorly, and then people complain that they commit crimes and are unruly, not realizing that having them in a slum situation likely doesn't help matters. Since they are planned to be relocated to a new district, clueless bureaucrat Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copely, in a star making turn) is charged with serving eviction notices and generally getting them to cooperate. It goes quite badly, and leads him to become more like them than he anticipated.

So the entire thing has a bit of an obvious allegory going on, and that's pretty unavoidable given the content. It doesn't help itself by making a lot of the human characters obviously evil, which is usually a death knell for subtlety. The late film hero moments can feel kind of awkward for this reason, as Wikus does sort of kill lots of people.

So why does it work? Well, Copely sells the weedy bureaucrat who is forced to go against what he used to just accept. He's never a perfect character - even late film he does some extremely cowardly and dick-ish things, rare for a hero - but he's strangely likable, even when he's right there with the evil company doing bad things. He's a nice guy, the kind of guy you probably wouldn't want for a boss but who you'd go for coffee with and buy a couch from. He's a recognizable happy center.

It also works because it's such a good action movie that it doesn't give you time to recognize how simple it is being drawn. The themes are obvious, and ever present, but nobody ever dwells upon them. It is a big, impressive action spectacle that relies on the themes to give a purpose for the action.

Still, being a big action movie leads to the people killed, and one wonders if they couldn't learn, like Wikus before them, that the aliens are actually nice guys. If we learn more about people - or space people - by hanging out with them, I wonder if some of the cannon fodder could have gotten along with the aliens if given the chance. I can understand some characters being just completely bad, but most of the soldiers are just soldiers, it feels somewhat uncomfortable just blowing them up.

Sometimes it can be too clever. Flipping between documentary style and more typical film making is an interesting choice - and the documentary talking head interviews are a great way to do exposition without being really annoying about it - but it seems a bit indecisive, as though it doesn't know what it wants to be.

It's far from a perfect movie, and there are also some points where the script doesn't consider if a twist quite makes sense in context. Still, it's possible to be imperfect and still quite good, and as a statement of purpose, District 9 is evidence that director Neill Blomkamp is one to watch.

The Ghost Writer

2010-08-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

On release, it was impossible to talk about The Ghost Writer. Everything was filtered through a lens of director Roman Polanski's transgressions, interest in which was revived quite close to the film's release. To discuss the film was to discuss Polanski, and more than one critic read more into the experience than what was intended. It was a potential last film, it could be historic, after all.

To be fair, the film is about a man in exile due to crimes which happened several years before, not unlike Polanski. However, former prime-minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) is not meant to be Polanski by any means, instead being a slightly smarmier Tony Blair. The ghost writer of the title is Ewan McGregor, brought in to replace the old ghost writer after he kills himself under lightly mysterious circumstances, eventually leading to the uncovering of an elaborate conspiracy surrounding the otherwise quite mundane Lang.

It's actually a clever tactic, making the former Prime Minister as boring as possible. The assignment, in the beginning, is straightforward. The new ghost is brought in to punch up Lang's autobiography because it is, frankly, terrible. It's presented as just a dull job, and constant shots of McGregor sleeping reinforce this. It's funny, because it makes the twists seem all the more interesting, since on the surface we're not looking at a spectacular or interesting man, just another PM. Ho-hum, right?

Polanski, for all his faults, knows how to make a thriller, and I seriously doubt it's even possible for him to make a bad one. So the Ghost Writer isn't a bad thriller. There are twists, it's a slow reveal, and one is often intrigued by just how deep things go. It's something Polanski has done before to great effect, and here it is clearly the work of a master of pacing and atmosphere.

Unfortunately, that master is just going through the motions on this one. To quote one of the characters, the words are all there, they're just in the wrong order. The story is actually good, but the leaps required to hit the right beats don't hold up very well. A key twist relies on a poorly designed website - never, ever a reliable source - and some characters just don't seem to exist, if that makes sense. They're there, they have dialog, but they're not really blessed with personality or interest. Also, while the final shot is beautiful, the questions it prompts are not quite the ones which it intends to.

That said, it's exactly what you expect, a competent thriller made by a guy who could make one in his sleep. This is no bad thing, and even flawed and imperfect there is a good movie here, one which is constantly interesting and compelling. Just not the greatest movie, and maybe that explains why just as much attention was paid to the director's troubles as the film itself.

Clash of the Titans

2010-08-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

I've seen the original Clash of the Titans, though it's quite telling that I don't remember very much about it. There was some charming stop motion, a kraken, and assorted Greek things. Given that the film was such a memorable event, it stands to reason that the new Clash of the Titans is something equally memorable and distinct.

Given that it's 2010 rather than 1981, a few changes have been made to the formula. For one, stop motion is out like Ricky Martin and Lance Bass, replaced by shiny, shiny CGI - and I do mean shiny, the armor of the Gods is so glittery it's reminiscent of a prom photo circa 1987. The camera swoops and shakes, the script is slightly darker and more extreme, and the film owes an obvious debt to Lord of the Rings, especially in how it takes in sweeping landscapes.

The story largely does remain the same. Sam Worthington is Perseus, the generically handsome demi-god, who grows up with a family so wholesome you know they won't make it very far into the film. After they're completely expectedly killed, he decides he doesn't like gods very much, and is charged with slaying the Kraken, which is to be released by Hades, played by a combination of Ralph Fiennes and CG glitter - not sure why Hades has glitter, but there you go - as part of an elaborate plot to weaken Zeus, played by Liam Neeson and even MORE glitter. He goes on an epic quest involving giant scorpions, a disapproving Mads Mikkelsen, a sexy Gemma Arterton, lots of landscape shots, and a need to behead Medusa, as often happens in these greek myth movies.

Surprisingly, for all the mythology and big CGI battles, the film is surprisingly boring. One culprit might be the general overuse of CGI in all movies. While the original was charming in its silly stop motion animation, CGI can take the wonder and imagination out of a picture. There's no question of how they did the various stunts, we know, they had a bunch of computers render big beasties. When anyone with a PS3 and God of War 3 can see equivalent visuals, the magic is kind of sapped.

The script is also pretty dull, in the end. When you're working with material as well known as Greek mythology, the last thing to do is just go through the expected motions - oh boy, I wonder where the shiny shield is in Medusa's cave? - and Clash of the Titans doesn't stray very far from the beats followed by the original. Since the original wasn't that interesting to start with, it keeps it from being too compelling.

Putting Mr. Excitement himself Sam Worthington at the middle of the film is another stroke of dullness. I know, the guy was the star of Avatar, but he's still an actor most remarkable for how unremarkable he is. He's just some guy, and while that works in some contexts - like Avatar - when he's supposed to be a demi-god it kind of deflates the title.

At least Worthington has a bit of restraint in his performance, something nobody else in the film does. The acting here is bizarre, with over emoting, and BIG. ACTING. MOMENTS. which would make William Shatner hide in shame. It's bizarre, nobody in the film acts like a real person, the king of the bad acting being Luke Treadaway, who plays Prokopion. He's amazing, it's an acting train wreck, and he flails around wide-eyed. You just have to ask what is wrong with this character, and while that might be partially intentional it's blissfully distracting.

Still, it says a lot when the lunacy of one minor performance can trump the entire rest of the film. The CG battles won't stick with me, though I do remember one being confusingly edited. The story, I've seen it before, done better, and I'm not referring to the 1981 original - I am, however, referring to a Saturday morning cartoon series of which I can't remember the name. I'm not sure wh

Repo Men

2010-08-17T01:10:00.000-07:00

Forest Whitaker, Jude Law, Liev Schriber, come clean about that hooker you murdered. Maybe Alice Braga should also come clean about it, though I suspect she's just taking any Hollywood role she can find to establish herself as an actress. Regardless, we all know you killed that hooker guys. Why? Well, you're all talented actors who have a bit of a box office draw. You're all actors who should, by all logic, have free reign to choose your projects and pick anything which you want. You are all actors who, by no means, should be starring in Repo Men.

In a world which looks like Blade Runner with extra gushy gore, Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are Repo Men named Remy and Jake. What do they repo? Organs! Sweet, gushy, artificial organs, after people default on their sub-prime loans, issued by Liev Schriber's Frank, who is so slimy he apparently is also on a Nickelodeon game show. Remy loves being a repo man, even though his wife does not approve, and he and Jake go on many repo adventures as they murder hundreds of people to get their organs back, serving a business model which can't possibly sustain itself. Eventually, Remy has a change of heart - both metaphorical and literal - and realizes that he's pretty goddamn evil actually. Also, there's Alice Braga, who plays a singer who had every body part replaced. Her character is of dubious importance, though since I like her I'll say she was great in City of God and leave it there.

Repo Men packs one hour of story into two hours, stretching the premise so thin that it could be used as a salad strainer. Everyone in the film has a shiny new artificial organ, though everyone's also past due on their payments. How does this business model work exactly? We all know that the sub prime mortgage collapse did in a lot of large companies - the film seems to think it's clever to reference such an event years after the fact, because it's cutting edge - and if everyone's defaulting on their loans - and has to get an expensive repo job on their body parts - how does the company profit exactly?

If we were going to talk about plotting, there are so many rabbit holes to go down. The first half of the film is accompanied by Jude Law's ridiculous, half-jokey narration, which doesn't really add much in the way of context or anything, and presents a misinterpretation of Schrodinger's Cat so egregious that millions of quantum physicists were literally angry with rage. In the second half, we're presented with massive plot holes, ridiculously sloppy writing and some extremely heavy handed moments. Of course, there's a reason for this, that reason being a plot twist so awful that M. Night Shyamalan would find it beneath him.

I felt for the actors. These are talented people who just happened to kill that hooker - there really is no other logical explanation - and they are given a script with dialog that causes physical pain and doesn't make any sense. You want to rescue them, take them away from this set and to a production of a good movie, that isn't awful in every way.

Action movies can often get away with an awful script if the action is good. The action is not good, just gory. There's lots of squishy gooey surgery scenes, and people are stabbed with alarming frequency. There's also a fight scene that tries to rip off Old Boy but then decides it takes too much effort to film such an intricate sequence and just becomes quick cut and filled with unnecessary stabbing. A good stabbing can sometimes be a valuable piece of punctuation in a good picture, but when everyone gets stabbed what's the point?

It's amazing that something so awful can get past script approval, budget approval, shooting, editing, test screenings on the way to wide release. Producers want to make money, that's their job, so surely someone down the line thought "Wait, what are we making? Why are we doing this? Why did I approve this script? This is terrible! The reviews will be universally awful! Audiences will stay away in droves! What was I thinking?" Perhaps the producer also killed a hooker?

The soundtrack's good though.

The Little Mermaid

2010-08-14T01:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am watching a large number of Disney movies lately, what's it to you?

In a short, and not especially detailed version of a fairly long amount of history, Disney had turned itself irrelevant by 1989, becoming a theme park company and TV studio rather than a film company. Worse still, animator Don Bluth decided to make his own animated movie studio, with blackjack and hookers*, and his films were doing better at the box office. Then the company was almost taken over, Michael Eisner was given the reins, and The Little Mermaid stumbled onto a formula that Disney rode like the town bicycle: make it a catchy musical!

*The presence of blackjack and hookers is unconfirmed and possibly an awkward joke.

Oh, and what a catchy musical! The songs here are plain solid, no question, from the downright hilarious "Poisson Poisson" song to the catchy "Under the Sea" to the very pretty "Part of your World". Disney had gold here, and they learned how to mine that gold pretty consistently for the next 10 years. I sometimes wonder if the film's success might have been partially due to everyone humming "Under the Sea" when leaving the theater.

The Little Mermaid is based on the premise that teenage girls are stupid. Teenage girls ARE stupid, there's no way around this, and teenage boys are just as stupid. People are idiots from about 14-20, I'm sure there's a study confirming this. Ariel, today's teenage girl, is rebelling against her father, because he doesn't let her hang out with humans. Then she spots generically handsome Prince Eric, who she immediately falls deeply in love with and makes a series of increasingly dumb decisions in order to get closer to.

Teenage girls love generically handsome men - witness the current popularity of the Twilight series, or the previous popularity of boybands and people named Corey. In the interest of fairness, teenage boys love attractive ladies who wear only seashells, so it's understandable that our prince falls for Ariel at first glance. It's one of those love stories where you wonder how long it'll last, because hell, this relationship is based on ogling.

I might be down on the film, but while it moves towards a pre-ordained happy ending, it actually is pretty effective at capturing the problem with teenagers. They're rebellious for no reason, consumed by lust and hormones, and very stupid. The villain is evil because she takes advantage of these flaws we humans all share, that being our love of our kids and our immense stupidity in our teenage years.

The happy ending does throw a strange wrench in the gears, simply because there's not really enough of a consequence for their actions. While getting there is inconvenient, they do get married at the end, which kind of confirms their instincts were right. I know of more cases of teenage stupidity where the instincts were wrong from beginning to end, and they didn't end in a pretty ending with fanfare.

Then again, I know of relationships forged in moments of teenage rebellion and idiocy which worked, and 30 years later the couple is stronger than ever. Yeah, it's the exception more than the rule, but maybe it means a story like the Little Mermaid isn't necessarily all wrong. Sometimes love works, even if everyone involved is making ridiculous decisions to get there. The Little Mermaid is just a rare example of raging idiocy working out in the end.

Cowboy Bebop - The Movie

2010-08-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

The common complaint when a TV series reaches the big screen is that it's like a regular episode, but bigger. It's a bizarre complaint, because the creators are trying to bring what is good about the series to the screen, and deviating too far would make it something completely different from what the series was in the first place. When you watch a series like Cowboy Bebop, an extra long episode is what you want anyway, because the episodes work as really good little movies.

Taking a completely different tack from Serenity, Cowboy Bebop doesn't use the film to unravel unanswered questions and put a neat little bow on things. Granted, the TV series actually ended the way the creator wanted to, so there's less incentive to do that. Instead, we've got a mystery that's a bit more complex than usual, taking place mid-series. The Bebop's crew is investigating some guy named Vincent, who's spreading a complicated biological weapon and killing lots of people, culminating in stopping him from killing even more people.

Placing the film mid-series kind of deflates a bit of the tension. You know none of your leads are going to die, and you know the day will be saved. I'm not sure that matters though, because even in the regular series there was really no danger of Spike and Jet dying, at the bare minimum, and while Faye and Ed's connection were more tenuous than the two central characters there was a confidence that they would come back. So the film works the same way the series does, just longer.

That's a good thing! The series was always best when it explored complicated villains, and there was always a lot of good action, and it filled 25 minutes with more character development than some long running film series' do in their entire run. Now, we get 2 hours to go deeper, explore characters more thoroughly, and have the mystery take a little longer to unravel for us. This is a great idea, and the idea of watching long Cowboy Bebop should be appealing to everyone.

Not that it's perfect. The villain's motives seem a little muddled, and the ending is surprisingly abrupt. Yeah, the plot itself had pretty much finished, but it seemed like there was still a little more story to tell. Faye also spends a lot of time tied up on the floor, which felt a little gratuitous.

Still, watching the world's longest Cowboy Bebop episode is a great way to spend time, and there's plenty of action and mystery to go around. When people complain something is just a longer version of a regular season episode, point to this, as an example of why that's sometimes what you want.

Tarzan

2010-08-06T23:34:00.000-07:00

Do you like Phil Collins? Do you looooove Phil Collins? That's the question you have to ask yourself if you intend to watch Disney's Tarzan, a mostly acceptable Disney film which also features liberal sprinkling of Phil Collins and montages.

The story goes that one day a man with an awe-inspiring mustache and his wife move to Africa. They build a big elaborate cabin and listen to lots of Phil Collins music. Also fans of Collins are a family of apes, who just had an adorable baby. Unfortunately, there's a big mean leopard about, and it eats the adorable baby. In spite of his abilities to grow amazing facial hair, the leopard also eats the man and his wife, though their child survives. As a result, said child is adopted by a lonely ape, and we learn valuable lessons about love, adoption, fitting in, and listening to the music of a former Genesis drummer and current bald man.

It actually is a mostly interesting film. Tarzan's journey to find himself and learning about where he came from is pretty good, and his interactions with Jane and trigger happy evil man Clayton are just as compelling as the wacky ape parts. It's also very beautifully animated, meshing 3D and 2D in often fascinating ways, proving that they can live together in perfect harmony and are actually more attractive this way - I'll take a million Tarzans over something that looks like Bolt.

That said, there's also stuff that is less successful. Rosie O'Donnell, who plays best buddy ape Turk, is annoying. Actually, the middle part of that sentence wasn't really necessary on second thought. There's this elephant that hangs around who doesn't seem to fit in anywhere but as a plot device, and I am really quite sick of Phil Collins now.

It's pretty standard fare and I'm not going to call it the best thing Disney has ever done. On the other hand, it's solid entertainment and has a number of really interesting quirks and twists as it goes. It's pretty good entertainment, and it is actually fairly decent as a whole. Unless, of course, you don't like Phil Collins. The number of people that applies to is surprisingly high, isn't it?

Badlands

2010-08-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

When you hear about something based on a true story, somehow you begin to expect something that is a bit less true than is being advertised. A bit of sensationalizing, perhaps, a combing through of the parts people expect with a large quantity of dramatic license to massage it through. So if Badlands is based on the true story of a young couple hiding out after one of them kills lots of people, you'll likely expect something that's a bit of an action thriller about young love and copious amounts of sex. That's not what you get when you watch Badlands.

Okay, it's about young love, that much is true. Martin Sheen at his sexiest plays Kit, a sexy garbage man who is sexy, and 25. Sissy Spacek is Holly, a 15 year old girl who does music lessons and baton twirling. They fall in love in a slightly creepy relationship, which Holly's dad (Warren Oates) does not approve of, for obvious reasons. Kit kills Holly's dad and she goes on the run with him, because teenage girls are stupid.

However, instead of being about these hot and sexy young lovers sexily loving each other in a young way, it turns into something very different. It is, more than anything, a meditation on loneliness, as the pair's only companion is the car they steal and acres of empty space. This is partially due to Kit needlessly killing everyone he comes across, so you're not quite sympathetic for them, but the film does a good job of emphasizing just how alone and apart from the world they are. Sometimes they're just the only object in frame apart from an empty sky and an emptier field. It just emphasizes their isolation.

The film is also quite pretty, in spite of the awful '70s film stock which was de rigueur. Shot composition is often breathtaking, always beautiful, and sometimes does a better job of telling the story than the script. It's about two people in the middle of nothing, and the shots are perfect at emphasizing their situation.

That said, the film is far from perfect. Spacek's narration doesn't really serve much purpose, apart from reminding us that she's a teenage girl and thus stupid - this is a trait shared with teenage boys by the way, it's just that there aren't any in the film to call out for their stupidity. Kit's character is obviously charming, a point emphasized by the later scenes where he charms all the people who tried to arrest him, but he's not very consistently charming, which undermines it a bit. Also, mountains of Saskatchewan, are you serious? Gales of laughter right there.

Still, it does what it seems to have intended all along, and it does a good job. The film presents the loneliness of people who brought it on themselves in a surprisingly sympathetic manner, and is pretty strong overall as a film. It could easily be seen as boring, but if you're in the right mindset, it's almost therapeutic.

Resident Evil

2010-07-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

Some films can evoke a specific time and place. Sometimes it's intentional, since a good period piece can bring a bygone era to life, or a genre tribute can revive a style long dormant. Sometimes, it's unintentional, and the period evoked likely wasn't the period intended. Resident Evil reminds me of the '80s, but in this case, I don't think that was the intent.

Why is that? Well, in some ways, it's the manner in which it's shot. There's lots of spooky smoke machines and a muddy palette that evokes the '80s for me. It also starts with a slow zoom on a frame much smaller than the screen, which I haven't seen since then. In other ways, it's just a campy zombie picture, and campy action is something I associate with the '80s for some reason. This is a film that Cannon Films would gladly attach their name to. It's got marines, things to shoot, action beat, and typical scary movie slow zooms followed by quick cuts, because that's shocking.

The story itself doesn't quite make logical sense. There's a big scary lab run by a computer which manifests itself as a little girl because that's a little creepier. Some virus gets out and the computer decides to kill everyone in a series of elaborate ways. A team sets out to investigate and is killed in ways which suggest the computer is an asshole - there's a hallway with lasers where they are toyed with for no obvious benefit - and then zombies show up. The core team played by Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, Matt Addison, James Purefoy, and Martin Crewes investigate, have mysterious secrets and mostly get killed by zombies. There's even some bad CGI to connect it with the Playstation original.

One of the main faults is that nothing happens for any logical reason. The entire existence of the McGuffin of the day - the T-Virus, which zombificates people - doesn't make much sense, the computer's elaborate killing of people doesn't seem especially logical itself, the entire go down and shut the computer off plan seems unnecessarily risky, though not as risky as giving it the power to kill everyone. Character motivations are never adequately explained and sometimes contradictory, and in some cases the reasons for the characters even being there doesn't make sense.

So it's dumb, it's kind of low budget and the story doesn't make any sense. I was sort of entertained in spite of it though, and that's because the premise actually sort of works. Why do I say that? Well, you've got a confined space, lots of baddies, and a bunch of plucky individuals who need to escape that confined space. Turns out that setup is remarkably difficult to mess up. I also liked the industrial metal score, it was mostly strong and even kind of catchy.

It's not good, it doesn't make sense, and it's pretty stupid overall. Yet, it makes itself enjoyable in spite of many, many obvious flaws. The real reason why? Because it reminds me of the '80s. It reminds me of those wasted afternoons watching bad '80s films on channels like TBS. I can understand hating it, because it's stupid, but it's bad in the right way.

Hercules

2010-07-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

Know the myth of Heracles? Well, discard that in your mind for a moment, it has little to do with the Disney film Hercules. There's good reason for this. You really can't discuss Zeus with bringing up the messy matter of rape - Zeus loved him some rape - and in the original legend Zeus went around as a woman's husband and did some raping. Then Hera was irate at this and decided to punish Heracles a lot.

Now, in the Disney version, that doesn't happen. Instead, Hera and Hercules are in a rape-free monogamous relationship, and Hercules is their beloved son. Then he's stolen away, made mortal with magic juice, and has to be trained by Danny DeVito. Then he finds a girl named Meg, and they live happily ever after, until her murders their children in a fit of rage.

Disney didn't show that last bit either.

The question here is obvious, why did Disney adapt Hercules? It's a story filled with violence, rape and murder. As such, it's slightly less than family friendly. Take all that away, and you've basically got Bam-Bam Rubble smashing his way through a formula. That's fine, since it's Disney, but they could have really adapted anything if they wanted to have a formula. In spite of the names, it doesn't really involve the real legend.

That would be fine, if it was good. Mulan had some serious plot alterations from the poem on which it was based, but they served a dramatic purpose. Here, it's all bad jokes and light plotting. The story is padded - heavily - by the chorus explaining what's going on, but it doesn't really move the action. The story itself is by the book, and the overall film is just low-tier Disney. When the studio was on, they could make masterpieces, but when they were off, they were just dull.

There are some very weird references scattered throughout which make me wonder just what was going on. Scar from the Lion King becomes a lion skin, the names frequently reference the real story, and small details show that someone knew what they were doing. Then the illusion is ruined by the fact that you know in the back of your mind that they're getting even the basic details wrong, and they're not replacing those details with better ones.

It's also the only Disney film with a nipple, but that's easy to miss.

If I was 8, maybe I would like it, but people who are 8 typically have very low standards. It's not awful, per se, but it's simply not as good as Disney is capable of making. Knowing what they can do - and Mulan is an example of this - it's difficult to watch something in which they aren't at their full potential.

Mulan

2010-07-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

Disney princesses - sorry, Disney Princesses, since it's a brand - are as a whole pretty useless. Their stories tend to revolve around getting a man, keeping a man, being saved by a man, and generally bending to the will of a man. Then, at the end of the day, all they get is a pretty dress. Yet, the princess formula is an integral part of Disney's success, and something which they have made a lot of money on. Still, I imagine some people within the Disney empire was getting annoyed by how completely useless the princesses are, for the most part. Hence, Mulan.

Mulan is counted among the pantheon of Disney Princesses, but unlike, well, all of them, she isn't useless. Hell, the entire film is about how women aren't useless (and possibly also about being a lesbian, but that's reading a lot into it). There's a society that doesn't value women, so Mulan becomes a man and joins the army so her father doesn't have to. Then she kicks everyone's ass and kills thousands of enemy soldiers. She also scores a man, but that part is mostly pushed to the last five minutes because that's really not the focus here.

She essentially beats all odds by not only being a Disney Princess who doesn't suck, but also possibly the most badass Disney character. She certainly has the highest body count, at the very minimum. Her actions are pretty much presented as the pinnacle of badassery, with there being frequent mentions of her being a girl, just to point out that the ladies are doing it for themselves. It's a break from the convention of useless women, a female Disney character who does more than fill out a dress and pick a handsome yet earthy guy.

Of course, it's a Disney film, so formula can't be abandoned completely. Are there catchy songs? Are there ever! Do we get wacky animal sidekicks? Oh baby, ladies and gentlemen, Eddie Murphy as a pointless dragon! It's also got that trademark very pretty Disney animation, which is a highlight, but even as the story breaks some conventions, it strictly adheres to others, and it still does the "heroes have to end the story together" thing that was pioneered a mere 1000 years ago.

Actually, I wonder how much better this might be if it wasn't Disney. The story is fairly violent - war, China fighting off the huns, etc. - and there are several cuts and scenes where you could see the filmmakers straining under the restrictions. A full on bloody spectacle could easily be made - and made well - with this material, and it often feels about a half step too safe.

Still, it was progress, and proof that someone at Disney could make an interesting female character. Yes, they had to dress her up as a man, but still, somewhere in that land of dormant franchises and elaborate theme parks, a nugget of feminism remained. A tiny nugget, that never really got a chance to flourish as the studio was confused by changing tastes and Pixar generally doing a lot better job of filmmaking than they were, which lead to a pile of bad decisions and worse movies, but a nugget. A nugget obscured by the Disney Princesses brand, but a nugget. Hopefully people see beyond the surface glitz of Sleeping Beauty, the naivety of Snow White, the balls to the wall stupidity of Ariel, and the general pointlessness of Jasmine to find that nugget.

Smokey and the Bandit Part 3

2010-07-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

I recently complained that Smokey and the Bandit II didn't do what it says on the tin. Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 does, and yet, it's somehow worse. How does that work?

Well, for all their flaws, the first two movies had a story. It wasn't a good story, or a deep one, but it existed. There was a forward momentum, something to follow, some characters that you could conceivably care about. This doesn't have that. The story? No real story, just a destination, with no real connection from point a to point b. It's a collection of silly vignettes that have nothing to do with each other.

Hell, the warning signs come early. No Burt Reynolds - well, there's a pointless cameo, but he's largely absent - no Sally Field and the director was not Hal Needham. Is it that hard to get Hal Needham? He's not exactly an A-list director. He's barely even a C-list one, how crap does your production have to be if you can't get Hal Needham? Jackie Gleason is back, though he phones it in, and Jerry Reed grows a mustache and turns into the Bandit. Yet, while he actually turned in a pretty respectable performance in the first two, he's possibly the most annoying thing on screen.

So, let's cover what is done right. There are a lot of stunts, and many are well done. They don't really serve much purpose, but if you want to see cars crash through things, well, this is a movie where that happens. The breadth and depth of things being crashed through is vast. It's a very impressive variety of pointless crashing. Also, in one scene you can see a nipple if you look closely.

That's it.

Some stuff is just weird. Some scenes were heavily, and obviously, dubbed in post production. Reportedly Jackie Gleason also played the bandit in the first cut, which wouldn't have made sense, and I wonder if that change explains the variety strange cuts and general incomprehensibleness of the goings on. Other strange things are nudists and having our heroes stumble into an orgy. That seems like an odd choice when the film really is only good if you're 8 or watching it on TBS while making a cake. Speaking of the orgy, that sequence is weird, as the bandit character and the smokey seem to be in entirely different worlds, as one goes to a rather dry novelty hotel and the other picks up a tranny hooker.

But mostly it's just bad. The comedy isn't funny, and there's no reason to care what happens. It's just a series of slow motion car crashes, without any reason to follow or care. It forgot that while lightweight, pointless and often stupid, the first two Smokey and the Bandit movies were, well, movies. They had stories, characters, and even a little tension. Not great stories, characters, or tension, but they were there. This just has cars crashing into things. I'm pro cars crashing into things, but unless there's a reason for it, what's the point?

Smokey and the Bandit II

2010-07-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

There are two reasons people want to watch Smokey and the Bandit. Reason 1, to see a man with a mustache drive a black Trans Am recklessly. Reason 2, to see Jackie Gleason swear and play a jerk cop. Smokey and the Bandit II, unfortunately, decides that the main reason people want to watch a Smokey and the Bandit movie is to watch some bad comedy. This is an erroneous assumption.

The story must be a meta commentary on the production. Jerry Reed is eager to do a silly run like in the first movie for muchos dineros. Burt Reynolds is a washed up drunk coaxed into another race in order to further his fame and fortune. Sally Field - who is introduced in a way that must have been commentating on her contract negotiations - also wants money. And Jackie Gleason plays so broad that he has to play three different characters. There's also a literal elephant in the room, perhaps referencing the metaphorical one, that nobody besides Jerry Reed wanted to be there.

It's a retread, and a bad one. There's a dearth of car stunts - no black Trans Am until 25 minutes in, not even a stunt until 47. Everyone is visibly annoyed and wanting to be somewhere else - with the exception of Reed, who actually seems to be enjoying himself, as though he just likes to be on camera. There's really only one notable stunt sequence - though it's a biggie, with what looks like hundreds of cars destroyed - but until we get there we've got a lot of pointless elephant-based drama, bad comedy.

I liked that the relationship between the Field and Reynolds characters collapsed between films, that was believable. It seemed like the natural conclusion, as they had nothing in common and a relationship forged in high stress circumstances. I also like that it made fun of Reynolds' ego a lot, since it's clear he's got a big one. I didn't like how even with a pointless story it didn't really have an ending - it seemed like they just ran out of movie - I didn't like how it tried to setup an even more awful sequel, but more than anything, I didn't like that it didn't do what it says on the box.

Nobody cares about anything but the stunts with this kind of movie, and the first one realized it. This either didn't have the budget or the effort needed to do what it says on the box. If you're going to do an unnecessary sequel, at least keep doing what made the first one so... decent. Don't turn it into a bad comedy, that's forgetting why people watch in the first place.

Good lord, there's another one of these things?

Smokey and the Bandit

2010-07-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Some movies are intellectually stimulating, deep, and artistically challenging. That does not describe Smokey and the Bandit. There's really not much substantive in this film at all, though of course that doesn't mean it's a complete loss.

Truth be told, if you're watching the film you're really not looking for much in the way of story. Burt Reynolds is the Bandit, Jerry Reed is the Snowman, and they're trying to get beer from Texas to Georgia for a bunch of money. On the way they meet a runaway bride played by Sally Field, and misogynist, racist, and all around objectionable Buford T. Justice, given life by Jackie Gleason, who happens to be the potential father-in-law of said runaway bride. Also in a starring role is a black Trans Am, which goes really fast.

Plot exists solely to give some motivation for some super fast driving and to destroy as many 70s full sized sedans as possible. We're introduced to a fraternity of CB radio enthusiasts, as though the CB industry had heavy investment in the film. Everything happens as an excuse to drive fast and smash stuff.

Is there anything necessarily wrong with that? Well, if you're looking for substance, yes. Smokey and the Bandit was seemingly designed to allow director Hal Needham to film lots of stunts - he's a former stuntman after all - and provide a light Saturday afternoon of entertainment. It's the kind of film that works perfectly on a channel like TBS, there to watch between other programs with every minute leading to something a bit amusing or an impressive stunt. The story is kept as bare as possible because you really don't have to follow it, so why bother?

This isn't to say that the film is meritless, just really lightweight. The junk food of cinema, let's say, but even junk food can be really tasty sometimes. Plus, there are some things that it does right. For one, it's really well cast. Field is great at being simultaneously charming and very annoying. Reynolds has an effortless, bad boy charm and Reed has a strange neurotic charm which also somehow works. The star of the show, really, is the Trans Am, which has this redneck cool that shouldn't be nearly as appealing as it is.

The best actor of the show, by contrast, is Gleason. He manages to make Buford T. Justice into a really horrible asshole that you never object to so much that you hate him, but always just enough that you want him to lose. Every loss where you might feel sorry for the guy is always ended by a perfectly chosen line where you are reminded that this man is an ass. It makes it okay to root against him, but also okay to like it when he's on screen. He's the kind of person you love to see fail, which is good, since he fails a lot.

It should also be noted that it's the source of possibly the world's greatest driving song, Eastbound and Down. It's not used as well as it could be - the chase it is used in is actually a surprisingly boring one - but it's a great song and I always drive a little more irresponsibly when it's on the stereo.

So Smokey and the Bandit has merits, it's just not a very deep movie all around. It's fun, more than anything, for the actors, the cast, the crew, and everyone. Nothing wrong with being fun, and that's why it got two sequels, which will be covered in the coming weeks. Why? Because they're included on the DVD I got, that's why! Hope you're prepared for Smokey and/or the Bandit forever.

Se7en

2010-07-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

I don't claim to know why genre conventions have evolved as they have over a hundred years of cinema. The two cops which are opposites, serial killers, all the conventions that have sprung up over the years for crime-based films and I've got no idea why they exist. Still, at this point they've become so well known that they become a reference point for something completely apart from a cliche. Se7en is an example of this, a taut disturbing thriller grounded in genre conventions which everyone knows and loves.

I mean, we've got the typical standards here. Morgan Freeman plays a cop who is too old for shit, especially this shit. Brad Pitt is a passionate upstart who lets his emotions run wild. Together, they fight crime, and a serial killer who models his murders on the seven deadly sins. Seen this before? Yes, you have, though perhaps not the seven deadly sins part, and it actually is strangely comforting as the movie starts. Here's something familiar, something tangible that we can identify with after years of movies doing the same thing.

Then it takes a wild turn for the messed up zone, and thank the lord for that.

By basing the movie around two characters which could easily collapse into cliche it becomes a little bit more disturbing overall. The familiar sights are combined with something completely different and more than a little disconcerting, and it's filmed in a moody, tense way which is a complete departure from a typical police film. There is something familiar in the mix, and that makes the content itself more disturbing, and the ultimate conclusion significantly more shocking.

See, what it does is take something we know, love, expect and appreciate and turns it on its head. It's almost a commentary on film cliches in a way, as it takes the most predictable of genres and makes a film that is as unpredictable as you can get, and which goes in directions which nobody can anticipate. It takes cornerstones of enjoyable fiction and turns them in on themselves, a clever and engaging move.

A good film will go somewhere you won't expect, even if that direction makes complete sense as you go through the story. This does that, and for that it has to be one of the best intense thrillers that you will ever find. It's likely not far from the truth that this film made David Fincher's career, and considering the unique, varied and often dark directions he's taken, it's a career we can be grateful for.

The Bad Sleep Well

2010-07-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I'll mention that a film's subtitles are conspicuously bad. Sometimes, the movie is bad to start with (Immortal Enemy), but it's often the case where bad subtitles are just annoying. Now, the first time I saw The Bad Sleep Well, it was a downloaded copy with awful babelfished subtitles. The movie was clearly good, but the serious tone was undermined by lines like "YOU JUMP DOWN AND DIE!" Now, having watched the classy, well done subtitles on the Criterion release - legitimately, might I add - I can honestly observe the difference a proper translation makes, and also why if a film was good, not even the worst translation in the world can hold it back.

The story was still clear, even if the details were hard to parse. Toshiro Mifune is Nishi, a secretary and son-in-law to powerful guy Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori), vice president of the Public corporation, which has something to do with Japanese building contracts. Iwabuchi is corrupt, and powerful enough to get people to kill themselves (an element uniquely Japanese), but he made the mistake of suiciding the wrong man. As a result, Nishi's out for revenge, in a plot that's quite complicated and rewarding in equal measure, with a shocking twist ending.

That story brought me back again, for the second time, even as bad as the translation was, but I appreciated that well written dialog made things a lot clearer. It took away the constant distraction and put the focus squarely on the picture, which is great, because it's a good one. The dueling themes of corruption and loyalty play out in frequently compelling ways. The scheme isn't necessarily complicated, but it also is intricately woven in with the personal relationships between characters. Corruption is a theme, but what corruption does to people is the important part of that theme, and the focus is always on the people rather than the scheme itself.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that Akira Kurosawa makes films like a painter, and this film is no different. Hell, this is the movie that gave me that realization in the first place. Just in the way shots are framed and actors positioned can tell the story of the scene, and sometimes it does more than the necessary exposition in establishing character.

It does have a couple problems. There's a lot of exposition, which can get tiresome as it's not always strictly necessary - sometimes things are explained a bit too much for no clear reason. Kô Nishimura's turn as Shirai requires him to react in shock, which at times seems to border on the ridiculous overacting that sometimes plagues silent films. Still, that's just me picking nits, because that's what I do.

Everyone thinks of samurai epics when they think of Kurosawa, possibly because he was very good at them. However, with this, he proves just as adept with a modern setting and characters. They reach into the core problems of Japanese society - especially of the era it was made - perhaps better than the old samurai, possibly because they're more easily identifiable. The corporate shenanigans are something still relevant 50 years after the fact, and it's one of those films that will always be just a little relevant overall.

Serenity

2010-07-02T09:24:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons television is having a renaissance lately is that people have finally figured out the strengths of the medium. Free from having to deliver everything, all of the time, TV shows can often have entirely character-centric episodes, a slow burn of a story, subplots that anchor the show and are never quite revealed, and so on. In a movie, you have to begin and end in two hours, and while subplots don't hurt they generally have to be wrapped up unless you're ludicrously confident that a sequel is going to happen. Even telling the same story, it's a completely different pace, and one which necessitates taking a very different approach to storytelling. As a result, it's always interesting when a TV show takes to the big screen, and in the case of Serenity, tell a season's worth of story in about two hours.

Serenity picks up where the beloved, short lived, and mishandled TV series Firefly left off. Mal (Nathan Fillon) is still the captain of the Serenity, old war hero for the losing side, and general enjoyable screen presence - albeit with the dick meter pegged a bit higher here. His crew is still a lovable cast of characters which everyone became fond of during the show's run, but the story itself focuses squarely on River Tam (Summer Glau), everyone's favorite slightly crazy young psychic girl who can absolutely, positively, kill every motherfucker in the room if triggered. There's also Chiwetel Ejiofor as the cold operative who is trying to kill her.

There are two pieces of the show's mythology that have never been explained that the movie tries to wrap up. The story of how River got to be so crazy, and that of the reavers, people who eat people. Here, they neatly align, so we can get some of the mysteries explained just in case the movie didn't get the series renewed. Given that part of the story is about the reavers, we also have an excuse for a lot of action, which seems to be the law for sci-fi films.

Serenity had a pretty much impossible job, reaching out to old fans and yet attracting new ones, which is pretty hard at the best of times. It didn't work at the box office, since Firefly is now truly dead, but I wonder if it could have. Characters are introduced briefly, but this is all about Mal and River, meaning the supporting characters are not given nearly as much to do. If something happens to a character, while a fan might be crushed, someone just wandering in might be curious why they're supposed to care. It relies of those 13 original episodes to give some moments of emotional resonance, which is a shame if you're not a fan of the show.

I was a fan of the show though, and it's nice to see what amounts to a really big series finale. It does feel like a double length episode at points, but that's really no bad thing, as the show was consistently witty and heartfelt, and anyone who liked it would just want more. Serenity fills that need, but I worry that in doing so it might have been alienating to people who never watched Firefly first.

8 1/2

2010-06-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

Federico Fellini was possibly the most influential Italian director in the history of cinema. He's added words to the English language - Paparazzi, for reference, after a character in La Dolce Vita, which is also a term familiar to most - and is cited as an influence by pretty much every director you can name - and several you can't. In spite of his clear talent, it's comforting to know that he also wasn't supremely confident at all times. How do I know this? I've watched 8 1/2.

Now, that isn't to say anything negative about 8 1/2 - in fact, prepare for praise - but instead just a response to the subject of the film itself. Some might suggest that the movie is slightly autobiographical. After all, it's about an Italian film director struggling with a concept for his next picture and also with his wife and mistress. Fellini, was an Italian film director, the title was a reference to the total number of movies he had made before, and he made this movie because he wasn't sure what to do next. I won't claim to know what his marital situation was at that time, but there's a large amount of vulnerability here, almost a kind of therapy, as Fellini lays bare his own frustrations through proxy characters and events.

It's a feel good story, but not in the traditional way. Everyone has had moments of a loss of confidence, everyone has been nervous and everyone has had times when they don't know what to do next. If you're a creative type, you can recognize that, just as in the film, the act of creating can sometimes seem like going steadily insane.

I understand this, and I'm sure everyone has had moments of a supreme lack of confidence and uncertainty. The liberating aspect of this film is that one realizes that an influential filmmaker at the height of his powers felt the same way as we might, and he worked through it to create one of the best films you'll ever see. Now, we're not all Fellini, but there's a certain something life affirming about the enterprise. The knowledge that the feelings are normal, and that people aren't alone at these lows, it's kind of uplifting.

The best part is, even if you don't know the story behind it, the frustrations and triumphs are laid bare on screen so you can fully grasp what is being presented. It takes the intimately personal, and makes it universal, and that's not only a difficult trick but a highly worthwhile one. I don't simply understand Fellini more after watching this, I understand myself. That's what truly great art can do.

First Do No Harm

2010-06-25T05:56:00.000-07:00

TV movies have a bad reputation. This is essentially because the worst of them just take an issue, and interpret it in a basic manner. First Do No Harm is let's learn about epilepsy.

Of course, as someone who knows a bit about the subject, there are some things which don't really work. Having a kid subjected to an intensive battery of tests after one seizure is inaccurate, though it's likely the time line was compressed for the sake of time - it's only an EEG the first time - and it isn't a case of "two seizures is epilepsy at all times" - I don't have it and I've had more than one. Whatever, that's what happens when something has to be easily distilled into an easy to understand manner for the sake of a TV movie.

That's the problem though. Learning about epilepsy - and the assorted crap about why the US health insurance system is pretty much terrible and screws everyone over for arbitrary drama - isn't really a plot. Meryl Streep, while a classy actor, can't really elevate the proceedings above a PSA. Jim Abrahams, while once good at comedy, simply can't pull off being a drama director.

It's heart is in the right place, really. It wants to help people learn about a condition that is both serious but not so bad that people with it can't be perfectly normal. It wants to educate, which is admirable, and it wants to show off a special diet which helps some people, which is similarly admirable. It's just that with education as the top priority, making an entertaining movie is too far down the list.

Bad Guy

2010-06-22T06:25:00.000-07:00

If you watch enough movies, you notice cinematic tricks. For example, casting a sympathetic looking actor and playing lots of evocative piano music might try to get the audience to like a character. Kim Ki-Duk knows this, so this trick is deployed in Bad Guy, except with a rapist. It's a film about a man doing horrible things - hence the completely justified title - presented as a love story.

Jae-hyeon Jo plays that Bad Guy, a mostly silent protagonist who tries to pick up the lovely lady played by Won Seo, and fails, spectacularly, as he just creeps her out. Then he kisses her and she likes him even less. So, he effectively tricks her into being a prostitute and watches as she is essentially raped over and over again. So yes, a bad guy.

Ki-Duk films it like a love story though. Jo's got a great emotional face, and he just looks so gosh darn likable. If you walked in mid-way through you'd think awww, this guy could never be a rapist, look at him! Plus the really pleasant soundtrack manipulates you to care about him, which would be fine if he was like Sting and trying to stop her from being a prostitute, rather than forcing her to become one due to deception.

It becomes a commentary on how film can manipulate us into feeling things which might not be deserved, but it's kind of awesome for that. Sure, it's very difficult to watch, and most people will be completely disgusted by the events that happen on screen, but that's kind of the point. It's a reminder that a good director is going to play with your emotions, and you have to look past the pretty soundtrack and evocative shots to see what is really happening.

I've read people say the picture is misogynistic, but I think Ki-Duk is just trying to mess with the audience. Here's a guy deploying as many cinematic tricks as possible to turn a story about a horrible person doing terrible things into a love story, and Stockholm Syndrome into something romantic. It's manipulative to the highest degree, and is quite provocative because of it.

The Aura

2010-06-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

How do you make someone interested in what happens next? That's the basic question behind pretty much any film, but is especially vexing if it's a thriller or a mystery. Everything depends on audience curiosity, and if that disappears your film no longer works. With The Aura, the solution is to keep everything slightly off, and just keep the audience that little bit off balance. The Argentinian thriller maintains a slow pace by ensuring that you simply must know what happens next.

That is apparent right from the first shot, where we are introduced to our protagonist - a mild mannered taxidermist played by Ricardo Darín - on the floor, passed out. We are never given an indication why, though an answer arrives later once it no longer needs to be mysterious, and we're simply introduced to this man who is on the floor, obsessed with the perfect crime, and makes his living stuffing animals. He is a mystery from the first shot, and even as we learn more about him he is always slightly beguiling.

The story, centered around the taxidermist, involves a hunting trip he takes with a colleague. The colleague goes home, our taxidermist sticks around, and stumbled upon what he believes is the perfect crime after accidentally killing a guy. Things evolve as he bluffs his way through the details to get in charge, and to say much more would spoil the endlessly complex and clever payoff. Let's just say it ends well, in a rather meaningful manner.

This is the second film from director Fabián Bielinsky, but it's also unfortunately the last film, as he died young. His first feature, Nine Queens, I also saw, and it had promise but was endlessly gimmicky and was a bit in love with how clever it was. This manages to reach a balance that the previous film never did. It's still extremely clever, hiding important details in plain sight and having events interact in unexpected and fairly brilliant ways. However, it's also smart enough that hides the clever script behind it, never quite calling attention to the often brilliant plotting. It knows how to keep you intrigued, and it's the same reason the taxidermist can get away with becoming a master thief, it lets you know just enough to satisfy your initial curiosity and hides the rest.

It's also beautifully shot, and the choice of shot is as clever as the script itself. We are always well aware of the taxidermist, where he is, and what he sees in any moment. We know only what he knows, which in the grander scheme of things makes the plot that much more compelling. We're not in his head really, except for some rare moments, but it's more that we're a third person in the party, which for some reason is always following him along. It's an effective tactic, and it plays out in unexpected ways, including a shootout that takes place completely off camera. This does leave one or two unanswered questions, but it also keeps everything compelling. Restricting information is much more effective overall than sharing it. True, we never quite get inside the heads of anyone, but maybe we don't have to, it's what happens next that is the real prize.

There are many thrillers that explain away their premise or dispel the fog that surrounds them, and they're all the weaker for it. Here's one that lets you know only as much as you need to follow one part of the plot, and lays the rest of the pieces out around so you can learn the rest. It's possible to put the puzzles together, but even if you do, the slightly off kilter mood keeps you wondering just exactly how it all plays out. It's a shame Bielinsky died before he got the chance to make a follow up, this guy had real talent.

Moloch

2010-06-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

One of the stranger things about Moloch is that it's actually a pretty relatable story. Yelena Rufanova plays a young woman in a relationship with an insufferable blowhard who also happens to have a great deal of power and influence (Leonid Mozgovoy). As a result, she's the only person who can disagree with him, since he surrounds himself with yes-men who wouldn't dare, no matter what they actually think of some of his ideas. Some of the aforementioned yes men happen to be with him on what can only be described as a very awkward vacation. Nobody really gets along with each other, and there's an uncomfortable veneer of civility surrounding the whole thing which is obliterated whenever certain people get together away from the others they don't necessarily like.

I've been in similar groups, where everyone is barely getting along and can only survive by talking behind backs. I've been in groups where there was a clear ass who nobody liked who everyone was too cautious to actually confront. I've also been on awkward vacations with people who didn't quite get along. I'm sure everyone has been in similar situations, it's just something that happens when people assemble in large groups, some of the pieces just don't fit together without a great deal of artificiality. It's a uniquely human experience.

So, it's interesting that Aleksandr Sokurov, the director, tries to distance people as much as possible from the film itself. It takes place in a very remote castle, surrounded in mist. Rufanova's character is introduced in a ten minute, wordless sequence of her just being bored and dicking around in the castle. The sets are large but vacant, calling attention to how unnatural the entire thing looks. Oh, and everyone in the film is a Nazi.

That's right, that young woman? She's Eva Braun. The insufferable ass? Only the biggest ass in history, Adolf Hitler. It's surreal to have the Hitler being portrayed as basically a really annoying boss, and every time you begin to relate to the characters someone in uniform is spotted on screen and you think "oh right, they're Nazis." While it captures the awkwardness of people who don't quite get along, it also never stops reminding you that these people, in spite of their eminently human qualities, were also generally history's greatest monsters.

It's a very strange piece, in that it does engender a lot of sympathy for Braun, who is depicted as being just one of millions of women who fell in love with a jerk. She's depicted as always a little unhappy, and as a result it creates an ultimately sympathetic character. Yes, a sympathetic character who is also Hitler's girlfriend, it's a strange thought to have, but if she's presented as an exaggerated version of every woman who married a monster, maybe it's not a bad idea.

I can't quite figure out if it's a problem or a strength that such an intrinsically human story also happens to be about Nazis. On one hand, it can yank you out of it, and you do feel bad about being able to relate. Then again, the Nazis were people, even if they were people with thoroughly objectionable ideals. I've said it before, but sometimes we need to be reminded that they were people, just to get across that we should be always on the lookout for people of the same nature, to prevent a similar result.

Kung Fu Hustle

2010-06-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

Looney Tunes, at its best, is animated slapstick comedy. Taking full advantage of animation, it takes a blend of likable characters and allusions to other work, and shoves them in a blender with some comedic violence and visual trickery. It is a series of visual jokes, animated ridiculousness, violence and pure energetic joy. So, if someone were to make some sort of live action Looney Tunes, it would be impossible. Luckily, CGI was invented and as a result, Stephen Chow could pull it off with Kung Fu Hustle.

The story is a little strange, designed seemingly to string along the endlessly inventive and wonderful sight gags. Stephen Chow - who also directs, and who can probably kick Ralph Macchio's ass - is Sing, a generally disreputable character who tries to make a few dollars by pretending he's with the scary Axe Gang. In the end, he manages to do little more than make the Axe Gang angry and get them to pay attention to smelly little Pig Sty Alley, with it's disproportionately high number kung fu masters. Hilarity and awesome ensue.

I compare it to Looney Tunes because it has the same sense of visual wit, though a bit more grown up. It also uses a number of the same tricks. Characters have an unnatural elasticity to them that recalls Daffy Duck's beak spinning around after being shot in the face. Physics here play by a unique set of rules designed to make things a little bit more funny and emphasize that this world just isn't real. That aspect helps things that might otherwise be kind of terrible - like a cat getting cut in half - into something hilarious, since the film doesn't pretend to be remotely realistic. Even the more brutal scenes are emphatically not real, which allows you to have a bit more fun.

Not that Looney Tunes is the only film that comes to mind here. Chow is clearly a fan of movies, since anyone who has watched far too many can spot subtle allusions and references - and blatant ones too - and can tell that some bits are clearly inspired by old Chinese pictures I have never seen but now want to. It's just in love with the possibilities of the screen, both in the unique ways it can use it and in the ways others had used it beforehand.

I often prefer practical effects to CGI, and in the hands of an incompetent filmmaker CGI can be a crutch or a distraction. Chow, however, has found the perfect use for it, to make live action cartoons and just have fun with the possibilities that film can bring. There's a joy here that translates through the screen to the viewing audience, and that's fantastic, it's always a pleasure to see a director/star clearly thrilled to be doing what he's doing.

Lion of the Desert

2010-06-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

When a movie breaks 2 hours, the rules change. Every scene must be essential, every cut, shot and camera move considered. There are some reasons for this, most not particularly concerned with art but rather pure practicality. Theaters can make more showing a film every two hours than they can every three, bums get sore after two hours in theater seats, and bladders might get annoyed, especially if you bought a larger soda before the showing. Lion of the Desert is almost three hours long, does it justify it?

No.

In the first half hour, 20 minutes were pretty much unnecessary. In fact, Rod Steiger's Mussolini could have been completely excised without doing damage to the narrative. Characters are established multiple times, and there isn't very much consideration of what is strictly necessary. Pacing is deliberate, which isn't necessarily a problem, but it repeats itself so much that it is a struggle to maintain interest.

The story also suffers because it's trying to be a bit of propaganda for Libya, which makes sense because it was financed by Muammar Gadaffi. The setting is right before WWII, as Italy invades Libya and discovers, much to their astonishment, Libyans would prefer it if Italy didn't take them over, thank you very much. Anthony Quinn's Omar Mukhtar is the Lion of the Desert - presumably rejected titles included "Totally awesome guy who everyone loves" and "Badass motherfucker" - and is also possibly an android. He's a rebel and a teacher, presented as having no human flaws whatsoever and projecting an almost beatific glow as he goes around killing Italians with his rag tag crew. He also speaks in a very deliberate tone for some reason. His enemy is Oliver Reed's Gen. Rodolfo Graziani, who is significantly more interesting as he tries to end the war by killing as many Libyans as possible. The general actually resembles a human - though the kind of human you wouldn't exactly want to be best friends with - consumed by ego and determined to win Libya simply because he believes Italy should have it.

That's part of the problem, the only really believable character is the villain. The perfect hero smells strongly of a film that's financed by a wealthy military dictator who wants to make some propaganda. He's drawn too simplistically, and not really fleshed out as a person. We can't believe in him because there's little more than some quotes and a deliberate speaking style. He doesn't show emotion, he doesn't show depth, he's just there for what he represents. It's not a character, it's a symbol, and compelling movies aren't made out of symbols.

There are other, very strange problems with the film too. One is the sound recording, it's remarkably poorly done. There are early scenes filmed in a castle place that are basically echoes, and it is impossible to understand dialog. This happens repeatedly in the film, as the sound makes actors with otherwise powerful speaking voices sound like they're mumbling and incoherent. Supposedly powerful scenes are ruined when you just can't make out a damn thing people are saying.

It's not entirely bad though. The core story, even if the center of it isn't remotely believable, is solid, and there are some individual moments worthy of interest. There's a subplot about one family which is actually stronger than the rest, because the members do seem human, sympathetic and have a story which is worth caring about. In fact, the film does seem to have more to say when it leaves boring old Omar and focuses on the real victims of the war, the regular people who just want to be free from Italian persecution.

Perhaps, one day, someone will revisit the story, and do it justice. I can't help but think that Libya and Omar Mukhtar weren't very well served by this simplistic, overlong, and badly recorded film. There are moments of beauty, moments of relevance and moments of good hidden deep within. But, when the film dies every time its center appears on screen, a film dies overall. And it dies so many times over those three hours.

Attack the Gas Station!

2010-06-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

When I'm not watching movies, at random, I do other things. One of those other things is play videogames. Currently, I'm playing Saint's Row 2, because it was cheap and is mostly fun, apart from a couple really terrible late-game missions. The most interesting thing about the game is that the characters are clearly awful people who murder other awful people and generally do terrible things. Yet, you root for them, because they're funny, even if they're mostly psychotic insane people. Why is this relevant? Well, Attack the Gas Station has a similar dynamic. You're alternately horrified and amused by the antics of the main characters, the overall plot, and the entire film.

In film, four no good punk kids (Sung-jae Lee, Oh-seong Yu, Seong-jin Kang, Ji-tae Yu) decide to rob a gas station. Then, they decide to rob it again, because they have nothing better to do. When there's no money, they take the gas station over and hold the crew hostages, while randomly kidnapping customers if they annoy them. In the process everyone learns life lessons, everyone finds their hidden talents, and at the end of the day everyone is a better, more well adjusted person better able to confront the challenges life brings.

Self improvement through acts of violence and hostage taking is a decidedly odd premise, especially for a film aimed directly at no good punk kids. The film is filmed and presented as wacky fun, with interludes of the four heroes doing some nasty, unpleasant stuff to their charges because they can and they're asses. A different director and it could easily be about four people who terrorize this station.

But they're funny, so you like them. You especially like them after they force cops to actually pay for gas, and learn that their lives are a source of perpetual disappointment. You hope these abused little puppies stop chewing on slippers and blossom into the beautiful golden retrievers they were meant to be. Then you realize, holy crap, they're beating on people for no reason and are almost trying to induce Stockholm Syndrome in their charges. Wow, they're jerks, why do I like them so much?

Someone with less faith in the intelligence of their average person might argue the entire premise is dangerous - seriously, everyone's lives are dramatically improved, except for the two people locked in a trunk and then never seen again, no word on them - but I'm suspecting everyone realizes that this is just dumb fun. Same deal with Saint's Row 2, it's just letting you into the world of terrible, yet funny people you would never want to meet in real life. It's interesting how by making you laugh, sins can be forgiven.

Paths of Glory

2010-06-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

Someone once said that it was impossible to make a truly anti-war film because film, with it's explosions and choreography and whatnot, always makes war look fun. Evidently that person wasn't well versed in cinema, since there is a pretty clear example of how to keep explosions and battles and make war look anything but fun. Paths to Glory accomplishes the feat even with a big battle and enough explosions to make the German government suspicious during filming.

The trick is that most of the film is about the politics surrounding war, and what it can do to relatively innocent soldiers. The entire piece revolves around Gen. Paul Mireau (George Macready), a general who desires a promotion and glory, who places his ego above the lives of soldiers. When Gen. George Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) proposes a plan to take a location known as the Anthill, Mireau initially refuses, before he gets proposed some personal gain. Col. Dax (Kirk Douglas), in command of the regiment, is forced to follow the order, and the battle goes predictably badly, leading to a kangaroo court martial and general unpleasantness.

From the beginning, it's reinforced that there is a disconnect between command and the soldiers on the front, as command happens in a conspicuously shiny castle while the actual battle takes place in the dirty trenches - often captured in claustrophobic but frankly brilliant tracking shots. The contrast is made as conspicuous as possible, and the generals are made to be especially out of place during battle. The battles themselves don't actually show much success on the part of the army either, consisting mostly of slow crawls, intimidating explosions and lots of dead bodies. It strategically removes everything that could possibly be considered fun about war, replacing it with the ever-present specter of death.

That not scare you away from war yet? How about almost all leadership being shown as willing to destroy the men under them to protect their own reputation? Dax is shown to be an idealist and mostly honorable, and Macready seems to have grown a mustache solely to twirl it, but those are the two extremes of film. Within, there are many more subtle ways of murder in the service of ass covering, from the explicit - everything Mireau does - to the subtle - a character marked down as dead after his commander runs away from a battle. Even soldiers who are brave and exemplary in battle are screwed over just to ensure a general's ass is appropriately covered, just to emphasize that if the battles don't get you, the commanders will.

Of course, this is no surprise, since Stanley Kubrick is behind the camera and the man was an insane genius. Nobody lights a scene like Kubrick, and there is an execution that is almost unbearably tense and seems to taunt the viewer for having compassion. The film manipulates you completely with how it's shot, with only the rare music cue for emphasis. It has nothing but sympathy for the main characters, and then kicks their ass for emphasis.

I'll agree that the majority of war films are not anti-war for the reasons outlined in the first paragraph, but to say it is impossible is a lie. The trick is to stop yourself from making war look fun. Paths of Glory makes war look like what it is, violent and filled with death. That's a way to make it seem less appealing.

The Apple

2010-05-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

Cannon Films, run by Israeli entrepreneurs Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, pretty much captured the zeitgeist of the '80s. Their low budget films revolving around ninjas defined a decade that is now forever associated with ninjas, low budget, and video games. However, Cannon was hardly consistent, or good, and they had this strange obsession with musicals that they could never shake, which resulted in the modern classic Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (which I actually own, because it was $5 and I could say I owned Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo on DVD for that low, low price). This odd love of musicals resulted in The Apple, today's subject.

I've heard the Apple described as a completely insane disco musical that failed spectacularly. That might be overselling it a bit, but it is a disco musical that is also influenced by equal parts Fahrenheit 451 and the Bible (hence the Apple of the title), with an ending that comes completely out of left field. It is certainly strange, but I'm not sure if it's strange enough, to capture that sense of batshit insanity that a truly nuts film has to do.

It's 1994, and the World Vision Song Contest - It's supposed to be like Eurovision (which is going on right now!) except in the world, though it shares a name with a charity. In this 1994, a big media corporation called Bim controls the world, run by Mr. Boogalow (I wonder why Golan and Globus love that word so much). Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal, hamming it up) is the devil, quite literally, and runs the world with money and sellout disco music. But, from out of nowhere comes two plucky young kids from Moose Jaw (a running joke which is naturally annoying to me, being from Saskatchewan and all) who capture hearts with a sappy love song that is also not very good, but pure. Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Alfie (George Gilmour, with a distinctly non-Moose Jaw accent) are subsequently invited to make deals with the devil, becoming a super famous pop star like Lady Gaga and a hippie bum respectively.

Possibly the most interesting thing is the depiction of 1994, which actually manages to get some things right, even way back in 1980. Okay, nobody listened to disco, but people did wear lots of neon pink, and to get one detail right in these supposed futures is always impressive. Hell, look at the list of product placement in 2001 that showed mostly businesses which no longer existed in 2001. Naturally, some things didn't pan out. The 1970s mustache died an ignoble death, and for some reason glittery gold speedos never caught on - given the sheer number of glittery speedos captured on film, one wondered if Golan and Globus had stock in a company that made them - but hey, neon, we sure wore that.

The Apple does have some fairly astonishing scenes, like when an older pop star (in a silver speedo) convinces the female lead to both eat the Apple and that it's a natural, natural desire to meet and actual, actual vampire. There's also an amazing sequence when Alfie trips balls at an orgy and we are treated to the underwear kama sutra with men in golden speedos and women in nighties while we're treated to a surprisingly explicit song about seduction. The ending, which does not make sense in any context, is also worth noting, though I suspect that it was a focus group thing and the original ending was much more grim.

There is a problem with the Apple though, and that's that it tries to have it both ways. It decries the sell out nature of disco music while packing the soundtrack with disco hits. It decries the status of entertainment and has a corporate run state, but doesn't do anything with them. It reaches out to dirty hippies without having a single song that a dirty hippy could "dig". It seems like it wants to convert its audience away from disco, which is sort of noble, though in 1980 people were naturally moving away from disco anyway, possibly because it sucked.

It's hard to say that the Apple is worth watching, but it is fairly memorable when it hits its insane highs. Golan, who also directed, soon realized his true calling, which involved breakdancing and ninjas (and ruining Superman) but in this, the most nonsensical of musicals, he decided to get personal, and state what was wrong with music and the world. The strange thing is, he was sort of right - the story of Bibi doing a complete image shift from singer songwriter to vapid disco queen bears a striking resemblance to Lady GaGa's rise to fame - he just expressed it in the most bizarre way possible.

Another Public Enemy

2010-05-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

Sequels are always tricky. On one hand, you've got to give people what they liked from the first film, but on the other hand you have to give them something else. It could be going bigger, with flashier special effects, action sequences, and just more in general. It could be a change in direction, with taking care to bring insight into characters that might not have been obvious before. As a fan of Public Enemy, the Korean action dark comedy, I was excited to see what would happen with Another Public Enemy. It takes an approach I'm not sure I approve of, it makes it respectable.

So Kyung-gu Sol is back as Gang - or Kang, in these subtitles - being promoted from inspector to prosecutor. He is, again, confronted with a rich man who believes he is above the law - Han, played by Jun-ho Jeong - though he is a bit less brutal with his murdering, and is mostly involved with a complicated money laundering scheme. In the new film, we see Kang have a newfound respect for the law and due process - though not so much respect that he doesn't step outside it frequently, especially at the end. As a result, he's a bit more respectable, but less funny and interesting, and less compelling to watch. The old crew is back, but they're not up to their old antics.

It's a case where I might actually have a different opinion if it weren't the sequel. The political maneuvering as Han tries to get people off the case is interesting, though he's a less interesting character than he might be. The attempt to sell off property in order to get rich in America is a lot less sinister than it might be, and Han just isn't that compelling of a character, being a one note bad guy overall.

Unfortunately, with the dialed up respectability the action is dialed way down, with the majority of the maneuvering taking place in offices as people talk politics. It's actually not a bad premise overall, but I felt disappointed by it, as it trades the original film's tension and intrigue with much less tense and much less intriguing moments.

Another Public Enemy isn't bad, per se, but I couldn't help but think that it had been neutered. It doesn't have the teeth it once did, and making Kang respectable makes his character less interesting overall. It makes me think that maybe sequels generally aren't a good thing, because you can't have the same thing twice, but if you deviate too far it ends up being a disappointment. Perhaps Public Enemy should have been left alone.

Immortal Enemy

2010-05-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize it at the time, but this week has become a theme week! Aren't you excited? Yep, both features feature ghosts, though the quality of the two entries varies pretty dramatically. Since you already know that the last MaR entry was something good, you can likely assume that this week's is going to be bad. Calling Immortal Enemy bad seems a bit unfair, but it most certainly isn't good.

Due to bad subtitles disagreeing with the IMDB and with, um, themselves, I have no idea who plays anyone. Not that their performances stand out, but if you just have to know the minor roles of Thai people in silly films you're going to be disappointed. Anyway, the film starts in the past, as some douchebag decides that he really wants to marry a woman who may or may not be named Bonnie. Unfortunately she is married to Don, so he does what any sane and rational man would do, and that's kill Don's family and tear Bonnie's face off. No, wait, sane and rational are the opposite of the words I was thinking of, never mind then. In the process, he also drinks some foamy eternal life potion, and makes an aquarium implode, not exactly sure how that works but whatever.

Then we go into the present day, where worst boyfriend ever Eddie or Ned - Neddie? -takes his girlfriend Elly, or Cherry, depending on the scene - for convenience, I will call her Chelly - to the basement of his new (haunted) house, which is filled with scary mice, snakes and cockroaches. Then, apparently off screen, he becomes best friends with senior Douchebag, who is a ghost, and also a vampire. He goes around killing people and doing vampire things. Don and Bonnie are also reincarnated as Willy and Lorna/Ellen respectively (Lorlen?) who have to beat the vampire through a magical incantation or something. Also, nobody questions that, for Thai people living in Thailand, everyone has western names, which change constantly, making everything obnoxiously hard to follow.

Okay, one of the main faults - astonishingly bad subtitles - might be part of the reason for one of the other main faults - this movie makes no goddamn sense. There are nuggets of an interesting idea - something about reincarnated people living out their past lives again could be pretty cool if properly handled - but there are also mysterious ghost hunters, vampires who are also ghosts who are also perfectly fine on a sunny day, everyone's name changing by the minute, and it never being completely clear who represents what and how.

What it feels like is a situation where someone made a list of all the scenes they want in a movie - sex! action! snakes! comedy! someone getting their face ripped off! - and then just tried to construct a narrative around it. That's the only explanation for the plot, which goes off the rails completely in the first 10 minutes and then bounces merrily through the field of incoherence.

I actually don't always hate a movie that makes no sense, provided it's done with style, but that's another area where Immortal Enemy doesn't work. It makes heavy use of bad handheld, as though it's not confident enough in its own stunts, and the special effects aren't even trying half the time. It looks like what it is, an amateurish mess. Sometimes that can work, sometimes it can even get a cult following, but here, it's just a bizarre ramble, and for the biggest crime of all, it's a midnight movie that doesn't make incompetence fun.

The Devil's Backbone

2010-05-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

You know what's exciting? Good movies! A film which has imagery that sticks with you, genuine tension, a densely packed narrative that never feels over-stuffed, good performances and direction. Impressive for the era special effects that may have aged a bit badly, but are used in full recognition of this fact and just amp the tension by being mostly hidden. It feels like a long time since I've seen a movie that I've regarded as genuinely amazing - Bonnie And Clyde maybe - but finally, here's a picture that I think is among the best you can get. The Devil's Backbone is finally a film everyone should see.

Guillermo Del Toro describes this as the brother of his highly acclaimed and highly amazing - and fairly depressing - film Pan's Labyrinth, albeit from a few years before. This is an apt description, though it's hardly saying that the films are identical. Like siblings, you can tell that they come from roughly the same place, and if you didn't know who Del Toro was you could probably understand that he did both.

Like the later film, this is a personal story, using history and the supernatural as texture. Fernando Tielve is Carlos, a young kid whose parents were killed in the Spanish Civil War. He is sent to an orphanage, which is giving support to one side, and is haunted by ghost of a recently killed kid, with an undetonated bomb in the middle of the street. An extremely dense narrative spools out around the kid, as he is caught in the problems of adults which he cannot hope to understand.

One of the keys here is that there is a lot of tension, and as the film goes on it becomes clear that it's not a safe world that the characters inhabit. As a result, the tension becomes increasingly real, as even if it goes towards a karmically appropriate ending for the most villainous, it might not necessarily head towards a happy one. Tension is created because you begin to like the characters, but also know that nobody is safe in the world they inhabit.

It's also amazingly well acted, especially considering the sheer number of child actors on set. The adults have a great emotional depth as well - Federico Luppi as the kindly old man Dr. Casares needs to be singled out for his masterfully controlled performance, as he commands the screen and your respect even when he does nothing at all - and the performances are all as complex as the film itself is.

This is an astonishingly good movie, an example of what can happen when everyone involve gives some of their best work. It's classified as a horror movie, but it's got more depth than that simple description can provide. It is, more than anything else, about understanding, both the world around you and your own actions. Del Toro is one of the rare directors who can create spectacle, horror and action, but consistently have his characters be more memorable than the most elaborate set pieces he can devise. This is, finally, a movie everyone should see.

Bagdad Cafe

2010-05-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

The death of any film is when you have to ask if it's supposed to be funny. It's not a problem with comedies exclusively, if you find yourself confused about whether the director or writer, or writer/director in the case of Bagdad Cafe, intended for a scene to be comedic or not, it signifies that the film has failed. This is not to say that something has to telegraph it's intentions, or that even the same reaction has to be felt by every viewer, but that when you start questioning what you're supposed to get out of the picture, it takes you out of the action and makes it increasingly difficult to keep caring about what is happening in the film.

There are many moments in Bagdad Cafe where you wonder whether or not something is supposed to be funny. It starts from the first scene, where magical German lady Jasmine (Marianne Sägebrecht) breaks up with her remarkably sweaty husband (Hans Stadlbauer). The scene is edited in a frantic, slapstick way, suggesting I should be amused by it, but I was just annoyed by how poorly edited the whole thing was, and the camera angles which were completely bizarre. I wondered if I was supposed to be laughing, but the scene was more annoying than hilarious.

The film itself, about what happens when Jasmine finds her way into a remote gas station and warms the heart of shout-y angry owner Brenda (CCH Pounder) and her family, and causes Rudi Cox (Jack Palance, classing up the joint) to fall in love. At first everyone's angry and sad all the time, and then they suddenly warm to her and things become happier. It's fun, or it's supposed to be I'm assuming.

It's odd, because there are a few scenes in the film where it sort of works as a nice, unassuming slice of life film, following a few well meaning people as they begin to warm to each other. For the rest of it, I can see it trying to be funny, or at least amusing, but the entire thing falls flat and doesn't work properly. There are these odd sort-of running jokes that don't go anywhere (Germans like their coffee strong!) and some of the interactions seem like they're trying to be wacky but aren't somehow.

The only really remarkable thing it does is reverse the tired "magical black man" cliche by making it a magical white woman, teaching a bunch of black people to love each other and put on a magic show in a remote diner. That hurts it too, since it causes the character of Brenda to be introduced as abrasive for no good reason before she's best friends with the German lady. The pre- and post-Jasmine character transformations are fairly abrupt and unnatural, and Brenda has no reason to be a suspicious dick for the majority of the picture. Hell, the only reason given is that Germans are weird, they wear lederhosen! Better watch out for the Germans! (This is also used for some really limp drama and a real groaner of a line later on).

I didn't completely hate the film, some sequences were nice and there's a song which plays throughout which is sort of appealing in an '80s ballad kind of way. The problem is that it takes more than being nice, you've got to get people to care and be absorbed by the picture. I knew from the moment I asked whether or not it was supposed to be funny, I wouldn't be.

Angel

2010-05-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

Today's movie is Angel, but it's pretty awful so I don't want to talk about it. In short, it's badly shot, badly acted, badly written, and the only reason it was even on DVD is because it's about two gay guys.

That's what I want to talk about, the crap except there's some gay dudes problem. The DVD itself? It's filled with trailers for similarly just awful looking movies which try to sell themselves based on the fact that there are two men in the lead roles. They're irredeemable rubbish, sure, but hey look gay guys, you don't get to see gay guys in movies very often! Look, these guys are gay, just like you, they even have vague gay problems that could be easily substituted with a vague not-gay problem except then we couldn't base the entire production and marketing around the whole gay thing.

This is not to say that there aren't very good movies about gay people, there are many. Thing is, they're generally made by people who are just good at movies, full stop, and they aren't using homosexuality as a crutch to get attention. They can also take a situation that is not universal and make it sympathetic and understandable to an audience which doesn't share it. Brokeback Mountain, for an award-winning example, connects with people because it is an understandable, tragic love story. The main characters being men is important, but the emotions themselves are universal.

The problem with crap like this is that it isn't well written enough to be universal, isn't acted well enough for people to connect, and just plain isn't good enough to matter to anyone who isn't searching desperately for a movie about gay men (which I'm not). A good movie can be about just about anything, if it makes it compelling. A bad one often finds a gimmick and uses it as a crutch. Apparently there's an entire label dedicated to that, it's kind of sad.

Here's a last comment about the film itself: I knew the one character was bad because I read Mark Trail.

The Middle of the World

2010-05-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

I believe I've said many times before that I have never seen a bad Brazilian movie. I'm not sure if it was luck, a deep pool of talent, or just good selection for the films that leave the country, but I've been impressed by pretty much the entirety of their cinematic output until now. So, I'm not sure if I should be thrilled or disappointed that, for the first time ever, I've seen a Brazilian movie that I can't get behind, one I dare say is even, well, bad. The Middle of the World is a film I knew had to exist, being that no country is perfect, and even the best directors in the world have laid down some true stinkers in their time.

Immediately, however, I'm going to lessen the impact by saying that there are some very good things about this piece. It's beautifully shot, which makes me wonder if Brazil is somehow just really kind to film cameras and it's impossible to shoot a film badly there. The soundtrack is also excellent, and I was tempted to seek out several songs on it for my personal collection. There are good things here in both visuals and audio.

Given that it's a pretty film, it's clear that the problem has to be of a script based nature. The story, of a family bicycling across Brazil so the father of the household - or bikehold? - can find a job suitable for supporting them isn't necessarily bad on paper. In the mix is a bit of light teenage rebellion on the part of Antonio (Ravi Ramos Lacerda), who is discovering girls and that his father (Wagner Moura) is kind of an idiot - more on that later - and that he is finally blossoming into a real man, which is partially told through his ease of smoking cigarettes, which might make anti-tobacco activists rather unhappy. Also in the mix is Rose (Cláudia Abreu), who manages to bicycle, raise five kids and actually be somewhat useful to keeping the family alive in spite of not having a backbone for the majority of the picture.

So, of course, my problem rests on the shoulders of the father, Romao. Wagner Moura is a good actor, he's done a fantastic job in a number of films. Even here he manages to bring sympathetic qualities to a mostly unsympathetic character. Romao is stubborn, stupid, and a bit of an egoist. He searches in vain for a job that pays enough to feed his family, wandering from town to town on a fool's errand, not taking any job he sees as below his station. Until he finds that magical job, who makes the money to keep his family together? Well, not him, it's the rest of the family that works hard and keeps them from going hungry. Plus, when they find chances to make some and settle down, he makes them get on their bikes again, in search of his mythical job. He is essentially biking away from his responsibility, instead of confronting it. He's got pride, but is a coward.

He's also the core of the film, which is unfortunate since with such an unlikable character at the center it becomes difficult to get behind the journey. If the family was forced to move on due to circumstance as opposed to bald faced stupidity, it might have worked, but as is, not so much.

There's also the problem of the story of the kid. Lacerda is not as good an actor as Moura, and his quiet rebellion gets crowded out by Moura's dominating screen presence. He's just not a compelling enough personality to get any of the spotlight. A stronger kid in the same role could have contended a bit better, and had the conflict of personalities mean something. As is, they don't, and it's weakens the film as a whole.

Great sound and image do not a great film make, and while those elements work the film as a whole does not. It's a shame really, since I was hoping that Brazil's winning streak would continue. As it happens, they merely have a batting average much better than most countries, and that can't be discounted.

Andromedia

2010-05-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

I've probably mentioned it before, but I'm extremely fond of Takashi Miike, mostly because of his unpredictability. Perhaps this is due to his being insanely prolific, but his films aren't afraid to go off in bizarre directions and take unexpected turns. Nothing he does is surprising, even if he's making a vehicle for Japanese girl band Speed and their boy band buddies Da Pump. Andromedia isn't merely a star vehicle though, it's an experiment in fusing genres that nobody has ever thought to fuse.

On one hand it's a heartfelt drama about adolescence and getting a second chance with someone you love. Kenji Harada is Yu, and Hiroko Shimabukuro is Mai. They're young lovers and old friends, coming to terms with their blossoming sexuality and young bliss. Takako Uehara is Mai's friend Rika, who secretly loves Yu and is jealous. Tragically, Mai is run over by a bus, in a scene that I hate to admit I laughed extremely loudly at, and everyone is sad, until she is reincarnated as a magical computer program by her dad.

That leads neatly to the other hand, which is a wacky computer-based espionage comedy in the vein of Hackers and Masterminds, with the same mix of "OMG computers!", hilariously juvenile evil CEOs (Christoper Doyle, also known as a very good cinematographer. Cinematography and acting do not require the same skill set, as soon becomes obvious by his overblown performance), and instantly dated and ridiculous CGI. Mai inhabits a world of Tetris blocks, sheets of quickly scrolling binary and all the "Holy crap, computers!" you can think of post-accident, and is being chased by the evil CEO and Satoshi (Ryo Kataro), her half brother who has a brain tumor and an unclear role in the proceedings.

Also, there's a boy band music video in the middle, because there's a boy band there, that's what they do, why not?

It might seem like touching drama and action/comedy are two genres you would never expect to see in a hybrid. There is a good reason for this, the tonal shifts are utterly bizarre, and you often feel as though there are two movies going on simultaneously. Not helping is the overwhelming late-80sness of the proceedings - the movie was released in 1998, but it feels really 80s in style and substance. I never realized that the one thing Masterminds needed was more high school drama.

I wish it could have just been about the kids coming to terms with their friends' death, but there has to be that pesky explanation for that ghost. On the other hand, I sort of enjoyed the cheesy hackerspoitation aspects, in the same way I enjoy Hackers and Masterminds in spite of their terrible execution. I love movies about computers by people who have only heard of computers from second-hand sources, and this is no exception, the joyously bizarre attempts to visualize what happens in your machine is a joy to behold each and every time.

One element that doesn't work is Hiroko Shimabukuro. Like in most vehicles for people who made their name singing, Shimabukuro is utterly unconvincing as a human being. Now, I actually thought this was an intentional choice on the part of the performer, since she's not a human and supposed to be learning her way around being in a computer, but she seems to be reading off of cue cards. This would be fine if she could read out loud, but it honestly sounds like a fifth grader reading a report to class. As I said, it sort of works in the computer, but there are scenes where she's playing a real person, and she still does it.

Andromedia could have easily been unwatchable, and it is nevertheless very stupid, but I have to say I can't hate it. It's too out there, trying to meld genres that really don't go together very well. It has some good elements, some good imagery, and it's by my favorite hyper-prolific Japanese director. I enjoy watching it, but I hate to say, it's a very stupid movie. But, considering what it was designed for - a vehicle for bands - it's certainly better than Spice World.

Morvern Callar

2010-04-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

It started with moving images. Later on, it sound was combined with the images. In essence, all film can be reduced to moving images and sound, and the interplay between the two forces is what makes the base on which all film is built. Sometimes, films are made where the value of the work can be reduced to the ways the sound and image play off each other, such as in Morvern Callar.

The film one expects when they hear the storyline and the film that results, in this case, are two completely different things. The story goes that Morvern Callar, played by Samantha Morton, finds her boyfriend has killed himself on Christmas Eve, leaving behind an unpublished manuscript and a mix tape. Callar decides to change the name on the manuscript to her own, and also go partying as her boyfriend decomposes on the living room floor. Now, take everything you might expect from that premise, and forget about it, because the plot merely gives a rough direction and a bit of imagery.

What you get instead is a pure mood piece. The dialog is sparse, the plotting moreso, and it takes a good 30 minutes before much really happens, story-wise. That's because the story exists to give a direction, not to actually dictate events. We are let into the world of Callar through Morton's performance, the suspiciously perfect mix-tape, and the sublime mix of sound and image.

What is the mood it creates? Well, it's a mix of moody depression and light creepiness, and not just because Callar's boyfriend sits on the living room floor for so long. The film is mostly about grief, trying to convey that sense of loss simply through the power of cinema. Anyone expecting to find anything of a story will be disappointed, as will anyone unwilling to be absorbed into a picture which wants to convey an idea over a coherent plot.

If you're willing, it's an easy film to get lost in. It is beautifully shot, the music selection is amazing - apart from one song I generally can't stand that is nonetheless wholly appropriate for the scene - and while it can sometimes can seem inscrutable, it's easy to see the ideas and the pure thought that went into the overall atmosphere. It's a very different kind of movie, and one that might not be for all people, but it is worth exploring and giving a chance.

Amores Perros

2010-04-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

This year at Cannes, for the first time ever, director Alejandro González Iñárritu is going to debut a movie not written by Guillermo Arriaga. I'm excited, because Inarritu is a top flight filmmaker who really needs to get someone else writing screenplays for him. Not that I hate Arriaga, but he's kind of a one trick pony, as evidenced by their first collaboration, Amores Perros.

So, as you should already know, it's a film about several characters tied together by one central event. In this case, a big, really nicely executed car crash that opens the film. It's caused by dog fighter/douchebag Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal) who did some stupid things while trying to get money to run away with his abusive douchebag brother's wife (Marco Perez as the brother, Vanessa Bauche as the wife). He runs into successful model and owner of an astonishingly stupid dog Valeria (Goya Toledo) who has really shrill arguments with her man Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero), who just separated from his wife so they could live together in an apartment with a hole in the floor and an amazing view of the successful model's legs. Saving the best for last, there is also the Hobo Assassin (Emilio Echevarría), who goes around being awesome with his pack of wild dogs and his regrets.

So, we have three stories crammed together into one film, all about how love screws you in some way (a translation of the title is Love's a Bitch). While it's the beginning of the collaboration, having seen this film last of the three that director and writer collaborated on, it's familiar ground that they will pretty much draw all life out of following this. While it's handled in a relatively clever way in 21 Grams, and there is a lot more of it in Babel, between the three films they have done pretty much everything possible with the structure.

The question with this is, does this need the structure at all? Two of the three stories could do perfectly fine as a stand alone feature. The douchbag dogfighter chapter needs a bit of fleshing out post-accident and it's will do fine. It feels more familiar than the other two, but it would certainly work well as a film of its own. It's got an interesting perspective on a battered wife that doesn't really get explored enough - why is she so loyal, for instance?

The best chapter, however, is that of the Hobo Assassin. Never mind how cool he is - there's a scene where he goes over a hill with obligatory ass-kicking music and his hobo cart and feral dogs, it subverts cool action hero cliches and is completely awesome in its own right. Where was I? Oh right, it doesn't matter that he's just cool, he's got a compelling story, the arc of his assassination attempts on a rich guy with greasy hair is compelling and there's a bit more that can be done with the characters involved in the assassination plot. He is, on his own, much more interesting and compelling than every other character in the story, and really deserves a complete two hours rather than having to compete with two other stories.

So, why doesn't the accident victim deserve an entire film devoted to her? Well, it's a big dead weight in the middle of the film. For some reason, Arriaga writes people who have recently been in debilitating and life ruining accidents as shrill, screaming morons without common sense. This was especially apparent in Babel, but it's pretty bad here, as the character of Valeria - who should be at least a little sympathetic - wears out her welcome early and then wastes away any remaining good will by just being annoying, until being annoying and jealous. Her boyfriend bitch slapped by the screenplay, as it seems to suggest that he got what he deserved for leaving his perfect in every way wife, who is on screen for so little we don't understand why he left her. They're not very interesting characters, and then they make themselves hateful, Valeria especially taking what should be an identifiable character and ruining her with shouting, pettiness and jealousy. It smells of someone wanting to focus on the victim, and then trying in vain to make a story around a woman sitting in a wheel chair with a stupid dog underneath the floor boards for some reason, by trying to incite marital drama that has no need to exist.

That said, this was mostly a good movie, and the dead weight in the middle is prime opportunity for a bathroom break or to get some snacks. It does make me think that the Inarritu/Arriaga partnership needed to end. Inarritu is just too good of a filmmaker to keep making these same pictures over and over again. I wonder what he can do with a narrative that's a bit more focused. Arriaga needs the confidence to fit only one story in his pictures, as the timeline-jumbling everyone-is-connected thing got stale quickly and smells of someone who doesn't have enough confidence in his own work to follow through with an idea. Someone needs to do a proper, feature length film focusing entirely on the Hobo Assassin, he really deserves to shine.

Bonnie and Clyde

2010-04-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

The mark of a true innovator is how common their innovations become after they do them. Dede Allen, who died earlier this week, was a true innovator. Action films are cut like Bonnie and Clyde, her use of jump cuts and edits as pacing are pretty much staples now, and it seems hard to believe that the work she edited was not cut like that before she came along. How many other editors have gotten as many loving tributes as she has had during the past week? How many editors are even recognized at all? That tells you just how much of a ground breaker she was. It's appropriate that, by sheer coincidence, I had Bonnie and Clyde cued up for this week, since this a large part of the reason she has gotten the recognition she has.

Bonnie and Clyde is one of those films where, if you come 20 years after the fact, you're not going to quite get what the fuss was about. This isn't a knock against the movie, but more an observation of just how much film was influenced by it. You hear about its groundbreaking editing, filming style and the innovative and visceral way it handled violence. Then you watch it and think, yeah, it's good, but it's hard to appreciate that once upon a time not all films were like this. If it changed the face of film, it did so in a way that everyone has since copied, to such an extent that it's difficult to appreciate how different it was at the time.

That is not to say that this makes the film worse. There is a very good reason why everyone has been influenced by this little film about violence and sexual frustration. The story is one that has captivated people since Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow started robbing banks and being sexy. Warren Beatty's Clyde is a charming ne'rdowell who Faye Dunaway's Bonnie spots trying to steal her mothers car. Lightly turned on by the danger this charming stranger represents, Bonnie decides to follow him and his impressive gun, and they start robbing banks and styling themselves as a modern day Robin Hood. They bring along C.W. Moss (Michael J. Parsons), a kid from a gas station who they convince that robbery will be fun, Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and his screaming wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), and go around robbing banks and getting in violent shootouts. Then, things go quite badly, though everyone knows this because the story is pretty famous.

The film is entirely about sex, and the violence is presented as simply sexual urges expressed in a different way. We get a clear indication that this is the intent from the first robbery, as Bonnie can't keep her hands off of Clyde after he does some good old fashioned armed robbery. As he spurns her advances it becomes steadily more violent, until finally they do the deed and they are no longer seen armed. It's a clever way to approach sex in a society that fears it to no end, and somewhat disconcerting that bodies full of holes are acceptable while a nipple still sparks outrage.

Okay, this is not historically accurate, fine. It doesn't have any desire to be, it uses near-legends to express a point, and it's probably better for it. The real Bonnie and Clyde had a much less tidy story arc to them, and while an entire television series could be made of their exploits, one movie is a bit of a stretch. Considering that sex played into the legend as it was, it's entirely appropriate that a sex-themed film was centered around them.

It's not perfect, but nothing is. The real Blanche Barrow objected to Estelle Parsons making her look like a screaming ass, and she's right. Yes, she won an Oscar, though if your objective was to look like a screaming ass it was a good job. That's pretty much the only thing I didn't like about it, but I've never been a fan of the constantly screaming woman character.

The passage of time might mean it's hard to see what was so innovative about Bonnie and Clyde, but that's fine. It hasn't dulled what makes it a good movie, and at the end of the day, innovation only matters if the innovations catch on. Bonnie and Clyde's innovations did, and it remains an excellent movie on top of it. So it's everything you might have expected, it's just hard to see right away.

American History X

2010-04-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

I mentioned before that I live in an area where every black man is either a doctor or a football player. It's a factoid that puts me at arm's length from the specific breed of racism often explored in American films, though not from racism in general - my area has very real problems with racism against aboriginal people, just look up Jim Pankiw for a clear and shameful example - but maybe it gives necessary perspective to see the narrative problems in American films exploring the subject. Let's take a look at American History X, which tries so hard to tell a message the narrative gets lost.

Edward Furlong is Danny, a punk kid with neo-nazi leanings, something he learned from his brother Derek, played by Edward Norton. Derek was a neo-nazi kingpin of sorts, finding lost and confused kids like himself, and getting them to unite in anger against a common enemy, anyone who isn't a white guy. Danny narrates the story of Derek's redemption, as he learns that being a racist prick isn't actually a good idea, and through the power of a wacky laundry man in prison, stops being racist. There's a message about how racism is inherited from the people you trust most, and how people who look up to you are influenced by your actions.

It's a difficult subject to take on, and if I'm completely honest, I don't actually think it works very well here. Much like Crash years later, it has the problem of wanting to make sure there is no possible way to misinterpret the story. As a result, there are a lot of speeches punctuated by actions which underscore how you are supposed to feel during any given scene. It might as well have big flashing signs telling you what you are supposed to feel at any given moment.

Not saying it needs ambiguity - it's not an ambiguous subject - but would a bit of subtlety and nuance be too much to ask? The majority of racist people aren't shooting people and doing lengthy speeches about why anyone who isn't the same as them is bad, they're much more subtle about what their actions. It's a subject that requires subtlety, because going over the top doesn't allow people to realize what, exactly, they're doing in their own lives that might be a little bit racist.

It's interesting that director Tony Kaye wanted his name off of it, saying that Edward Norton took over and re-edited the film to make himself look good. Even if he did, I've got to say, this film would be nothing without Norton. If the script is filled with heavy-handed speechifying, it's speechifying that gives Norton an extremely difficult job. He has to straddle the line between being a sympathetic character we root for and a horrible person, yet make both sides believable. His transformation would not have worked without a bit of subtle kindness in the before. It's a minefield of a role, as tipping too far on one side could make the rest completely unbelievable.

I almost wonder if films like American History X and Crash are well regarded not because of their narrative quality, but because there's a feeling of immense guilt among the population of the US about how black people are treated. Every time a halfway decent movie about the dangers of racism comes along, it's always considered quality, even winning Oscars, no matter how heavy handed it might be. The message here is good, and I like the idea of how people influence the views of each other, but I can't help but wish for a bit less heavy-handedness, a bit less speechifying, and a bit more subtlety. The message would still be clear, but I can't help but think it would make for a much more compelling approach.

All About Eve

2010-04-16T06:18:00.000-07:00

The trouble with legitimate classics is that it's always such a struggle to say anything interesting. Everyone knows that All About Eve is a good film already, and the story and title have been referenced in such an odd assortment of ways that the story is pretty much part of the culture by now. What more is there to say about it?

The story of Eve has shown up so many places that it's almost a cliche, though I imagine it was much more original in 1950. Anne Baxter plays Eve, who is, at first appearance, a naive young woman star struck by Margo Channing, played by woman with eyes that make boys think she's a spy, Bette Davis. Channing is already insecure about getting older and aging her way out of the parts that provide her bread and butter. Then, Eve comes along, and is the most perfect assistant in the world, and really seems like an adoring fan who just wants to be around her famous friend. Eventually Eve is cast as an understudy, and is revealed to be a brilliant actor, mostly because all that crap about being a naive fan who wants to be around her favorite star is effectively bullshit. Eventually the audience sees it all, and it culminates in an ending which has a bit of subtle karmic retribution woven in.

It's an engaging story, and the characters themselves have a level of depth and interest that is not always present in the ripoffs. Eve, Margo and the rest all are human characters, with their own insecurities, desires, and needs. They behave like people, and even the sympathetic ones can be jerks, and believably so. It's also clever how it introduces Eve herself, even knowing how the film ends Baxter plays her in a very likable manner, leading on to think she's not so bad. You begin to understand the choices made and the character of the individuals involved, it all makes sense.

That said, it's certainly a wordy thing. Not that lots of dialogue is a bad thing necessarily - and one scene where I questioned not just doing a straight up flashback had to be filmed in that manner once the entire context was known - but there are moments where scenes go on for one or two lines too long, or there's a bit of an unnecessary info dump to establish characters in the beginning which I didn't think really added much. There's a sense that Joseph L. Mankiewicz was so in love with his script that he didn't want to cut a word, so sometimes there are moments of simple redundancy.

Yet, saying that, it is REALLY GOOD dialog, so I can't complain too loudly. Even with scenes that go a few lines too long, I notice that the lines are still really clever, witty ones, and I can't say I'd be too thrilled about a cut were I in Mankiewicz' shoes. Like the characters, I fully understand the faults, though faults they remain.

The funny thing about the entire enterprise is that it has a pretty simple message at the end, one about people themselves. It presents a narrative about people, and flawed as we all are, we do need each other. Those who use others as a means to an end are successful yet unfulfilled, those who give others a place in their lives are still successful, but more importantly, much happier than those who don't. Flaws and all, we need each other, so don't be a dick.

A Huey P. Newton Story

2010-04-13T07:08:00.000-07:00

Spike Lee, much like Woody Allen last week, is wildly inconsistent. Yet, somehow, I think this might be his best quality, since he's inconsistent mostly because he'll try anything that might be interesting. Yes, he's got common themes, mostly involving racial identity, but he's willing to express these themes in a variety of different ways. So, here's Lee filming a one man show for television (MaR, not just theatrical releases here!), A Huey P. Newton Story.

The story, of a story, is this story. Huey P. Newton (Roger Guenveur Smith) is a co-founder and leader of the Black Panthers. Here, he sits in a chair, smokes, and tells stories about his life, his beliefs, and what it means to be a black man in the world, and the problems that black people face in the current world and in the past, and why change needs to happen. He sometimes rambles off topic, sometimes seems to stutter, but is often engaging, funny, and the message has a real point to it.

I've undersold it, and I admit that. A summary can't sell a one man show, it's all about the actor doing it. Roger Guenveur Smith is a good actor. He's constantly engaging, bringing a neurotic chemistry to the role, stringing together serious points along with jokes, poetry, and an appreciation for history and literature. He's just fascinating to watch all around, something that he has to be in order to carry a show which is basically him talking for an hour and a half. He sells it, and makes it worthwhile.

So, what does Spike Lee do here? He doesn't have to do anything, he can have a static camera and it'd still be worth watching, Smith is that engaging. Lee, however, brings archive film into the background, constantly plays around with the camera and keeps looking for alternate ways of capturing Smith's performance. It doesn't detract in any way, and some of the archival footage provides context. It's not strictly necessary, but it doesn't hurt, and I imagine for some who might get impatient with a man talking for an hour and a half they provide some interest.

I didn't need that though, Smith sells it well enough that he's all I needed to get the film. Yes, I'm a pudgy white guy from an area where the only black people are doctors and football players. I'm about as far from the target audience as you can get. Yet, I was engaged, and I understood more about Huey P. Newton than I had before, and I was more interested in the Civil Rights movement than I had been before. If that was the goal, then consider A Huey P Newton a success.

The Brothers Grimm

2010-04-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

In this world, there are many things that should have been great. Among those things is today's entry, The Brothers Grimm. In the starring roles, Matt Damon, who remains one of the most likable screen presences out there, and the late Heath Ledger, who, in spite of having some monumentally poor choices in roles, was a frequently engaging screen presence. In the director's chair was Terry Gilliam, who, in spite of famously bad luck, has an arresting visual sense and a taste for the whimsical and the macabre. Who could be more suited to a movie inspired by the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales, which are all bizarre and twisted? This should have been a fantastic film.

Should have.

So, what went wrong? The story itself isn't a bad idea. Damon and Ledger are the Brothers Grimm, who, instead of collecting folk tales are engaged in being paranormal investigators and con men. Knowing this, French general Delacombe (Jonathan Pryce) gets them to investigate another seeming paranormal scam, which might not be a scam after all, and make those silly Germans believe in logic and reason over fairy tales. Included in the mix are about ten billion references to other fairy tales, and a story that gets lost in its own ideas.

That's part of the problem really, it's got many ideas, but it doesn't know what to do with them. It's over thought, making a conscious effort to tie in as much fairy tale and references in as possible before the story ends. It is trying very hard to do as much as it can to remind everyone that it's a film called the Brothers Grimm and about fairy tales.

The other part of the problem seems to be that someone, somewhere along the line realized that holy crap, it is a script lost very far in its own ideas and as a result a bit weak. As a result, everything is cranked up to 11, from the visuals - which are grim and frightening and certainly nightmare material - to the acting. Oh god, the acting.

Peter Stormare, who plays Cavaldi, a French...something, deserves his very own paragraph for his... whatever this is. He is completely incomprehensible, and flails around wildly and incoherently, trying desperately to bring something to the screen. I am completely confused by what the hell he's trying to do. He's just this distracting screen presence, as he flies around in a fit of pure insanity. While Ledger blubbers and Pryce hops between having a bad French accent and being a sniveling villain, Stormare is just bizarre.

So, it's got nightmare material looks and performances that are completely mad, it doesn't really have a core to it. The story is so lost in the ideas that the actual plot doesn't make sense. What should be something of an engaging romp becomes an unintentional horrorshow. The people involved should have lead to great film, but it isn't. Cursed potential.

Alice

2010-04-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

When I first started watching Alice, the idea was that I would not be obligated to write about it. Thing is, this had become something of a chore - part of the reason I went on a brief hiatus already - and I wanted to rediscover why I kept writing about these films, and maybe enjoy watching them again. Without that obligation, I was somehow free to actually enjoy Alice again, and was so bursting with things to say about the film that I couldn't leave this little project alone. Hooray!

Don't take that to say Alice is an unimpeachable work of staggering genius though.

What it is, is a Woody Allen film from 1990. If there's one thing everyone can agree with about Allen is that he's kind of a creepy old man. However, a second thing everyone can agree on is that his work tends to be wildly inconsistent, as he tries to do a film a year whether he needs to or not. Did 1990 need Alice? Well, maybe.

Alice is Mia Farrow, a lovely attractive wealthy lady married to slightly sleepy Doug (William Hurt) - I've come to realize that Hurt is the sleepiest actor ever, though it helps here. She lives in a world of pedicures, shopping and superficiality, and is shocked to the core when she meets Joe - played real life Joe, Joe Mantegna - who is interesting and prone to wearing more casual clothes and playing the saxophone - Allen desperately wants to make the saxophone unbearably sexy, possibly because he... isn't. She goes to visit a mystical Chinese Yoda substitute named Dr. Yang (Keye Luke), who proceeds to give her magical drugs which help her learn about herself, provide convenient ways of moving the story forward, and eventually lead to an utterly painful party scene late film.

Alice, both the character and the film, are very silly. Ghosts, hallucinations, opium dreams and an invisibility tonic all work to guide her into "finding herself", which apparently means making a weak attempt at being a writer and shagging an Italian guy. It tries a bit too hard to make a point about the superficiality and wealth, and Hurt's character is played as so much of a dick that the climactic choice seems hollow. Chinese Yoda is a bit too convenient and to get the story moving, which saps a lot of the humanity from the story. Plus, his collection of whatever herbs are way too convenient, and a cop out when what is really needed is strong plotting.

That said, the film is often funny, there are some good shots, and when Allen trusts himself with these characters, rather than losing his way in supernatural BS, it has moments of beauty and genius. It's just that he doesn't seem to trust himself as much as a guy who had, at that point, made several beloved comedies. It is like Alice herself, stuck in superficial things and not willing to trust itself to just let these characters move in a natural manner.

In essence, the problem I have is that the supernatural doesn't add anything and is used as a crutch, and a good movie could be made by simply getting rid of the lot and instead focusing on the core characters and their relationships. It has moments of good, make no mistake, but it is too timid and uncertain to have a full two hours of good.

2010-03-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

Normally there would be an entry here, but a storm of real world adventures means MaR will go on temporary hiatus! Until April(-ish).

Distant

2010-03-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

The following is entitled "Why I watched only an hour of Distant, and why that doesn't necessarily mean it's a failure."

Distant is interesting in that the title is both a description of the plot and a summary of the filming style of the work. Distant is, well, distant. It's filmed in predominantly static medium-length takes. It deliberately keeps you away from the characters and the events in their lives. It has this really bizarre effect of keeping the audience in the position of a voyeur, especially since what little movement the camera does do is akin to CCTV. It's an interesting effect.

The story too, is about distant people. Emin Toprak is Yusef, who needs a job but is generally unfocused. Muzaffer Özdemir is Mahmut, who has a job he finds unfulfilling. Together they solve crimes! No, they just live together for a while and gradually get on each others' nerves. And then I quit watching, so there's probably something else that happens to give the film a bit more dramatic thrust. It does capture the mild annoyance inherent in living with someone you don't like that much.

So, in effect, you're stalking boring people, and director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has an interesting idea as a whole. He wants to capture light tension and remote people, and he does. He doesn't get under the character's skin, he just observes, which gives a lot more insight into their character than you might expect. It's an interesting attempt and certainly different

It's also really boring, and the hour I did watch felt like a decade. But, maybe that's the point? If it's intentionally boring, does that really count as a failure? I didn't enjoy a moment, but I did see what Ceylan was going for, and I actually think he did succeed. I just couldn't take it for another moment. It's strange, I genuinely didn't enjoy this movie, but I can't call it bad, it's too purposeful to be taken as crap.

All About Ah-Long

2010-03-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when you see a movie, you think it's fantastic. Sometimes, you think it's terrible. Other times, you think it's quite good, but is in dire need of a remake. In the third category is All About Ah-Long, which is in essence a very good movie, but has a couple of things wrong with it that could be easily fixed.

The story is, for the most part, not one of them. Chow Yun Fat is the titular character, a truck driver and failed motorcycle racer who is raising his slightly obnoxious son Porky (Kwan Yuen Wang) on his own. One day, Porky catches the eye of Sylvia (Sylvia Chang) who happens to be the casting director for a series of advertisements. Oh, and she's also Ah-Long's ex and the mother of Porky, as she finds out much to her surprise.

It's an interesting take on the bond between parents, as Porky begins to bond with his new found mother and unknowingly causes a bit of jealousy in the father he's known and cared about for the last ten years. The young actor in the role is pretty good at being an admittedly obnoxious little brat who remains quite likable. The film as a whole is quite emotionally complex, with characters having to deal with their resentment towards one another competing with their love of this little brat. It's the kind of thing that works partially because it's a universal concern, since everyone has parents, most have lovers and many have kids. The relationships here are strong, and as they make up the core of the movie, it could easily be remade to be even better.

So why do I want it remade? Well, first, it's the 80s, so the soundtrack's bad, and the film stock is poor. That's admittedly nitpicking, there's precisely one reason I want this film remade, and that's the ending. See, there's a scene immediately before the final scene that involves a plane taking off that has a nice bit of ambiguity, is slightly sad, and is the most appropriate way for the film to end up. Then, there's a tacked on motorcycle race, which just screws with the characters you've grown to like over the past hour and a half, makes stupid plays at big emotions, manufactures a rivalry seemingly out of thin air and generally makes the movie retroactively worse. The scene before was lightly melancholic, this tries way too hard to be sad and becomes almost comical in the process. The sheer amount of punishment Ah-Long receives is obnoxious, everyone gets a big emotional moment that's overdone, and it also happens to make the race look like the worst run motorcycle race in the history of racing. I'd like to forget it ever happened.

With a remake, I can! Get to it someone, make a film of Ah-Long but change that stupid ending and give the world a solid film. It's a mostly good movie, I'm sure that with the right script and the stupid motorcycle race excised forever, we can have one of the better examples of a film about the bonds of family, the way people change over the years, the conflict that happens when parents split, and so on. 90% of this film is genuinely fantastic. 10% is godawful. One little remake could change those percentages completely.

Aladdin

2010-03-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

Disney is an odd beast. On one hand, pop in a DVD of one of their movies, and it becomes immediately apparent that they are a coldly commercial operation, using their brand to sell all manner of irredeemable garbage - including the awful direct to DVD sequels to this movie, Aladdin - to their constant attempts to squeak every dollar out of every film they make. On the other hand, they also happen to have earned that brand, by making some of the most beloved children's films of all time.

Aladdin, for example, came during an era when Disney had rediscovered how to make really good movies. The Littlest Mermaid, the Lion King and especially Beauty of the Beast managed to bring the Disney brand back to the forefront, win awards, and be genuinely fantastic films all at the same time. Not for 30 years had Disney had a winning streak like they did in the early 90s.

They did this by finding a good formula, which they use more often than not (though I think The Lion King avoided it). First step was finding a love story, often involving a headstrong young woman, an enraptured young man, someone evil and a bunch of magic on the periphery. So, we have princess Jasmine, who won't marry anyone even though it's an archaic law. In comes Aladdin, who lives on the street. Evil someone Jafar needs him to get a magic genie lamp for reasons that aren't entirely clear, and with the lamp Aladdin gets Robin Williams to grant him three wishes, mostly devoted to getting laid. Oh, and there's lots of catchy music, so buy the soundtrack, since it's Disney and your experience is not complete without an assortment of merchandise (ironically, the film opens with a man selling crap. Way to get back at corporate!)

Yeah, it's a formula, but Disney is really good at the formula. They've won Oscars with that formula, made millions of dollars, and then it helped them basically become the most irrelevant part of their own studio after Pixar figured out how to work outside it. It works here because you've got a hero and heroine that you root for, and Disney's so adept at making animation that you care. The animation here is beautiful, expressive and detailed. The visual gags keep it interesting and it's clear the studio gives a crap about the look of the film. This is good.

What isn't good, in this case, is how annoying the picture is. The blame for this can be placed squarely on two men - though the casting director who put them in the roles isn't innocent either. First, Gilbert Gottfried as Iago. On one hand, the voice suits the character, a slightly obnoxious evil parrot. On the other hand, Gilbert Gottfried sounds like a cat being assaulted while being dragged across a blackboard. He has the worst voice in the world, and should find a nice career where he never has to talk again. Nothing against the man, he's cursed with that sound, but god he should have been a mime or something.

Second, Robin Williams as the genie. Robin Williams can be a good actor, this is in the realm of possibility. Unfortunately, he's often allowed to go off and do a million impressions and wacky voices in a breathless free-associative ramble with the slightest encouragement. Some people find this amusing, I find it very annoying, and it's what he does here, with the help of animation to give a visual accompaniment. It is like what I imagine Robin Williams' head to be like, all flashing neon, bizarre pop culture cues and enough voices to fill a large sized truck. I hate it when that happens, and I found myself getting quite tired of the Genie's shtick very early on.

For a kids movie you can do worse, and it does have that trademark really beautiful animation to fall back on - plus, not every scene features the genie, which is nice. But, for a kids movie, even limiting yourself to Disney movies of the same era, you can also do a lot better.

Alex Rider: Stormbreaker

2010-03-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

If one's taste can be skewered by their early experiences, there's no question James Bond changed mine. My love of British things, my love of action movies, my love of bombastic musical scores, my love of elaborate flash, all of it can be traced directly back at watching Bond films on CTV during their annual big marathons. As a result, at 14, I had the idea for an exciting action movie about the child of Bond, starring me! This was in spite of neither being athletic or an actor, but escapist fantasy is, by definition, mostly unrelated to reality. While it doesn't star me, someone did essentially make that movie, and they called it Alex Rider: Stormbreaker.

They called him Alex Rider - played by Alex Pettyfer - but he's the son of a James Bond-esque secret agent played by Ewan McGregor in a surprisingly brief role. Bond is killed, and Alex is brought in Alan Blunt (Bill Nighy, who is acting in bulk) and MI:6 (which includes Jimmy Carr, who as an actor, makes a great dead-eyed panel-show guest), which needs another way in to the compound of one Darrius Sayle (Mickey Rourke, in eyeliner and dressed like a pimp). Yes, it is irresponsible to send a 14 year old to be a super spy and possibly kill people - something pointed out by Alex's caretaker Jack, played by an Alicia Silverstone who is still, sadly, recovering from the career coma induced by appearing in Batman and Robin. The standard Bond tropes apply, there's a dastardly plan to kill everyone, big elaborate sets, ridiculous henchmen - albeit here played by actors who are hamming it up to the MAX - some decent action and plenty of great set pieces. Unlike Bond films, it also has a moral about bullying. Yes kids, if you bully someone they'll try to murder everyone, and you'll become really fat like Robbie Coltrane.

In some ways, it's basically a Roger Moore Bond film. Not completely serious, plenty of edits to make it acceptable for younger teens, and a plot that keeps rolling and provides lots of opportunities for good action and excitement. Some fight scenes are clearly edited to get a PG, but as James Bond's non-union equivalent, it does the job admirably. Since it has literally every actor working in Britain in a bit part, there are a lot of familiar faces and good performances - if Q returns to real Bonds, he should be Stephen Fry - and while some people get a bit ridiculous, I've seen real Bond films that are worse.

That's actually the best thing about Stormbreaker. It follows the formula to perfection, but there are entries in the actual series that don't do it as well. This has better pacing and more appropriate tone than Moonraker, Pettyfer is a better actor than George Lazenby, the evil plot is significantly more interesting, coherent, and better executed than Die Another Day, and the villains significantly more threatening and complex than anyone in The Man With The Golden Gun.

Another good thing is that it doesn't talk down to the kids. Fine, the moral of the story is a bit silly, but Rider is a smart, witty young man, the overall tone is catches that the kids it's being pitched at are starting to get more serious, and it does the dastardly plan thing as well as any other film with one. It's just a well paced, nicely made action film, except with a younger hero.

About the worst I can say about it is it's just another action movie, except pitched a bit younger. But, if I'm honest, it took me back to when I was 14, and I wanted nothing more than to be the centre of a massive action film with explosions, car chases, and guns. Bond films might have skewed my tastes a lot, but as a result, I can even appreciate the knockoffs. And hell, it doesn't hurt that the knockoff is just as good or better as some of the examples of the real thing.

Casino Royale

2010-03-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

Reboots are basically an admission that you failed. A successful franchise doesn't need a reboot, and if you're going in that direction you're basically assuming that everyone agrees your franchise is dead in the water. So, after the awful Die Another Day, it was a welcome announcement to hear that the James Bond series would get a fresh approach and cease to suck. The reboot in question, Casino Royale did in fact manage to revitalize the series, and using a template from an unexpected source.

See, the Bond series had been rebooted before - though they didn't bother to get a new actor at that time - and in much the same way. Like Die Another Day, Moonraker was pants-on-head retarded, and someone in charge saw that, in spite of the decent numbers, something had to be done. You can't just go to space for no obvious reason and expect a series to top it. As a result, For Your Eyes Only took a gritty approach. The plot would be realistic, Bond would be crueler, and the filming style would abandon the lighthearted muckety muck of the last four Roger Moore installments. Yes, they didn't actually have enough balls to fire Moore, but it went grittier, darker, and better all around. Incidentally, it actually convinced me that Moore was a fairly good Bond overall, a position I maintained until watching every Moore film. Now, I believe he was good in For Your Eyes Only, but generally pretty awful.

While Die Another Day didn't go to space, it did have an invisible car, and once you go invisible you've reached that ridiculous wall, again. So, they went the For Your Eyes Only route, again, except they didn't pussyfoot around this time. Pierce Brosnan was out, replaced with the gruffer Daniel Craig. It would go from being about being about an experienced and suave spy to a cocksure amateur. They wouldn't get rid of Judi Dench - because Judi Dench is just plain awesome - but they would make the spy action a lot grittier, more realistic, and with a stripped down reliance on gadgets. The experiment worked, and the series was saved forever.

In fact, action movies were saved, because finally someone dared to make a film which didn't rely solely on CGI to replace practical stuntwork. The breathtaking parkour sequence, for example, was done with real people actually jumping from great heights. The human movement is something that CGI has consistently failed to achieve, and as a result we have a sequence that is genuinely tense. The knowledge that these are real people doing real stunts just enhances the program.

A strange thing is that it also proved that basing an entire film around a high stakes poker game could work, provided there were enough distractions on the way. It keeps the tension high, even though the premise as a whole is ridiculous and requires an exposition man to keep the audience on track with the rules of cards. The entire purpose is to have a backbone on which to build tension, and it succeeds in that.

That said, the film isn't perfect, and to be honest simply doesn't know where to end. It seems as though it should stop somewhere in the middle of the almost happy ending, but then the movie keeps going, barreling headfirst into a final big action sequence. Great, you might think, but for a good portion of the film before that it seems to be wrapping up. Perhaps it's a way to lull the audience into the same sense of complacency as the hero, but instead one feels the need to gather their jacket or find the DVD case, as the film is plainly over.

For myself, I can't help but think the entire last sequence would have been better placed at the beginning of the next movie, for it would be as much of a shock, and also remind the audience of the stakes of the game. Now, the next movie in general wasn't as well written or Casino Royale, and often seemed like a delivery system for action scenes rather than a coherent story - it's a rare film that works just as well if you replace the soundtrack with your own - but I think having the audience reminded again of who and why Bond was out for revenge would have been to it's merit.

Nonetheless, this is arguably one of the best action films of the decade. It justifies reboots, and it was the first time in a while it seemed like someone at the helm of the Bond series knew what they were doing. For a life long Bond fan, that didn't come a moment too soon, I don't think I could have taken another Die Another Day.

Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro

2010-02-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

If there's one person on earth who knows what makes a good family film, it's Hayao Miyazaki. Take Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, for example. If I was 10, I would be watching this movie every day. Even now, long after I was 10, this is still a great time that pretty much anyone can enjoy. It's perfect for that age when you can handle a bit more action and a bit more drama, but are still looking for fun in your films. It's an animated adventure aimed squarely at anyone who loves a good animated adventure.

The story follows Lupin III, the latest in a line of master thieves, picking up the scent right after a major robbery. Alas, the robbery doesn't net much more than a big collection of counterfeit bills, leading Lupin and friends to go after the source of the counterfeit money, which is in the Castle of Cagliostro, located in a tiny country that even smaller than Luxembourg. There he sees a beautiful bride on the run from thugs, leading to an adventure with an evil count, plenty of action and a complex mystery. It ticks pretty much all of my 10 year old equivalent's buttons, and even now I appreciate the fun involved. As a kid who grew up on Inspector Gadget and Darkwing Duck, I lived for this kind of thing.

This is very early Miyazaki, so it is clearly much lower budget than many of his later and increasingly detailed works. Yet, his animation is still beautiful, and is actually reminiscent of all those cartoons kids wasted their Saturdays watching. He's still got that trademark attention to detail, with the slightly cartoonier Fiat 500 - all Fiat 500s are cartoon to an extent - that Lupin drives being a pretty much spot on replica. Everything from the elaborate gearwork in the climax to the smallest design flourish is clearly thought out.

Still, all the detail in the world wouldn't matter if the film wasn't any good, and this film is just plain fun. Yes, the sound effects are a bit wacky, but it's animated slapstick, it's appropriate. Lupin is such a likable character overall that one can't help but be drawn to him and his adventures. The villains are exaggerated and it often gets silly, but it should it's a fun movie, that the family can enjoy.

Well, the family can enjoy it provided they're not watching the Magna International dub, at least. Here's the thing Magna, this is a movie that was designed for the family. In short, young boys and girls will be watching this with their moms and dads. Know what moms and dads don't like? Swearing. So why is the dub so sweary? I mean, I have no problem with profanity in my own life, but it doesn't fit the tone, it doesn't fit the characters, and it actually distracts from the movie as a whole. To take the language even to PG-13 levels is distracting, and reeks of a company trying way too hard to be cool that they can't understand something as subtle as tone.

Still, a bad dub isn't the film's fault, and when someone figures that out and does a much needed re-dub, this will again be the perfect family picture. Miyazaki just knows what kids like, and the children of the world will be poorer off when he stops making movie. Luckily for all of us, he seems to be dragged out of retirement a lot.

The Shawshank Redemption

2010-02-23T03:33:00.000-08:00

Here's something interesting, the Shawshank Redemption was a flop. Yes, the film voted the best ever by the borderline illiterate folks at the IMDB was a failure when released. Yet, being both a failure and a film that's extremely well regarded makes perfect sense here, in the strange and often contradictory world better known as reality.

So why did it fail, first off? Here's the thing, read an IMDB comment board. Now, imagine the person writing those comments saying "I would like two for the Shawshank Redemption." Plainly, there is no way that they could do it. The very people who like it best could never see it, because they couldn't read the posters. As they couldn't read the posters, they would assume that the movie is much too highfalutin' for them and go see, so they'd watch The Little Rascals instead.

(Yes, I recognize the irony of linking to the IMDB and mocking the users, thanks)

So then why is it a success after the fact? Well, it's partially because it was played every day on TBS at one point, so you could see it pretty much whenever you wanted. Still, there's a very good reason why the Shawshank Redemption is #1 on the IMDB and other TBS favorites like Rush Hour 2 continue to be overlooked for accolades. The fact of the matter is, Shawshank is a crowd pleaser.

The story has all the right elements. There's a man convicted of a crime he didn't commit in Andy Dufrense (Tim Robbins), who meets fellow inmate Red - as portrayed by America's Grandfather and Voice of God, Morgan Freeman - whose soothing narration lets us know that everything's going to be okay. It lets people into an interesting world, strings along a fairly entertaining tale as Andy goes around implementing various schemes and improving the prison, leading to a twist ending that's satisfying and happy. It's the kind of film you can enjoy, with strong performances, and characters that it is easy to get attached to. We're allowed to be sympathetic for the characters because one was framed, the other was repentant, and the rest we really don't know the pasts of. I'm not immune to the charms myself, and while I'd never call it the best movie ever, it is a solid choice for an evening's entertainment.

Yet, it's got what I call the Shawshank Conundrum. We are in a prison. In prison, people tend to be there because they did things like murder, rape, robbery, and tax evasion. Since this takes place over a number of years, we can assume that tax evasion is not the primary reason why these likable characters find themselves behind bars. Yet, in order to like these characters, we can't exactly dwell on the fact that they might be slightly less noble than having the voice of Morgan Freeman might suggest. Also, because they're likable characters, having prison seem too awful might make the audience sad. So prison is played like a summer camp with light sodomy rather than a serious place which exists to lock up criminals. In spite of the loneliness inherent in spending many years behind bars, it never seems that bad. There's a line that goes "everyone in prison is innocent," and one can't help but think that they're being played that way.

It's a completely satisfying caper, sure, but it's also a little bit too squeaky clean. There's a bit of an edge, but not quite enough to make one think that, you know what, prison is a crappy place, I hope I never have to go there. So long as you don't think too deeply about the things the various characters have done and why they're there. Just enjoy the antics, become amused by Andy's antics, and laugh as all the pieces fall together. That might not sound like the best movie ever, but hey, it doesn't have to be the best to be good.

Man of the Year

2010-02-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

Every time I see a movie from Brazil I wonder if it will be the one that breaks the streak. See, I haven't seen a bad movie from Brazil yet, but there simply has to be one. There's a bad movie from every country, and for Brazil to have such a solid run of good simply has to be luck on their part. Well, after watching Man of the Year I still haven't found that elusive bad Brazilian movie. That said, I do have some reservations about it.

Now, this is the story about how Maquiel's (Murlio Benicio) life got flipped, turned upside down. In Rio de Janerio, born and raised, losing soccer bets was how he spent most of his days. Chilling out max and relaxing all cool, drinking some cola outside of a, err, bar. Well, a guy, he was up to no good, started making trouble in his neighborhood. So Maquiel shot him.

If there's one thing I learned from a class on Shakespeare, the difference between tragedy and comedy is the body count. Man of the Year, until about the mid-point of the film, could easily go in either direction. Maquiel trying to be a normal guy while everyone else is appreciative of him killing the local punk could lead to humor, and until a key death, it remains darkly comic, as Maquiel tries to be good and normal but keeps finding his life gets better whenever he engages in some light murder. It only goes tragic when we can see Maquiel begin to enjoy murder rather than simply stumbling into it.

It's a really neat story, and one can really understand Maquiel and his actions. His actions always seem perfectly sensible at the time, and one can understand how he can pave his path to hell. Murlio Benicio plays the reluctant assassin well, and one can tell when the film is taking a turn for the sad simply by watching how he becomes increasingly comfortable with the path of destruction in his wake. It's also a story that could be only told in Brazil, a country known for a volatile combination of poverty, drugs and a corrupt police force.

It's also a beautifully shot film. There's a conscious effort to film some scenes in an almost dream-like manner, to underscore how Maquiel just flows with the currents around him, instead of really making a difference in his life. All of the pivotal moments seem to be distant from what he would choose to do at any given moment. As he narrates, it seems like a conscious effort to distance himself from his actions, a clever choice.

I mentioned I had some reservations, but it's really down to one major one. This film needs a bit of tightening up in the screenplay department. While the various subplots actually do pay off, along with giving the audience an early indication of the motives of Maquiel's benefactors, it gets a bit lost. There are times when it just seems lost in the machinations of its plot, unsure of exactly where to move or how to get there. It gets stuck repeatedly, which can be a bit of a drag, especially since you don't know where they're going. As Maquiel's life is sorted into different boxes which don't touch, it's often a struggle to care that they will connect. I can't help but think that streamlining several scenes and tightening up others would make for a superior film.

That doesn't make it a bad movie so much as it becomes merely a decent one. It does have a good overall story, one born from the overall situation in Brazil. As a result, it's something that's worth watching, and continues Brazil's neat avoidance of bad films. I'm sure Brazil's bad film is out there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.

Happy End

2010-02-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

Regular readers might know that I generally am not very fond of what I've called a pity movie. They generally get a special amount of bile from me, and each one I'm subjected to gets a new and unique rant about how they're the scourge of cinema, and acclaimed quite wrongly. So, you might be surprised to know that I've found one I don't hate. In fact, Happy End isn't all that bad at all. How did a movie about miserable people manage to keep me from unleashing all my hatred?

Was it the story? Here, we have a career minded woman named Bora (Do-yeon Jeon), who apart from being career minded is also having quite explicit sex with shaggy website developer who shares my sense of style Il-beom (Jin-mo Jeu). She isn't finding her way to his bed just because of the raw animal magnetism inherent in a love of checked shirts and hair that's slightly too long, it's also her way of getting away from her sad sack husband Ki-min, who is played by the generally excellent Choi Min-suk, who takes care of their infant daughter when he isn't hanging out in the used book store. As inevitably happens, things go badly for everyone involved, and the title becomes ironic as one might expect.

By the numbers, I should hate it. Everyone's depressed because they're stupid, and it all leads to a deadpan misery throughout. It's also slightly misogynistic, which can be very annoying the more that you think of it. But, somehow, it actually works quite well, perhaps simply because it doesn't judge the characters.

Here's the thing, everyone in the film does awful things. This causes themselves and others a great deal of misery, and makes them wander around moping all the time. But, that said, they aren't viewed as awful or overtly sympathetic. There are no heroes or villains, just people, good and bad wrapped into one person.

There's also no unseen force in the screenplay making everyone unhappy just for the sake of it. Too often everyone in this type of movie is punished constantly for just daring to try to be better than they are. The people here merely face consequences of their actions, even if the consequences can sometimes be a bit overdone. It's just three people, caught in a love triangle and dealing with the emotions inherent.

I'm going to admit I don't love it, but I don't hate it, and can respect it from a distance and recognize that it's a fine example of its breed. The lesson here is that it's possible to make a film about miserable people being miserable. The trick is, you have to actually make them people apart from their misery. In spite of their many faults, the characters of Happy End are people, for better or - in this case - for worse.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl

2010-02-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

Once, when one of my nephews was about ten, he told me a story. It began as a story about Little Red Riding Hood, but quickly turned into a twisty, incoherent narrative filled with action, digressions, and jokes about flatulence. It was amusing, especially as the narrative went progressively off the rails and quickly became an outlet for his odd sense of humor, but really it made no sense after the first sentence. It was great that he had a wild imagination and a gift for fart gags, but let's be honest, it was not screenplay material. Racer Max Rodriguez had a similar story, but his dad is Robert Rodriguez, famous filmmaker and hat enthusiast. So his insane story was made into a film called The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.

In order to have the fact that it makes no sense somehow make a little sense, it's all about dreams. Cayden Boyd is Max, a dreamer, who dreams up the story of Sharkboy (Taylor Lautner), a boy who is raised by sharks, and Lavagirl (Taylor Dooley) his partner in awesome, who is made of, well, lava. They live on the ridiculously named "Planet Drool". Obsessed with his dreams, he presents them as what he did last summer, earning the scorn of Linus (Jacob Davich) who bullies him, and the concern of his teacher Mr. Electridad (George Lopez). But the joke's on them, because his dreams - which involve a lot of bad CGI, incidentally - become real, and he has to save his dreams from evil and his big angry bully friend.

As a dream narrative written by a young kid, stuff doesn't make sense. Dad tries to make things come together, but like all young kid stories, it keeps going into traps and then having convenient ways of getting out of them. Things are introduced just because they need to be exist to keep the story needs to continue, even if everyone involved freely admits that it's really just stringing things along. It's sort of amusing, perhaps, but hardly something to build a story on.

It's not just an incoherent narrative, it's also an experiment in CGI sets. The look of the movie is low rent, strangely unattractive, and it looks dated and bereft of art direction. It's just ugly, and things work in an obviously artificial and overly smooth ways. It's like the worst CGI sequences of the worst games, and it just looks bad.

Not that it's all bad though. The kids are usually an engaging screen presence, even Taylor Lautner, who has since made his name in the sparkly vampire movie - and if there's a film series that will rob you of any charisma you might have, it's a sparkly vampire movie. In fact, here he brings a lot of personality to the role of Sharkboy, and one can't help but think that it's a shame that he's going to be typecast as a sparkly vampire or whatever the hell he's supposed to be (I genuinely have no idea or interest in what that series is supposed to be about) and never get real work again. The rest of the kids are actually quite good as well, with Dooley being likable even when her character gets amazingly whiny, which is a feat.

Maybe the film isn't for anyone over 10, the age group that can appreciate and create bizarre stream-of-consciousness narratives. Maybe I'm too old to enjoy something which bathes in a sea of bad CGI. But, in the end, it's a movie that's about what you would expect from a screenplay co-written by an 8 year old. It's creative and frequently interesting, but it's the kind of thing that can only happen when your dad is a famous film director.

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A

2010-02-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

While it might seem like an odd thing to bring up when discussing the film of a completely different director, it seems like the appropriate moment to say I don't like Lars Von Trier. Perhaps it's simply because Big Bang Love, Juvenile A has managed to make me realize why exactly it is I don't like Von Trier. Simply put, I hate his almost fetishistic need for self-denial. From denying himself proper lighting and equipment with the Dogme 95 movement to denying himself full sets with Dogville, his entire aesthetic is punishing himself for some ill defined reason. This film puts that in sharp relief, because while it does use similar chalk outline sets on occasion, it's not because of a self denial, but because it can, and because it is not denying itself anything. Instead of a film of punishment, it's a chance to actively explore different methods of doing things.

The story goes that two convicted murderers, Ariyoshi (Ryuhei Matsuda) and Kazushi (Masonobu Ando) go into prison (which is between a space shuttle and an ancient ruin, oddly) and enter into an unlikely but intense relationship. However, Ariyoshi is seen strangling Kazushi, and the film explores why, or if Ariyoshi killed Kazushi. While that description may imply a typical crime narrative, that's not what you get here. Instead, the relationship and the characters are explored in a highly abstract environment, with the design being an outward expression of their emotional state rather than conforming to traditional prison rules.

One could easily accuse this film of being pretentious, and it is trying very hard to be an art film. Of course, being by insanely prolific Takashi Miike, one might also assume he just wanted to approach the material in a new way, and try something he never had before. Whatever one thinks, you can tell that the design of the picture is rooted in a sense of inventiveness and exploration. From a pure story perspective it's interesting, but it becomes rewatchable just because of the subtle clues hidden within the sets and design.

It's also beautifully shot, using light in ways to help define scenes and areas in a way that defines them and gives a striking image at the same time. The greens and purples of the interrogation room contrast with the yellows in the primary prison area, and in rare excursions to the real world there is a completely different shooting style to emphasize the disconnect of the prison world.

It's up to the average viewer if these visual flourishes and some of the odder elements actually add to the picture. It could come off as extremely pretentious, and if you're not prepared for it, a little alienating. That's fine, but if nothing else, it's an experiment, and denies itself nothing. It is a film which denies itself nothing to try to get its point across. That's why I love Takashi Miike, when one watches his films you get the sense of a director who recognizes that film can be whatever you want it to be. If Von Trier would realize that instead of using it as a means of self (and audience) punishment, maybe I'd like him too.

Accidental Tourist

2010-02-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

This seems to be a week of movies that have the life sucked out of them. Accidental Tourist, for example, is a film most dreary, an exercise in dead filmmaking, taking a script filled with quirk and turning it into a dirge.

It's about Macon Leary (William Hurt), writer of the Accidental Book series, a travel guide that takes all the joy, interest and excitement out of new and interesting places. He's also mourning the loss of his son, his marriage to Sarah (Kathleen Turner), and his ability to emote. He meets a wacky dog trainer named Muriel (Geena Davis) who is a very calculated wacky. She sings! She wears long nails! She talks a lot! They get together, because that is what happens in movies like this, after stopping by Macon's quirky but dour family and Bill Pullman trying to be the only cheery character in the film. Eventually he has to decide between the old wife, and the new quirky girlfriend.

"That sounds like the makings of a bad romantic comedy," you might say. This is accurate, but even the worst romantic comedy has life to it. Even if it's an artificial, annoying, badly implemented life, it's life. This has all the excitement of a particularly grim funeral procession. The pacing is plodding, the direction is staid, and the film is just a dirge. It isn't merely that it has no joy, it has no emotion full stop. It's a film so bereft of excitement that even the lead actor can't be bothered to wake up for it. It's two hours of sleepy drifting.

I'll admit that I've didn't expect it to be good, but being that it's directed by one Lawrence Kasdan - co-writer of Empire Strikes Back - and from my limited knowledge of him I didn't expect it to be a dirge. If the actors and director can't bother to care enough wake up for the show, why should we? I can't think of a compelling reason.

Adrenaline Drive

2010-02-01T18:43:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting case, Adrenaline Drive is an Action-Comedy, with a distinct lack of Action and Comedy. It is in fact the kind of movie that makes you appreciate a good director all the more, because you can see what it was meant to be in its bones, but the man in charge - Shinobu Yaguchi - just screws it all up.

Once upon a time, there was a young man named Suzuki (Masunobu Ando). He runs around in a passive aggressive relationship with his boss, whose name I can't find. His boss trying to make him angry leads to him running into a Jaguar owned by a Yakuza. This leads to him going to a Yakuza headquarters and a wacky gas explosion that kills all but him and a strangely immortal Yakuza boss, whose name I can also not find because the IMDB entry for this movie is really bad. When in an ambulance to the hospital, he meets attractive nurse Shizuko (Hikari Ishida), and they decide to run off with the Yakuza money. This leads to a theoretically madcap romp through Japan, as the Yakuza is hot on their trail and they need to get through some sexual tension in the meantime.

This is perhaps not a work of art, but on paper it could be a funny, and fun to watch film. Some of the scenes would likely be very strong on the page, and there are more than a few amusing little moments. The dialog might even be good, though the DVD I watched was riddled with typos and glaring mistakes so I might not be the best judge of that. The way that several different factions collide in the fight for the missing money at the end has been done many times, but that's because it often works. This should be a highly enjoyable romp that doesn't take itself very seriously, a decent popcorn movie for a night out.

Yet it's very boring, what happened?

It's all in the direction, or maybe it's the lack of it. Such rudimentary things as moving the camera once in a while, doing more than medium length shots from a static position or really anything to augment the action is not done. Prime opportunities for slapstick are wasted, visual jokes that were clearly written into the script land with a thud, and everyone underplays like they haven't actually seen the stage directions. It takes a script that could be fun, has some great opportunity for action, and a lot of potential and rushes through it like an indifferent high school student doing a report. So much potential fun, so little done with it.

If someone who knew what they were doing decided to tackle a remake, I'd watch it. It could be an opportunity for someone to make a really enjoyable action-comedy. But, it isn't because this time the director just didn't make the effort that the script needed to work. It's a shame really, because in another universe, someone could have a really good time with this.

Heavenly Creatures

2010-01-29T07:19:00.000-08:00

Peter Jackson seems to be a director for whom reality holds no interest. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, so long as he chooses his projects well, but it's clear that he wants to spend as much time as he can creating novel and interesting worlds rather than deal with the mundane reality. As such, he's the perfect person to take on the story of Heavenly Creatures, a film about two young girls who eschew reality and live in a fantasy world of their own creation, with less than positive results.

Melanie Lynskey is Pauline Parker, a perpetually scowling girl from New Zealand. Kate Winslet is Juliet Hulme, a new arrival to New Zealand who is one of those kids who is a bit too loud and a bit too convinced of their own brilliance. They bond over the fact that they were often sick and are not especially popular, and retreat into a lovingly rendered fantasy realm. That fantasy becomes increasingly intense, as does their bond, which leads their parents to be concerned about their well being. Unfortunately, this is interpreted as a threat to their friendship, and to their world, with tragic results.

I feel the need to make special note of the camera here. Camerawork, naturally, can create a mood, but with a variety of sweeps and turns, Jackson manages to capture that feeling of obsession and happiness that begins an intense relationship. The camera throughout sets the mood, from romantic, to horror, to the last sequence which is somewhat elegiac. Sometimes it's a bit overplayed - zoom for emphasis isn't the best choice - but the camera catches the emotions of the characters.

It's an interesting journey it goes on. Contrasting the elaborate fantasy of two main characters with the more sensible concerns of their parents keeps everything in context. While it endeavors to give an understanding of the girls' motives, it keeps the audience from getting convinced they were right. Parker's mother is deftly played by Sarah Peirse, who manages to pull off the impossible trick of being kind and tender and absolutely awful depending on whose perspective the scene is seen from. It works hard to keep every side of the story in focus.

It's obvious that the fantasy sequences were Jackson's favorite part of the production, but that's fine, because they're an essential part of the story. The way they are intercut with reality gives a unique perspective into the minds of the girls, who were so obsessed with their manufactured reality that they had great difficulty in the real world.

When I talked about Champion, I spoke about how that movie succeeded because you cared about the character at the center. Here, it works because you understand those characters, who were also real. You won't agree with their course of action, but you will get a glimpse into their mind. While it's a vividly realized place, it's also somewhere where you wouldn't want to be.

Face/Off

2010-01-26T05:37:00.000-08:00

Let's get this out of the way quickly: The entire premise of Face/Off is ridiculous. John Travolta and Nicholas Cage switching bodies? That's amazingly improbable, though it must be said not as improbable as the steps required to get to that particular ludicrous development. The script as a whole is built on concept rather than coherence, and it goes all over the place and with all sorts of wild yet ill-defined plans. On paper, this is all very stupid.

One gets a sense that director John Woo realized how insane the whole thing was. As a result, instead of trying to play things straight, we get a film that embraces it's own ridiculousness. It drenches what would otherwise be a very stupid story in waves of style and over-acting, and as a result, even with the very high body count, it turns into pure fun.

Step one in this transformation is the casting of Nicholas Cage. Nobody can do completely unhinged quite as well as Cage, and when he's playing Caster (the villain) he takes it so many notches over the top that you can't help but forget about taking anything seriously. As a result, when John Travolta becomes Caster, he's got to do his best Nicholas Cage impression, having to match him in wild-eyed madness. The performances are so over the top that there's no indication of where the top is, or if it is even possible to bring it back down. You can't take anything seriously with so much flamboyant acting on the screen. This is something you can't take seriously if you want to enjoy it.

Step two entails making the action sequences as stylish and accomplished as possible. That's John Woo, whose action sequences never fail to be engaging, stylish, exciting, and a bit too long to really take seriously. With his impeccable command of music, pacing and pyrotechnics, Woo can pull off sequences that are like a ballet with guns and explosions. The script becomes completely irrelevant, as it functions merely to set up superb imagery and impeccably done action sequences.

Between those two steps, we get an extremely bloody action film that manages to be extremely fun and engaging. According to the internet, it was once proposed to be a vehicle for Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If that would have happened, it might have been truly horrible. But with a cast and crew who are clearly enjoying themselves, and look that throws caution to the wind and becomes so cool you don't think of the logic behind it. It's a symphony of violence, and one that's astonishingly watchable. It could have been terrible, one can see the potential for serial awfulness in its bones. Luckily, the right people came together, and made a film that one is almost forced to adore.

Champion

2010-01-22T08:17:00.000-08:00

One of the big problems with bio-pics is that they have to compress what is generally a complicated life into two hours, frequently attempting to make a story arc out of something that generally doesn't arc in a predictable fashion. As a result, often things are glossed over and the life no longer resembles what really happened. One of the problems with sports movies is the need to keep people rooting for the preferred team or player. In this case, it means that the good guy is given artificial obstacles and the opposing characters are made out to be unfortunately evil. Yet, combine the two and you'll get something like Raging Bull, the famous boxing movie starring Robert DeNiro and directed by Martin Scorsese which does not fall into the typical traps. Or, you'll get a movie by someone who has watched Raging Bull numerous times, Champion which avoids some of the traps, and falls into others.

Champion is, naturally, about a champion, Korean boxing champ Kim Deuk-gu, as played by Oh-seong Yu. Duek-gu isn't very smart, and at the beginning he's not even that good, but he devotes himself to training and steadily rises through the ranks in Korean boxing to become the Pan Asian champion, and challenges a man named "Boom Boom" Mancini (Matt Phillips) to the world championship. Fans of boxing and/or Warren Zevon might be able to figure out the ending, but that's only a small part of the story. Instead, the film keeps focus on the middle, and the type of person Duek-gu was.

He's an interesting character in that he's not very complex, but there's something very honest about him. He's an admirable figure simply because he sticks to his goal, as though he realizes that it's all he can do, all he knows, and the only way he can make a living. He uses it to better his life, and while he seems to realize where boxing will lead him - as does everyone else, quietly - he continues to do it because he knows that it's something he can strive to be good at.

As a result, we like Duek-gu even though he's never made out to be the explicit underdog. In fact, one of the strengths of the film that, no matter what happens, we're presented with a man who is genuinely good at what he does, or is good at what he does after he gains some confidence. In fact, the climactic match is presented as completely even. We care about him because he came from nothing and has bettered himself. Yes, it does arc conveniently, but his life did aim directly towards the climactic fight, so it makes sense.

Another bonus is that it's a very well made movie. As mentioned before, director Kyung-Taek Kwak has clearly watched Raging Bull several times. There are shots throughout that are directly ripped from the film, and he's clearly inspired by the way boxing was shot for it. I am not complaining, because Raging Bull was one of the best boxing films yet made, partially because of how the boxing was shot, and this just takes it a few steps further. Kwak has a great visual sense, and there are frequently absolutely beautiful shots. While it does have some amazing boxing sequences, outside of the ring it is equally well done, in particular a completely devastating tracking shot near the end of the film.

It does follow most of the beats you would expect from a sports film, but it does it so well, and makes one care about the characters so much, it makes you forget that the beats are there in the first place. Even if it compresses a complicated life into two hours, it makes one care about that life, and about other people who have similar lives and careers. While there were far reaching effects to the fight at the end, there's really only one that's mentioned within the film, and after two hours with Deuk-gu, it's the only one that really matters.

ABC Africa

2010-01-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

A good documentary can take a subject and add additional insight to it. The subject of ABC Africa is the problem of AIDS in Uganda, the difficulty dealing with the orphans whose parents die of AIDS, and programs to help parents teach their kids and learn how to improve their lives. What additional knowledge did I learn from ABC Africa?

-Taxi drivers in Uganda will stare directly forward in an incredibly awkward and slightly amusing way if you aim a camera at their ear.

-Kids in Uganda love mugging for the camera. This is true of all kids, but especially those in Uganda.

-Iranian filmmakers are unable to find their hotel room in the dark.

-Iranian filmmakers are also unable to realize that filming several minutes of them talking about how dark it is, with no picture, is less than ideal.

-Iranian filmmakers should probably read the notice that says "electricity is cut after midnight, bring a flashlight."

-Ugandan schools seem to have really good music programs. Or, at least, lots of people willing to sing on camera.

-Mosquitoes can be big.

-Ugandan airlines have really bad CG videos showing people how to put their seatbelts on. They are hilarious.

-The church in Uganda is still pushing abstinence in spite of a big AIDS epidemic going on. This seems irresponsible - and hey, that's relevant!

If one did not realize already, this documentary documents lots of irrelevant things. In fact, it feels like the vacation video of some enthusiastic amateurs, not the product of an apparently acclaimed Iranian filmmaker tackling a serious subject. It just lets film roll, no matter how dumb it might be. As a result, it fails in its mission, to make people care about Ugandan orphans, mostly because it's really boring. More exploring the issues surrounding AIDS, less filming the ears of cab drivers, maybe we would have gotten somewhere.

The Iron Giant

2010-01-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

It's only appropriate that one follows up a fairly awful anime with a film that validates animation as a form. Since I love animation, I feel the need to confirm that animation is totally amazing. Luckily, by pure coincidence, I had a film by someone who is quite possibly the best and most consistent director working in animation today, who currently works for the studio which is quite possibly the best and most consistent animation studio around. However, this is the film he made before joining that studio, which is also amazing. I am speaking, of course, of the totally fantastic Brad Bird, and the Iron Giant.

In the very beautifully animated world of Rockwell, Maine lived a young kid with the rather strange name of Hogarth. He likes pets, like squirrels, which really annoys his mother Annie, who is both a single mother and a busy waitress. One day, he discovers a big Iron Giant, who is like a big massive puppy dog who can't remember anything. They become fast friends, as often happens in this kind of movie, but their friendship is challenged by Kent, who works for the government, has a huge ego and is highly paranoid about the "red menace," since this takes place in the 50s. Also involved is friendly artist shopkeeper beatnik cool dude Dean, who runs a scrapyard, which is convenient, because the aforementioned Iron Giant has a taste for metal.

For some reason, millions of films are made about kids and their pets. Maybe this is because a pet is one of those things that is always loyal, reliable and friendly. For a particularly awkward kid - as someone named Hogarth would inevitably be - a pet is one of the rare friends one might have. Kids can immediately identify with teaching and becoming close to a loyal pet. Some kids even have to deal with their loyal pet putting their life on the line to save them - a case recently happened in B.C. of a Golden Retriever which kept a cougar off of her owner, for example. It's something that remains somewhat universal, even if the pet, like in this case, is a super cool robot.

So what sets apart a really good pet story from a less good one? Well, being about a super cool robot helps, of course. Simply by being a robot, it opens up a wide range of possibilities of what it can do. Powers can be given, wonder can be created, and one can do a really detailed homage to the style of the 50s and cold war paranoia. The Iron Giant does all of that.

First the giant himself. Here is something that could not be created without animation, a blend between cel-shaded CGI and hand drawn that is innovative, good looking, and exactly the same as what Futurama uses. I'm not sure who did it first, but it's such a good look that I'm sad I don't see it more, and it's a key component to making the film as compelling as it is. The Iron Giant is, in spite of being a big robot, is filled with emotion and character, and quickly becomes endearing to the audience. You care about the Giant, which is absolutely key to making the film work.

The rest of the characters are similarly fully realized. The humans are completely, fully drawn humans, complete with good and bad, and aspects of their personality that people can identify in themselves. Annie isn't perfect, but she's a good mom. Hogarth is foolish, but he's basically a good kid. Even the villain, with his ego and desire for career advancement, does have the safety of his country at heart. His main flaw is that he's convinced that he's right, even when he couldn't possibly be more wrong.

In short, it works because it spends a lot of the time just making you care. The conflicts, the characters, the world, they all become important before the end of the film. It's a world you want to protect, and you want to turn out well. When you see a movie like this, that should be the priority, and when the drama unfolds you suddenly have an investment in everything involved.

Another plus is that the sheer level of detail in the picture, which explains why Bird fits in so well at Pixar. From the uniquely awful acting in a B-movie within a movie, to the light mockery of old atomic bomb safety videos, there are layers and layers of homage in the background, things that grow and one notices as they watch the film. A young kid can enjoy the story, and as one ages and learns they can find more little details to amuse and entertain. It's wonderfully clever.

So where does this fit in the overall realm of pet pictures? It should be near the top, up with ET and well above Ol' Yeller. It should be one of those films that families have to buy repeatedly as the DVD wears out from constant use. Warner Brothers bungled the release so it wasn't nearly as popular as it should have been, but I hope people discover it more and more as the years go buy. I'm going to say, without regret or a hint of hesitation, that this is a classic, and something that people will be able to enjoy for decades to come.

A Wind Named Amnesia

2010-01-12T06:47:00.000-08:00

At the first menu of A Wind Named Amnesia I was concerned. Here was a movie which actually had written on the DVD menu screen a note to use the menu buttons in order to select options. How obvious is that? Do they really not trust the audience enough to believe they can figure out how to work a DVD player? The answer soon became apparent, and that answer is no.

The premise here actually could be pretty decent. In the post apocalyptic future of...11 years ago, everyone in the world has forgotten everything they know. How to speak, how to find food, how to not explode, all of these things have been wiped clean by a magical wind. As a result, people have become more primitive, and their sentient robots have been allowed to run riot. However, one guy actually does know language and how to operate a Jeep, and he is supposed to help people learn again, with the help of a lady with silver hair. Together they travel the world, encountering people as they inch towards civilization in the crumbling debris of their former society. That could be a good premise on its own, plus there's a sequence very early on about the origins of a religion, which worships a piece of heavy construction equipment a man has figured out how to manipulate.

So, on paper, we have a compelling movie. Many things work on paper, however, and if it's not obvious from the tone already, this doesn't actually work. The annoying thing is there is a very, very simple explanation for this. In short, everything is explained too much. Every action, every reaction, everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future is accompanied by a wall of dialog. The musings about the scenes often ramble on for much longer than necessary, make awkward attempts at being deep - sometimes even reaching the level of a high school student's journal - and sometime even appear to misinterpret the scene that just happened. A moment where a woman runs back to her father because she cares for him is explained as her not being comfortable leaving the security of the city where they are the only survivors and are provided for, when from the editing of the previous sequence would normally indicate that she just loves the man that the 'heroes' haven't bothered taking with them.

So it really doesn't trust the audience at all, is that the only problem? No, there's also the story overall. As mentioned before, there's a potentially great bit about the origins of a religion, but it only takes up a small portion of the running time, before it goes off in search of more life lessons to explain in an overly messy fashion. The problem is, in that search, we lose any sense of narrative, instead things just happening because the running time needs padding. A sentient robot is introduced early on that just doesn't go away, existing solely to have something happen in the last act. Well, something other than gratuitous animated breasts, anyway.

That brings me to my other problem, which is how it tries to be mature. It is anime, and it seems to need to show off its adult themes a bit, seemingly to prove that grownups can watch cartoons too. I have no problem with mature animated films naturally, and I feel the medium has never been used to its full potential. When I say that, however, I don't mean to say we need to see more pointless shots of animated - and suspiciously young - breasts swinging in the breeze. There are only three female characters in the film, but two of them get topless, one solely for the sale of frolicking. The second woman was part of a sex scene that was part of some heavy handed symbolism, so it's somewhat less objectionable than the teenager frolicking moment, but I still felt that I was being pandered to.

That's the problem really, I got the impression throughout that this film just didn't think very highly of me. Everything is explained, lengthy speeches were inserted about the nature of man in order to impart a lesson, and it gives out gratuitous boobs in order to captivate its sweaty, mouth breathing, doesn't get out enough audience. A good film needs to trust you to understand its content and what is going on. A poor film doesn't trust you with anything. This is a truly poor film.

High Plains Drifter

2010-01-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting things about Clint Eastwood is that the films he directs don't necessarily match his screen persona. Here is a man who has made his name through feats of pure badassery, either in westerns or the Dirty Harry series, who has become the go to source for films which manage to hit a certain mix of sensitivity and understanding of his characters, especially lately. Now, he's not the most consistent director in the world - hello Space Cowboys - but he has managed the difficult feat of pleasing both audiences and critics, and often doing so with issues people might be uncomfortable with. Not everyone can make a movie following the Japanese at Iwo Jima which is mostly sympathetic, yet still manage to have it accepted in America. Through most of his films, one gets the sense that he genuinely cares about his characters, so even in his low points that impression overrides. So, here's High Plains Drifter, a film that sticks out in Eastwood's filmography, just because very little of what I just said applies.

Let's be clear here, this is not to say this is a bad film. On the contrary, I liked it a lot. However, unlike the majority of Eastwood films I've seen, respect for the characters within - with one or two exceptions - would have made it fall down completely. This is a movie which hinges on the audience not liking the characters at all, and if one does it loses a lot of what makes it great. It is, then, the bizarro Eastwood that must be behind the camera, though I like that one too.

So what's it all about? Well, there's a town called Largo which harbors a dirty little secret - a secret which I won't tell you, because I like surprises. Arriving in town is Eastwood, whose name, in spite of the IMDB's trivia section's claims, is never given - this seems to happen to his characters a lot - who proceeds to make everyone nervous. There is a good reason for this, as within moments of arriving he kills three people and rapes one woman. A normal town would think that this is a bad man, and should be arrested, but Largo doesn't, and hires him to protect the town from other bad men coming back after a year in prison, primarily due to that aforementioned secret. Eastwood takes the opportunity to make a series of increasingly ridiculous demands, and effectively turns the town in on itself. His relation to the town itself never becomes explicit, though it is heavily implied that there is one, and one begins to wonder what his motivations are and where they come from.

The ambiguity of the picture is one of the strengths, especially since there's no clear indication of how Eastwood's character knows what he does, or how he can pick out the characters which deserve saving and which deserve punishment. He's a mysterious force, arriving from somewhere to punish the sinners - which includes those who stand by and watch while bad things happen, without doing anything - and the town as a whole. As the town itself relies on others to do its dirty work for it, one gets increasingly certain that they should realize what they're doing to themselves, and all ill that comes out of his presence is well deserved. Here's a man who is introduced with rape and murder, how can they trust him and give him complete control of the place?

The film, in spite of a fair bit of violence, is clearly a moral tale. All of the mistakes made and punishment metered out is due to the inability of people to actually stand up for themselves. If they weren't weaseling around behind closed doors and hiring others to "solve" their problems, none of the events that transpire would happen. But, by refusing to stand up where it matters, they steadily destroy themselves and their relationships.

It also doesn't sound like any western I had ever seen. The look is standard Western material, naturally, though with significantly more red - painting the town red is somewhat less exciting and jubilant than the phrase generally implies - but the music isn't the standard guitar-based sound at all. In a bid to keep it slightly creepy and otherworldly, the soundtrack instead takes on an electronic sound - I think I hear theramins! - which sometimes even sounds appropriate for the original series of Star Trek. It's decidedly weird, but actually very welcome, since it emphasizes some of the more otherworldly aspects of the picture.

It's interesting, this little project has a tendency to meet people at a low point, and this is so much different than a regular Eastwood film that one might expect it to be continuing the trend, but I actually found this to be one of the high points. As strange as the film can be, and for how little it relates to how people currently know Eastwood's direction, it's really one of the most fascinating westerns I've ever come across. I'm not sure if my tastes have become completely apparent over the past year, but this is my favorite kind of movie. It's exciting, it's interesting, and it makes one think. I dare say it's one of the best movies I've seen.

Alias

2010-01-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

I don't know very much about the production history of Alias. I know the film is from Belgium, but being a semi-obscure film from Belgium the intimate details are hard to come by. I have a strong suspicion, however, that the production started life as a TV series, and then the whole thing was derailed and made into a film.

Why do I suspect that? Well, for the first hour, we have a film that builds. Characters are steadily introduced, the central mystery is laid out, and we're kept guessing as to the true nature of a key character. That character is Dieter, played by Geert Hunaerts, who by the power of his amazing buttocks attracts the attention of Eva, played by Hilde De Baerdemaeker. Eva, either coincidentally or not coincidentally - that's part of the mystery! - has just witnessed and filmed the suicide and/or murder of some naked lady. Also filmed are two bumbling thieves breaking into a car, in a subplot that doesn't really go anywhere, though it does serve to give thunder butt a way to introduce himself, through the power of gratuitous violence. Anyway, Eva and her friend Patti (Veerle Dobbelaere) begin to examine the tape to see what was going on, while Eva becomes attracted to Dieter and his bum and we wonder how he is connected to the suicide of the sexy lady. Also present is Mark (Werner De Smedt) who is played as somewhat emotionally abusive yet is also almost a hero in a bizarre end twist.

For that first hour, we get some fairly standard pilot material for a serialized storyline. A mystery is introduced, we get some flashy over-designed opening credits - a TV staple - and a number of characters and relationships are established in the early going. It's standard fare for a pilot really, and it does do a passable job of making one curious about the central mystery. Then, after the opening hour is complete, in the space of a single cut all mystery is discarded. What happens is we move from getting a story that slowly develops and a potentially compelling mystery into everyone's motivations laid bare and the entire storyline explained in a serious of info dumps. One can see that someone was instructed that, oh crap, it's a movie now, we have 47 minutes left, time to wrap it up.

It's a pacing disaster, characters are changed from complex to cardboard cutouts, and the ending is clearly rushed. The worst part is, I could see it coming, because it became increasingly obvious that the pace could no longer be sustained, and also from the editing to the visual style, this was always meant to be a TV show.

Would it have been a good TV show? Well, I'm not sure. It wasn't extremely compelling, I'll be honest. On the other hand, there are a couple pretty good moments in there, and one wonders how they might have gone in a more serialized approach. There's a bathroom scene that's having a grand old time pulling tricks on the audience, and there's one simply masterful comedic touch. When one character is being pitched as the major psycho, the scene immediately after is that character gleefully singing "Rose Garden" while driving. It's possibly the most amusing cut that there has ever been in a middle of the road thriller.

There are some other odd things here. There's a shocking cliffhanger twist ending that might have made for a second season of the TV show once the mystery was solved, but here just arrives without explanation and is fairly stupid. It does foreshadowing by ripping off more famous characters in better movies by more famous directors - Norman Bates has ensured that loving one's mother too much will always be seen as a touch creepy. Worst of all for a thriller, it just doesn't pack much punch.

I don't know if I'm completely right about the TV show origins, but it does explain the flaws and the inconsistencies of the film. It also makes one wish that the pilot would have just been picked up. That way, things could have been developed in a proper fashion, and more importantly, I could have watched something else. It's a win-win situation.

Thunder in Dixie

2010-01-01T07:40:00.000-08:00

Behold, the power of reduced expectations! I'm not sure what I would have thought of Thunder in Dixie if I didn't watch Speed Lovers first, but I found myself more entertained than I had any right to be. Here was a movie where people could act! The camera was handled well! The score was jazzy! Hell, the script even had some tension in there! Plus it had main titles by Saul Bass' Non-Union equivalent, which was kind of neat. Overall, this movie was not awful, I'm impressed.

Once upon a time there was a race driver named Mickey (Harry Millard). He drove very drunk and killed the wife of another racing driver, Ticker (Mike Bradford). As a result, Ticker blames Mickey for his wife's death, and is very angry. He also wants revenge. So, at the first race Mickey comes back to, he intends to be very aggressive and hopefully kill him. This is not effective conflict resolution. Realizing this are the girlfriends of the drivers. Lily (Judy Lewis) doesn't want her husband racing anymore, and is trying to convince him to give it up. Karen (Nancy Berg) doesn't want boyfriend Ticker to die either, though admittedly she wasn't very interesting so I don't remember her character very well. It all builds to the climactic race, where we are promised thrills, spills, and so on.

Much like Speed Lovers, the bulk of the time is spent in hotel rooms. Unlike Speed Lovers, the actors involved can mostly put in decent performances. Judy Lewis is even somewhat impressive, doing a lot with a middle of the road script, and managing to give her character some depth and visually telegraphing her concern for her husband through just looks and the way she pauses. She even manages to build tension in otherwise boring scenes, as she acts her way out of the paper bag known as the script. The other actors are generally also not awful, and it makes the core story of the film believable and almost interesting. That's faint praise, but I'm coming off of Speed Lovers, give me a break.

Of course, it's not perfect, it clearly didn't have the budget for perfect. It needed a race, and it didn't have some racing driver to exploit footage of. As a result, the race is actually somewhat intense and easy to follow. It also is essential to the plot, unlike Speed Lovers where the race - much like every scene in the movie - isn't essential to anything. Unfortunately, it's also clearly the only race they could afford to film, and still mainly uses stock footage, so we have to deal with a cavalcade of hotel rooms yet again.

That's the real problem with Thunder in Dixie, it's cramming a full half hour of story into 80 minutes. Scenes repeat, constantly, and the action really goes nowhere for the entire middle third of the movie. To be fair, it was made for drive-in theatres, and that's prime make out time. Really, all you need to see is the beginning and end, as though the filmmakers knew to allow for heavy petting mid-picture.

It's dull, and really not a very good movie in the grand scale of things. What it is, however, is competent. That's not high praise, but having just seen Speed Lovers, competence is a wonder. I embrace this film's dull competence. Bless you Thunder in Dixie, you are not as bad as you could be.

As a side note, Happy New Year! We're coming up on a full year of Movies at Random, and what a year it's been! What can you expect in 2010? Well, we've got something from Belgium, something from Clint Eastwood, and more wacky adventures lined up. Stay tuned for more MaR, because I enjoy the project most of the time.

The Speed Lovers

2009-12-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

Looks like we've got ourselves another theme week! Unlike the first time, this one is the result of a double feature. For some reason, I have two car racing based B-movies here, and the first one up on the plate is The Speed Lovers.

Once upon a time, writer/director/actor - and I use those terms quite loosely - William F. McGaha stumbled on some stock footage of a stock car race along with a stock car race driver named Frank Lorenzen. So, he decided that he'd use that opportunity to make a name for himself and a film he could star in. The auteur thus strung together a story about himself, as Scott, a car racing hopeful who has never actually raced before. While real car racers generally work at it from childhood, steadily improving their skills and getting into bigger and more powerful vehicles, he somehow believes that he can suddenly be the best racing driver in the world, instantly. He's looped into a highly ridiculous scheme run by Victoria and a fat guy - Peggy O'Hara an David Marcus - to make money and screw over real life racing driver Lorenzen.

The race footage is pretty solid, if disjointed. Lots of action, crashes, all of that fun stuff. Sure, the races aren't really easy to follow, but is pretty interesting. Surprisingly enough, Lorenzen is a better actor than one might expect for a racing driver. No, wait, that's not quite right, he really isn't a very good actor at all, where did I get that idea? Oh right, it's because everyone else is very bad at acting. It's like listening to the conversations of a forest, everything's wooden. The shining star of bad acting is McGaha, who doesn't seem to quite know his lines - which he wrote. The best part is that he gives himself the opportunity to be drunk, and dance, even though the concepts of drunkenness and dancing seem to be completely alien to him, like explaining the idea of swimming to a man in the desert.

His script is similarly well executed. The dialog manages to be both overly expository yet astonishingly vague. We're never given more than the roughest idea of what anyone or anything is, but that rough explanation is repeated constantly. Combined with the poor delivery and awkward phrasing, and it's like being bludgeoned with a particularly dull tree. Plus, the hero is amazingly unsympathetic. He's got an ego, he's annoying, he's a drunk, he screws everyone over, and he's an asshole. Yet, we're supposed to pull for him. Contributing to the joyous crap parade is some hilariously inept sexism. Characters are constantly saying things about how useless women are, dropping the lines with as much verve as everyone else in the film.

Oh, but crappy dialogue isn't the only wonder on display. We have a film about speed that never really leaves hotel rooms. But maybe that would be okay if the hotel rooms were filmed well, right? Well, after bringing together his racing relics McGaha seemingly had no money on such basic implements like a tripod. The camera simultaneously moves constantly and not at all. The framing is static, but the camera never stops shaking. Truth be told, the racing stock footage is good, but one can instantly tell where the stock ends and the footage shot for the film begins.

The theme song is remarkably annoying as well, though I like the band they got to perform it. Why? The same reason I love Cheap Trick, the drummer looks like an insurance salesman.

McGaha was a man with a dream, he wanted to be a star. He wanted to be a triple threat, a writer, director and actor. Unfortunately, his direction is inept, his writing is comically awful and the less said about his acting the better. It's a bad movie, poorly done in every conceivable manner. Let's all just forget about it yet again. Until next time, where we have the other half of this double feature.

Yet I'm intrigued to see that he went on to play Jesus (!) as the leader of a biker gang (!!) doing LSD (!!!). I wonder how bad that is.

Bright Young Things

2009-12-25T04:44:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to all. Now, were this a project with which I had more than a passing influence in the films discussed, this would be a time to bring out some Christmas film. Alas, that is not the case, and true to the random word in the title, the film today really has nothing at all to do with Christmas. What it does have, however, is a quite interesting chap named Stephen Fry, and his directorial debut Bright Young Things.

This begins as a joyously absurd and lightly dark comedy, focusing on Stephen Campbell Moore as Adam, a young writer who wants nothing more than to be married to Nina (Emily Mortimer). Unfortunately, in the process he loses the book he's writing, and each time he runs into a bit of good fortune it's cruelly snatched away by circumstance. He hangs around high society folk like Agatha (Fenella Woodgar) and Miles (Michael Sheen). In the beginning, it is all gaudy spectacle, which gradually gets stripped away as the film progresses and gets steadily more serious.

It's an interesting twist in tone that the film has. The beginning is all splendid superficiality, going through rather beautifully shot parties and keeping the story grounded in money concerns and increasingly farcical ways of losing that money. The characters are silly, for the most part, but an endearing silly, and if they do excessive amounts of drugs and party too much, that's really quite fine. They're not really deep people, but they are endearing, which is vital for the film to maintain its interest as the tone gradually becomes more serious. As the tone changes the characters steadily shows the layers of their personality it feels like looking in on new friends as they reveal their personality.

It's a sublimely chaotic film, which nicely captures the feel of non-stop partying and copious drug use. It is a little absurd, but a good party always is, and it's fun to follow the characters and events as they drift around and with each other. It can be read as a critique on our current obsession with fame and glory, but in the process it humanizes the famous. It does have some odd tonal shifts - especially since the primary storyline rests on some odd absurdities - but it seems completely natural in context, and is frequently very funny.

Another odd thing is that it manages to have every single British actor in a minor role. Perhaps this is a symptom of everyone in the world liking Stephen Fry, but it is quite bizarre that a nation of performers have showed up for a line or two. Surrounded by the immense talent, Fenella Woodgar and Stephen Campbell Moore manage to hold their own in their first feature. Moore in particular carries the put upon Adam with an air of confidence, even as things go badly for him. One never gets the sense of him giving up, no matter how badly things are going.

It's an interesting case where it one gets absorbed through fun and begins to care more as the film becomes more serious. It's really like friendship overall in the end, people hanging out at first in good times and beginning to care as things get more serious and less lighthearted. Fry manages to make a film that's breezy and compelling, and in the end quite fun to watch for the most part. Yes, things get quite deadly serious, and having the spectacle stripped away leads to a rather interesting moral in the final scene, but as a whole, it's a nice place to spend time, and a decidedly enjoyable thing to watch. I'm not sure why Fry hasn't made more films, but I'd like to see him do it again, he knows what he's doing, and how to make something splitting between comedy and sadness seem completely natural. Perhaps a Christmas gift for next year?

Henry V

2009-12-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

One of the strange things about this project is that I seem to introducing important people in their worst moment. I've mentioned previously how Pixar was introduced with their worst moment, but now we've got Henry V, which features two names seen previously, and not in a great light. The film was made by and stars Laurence Olivier, whose first appearance here was in the 49th Parallel, where he was the most annoying character in the world. It's also an adaptation of Shakespeare, who previously showed up in a really ridiculous adaptation of MacBeth. Here's a much better showcase for both men.

Henry V is about Henry V, if the title wasn't obvious already. He is the king who was in charge in the Battle of Agincourt, wherein the British came from a disadvantage in numbers to kick some serious ass. It's like 300, if it was real and, you know, not shit. Anyway, given that this was war time, and the British could use a morale boost, it seemed like a good idea to remind everyone of a massive victory they once had.

Being Shakespeare, as one might expect, the story is quite good. The strongest moments, however, have little to do with Henry's bravado but instead his quiet contemplation and uncertainty. The best scene overall is one where Henry goes among his men the night before battle. The uncertainty among the men and the mixture of anticipation and dread is deftly handled. As the king confronts what his subject thinks of him, it shows a certain vulnerability and uncertainties in his own character, and keeps him likable and more than just a man with big speeches and a bigger sword. Another great scene is at the end, where Henry tries to woo Princess Katherine (Renee Asherson). Olivier plays on his uncertainty and unfamiliarity with the situation almost as much as Shakespeare does in the play, giving a character played as a hero for two hours some degree of humility, reducing him to a scared teenager in front of a pretty girl. It's a genius moment, and ensures the character never gets too big.

So it should be noted that this is actually a very odd and fairly experimental approach to filmmaking. In the beginning, it seems like a documentary on theatre production, albeit in the 1600s. It begins in the Globe Theatre, complete with audience, characters changing costume behind the scenes, and even a freaking laugh track. It's a bizarre way to begin a film, and completely unexpected. As the film progresses and the drama heightens, the scene gradually gets more realistic and the rest of the theatre fades away steadily. Eventually, we get to the innovative yet imperfect final battle, which is purely on location, before ending in the theatre yet again.

It's a neat trick to use, since it sums up what good theatre can do. As you get into the characters and the story, one begins to feel their imagination take over, and the show achieves a heightened reality. The film is a representation of how good theatre can take hold of an audience. It becomes the most real as the tension gets highest, and comes down as we prepare to leave it behind.

It isn't entirely perfect - the battle scene is quite chaotic, and it becomes clear something like that had never been filmed so they weren't sure what they were doing - but every imperfection brings with it an interesting and influential move - in that same battle scene, there's a cloud of arrows, something seen in every film with archers seen since. Olivier clearly hasn't directed a film before, and uses that inexperience to experiment and try different approaches to making film. He is unencumbered by experience, which leads to many interesting ideas which more established people might feel were a bit too, well, crazy to work. Here, most of the time, they do, and it's quite fascinating to watch.

I've said it before, but Shakespeare needs to be performed for people to really understand it. This adaptation, of the ones I've seen, is one of the better ones, using gimmicks to get past the slower parts and getting to the core of why the play is still interesting. Plus, it was a morale boost when Britain needed it most, there's nothing wrong with that.

Assault on Precinct 13

2009-12-18T07:02:00.000-08:00

I have already named the most annoying director (Zack Snyder) and the most interesting director (Werner Herzog). Who is the most badass director? That would have to be John Carpenter. While I've seen a mere three of his films - Escape from New York, the Thing, and now Assault on Precinct 13 - I have come to the conclusion that nobody can make a more consistently badass movie.

The trouble with neatly summarizing the plot of this film is that anything but the most basic description of the story undermines what makes it great. Since the main event is right there in the title - technically it's Precinct 9, Division 13, but it does get very assaulted - the movie plays on you knowing that, at some point in the next 90 minutes, some serious crap is going down. Since you don't know exactly what's going to happen, it slowly builds and introduces characters, without giving any indication of how they will play into the overall film. There's a gang of hard thugs that stab themselves, the black Andy Griffith (Austin Stoker), a father (Martin West) and daughter (Kim Richards), a bus with death row prisoners - one of whom is treated as more dangerous than the others (Darwin Johnson), one who is more energetic (Tony Burton) and the guy who is watching them (Charles Cyphers) - and the people in the police station itself, including the badass Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) and the annoying Julie (Nancy Kyes). Eventually, they all converge on the mostly abandoned Precinct 9, District 13, which is open for one final night.

Until the actual assault happen, the film is happy to just bide its time. It knows that you know something is going to happen, so it updates the time and keeps track of the characters, sometimes underlining moments with a badass synth score which would feel very at home on the Genesis, if the Genesis wasn't from the future. It toys with the audience, as it knows exactly what you expect. When things start to happen, it's a shock just because you don't expect them to happen that way.

The shootout itself keeps that intensity by restricting the perspective to the protagonists. You feel as though you are standing with them in the mostly abandoned police station. While you have a bit more insight onto the reasons for the attack, the methods and exact approach the villains are going to take remains a mystery. The one thing that you can tell for certain is that bad things are going to happen, just like the characters.

Of course, in all this tension we don't really learn much about the characters. Unlike movies where people decide to share their entire backstory in intense shootouts, here we only learn how characters handle pressure. Some are better than others - Julie is not very good, for example - and we see characters who shouldn't be friends bonding over gunplay and a shared threat. We even grow fond of the characters because we feel as though we're in the same situation. After the smoke clears - quite literally - we move on our way.

I can see someone disliking the unresolved ending, and I can see some people wishing for more than crash boom bang against some mostly ill defined - though clearly evil - characters. That's fine, but I like that Precinct 13 ignores all the regular trappings of an action film, and focuses instead on what people really want. Action and tension, everything else pared to the bone. That's how you do it if you're a badass. No wonder it was made by the most badass director.

Ratatouille

2009-12-15T06:49:00.000-08:00

Last time I spoke of Pixar, I had the misfortune of landing probably their worst feature. It's unfortunate because I really do love Pixar. I like how they don't talk down to their audience, how they make movies that people of all ages can enjoy, and how they take unexpected ideas and make interesting films about them. Yes, I called Cars' premise something akin to Maximum Overdrive, but they've also made the most potentially queasy premise known to man - Rats in a kitchen, cooking your food, getting their little rat paws on all the herbs and spices - and made it into a charming and lovely romp. Yes, today is Ratatouille day.

The story goes that once there was a rat, named Remy. He, being more selective than other rats, wanted to be a chef, which was problematic because he's a rat. On one end, there are his rat brethren, who insist he be like them and eat garbage and do normal rat things. On the other end, there are humans, who are understandably uncomfortable around rats. Eventually, he finds an intermediary in the form of a man named Linguini, who can't cook but is easy to manipulate through his hair. He eventually takes over the restaurant of a disgraced chef who is also the Great Gazoo. This all leads to a climactic review by the renowned and a bit obnoxiously overplayed as evil Anton Ego, who inexplicably has a coffin shaped office and dresses in an angry black.

Actually, the Ego character was an odd one, because it's not what I would expect from either Pixar or Brad Bird. Pixar has been a critical darling since the beginning, mostly because they make movies for families that are always quite good. Bird also has been mostly charmed when it comes to critical standing, at least in recent years. He was on the Simpsons when it was everyone's favorite show, before making the Iron Giant, which everyone loved, and the Incredibles, which everyone loved even more. While there is certainly a bit of redemption late film, it's still somewhat anti-critic, and that seems a bit odd, considering that critics love Bird, want to marry him, and give birth to his children.

Of course, it's understandable everyone loves his films. It's got a positive message - no matter where you come from, it's possible to be great - and it doesn't talk down to his audience. His characters are charming and thoroughly drawn, the visuals are exciting and thrilling, and the attention to detail is amazing. Even better, here's someone who can make an action sequence, and the various chases that Remy is involved with are thrilling, exciting, and should be watched by all directors who are planning on filming a chase sequence in this day and age. He uses animation in ways that live action could never possibly manage.

Another great thing is the divide between rat world and human world is filmed in such a way that it is always clear whose perspective it should be viewed from. When watching from the rat's perspective, the world is larger than life, exciting and full of immense danger. From the perspective of man, it seems familiar, but it actually makes one almost envy the rats, just because they're living from a different world. It's a subtle thing that is vitally important in making the film as interesting as it is.

Like all Pixar films, and like all Bird films, the most important thing is that it trusts kids. The story is a little complicated, but it makes sense, is easy to follow, and it believes that kids can make sense of it. It is a world with danger, and it trusts kids to be okay with that. It tries all sorts of entertaining cinematic tricks and flourishes, and trusts that kids will keep entertained.

That's the success of the entire Pixar empire, and of this film in particular. By trusting kids, it makes the overall film enjoyable to everyone in the family. It, like the titular dish at the end of the film, manages to recall the joy of childhood for people of all ages, and brings back memories of things that might have been forgotten as people grow and change. This is what a family film should be, something that everyone can enjoy and get something out of, no matter how old they might be.

A Zed and Two Noughts

2009-12-11T18:38:00.000-08:00

A Zed and Two Noughts is a rare case where a film is clearly the product of personal obsessions but still somehow not unique. A picture that seems to be connected, both in style and content, to David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (and, in fact, Peter Greenaway does claim that Dead Ringers was primarily based on his film), Z00 is strange, briefly unique (for a few years, at least) and oddly compelling.

The story is about Oswald and Oliver Bruce, played by Brian and Eric Deacon. The two brothers share much in common, both being biologists working for the same zoo. They also both lose their wives in a car accident involving a swan. In the process of grieving, they become obsessed with death and decay (we get to see several time lapsed sequences of decaying animals to underscore this), and fall in love with the amputee who survived the accident, played by Andrea Ferreol. As the events transpire, they get closer together, both literally and figuratively.

It's a fascinating picture, and unrelentingly weird. The contrast between evolution and decay, and people coming together and falling apart is well done, and certainly fascinating. The contrasts and relationships between characters and their physical bodies, along with everyone's continued dissatisfaction with the world and the pieces of it is a fascination.

Another interesting piece of the picture is the way Peter Greenaway commands the framing of scenes. There's an uncomfortable symmetry in scenes - which also mirrors the themes within the film - and his framing is not only beautiful and striking but also reflect on the themes of the film itself. Michael Nyman's score is another essential piece of the puzzle, since it creates a certain feeling of unease to an already singularly creepy film. Never before has the Teddy Bear's Picnic been so ominous.

I'm not sure what it was in the 80s that created a need for stories about the madness and interdependency of twins, but the brief existence of the sub-genre created the two most uncomfortable and odd films I have ever seen, both wildly original and decidedly nontraditional in both content and form. It's a film that makes one think, both about how films are made and the various themes the director is swinging towards. It's unapologetically odd, but I like it that way.

Also, a film from the 80s with decent film stock. Wow!

After Hours

2009-12-08T07:44:00.000-08:00

Going by the poster for After Hours you might expect it to be the 80s-est movie in the world. I'm not going to completely dissuade that notion, since it does suffer from typical 80s problems, that being standard awful 80s film stock.

The movie itself is quite odd. Paul, played by Griffin Dunne, is a data processor who meets a sexy young lady named Marcy, as played by Rosanna Arquette. Things go quite badly in numerous ways which get progressively stranger as the film goes on. As saying basically anything will ruin the surreal surprise.

The thing with After Hours is I can't quite make heads or tails of it. It's good, I can tell it's good, and I enjoyed watching it. I'm simply not sure why I liked it, or what it is about it that makes me so interested in the events as they happen. It's amusing and absurd, a feverish adventure through an insane world, and yet I have no idea why exactly I like it.

I suppose being a Martin Scorsese picture helps. Even in the 80s, Scorsese was a great director. Few people can manage to get such memorable images from awful 80s film stock, and he keeps the film moving at a quick, fun pace. It feels fresh, interesting and unique. The most important thing about a film like this is to keep the energy up, and it never really flags.

I'll also say that even if it uses my pet peeve film stock, it's often a striking looking film. Some of the shots are downright beautiful, giving a real environment a subtly surreal quality. This was managed on the horrible film stock that was in vogue in the 80s! I mean, that's a near impossibility, but here it is, an interesting looking and genuinely cool movie filmed in the 80s, with an awful neon logo.

I liked that it made fun of pretentious artists too, as we go around Soho visiting performing art shows and sculptors making paper mache men in agonizing poses. There's something wrong with the characters in the movie, and it's all possible because they're artists. Artists are generally weird and full of crap - I talk to artists on a regular basis, I know this - it's one of the most realistic aspects of the experience.

Beyond that? I just know I enjoyed watching it, I cared what happened - even after the main character was something of a jerk - and as it got more absurd I got more intrigued. That's great, if I'm just watching it for myself, but since I've got this little project going it seems somewhat inadequate.

It's a big struggle to do an entry on this film because I'm just ever so slightly confused by it. It's good, I know it's good, and I enjoyed it immensely, but I really can't figure out why. Maybe that's for the best, and maybe there's nothing wrong with that little hint of uncertainty. I know I like it, what else do I need to know?

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

2009-12-04T05:33:00.000-08:00

With the release of 2012 a couple weeks ago, comparisons between Roland Emmerich and Irwin Allen came running fast and furious. Appropriately enough, today we feature a film directed by Irwin Allen, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. There are plenty of similarities between the two. A gigantic threat to the world, an ensemble cast, science charitably described as shaky, and a certain obsession with the latest in special effects. Allen might not have had CGI, but he does have the best scale models 1960s dollars could buy.

Here, we've got an exciting new submarine, helpfully completely explained with an elaborate tour immediately at the beginning of the picture. Walter Pidgeon is Admeral Nelson, the man behind the submarine, which is big and exciting. Peter Lorre is his science partner guy. Robert Sterling is Captain Lee Crane, one of the many ruggedly handsome men on the crew. There's also Frankie Avalon, pop singer, doing stuff. Also doing stuff is Barbara Eden as a woman, Crane's girlfriend, who is there with Joan Fontaine to break up the sausage party. Miguel Alvarez is a survivor found on the ice played by Michael Ansara, who is a preacher who believes the end is nigh. Together, they live on the exciting submarine, when they discover that the sky is on fire because the Van Allen Radiation Belts weren't fully understood by the man writing the script. There's also Jimmy Smith, played by Mark Slade, whose fate can be determined immediately after he is introduced.

Voyage leans heavily on spectacle and novelty. The hope is clearly that people will be so amazed by things underwater that they can gloss over the things that aren't very interesting. It's clear that the sheer novelty of a heavily underwater movie was hoped to enthrall everyone, even if it wasn't an entirely great movie. There are lots of look at that moments, including a giant squid which gets on the cover of the DVD.

However, there's a problem, and that's pacing. In short, the pacing is no good. The first 20 minutes are entirely exposition. The next 20 minutes are also exposition, with a couple things happening. The vast majority of the picture entails explaining what is going on, what was going on, and what will be going on. Since the science involved doesn't actually have anything to do with real science, one gets tired of constant sequences of people sitting around talking in submarine sets.

That sitting in sets has the unfortunate effect of getting rid of the tension. While there's a world crisis going on. Cities are burning, humanity is on the brink of destruction, and there's a highly risky plan to save it. However, we are safely seated in a stable, sterile submarine with all of the fire and destruction being kept safely at an arms distance. No matter what's going on in the rest of the world, we aren't ever in danger, because the submarine of hopes and dreams never feels like it's in genuine trouble. Plus, the world loses contact quite early on, making it easy to forget the stakes. While the tension eventually spills over into the submarine - and the film gets much better as a result - it takes so long to happen one is forgiven if they bail before that happens.

It is a pretty interesting premise, and the idea of a small group of people in close quarters forced to execute a plan they don't completely trust under extreme duress is a smart one. The recent Battlestar Galactica series mined a lot of genuine tension and excitement out of this same situation. The moments very late in the film that mine this conflict show plenty of promise. It just takes too long to get there. While the last forty minutes might be exciting, and finally achieve the tension the film had, until that point, failed to, it's still after an hour of awkward exposition and flawed explanations.

There's also something really odd that doesn't help - there's too much space, both in the sets and between the actors on them. This ties in to my earlier complaint about the tension taking far too long to build, but I can't help that the tension would be increased if it was filmed in a way that was a bit more claustrophobic. Huge sets and huge distances between characters - combined with a camera that wants to take in the entire set and isn't especially dynamic - ruins the illusion of close quarters. If you set a movie in a sub and mine tension out of it, you want the characters to be getting in each others' way, or at least feel that they are. They don't really do that here, and it's a subtle but unfortunate issue.

Curiously, while I didn't particularly like the film, there's a lot of promise in the general idea. It takes a long time to get there, but that same last hour has a lot of interesting ideas I'd like to see someone explore more. In spite of the poor science, staid direction and the dreadful pacing, there's a good movie hidden in here.

I've never been able to say that about Roland Emmerich.

The Watchmen

2009-12-01T05:51:00.000-08:00

I hereby officially nominate Zack Snyder for the coveted position of most annoying film director. There have been challengers to the throne, certainly. Michael Bay and his frantic continuity-be-damned style, J.J. Abrams and his inability to frame shots and obsession with lens flare, both were certainly contenders for the throne, but I think with The Watchmen Snyder has officially proven that as directors go, nobody can top him for sheer, distracting and inept direction.

The Watchmen was a highly respectable comic book made by the highly insane Alan Moore. While it's a bit too complicated to be summarized neatly into one paragraph, it's essentially about a group of mask vigilantes in a 1980s teetering on the edge of nuclear war. Opening with the death of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the situation is investigated by Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) who is somewhat sociopathic, and he believes that these vigilantes are being targeted. Then, a bunch of stuff happens, it's quite good. Snyder, naturally, misses the point completely.

Much has been made of the film's visual fidelity to the source novel. Indeed, Snyder does frame his shots almost exactly as the graphic novel does. However, there's one very important difference, and that is that there's a sense of grittiness in the novel. The world is run down, dust seeps into the old superhero materials, and it's weathered, broken, and decayed.

But Zack Snyder doesn't do decay. He is confused by grime, or proper film speed (more on that in a minute), so in spite of the precise framing, it doesn't actually look like the comic. It's all given a CGI sheen, with the faults polished away until everything gives off an unnatural shine. These are real people who suddenly look fake, living somewhere in the uncanny valley.

Speaking of the uncanny valley, the acting is...not good. Much has been made of Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach, but I'm not sure. It seems like a voice, rather than a performance, and while he's not bad, it is a bit distracting. At least he's acting though, unlike the rest of the cast. Casting seems to be dictated by who looks most like the book's characters, not who can actually turn in a decent performance. Special note needs to go to Malin Akerman as the Silk Spectre part 2. It's shocking, in fact. A group of people speaking in their second language in Sukiyaki Western Django had a more convincing grasp of the English language than she does, and she moves like someone who is unfamiliar with what we humans call muscles. The problem is, none of the other actors are exactly convincing as human beings. One wonders if Snyder is even interested anything other than CG and slow motion.

That neatly brings me to the next big issue here, and that's how much of the film is in love with changing film speed. In 300, which I also hated, Snyder seemed to be obsessed with slow motion, so much so that it seemed like the film was being played at the wrong speed. Now, Snyder has discovered the fast forward button, so he has discovered how to make things go fast too. The opening fight scene is a prime example of this, which makes it feel as though a small child is playing with a remote control behind you. Even worse, since regular dialog does not suffer from Snyder's usual slow motion flourishes, it creates a break between the dialog and the silly action scenes. It doesn't matter that going normal speed and without gratuitous CGI blood and injury it would have been a better action scene, Snyder is so obsessed with his tricks and silly speed altering that he ignores what would make a good film. There's no rhyme or reason to it, it just emphasizes how artificial everything is, an how Snyder is committed to ruin otherwise decent sequences with visual tomfoolery.

In fact, it's quite interesting how, for a film marketed as the product of a "visionary director" how his vision makes everything worse. The story here is good, the images are well framed, and some of the juxtapositions of image and dialog are quite brilliant. All of those good things? Lifted directly from the book. It's a good book, and much of the goodness of it does get translated on screen. I will say that the music is mostly good - and, unexpectedly, mostly what I was listening to while reading the book - though I'm not completely sure Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah was particularly well used here - it's behind a sex scene and just seems wrong somehow, perhaps it just doesn't match the rhythm of the scene.

Truth be told, when I was reading it, I thought it was a fantastic book, but would be difficult to effectively translate to film. It's actually not a very action packed book, more focused on the after effects and people uncertain of what to do with themselves, packing in much highly necessary back story and different visual tricks. Excellent, but not exactly effective for a concise picture. Here, it's 3 hours long, and it's hard to imagine it being shorter.

Honestly, script wise, it's mostly faithful - the ending is altered, though only one change was really annoying - and with a different director and different actors, it might actually be a pretty good movie. Three hours or not, someone here actually gets the jist of the book, and the point. The main problem is that the director does not understand what the point is in the least, and every decision he makes hurts the film on some level. That's why I nominate him for the most annoying director. He's obsessed with visuals and making things "cool", but his supposed vision just takes away from all his projects.

Sukiyaki Western Django

2009-11-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

I think the first film by Takashi Miike - director of today's entry, Sukiyaki Western Django I saw was one Dead or Alive, which ended with an absolutely insane final battle, where the two characters grabbed increasingly gigantic weapons, culminating in a bazooka. It was bizarre, and I got the sense that Miike ended the film that way because he could. That impression translates to the entire movie with Django. Miike is doing things because he can, though we do get some indication of why.

While I once said that Yojimbo was what would have been a western had Japan colonized the Americas, Django takes that idea and runs with it. Yojimbo, along with other westerns, and about a billion different pictures, are all referenced and played with here. We've got the story of two warring factions, one in red, one in white. Into town rides a lone gunman, Hideaki Ito. He enters the elaborate conflict between the two sides with both barrels, in sequences that feel quite heavily inspired by Yojimbo. On the way, we get references to the Tales of the Heike - a Japanese story I don't know much about - and Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Really though, this film references 100 years of film history, connecting it all together with one simple truth - in film, you can do anything you want. This seems to be the guiding principal behind Miike's entire cinematic oeuvre, and here we see him dabbling in pretty much everything he can think of. There's slapstick, silly jokes, romance, inventive, allusive, allegorical, and sometimes just plain beautiful imagery, tragedy and pure action. Anything that has been, and can be done with film is done here, and one can't help but get taken away with it.

Not that it's perfect, in fact there's one glaring fault. See, we have a movie that was made in Japan, with a Japanese cast (and Quentin Tarantino, being less annoying than usual, but still pretty annoying). So, what's the language used? English. It's the ESL happy hour, and the actors are clearly very uncomfortable actually acting in the language. It's a bit awkward, and isn't really fair to the cast.

It says a lot then that the rest of the film continues to be quite entertaining in spite of the obvious language hurdles. The best thing about the whole experience is that we're taken for a ride by a director that knows, deep within his heart, that cinema can mean anything you want it to. In each frame, you can see how decades of watching and learning about film has informed his style and taught him the power of a good movie. Cinema can make you laugh, make you cry, shock, stun and awe. As any fan of film knows, cinema can be anything. Here, it is absolutely everything.

Public Enemy

2009-11-24T06:17:00.000-08:00

Just when you think I'm talking about a recent Michael Mann picture, nope, that's a plural. This is Public Enemy, singular. As one might also expect from my obsession with Korea, which started long before this adventure, it's a Korean movie. It's also utterly, completely, amazing.

Truth be told, I was a bit worried when I popped in the DVD. First trailer? An ad for an Anime channel, seemingly bragging about how derivative all Anime is (several thousand gigantic robots! Hundreds of spunky magical girls! A billion kids with bad hair!). Second ad? An anime magazine, drowning in pastels and an unhealthy obsession with Japan. This is what they think people watching Public Enemy want? Derivative crap for people obsessed with Japan? Besides, this movie is Korean! Korea is not Japan! In fact, if one would to go by the quality of local cinema - and being somewhat obsessed with Korean cinema, I would do that - Korea is better than Japan. Though if one were to do that, Brazil would be the best country in the world, and that's not... accurate.

Another concern arose when I pressed play, and the default was an anime-quality dub. First off, dubs in live action? A definite no-no. I'm not one of those snobs when it comes to dubs in animation, but with live action dubs, the seams always show. Since we, as humans, can correlate the sounds coming out of someone's mouth to the motions, you can instantly tell something's gone awry. Not helping matters is that they got typical anime voices, which for some reason tend to be bottom of the barrel voice talent. Combined, you have a movie watcher scrambling to find the menu button.

But I forgive you, ADV, since once I got the settings in order and the movie proper started, I could see I was in for something interesting. When an hour was over, I was already wondering just how high in my all time lists of favorites it would be. In the last twenty minutes, I was literally on the edge of my seat. That never, ever happens. I can't remember the last time I was so excited to see what happened next I was nearly falling off the couch in anticipation.

So what is the story behind this 2 hours and 18 minutes of pure excellence? Well, in one corner, we have highly corrupt and extremely violent police officer Inspector Gang, brilliantly realized by Kyung-gu Sol. We meet him when his partner has killed himself, and he's being investigated for corruption. This is because he is corrupt, and has just stolen a proper crapload of cocaine from a group of criminals. In the other corner, we are introduced to Jo Kyu-Hwan - actually it's spelled differently in the film but I'm going by the IMDB - who is introduced as a likable family man who also happens to enjoy pleasuring himself in the shower. He's also played even more brilliantly by Sung-jae Lee, demonstrating unflappable calm and barely restrained anger. The scenes where he's trying to convincingly cry are absolutely amazing. Who do you think we're supposed to root for here?

From those introductions we start moving into the film proper, which can only be considered a black comedy/action picture. But, unlike many black comedies, this one is genuinely funny. Sometimes, it's absolutely hilarious, especially in every single scene where Gang has to do math. Gang's investigation of Kyu-Hwan is frequently fraught with difficulties, many of his own creation. While he might have a redemptive arc, he's objectively an ass. However, he's a likable ass, and you begin to feel for him as he gets steadily more obsessed with hunting down a man who he believes cut his face and made him get poo on his hands.

Helping his case is the fact that the audience knows from the outset that his suspicions are right. Our family man is quickly revealed to be not exactly a nice person, and our corrupt cop actually cares about the community as much as he enjoys beating up thugs. They're also presented roughly as equals in fighting style, which helps bring genuine tension to the action scenes. Almost as much tension as is brought to the table by the absolutely fantastic direction, staging, and everything to do with the action scenes. Director Woo-Suk Kang knows deep within his bones how to film a fight sequence, and he does some absolutely fantastic ones. The final battle is one of the all time great fistfights, I'm sure of it.

Seriously, I'm having great difficulty figuring out anything I wasn't absolutely enthralled by. Alright, if you have a crippling fear of naked men, you might want to be advised that, at the beginning of the film, we see a lot of men's butts. Of course, this could be a selling point for some people - Sung-jae Lee is very physically fit, and even gets a workout montage for all the ladies in the audience. It also doesn't start especially quickly, and the opening about what it's like to be police could be considered superfluous. But I'm just nitpicking because I don't want to say this is seriously the best movie I've seen in ages.

In fact, I'm stunned that there haven't been waves to remake this for American audiences. Americans love anti-heroes, they love it when wealthy psychopaths are beat down, and they love good old fashioned blackly comic action thrillers. Maybe American directors have secretly admitted they won't be able to top this, and there is absolutely nothing they could improve on. Seriously, while this isn't the best movie I've seen since starting this project - Z probably takes that - this is absolutely fantastic and everyone who enjoys a good dark comedy action thriller needs to see it now. Just ignore all that anime crap on the DVD, and be sure to switch to Korean w/subtitles.

Top Secret!

2009-11-20T05:31:00.000-08:00

One of the great mysteries of our time is "Why does David Zucker suck so much now?" I mean, the guy recently made a movie making fun of Michael Moore. That's like shooting a morbidly obese, unshaven fish with questionable taste in hats* in a particularly small barrel. He also produced the Onion Movie. And a bunch of other crap.

See, this is a mystery, because when he started making movies, David Zucker didn't suck. In fact, with Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, he made fantastic, clever parodies that probably broke rules and more importantly were quite funny. One of those movies is Top Secret!

The strength of Top Secret! is that it's a loving parody of old timey spy films - which explains some gratuitous Nazis, no matter how little they make sense in East Germany - with a real story to build gags around. Val Kilmer is a wacky rock and roll star in the vein of Elvis named Nick Rivers - and creator of the highly dangerous sport skeet surfing - who is going to be performing a concert in East Germany as part of some elaborate plot he's unaware of. He runs into one Hillary Flammond, as played by Lucy Gutteridge, who is a sexy member of the resistance, trying to save her father. Together, they have to save the world, one inexplicable dance routine at a time.

The humor of the film is often based on a quite simple formula, take a regular spy/Elvis/surfing/etc. convention and do something unexpected with it. It's an easy formula, but it often works. The gags aren't universally funny - there's a real stinker based around the Blue Lagoon that plays a bit larger role than is probably advisable - but they're often clever enough and well implemented. When they're not, they're easily ignored and the story can move on.

Since bad genre parodies have become a cottage industry for people who haven't got a clue, this is one of those lessons in why they're a good idea. It's a good spy film borrowing heavily from old spy movies, with a story that's often tense and characters you actually can give a crap about. Even better, the characters aren't in on the joke, and mostly just roll with whatever they're given. It makes the absurd humor stand out in contrast, because nobody realizes it.

Val Kilmer is, surprisingly, something of a stand out. The reason isn't because of his superior acting ability, or his ability to lip sync** - something which would serve him well as Jim Morrison - but his natural charisma. He's believable as a heart throb because he's just so likable and attractive, and he plays it up well. He works as a cocky sense of sanity in a world of ridiculousness.

More than anything though, it's 90 minutes of filmmakers just trying to entertain you. Yeah, sometimes it doesn't work, but that's fine, because you can tell that no matter what's on screen, they're going to brush that off and try to be funny again in the next few minutes. They try everything, from butt sex jokes to more cerebral humour to good old fashioned slapstick. That's why it's good, they put in a lot of effort to be funny.

So why is it that David Zucker isn't as funny now? Perhaps the three directors pushed each other to be funnier. Maybe he's not putting in that effort which is clearly necessary to be hilarious. Whatever it is, he should find his magic again, and kick the people making awful parodies right in the ass.

*I say this as a universal healthcare enthusiast.

**Reportedly he sang all his own songs. They're just really obviously studio recordings and not done on set.

Address Unknown

2009-11-17T06:09:00.000-08:00

I know what you're thinking, Movies at Random has sold out. Films people have heard of? In English? From major studios? Where's all the obscure Korean movies? Well, here's Address Unknown, just in case you were going through Korea withdrawal.

I've made no secret of my special distaste for the pity movie. The films with a huge ensemble cast where all the characters are needlessly miserable, and then punished time and time again for being characters in the movie. Address Unknown is very much a pity movie, revolving around dog butchers - no dogs were ACTUALLY butchered, something the film makes special effort to remind people of - disgruntled widows, one eyed girls and horny teenagers. One even works in a hilariously named store called Homeboy Shop which sells, among other things, a painting of a white tiger in velvet. Oh, and it's implied that everything is the fault of America, sometimes subtly, sometimes less so.

The problem with these things is that there's no happiness and no levity, it's just all depression all the time. There is no happiness because happiness is forbidden in this universe. If someone finds it, they are punished. If someone exists who isn't there to, on some level, make someone else miserable, they are punished doubly. Ink is spilled calling this stuff bracing, and "real", but it's not real, is it?

There's also the matter of human kindness and empathy always being immediately punished. The only reason ever seems to be that the overall downtrodden crap needs to be maintained from beginning to end. This is not helped by my other big issue with pity pictures is that they are always filmed in a very dull manner. Kim Ki-Duk is normally a pretty good director, with a great eye, but here it's just workmanlike and deliberately uninteresting. The events on screen are so serious and dour that they can't be filmed with a modicum of panache. It's telling when a world is so bereft of anything good that even the strippers just shuffle around uncomfortably, like 7th graders at a school dance.

In an interview with the director, he said he wanted to both raise awareness about the relationship between Korea and America - symbolized by beating a dog, of all things - yet show some sympathy for American soldiers who aren't in a particularly good situation. That has the effect of making the worst character of the lot, one American soldier whose name and actor are not on the internet - the actor's Mitch something. It's a thankless role, because he's got to alternate wildly between genuinely sympathetic, kind person and a monster rapist girlfriend abuser, sometimes within a line. The actor does an interesting job with it - he's better at the sympathetic than the villainous - but why not just have a sympathetic character and a villain? There's an entire army base, if you need both a monster and a kind person in a situation they don't want to be in to illustrate your point, make two characters. Of course, he winds up shot in the balls after attempting to tattoo his name on his girlfriend, because that's the kind of thing that happens in a pity picture. So long, sympathy.

I have enjoyed plenty of depressing movies, and my best movie of all time is about people who are screwed from birth due to the situation they find themselves in. But there, and anywhere else that gets being downtrodden right, they balance the good and the bad. Characters aren't pushed down every time they try to better themselves, they aren't punished simply for caring, and they aren't there solely to be kicked around. They're people, and like all people, their lives have joy mixed in with the sadness. Take Kids Return, recently featured here. It had characters whose lives collapsed around them, but it also gave them time to have success. We feel more for a character when we can see them in their best light, not simply having life abusing them at every turn. The fall of the characters in Kids Return hurt all the more because they had potential, and because we saw a glimpse of the success that was possible. When it's all sad, all the time, it stops being real, and just becomes an unfortunate, unwatchable dirge.

The Onion Movie

2009-11-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

I love the Onion

I love the cutting satire, I love the clever headlines, I love the deconstruction of newspaper cliches (and now, radio and TV cliches). The Onion has fooled foreign countries, and taught the world to laugh again.

So, naturally, I'm extra disappointed that The Onion Movie is no good.

The concept is 80-ish minutes of sketch comedy loosely structured around a fake TV network. This is also the rough concept of The Onion News Network, and it's clearly something that can work. The plot, such as it is, revolves around news anchor Len Cariou, upset that his newscast is being hijacked to advertise the upcoming Steven Seagal movie Cockpuncher - one of very few gags that actually works, culminating in a speech which echoes the end of On Deadly Ground. In the process, a whole bunch of gags happen, some ripped from real Onion headlines, others not.

There are several problems here, and I'm not sure what it is that kills it the most. First, it's very clear that every expense was spared. Production values are at a bare minimum, with clearly inexperienced actors, low rent sets (how many featureless rooms does one film need?) and special effects clearly designed by the filmmaker's cousin on his new Macbook. When one watches the real Onion's videos, one never gets the impression that it was made for no money. Here, one can't see a dime that has made it to the screen.

But, low budget wouldn't matter if the material was funny. Given that it's a sketch comedy film, one would expect it to be inconsistent. Even the mighty Monty Python let a few duds into the Meaning of Life, after all. It's more unfortunate that it's weighted so heavily on the miss side. Cockpuncher is funny, as is a bizarre gag about Peruvians having laser eyes - if only because it's unexpected - but for the most part it's all predictable. Even if there is good material, the film rushes through it like a nervous kid giving a presentation to the class. Gags flash by, never given a chance to develop, and if they are, the comedic timing and pure lack of acting skill kills it where it stands. When STEVEN SEAGAL is the best actor in your movie, you've got some serious problems.

That's it really, it's cheap and it isn't funny. In fact, it seems to share more with the ____ Movie series than it does with the Onion itself. Can there be a statement more damning than that?

X-Men

2009-11-10T07:08:00.000-08:00

I've never been a huge comic book person - the only comic I've ever read is the Watchmen - but I'm generally a fan of comic book movies. While there might be something inherently ridiculous as people in tight clothing with super powers battling it out, they can be quite well written - as Solid Snake has proven quite ably with X-Men today - and can be a subtle take on a real world issue or moral conundrum.

Watching X-Men, it's no wonder that the generally reliable Bryan Singer has made a good film of it. For one, the character of Magneto (Ian McKellen) is a holocaust survivor, and Singer seems to be strangely fascinated by the holocaust. Witness Valkyrie, and Apt Pupil, which are both intimately involved with the third reich. Also, Bryan Singer is openly gay, and the X-Men share a lot with being gay.

It's subtle, but also somewhat obvious in the content. There's a senator (Bruce Davison) who wants to force all mutants - people who have superpowers, basically - to register themselves. He argues that you wouldn't want a mutant in your schools, and replace the word "mutant" with "gay" or "black" or "Muslim" or whatever else someone has been persecuted for being in the past history, and you've got a subtle critique on general persecution. After all, they're simply born different. It's not explicit, but you can tell that Singer is drawing from his own experiences, and those of his friends. As a critique on racism and persecution, it's well done, never drilling the message into your head but always having it there.

Of course, there's a violent uprising lead by Magneto, and a more peaceful sect lead by Professor X (Patrick Stewart). They fight about the proper way to handle their persecution, with Magneto advocating violently converting people to being mutants and sharing his way of thinking. Also, a plethora of X-Men are introduced, though the main characters are clearly Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin), the former being a super healing mystery, and the latter draining whatever she touches. Their relationship is a backbone on which a wide variety of different ideas are built.

Possibly the big problem with this is that a lot of ideas have to be built on that backbone. The X-Men is an expansive series, with a ton of unique characters and a wide variety of different concepts to deal with. Worse, many of these characters and concepts are vital to having a clue to what's going on. So, as a result, there's often a lot of exposition in Patrick Stewart's soothing voice. It doesn't kill the movie, not by a long stretch, but it does bog it down.

The only other problem is that the forces of evil will always triumph, because good is stupid. The X-Men are comically awful in the climactic fight, having to overcome their own overwhelmingly poor fighting style more than the villains. Another detriment is the overall superhero movie pattern: Good, Great, Worse, Ugh, but that doesn't kick in until Bret "The Rat" Ratner takes over in X-Men 3, and doesn't hurt this movie.

Of course, I'm nitpicking because that's what I do. Those are minor faults in a film that is otherwise downright excellent. It's quickly paced, superbly well shot, and the action scenes are excellent no matter how stupid the heroes are. The characters established quickly develop their personalities and relationships, and even the more minor characters clearly have potential for future installments. Er...installment. One day I might get there.

So did I like X-Men? Naturally, and I dare say it's one of the best comic movies I've seen. More importantly, it's a perfect fit for Bryan Singer, and a lot of him can be seen in every frame. It manages to be very personal for a big budget action film adaptation, and that's a difficult feat to manage. It sure is a shame Singer didn't keep doing films in the series past the second one, it's one he was born to direct.

I just realized I'll have nothing to say when I hit the next one. Oh, I've written myself into a corner (though maybe it'll be a long way off, and everyone will forget and I can just do the same thing all over again).

Pi

2009-11-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

It's simplistic to say that budget doesn't matter, but a good director working with no money can make a film that's fantastic, while a bad director with hundreds of millions will never make a good movie. In an illustration of the former rule, here's Pi. For only $60,000, here's a film that launched two careers - writer/director Darren Aronofsky and composer Clint Mansell - and made millions of dollars.

Pi can be described as a mathematical thriller, which sounds much more bizarre than it winds up being. It's about mathematician, Max Cohen (Sean Gullette), who is looking for patterns in everything in the world, but mostly the stock market. He also stared into the sun once, and suffers from headaches and trippy blackouts. He might also have some heavy OCD, though this is merely implied. In looking for a pattern he finds a mysterious number, of interest to both some Jewish numerologists thinking that the number is god, and some Wall Street types looking to use it for personal gain.

The film spits out reams of mathematical exposition in rapid fire, which might not completely make sense but work in the film world. The way it's filmed leads to the preposterous notion that math is out to get Max - it's really people, but you know - and it gets genuine tension out of abstract concepts. It makes math sort of scary and fascinating, and one becomes both genuinely curious about the conclusions Max is on a train track towards, and almost frightened of them.

This could not have worked without a talented director at the helm, because it relies a lot on the direction to get the overall point across. Clever camera work and editing does a lot to keep the rhythm going and build the tension. Even better, it's a rare film that knows how to use handheld shots. Lots of low budget (and, who am I kidding, even high budget) crap uses handheld to make itself look edgy and cool, but this actually uses it for dramatic effect. It also uses smooth camera moves when necessary, and the camera is always where it needs to be, doing what it has to.

Special attention has to be payed to the score, which gave us Clint Mansell, and tracks which have been in every film trailer since he burst onto the scene. He gets the intensity exactly right, making math exciting, interesting and dangerous. It's also the perfect music to type to, curiously enough. Sound and image keeps the film going at a breakneck speed, and even makes exposition exciting. Exposition is so rarely exciting that this is an achievement.

I'm sure lots can be written about whether or not the math and theories are correct, but that's less important than what they mean to the characters in the film. Aronofsky creates a world where math is danger, and he's so good at creating this world that for 80-some minutes, you completely accept it. It's exciting, intense, and $60,000. That takes talent and skill, and it's why Aronofsky is an acclaimed filmmaker today, and even why Clint Mansell is a sought after composer.

Now and Forever

2009-11-03T06:02:00.000-08:00

"There is no way I'm going to do some cheesy movie of the week, okay?" - Oh girl, you have no idea.

The opening credits for Now and Forever contain a familiar name, Bob Clark. It's not familiar because it's a common name, instead because I knew I had seen it before. Somewhere bad, where only the bravest souls dare tread. A quick glance at his IMDB page reveals the horrible truth, this is the man who directed both Baby Geniuses movies! As a result, he is a contender for history's greatest monster.

I'm not being fair, he's actually directed a strange and elaborate mix of different films, from Black Christmas, to A Christmas Story, to Porky's, to this one, which was filmed in sunny Saskatoon. As he died not long ago - car accident involving a drunk driver, no less - I even feel a tinge of regret calling him history's greatest monster. Plus, he filmed a movie in Saskatoon! I lived in Saskatoon for three years, and it remains one of my favorite cities. That tang of recognition in most of the exterior shots elicits a small streak of joy every time.

Shame the movie isn't very good then, huh?

It's actually kind of amazing simply in the way it's bad. Clark had been making movies for many years by the time he did this one, yet it's pure amateur hour. The story is about Angela Wilson (Alexandra Purvis, then Mia Kirshner), troubled actress. After her father kills himself, she stumbles across some magical aboriginal people - including John Myron (Simon Baker, the Turok himself, Adam Beach) and Ghost Fox, played by surprisingly good considering the rest of the film Gordon Tootoosis. She goes to their suspiciously idyllic reserve (which is...inaccurate) and learns all about how wonderful being native is. Best of all Ghost Fox is literally magic, as he prevents a rape with the power of his mind. This is something that actually happens. I did not make that up. It's not even the most insane "magical aboriginal" moment in the film.

Eventually, she wants to leave the small town she lives in (a motive reinforced by the character saying some variation on "I want to leave this town!" every five seconds), hooks up with a crappy boyfriend, and a bunch of increasingly cheesy and sad things happen, leading to a twist ending that is unexpected, yet both ridiculous and ripped off of another, quite famous movie.

The script is, at best, clumsy. The narration provided by Beach often makes him sound like a creepy stalker who wants to dance around in her skin. This is due to bad writing, and a not very good reading. The strange thing is, Beach is not a bad actor - he was pretty fantastic in Flags of our Fathers, in fact. So I don't get why he's somewhere between psycho stalker and plank of wood here. Or maybe it's just the script, which is not interested in subtlety, but is quite interested in clumsy dialog and poor characterization.

Even the filming is amateurish. It's supposed to take place in a small Saskatchewan town, but as Saskatoon is not a small town, its city-ness keeps seeping through, often due to poor blocking. A scene set in "one of three motels in the area" (on Idylwild drive, which has many motels, but enough of my love of the filming location) is rendered unbelievable by the various tall buildings immediately behind it. Yet they managed to film one location in such a way that it hides just how close it is to a major highway (Highway 5, specifically, and it's RIGHT OFF of the road so it's pretty difficult to pull off. I was convinced it had to be a different building since it seemed further away from the highway than it was, but being that I recognized every single building in the yard, and the layout, from driving by so often, there's no other house it can be. Oh, I'm rambling), so clearly someone around can do things properly.

It's full on amateur hour, with a mysteriously stupid script, some bad acting, workmanlike directing and merely passable cinematography. The locations might be fantastic, but it's still a cheesy, badly made movie. No matter how much I love Saskatoon, being set in Saskatoon is not enough to make a movie great, or even tolerable.

A Mighty Heart

2009-10-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

Oscar bait. A term used for films that are clearly gunning for a golden statuette. While it's difficult to be truly mean about it, A Mighty Heart is Oscar bait. We've got a film concerning major real life issues with a true story - the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, which naturally feeds into the major problems in the middle east. We have a major Hollywood star - Angelina Jolie - dressing down and trying to fade into a role. The bait wasn't taken - either by audiences or academy voters - and I can kind of see why.

This is not to downplay the importance of the story by any means. Mariane Pearl's story about losing her husband is one that is important to hear, especially considering the state of the world in which it takes place. It's something that should be shared, and should be heard, so we can appreciate the dangers of simply cataloging what is happening in the middle east. It's important to understand what is going on in these places.

It's also not to say that the film is badly directed either. Michael Winterbottom is one of my favorites, and this just confirms it. He creates some good tension - even if the end is in sight - and he never makes the characters into unrealistic "heroes", just people doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. There are a couple of times where it seems it should be obvious that Pearl was going into a trap, but they are countered by some fantastic flashback sequences, including a heartbreaking montage of a trip the Pearls' went on mixed in with a take down.

The acting is fine as well. Yeah, Jolie does get a moment late in the film which quite literally screams for an award, but otherwise she gets the delicate balance between strength and fragility necessary for the role. The performances all around are solid and they give the characters a bit of a grounding in reality.

Speaking of that grounding, the script is often fine as well. There are some very chunky moments early on, where it lays out the back story and the situation in a "middle east for grade-schoolers" manner, but it eventually subsides and the meat of the story is still solid. Once it gets away from trying to explain the situation, it gathers steam and does create well rounded characters. Little snippets of incidental conversation slip in, and that's strangely important, as it just keeps everyone human.

So...what's the problem? It eventually hit me late in the process, and it's quite simple. The story would have been a lot better in a documentary. We know how it ends, and while the developments are interesting, the in-the-moment dramatization tries to make us forget quite how it's going to end. The incident is important enough that I think the retrospective approach of a documentary, perhaps with dramatized scenes, would help the structure and tone of the film immensely. That, and I find myself wondering what many of the major players are thinking in any given moment.

However, documentaries never get the profile of a feature starring Ms. Jolie, so it would have never happened. Increasing the profile is a noble goal, and overall I can understand their motivations. If there's a story that needs to be told, it's a good idea to make that story get out to as many as possible. Still, it's not like it made boffo box office anyway, so maybe, in hindsight, doing it as a documentary would have been a better idea. But as I said, it's hard to be mean to it, because its (mighty) heart is in the right place.

Kids Return

2009-10-27T06:32:00.000-07:00

"If you want to be a professional boxer, you need to learn to control your own life."

I think I'm going to start these things with a line from the film that neatly sums up the entire picture, what do you think? For example, Kids Return's overall theme can probably be summed up neatly right there, though professional boxer can be subbed out for any other profession. The people who succeed control their own life, the people who don't allow others to control them.

It's an interesting theme, considering the history of the production. See, somewhere between the last entry and this one, Takeshi Kitano had a major motorcycle accident. Actually, according to the writer/director/actor/editor/genius himself, it was more a suicide attempt. While he survived and went on to make some of my favorite movies, at the time there was a lot of doubt about whether or not he would ever work again. However, he decided that instead of never working again, he would pour all of his energies into making a new movie, which we see here. Not surprisingly, he's not in the movie itself, but he has clearly evolved as a person and a filmmaker, and it was probably his best movie up until that point.

So what's it all about then? There are two friends, Shinji (Masanobu Ando) and Masaru (Ken Kaneko). They are the school bullies and troublemakers, making strange anatomically correct stickmen dolls and beating up kids for their lunch money. One day, Masaru starts boxing, and cajoles Shinji into joining him. I suppose explaining the dynamics of their relationship is relevant. Masaru is very much the dominant personality, and Shinji is remarkably prone to suggestion. Due to their general misbehavior, teachers give up on the two students, and their paths diverge as Shinji proves adept at boxing, and Masaru wanders off to the Yakuza. It catalogs their rise and fall, which really isn't a spoiler since the film is cyclical and starts at the end, after everything has gone down.

Between the two, along with a series of other subplots, pressure from outside sources ultimately proves to be the downfall, especially when it comes to Shinji. Even if they know what they're doing is wrong, a charismatic person will get the best of their better judgment and lead to their ultimate failure. It's heartbreaking to watch as people who should have plenty of opportunity screwing up their lives because they are listening to an obviously bad influence.

It's a strange picture to watch at times, since there's a feeling that Kitano is trying to explain to himself why he crashed the bike. There's a scene very late in the picture showing the aftermath of an accident, and knowing the history of the production, one wonders how much of his own story Kitano put in. While one should separate the art from the artist, even subconsciously a lot of your own story can seep in, and considering this film's dramatic birth, one wonders just how much Kitano was influenced by himself.

Yet, even then, it ends on a hopeful note, as things start over again, perhaps with people learning from their mistakes and no longer letting themselves be dominated by a stronger personality. It certainly started over again for Kitano himself, as he went on to make some of the best films of his career, and also Brother.

Also, I would do unspeakable things for a big shiny Kitano Blu Ray set. Just saying.

Johnny Mnemonic

2009-10-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a question, do people realize what the cheesy parts of the present are? Will there be something about 2009 that people will look back and say "my god, what were we collectively thinking?" Johnny Mnemonic - a film which a guy I knew could never, ever pronounce the name of - has me curious, because this is a very cheesy movie, in an early '90s kind of way.

The story requires an opening text scroll - with lasers! - so you know it's good. In short, it's the future, as indicated by a title card that says INTERNET 2021, and there's a disease called NAS that's making the rounds. The popular rapper apparently gives people spasms, and this is in some way related to Keanu Reeves, who is a courier. Not just a regular courier, he stores sensitive data in his brain, 160GB of it! Unfortunately, he decides to ignore the low disc warnings and shove 320GB in there, and this particular data is of interest to all manner of interests.

One has to mention the cast, since it has possibly the greatest variety of famous people who cannot act I have ever seen. We've got the aforementioned Keanu Reeves, who is quite effective at playing a man who has had people poke around in his brain more than is probably advisable. Direct to video superstars Dolph Lundgren and Udo Keir show up, not especially popular rapper and scowling guy from Law and Order Ice-T plays a scowling guy with bad makeup. Musician and talk show host Henry Rollins proves that being either a musician or talk show host does not prepare you in any way for playing an angry doctor. There's also Dina Meyer as the obligatory love interest, but I have never heard of her.

In fact, there's precisely one actor in the lot who turns in the decent performance, and I believe I've mentioned him before (and will again very soon, if the DVD sitting on my desk is any indication). I'm talking about Takeshi Kitano, acclaimed film director and fascinating film presence, in a movie that's probably beneath him, but what can you do. The lucky Japanese got a version were his role was significantly expanded, but even here he's got the most character, the best delivery, and some great silly moments that I can't help but think he created all on his lonesome. Using his hand in a quacking duck pose is classic Kitano, for example.

Apart from everyone's favorite Japanese superstar, this is pretty much early 90s b-movie. Everything is lit with the most neon possible, the world's supply of smoke machines has been commandeered in order to make the futuristic city of Newark, New Jersey seem as futuristic as possible. Apparently in the future everything's on fire, and fire itself has turned hot pink and neon green. The general aesthetic of crap glued to other crap that was prevalent in the early 90s has been deployed in full force, and everyone looks like a drag queen except for Keanu Reeves, who has one of those really thin ties, and Kitano, who remains the only person who doesn't embarrass himself during the proceedings. The internet is accessed through the power of mime and looks like the worst CG in the world. The climactic sequence in particular looks like it belongs on the 3D0, not at the end of a major motion picture.

Inexplicably, however, it predicts the general function of the Nintendo Wii (albeit used for a phone). Huh.

I enjoyed this because I grew up in the 90s, but I'm not going to call it a great movie. The story is decent enough, but the performances are so bad and everything else so cheesy it gets in the way. The director - Robert Longo, who proceeded to never direct anything else again - is of the 'tilting the camera makes everything more exciting!' school of film making, and the 90s-ness of it oozes from every frame. If you're feeling a tinge of nostalgia for the early 90s, you could do worse, and it might prevent you from pulling out your favorite skinny tie, 3D0 and Ice-T records. Anything that keeps those Ice-T records stashed away counts as a good thing.

I'm Not There

2009-10-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

"I know more about you than you'll ever know about me."

Roughly in the middle of I'm Not There, Cate Blanchett, in the guise of one of the many variations on the theme of Bob Dylan - this one named Jude - delivers that line to a snooty British interviewer. It neatly summarizes the movie and the man, since it's pretty difficult to actually know anything about Bob Dylan, and even with Todd Haynes' fascinating attempt at exploring the man, he still presents something of a mystery, perhaps by design.

I'm a latecomer to the Dylan party, and I certainly would never consider myself a massive fan. Still, I've been growing ever fonder of the music, and I notice that what I like most is that he stubbornly does whatever he feels like, damn what his shallow fans might prefer. Going electric when all of your fans are shallow, folk loving proto-hipsters? Fantastic. Finding, then losing, religion? Why the hell not? Recording Wiggle Wiggle? That's the thing to do right now. Making a Christmas album? Sure, let's do it. Every time a hipster cries that their favorite "living legend" is doing something that doesn't fit their narrow perception of what they're allowed to do, a kitten is born. Dylan keeps us awash in kittens.

That stubborn following of his own muse, the swirl of legends crafted by the hipsters who care not a whit about the man but are obsessed with the symbol and a deliberate crafting of a shifty, mysterious persona creates a character that is, in essence, near impossible person to make a film about in a traditional manner. As is quite well known, this is far from traditional. No less than six people play different parts of the Dylan persona, all fictionalized and renamed. Cate Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, and Heath Ledger all play a part of something Dylan, and all are filmed in a different manner in a neat little mirror of the shifts in genre Dylan himself liked to make.

Yeah, it's far, far, far from a traditional - or accurate - biopic, but it's pretty much the only way to make a film of Dylan. He's an interesting personality, but he's not a film-friendly one. There's no arc to his story, though there are arcs to small parts, and there's no real beginning and end. Plus, there's the sticky matter of everything being obscured by legends, both gleefully fabricated by Dylan himself and by his ridiculous fans. It's a valiant attempt to find consistency in a person who seems to delight in being inconsistent. It's not a complete success, but it gets as close as anyone could in film form.

I like the attempt, though I think I'd like a full length film about the Cate Blanchett part of the character might be more interesting. From the surprise of a woman in the role trying to replicate the surprise of Dylan going electric, to the way she captures the fidgety weirdo behind the music, she's got the most interesting part to play. I could probably do without the Richard Gere part as well, which doesn't have a good connection to the overall character until very late in the film. Still, overall, I like how it's done, since it makes an effort to be so interesting.

Do I understand more about Dylan as a result of this movie? Not really. Do I like the music more? Maybe a bit, since it's used quite well, but he's still not my favorite musician. Was it worthwhile? You know what, it is. Successful or not, it's interesting to watch, never dull, and I genuinely liked it. Imperfection is fine if you're doing your best to be interesting.

As a side note, Charlotte Gainsbourg, who plays the wife in the Heath Ledger section, is behind 5:55, an album I quite like. It even mentions Saskatchewan! Yay!

Happiness

2009-10-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

24 minutes. That's how far I got into Happiness before giving up. To be fair, I didn't strictly turn it off - it's playing as I type - but I cannot sit through it. I made it all the way through Tomorrow We Move. I made it to the end of Fat Girl. Japon? I didn't even turn it off during the 90 year old sex scene. I've seen the entirety of all manner of irredeemable crap, but this defeated me after 24 minutes.

What is it about Happiness that makes me unable to bear it? It all started with the first scene. Jon Lovitz is on an awkward date with Jane Adams, gets dumped and starts crying. Then he gets angry. It's uncomfortable, unbearable, and unwatchable. More importantly, it's difficult to care about either character in the scene, since it opens at the end of their relationship and both characters haven't even been established yet. The message seems to be "Oh we're going with an ironic title here, hope you're prepared for two and a half hours of depressed people!"

And boy oh boy there are some depressed people! Joining the miserable brigade is sexually frustrated (and briefly shirtless) Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing a man who has uncomfortable and improbable fantasies about a sexy neighbour. Dylan Baker, playing a pedophile. The woman who plays his wife...playing his wife. Oh, and then some old people hate each other. See, Happiness! Feel the irony, swim in it, make it into an idiotic pop song.

Why am I going to willingly subject myself to the neurosis of the various uninteresting yet incomprehensibly dire predicaments of these characters? Why on earth do I care what happens to any of them, since they're at best boring, though for the most part they're thoroughly objectionable. Maybe it redeems itself somewhere in the remaining two hours, I'm judging it on a fraction of the total running time here, but my lord if I had to set through any more miserablist twaddle I would have had to shoot myself. As I do not want to shoot myself, I couldn't do it anymore.

Some people have called the film darkly comic. How? Where is the comedy here? Am I supposed to find humor in the unrelenting miserableness of it all? Am I supposed to be compelled to find out what happens to the uninteresting and unlikable characters? Well, sorry, I just don't. I can't sit and be bludgeoned with a bat of depression. I simply don't find two hours of bleak misery worth watching.

Unfortunately, I'm saying this at 24 minutes. Can I be trusted to give an opinion on a movie I couldn't stand to watch all the way through? Yeah, the first 24 minutes could be terrible, but there's so much more movie, maybe it all turns around? I...don't care. Well, the dialog playing in the background suggests that I'm right to have walked away, but honestly, I can't imagine how it could possibly redeem itself.

I like smart, visually interesting movies. I like movies that are funny, movies that are entertaining, and movies with interesting stories. I don't like to sit and wallow in someone else's misery. Other people love stuff like this, they call it thought provoking, subversive and dangerous. Honestly? I don't see it. What I see, and hear, is like an overcast day, light drizzle, that dull gray of a dreary afternoon. It's a slightly miserable nothing. I like sunshine, I like rain, I like thunderstorms and snowstorms and anything of that nature. Why? Because something's happening. Stuff like this, there's nothing happening but dreary misery. I can't accept dreary misery. And I can't accept this movie.

You win, Happiness. May we never cross paths again.

Gate of Flesh

2009-10-13T07:48:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite directors, as mentioned somewhere previously, is Seijun Suzuki. I appreciate that he did whatever he wanted with the studio's money, and made some genuinely ambitious and visually interesting movies on a shoestring budget. I also am fond of movies that make no sense in an intriguing manner, so there's also that. Then naturally I would be rather excited about Gate of Flesh showing up at my door.

Post-war Japan was apparently a bit of a hell hole, at least if this is anything to go by. Here, we have a story about a woman named Maya - Yumiko Nogawa - who falls in with a group of prostitutes. Kayo Matsuo as Omino, Satoko Kasai as Sen, and Tamiko Ishii as Oroku welcome young Maya into prostitute club, where the only rule is to ~~not talk about prostitute club~~ not give away the goods for free, under punishment of severe beatings. Unfortunately, one day a stranger with utterly ridiculous cheeks, cheeks so bad they almost the movies he's in because he looks like a chipmunk with the measels and it's really distracting, arrives on their doorstep, Shintaro Ibuki as portrayed by the cheeky Jo Shishido. He had cheek injections to get that look, what's wrong with him? Apparently Japanese ladies have a thing for impossibly big cheeked men, and it slowly divides the house.

At the beginning of the film, it seems almost feminist. Yeah, they're all whores, but they work for themselves, and they're doing it by exploiting the base instincts of the surrounding men. They're the ones in control in the scenes, and they seem to wield more power than anyone else. That vaguely feminist thing comes crashing down as soon as Ibuki arrives, since he immediately becomes the most powerful character by promptly beating up one of the ladies when she tries to beat him. It's an interesting slant while it lasts, however, since the movie was also designed to tie up naked ladies and whip them, in order to titillate the movie goer - or at least that is what is claimed in the special features.

Feminist or not, the film is as a whole unrelentingly grim. Everyone who shows a trace of human compassion or caring is immediately whipped, beat, shot or raped. This list includes a kindly priest getting raped by the leading lady. The message seems to be that people in post war Japan only survived by being the worst people possible, and that was the only way to survive. I wasn't there, so maybe it's true, but it's still quite dark.

Unfortunately, this features less of the visual invention that Suzuki is famous for, and it stars my least favorite actor of all time - seriously I can barely look at him and his freakish cheeks, it's like he lives in the uncanny valley. It's a fascinatingly dark movie, the perspective of a losing country immediately post war, when they're still struggling to admit defeat and rebuild. It's grim, but let's be honest Japan, you did pretty well for yourselves in the years since. Besides, if memory serves, you were kind of dicks anyway.

Fahrenheit 451

2009-10-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

It's a curious trend for acclaimed, talented, and generally fantastic foreign directors to go Hollywood. While American directors going off to work in a foreign language and country is rare, it seems that some days every foreign director who garners a little bit of acclaim will make an attempt at the American mainstream. Walter Salles, a fantastic Brazilian director, came and did Dark Water. Takeshi Kitano attempted (and failed) to break the American market with Brother. Wong Kar-Wai enlisted Norah Jones and a loose, pie-based narrative to try to bring his own style over in My Blueberry Nights. Acclaimed Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron went and did a Harry Potter film of all things - albeit one of the good ones. Of course, at least he made a good one, whereas acclaimed French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet came to do the fourth Alien sequel, something which doesn't actually make sense considering his style. I could go on, but instead I'll focus on today's "acclaimed foreign director goes abroad" film, Fahrenheit 451.

Francois Truffaut is the man behind this one, and he's perhaps most famous for being one of the leading directors in the French New Wave movement. Unlike Jean-Luc Godard, he's a bit less angry, and as a result he's arguably more accessible - though I've only seen this and The 400 Blows, so what do I know? In his attempt at English film making, he's gone with an adaptation of a book so subversive and controversial that it's required reading in many high schools.

So, perhaps you've been living in a cave, and you are unfamiliar with the book? Well, I will spell it out for you in as few words as possible. It's about a fireman named Montag, played here by Oskar Werner, in the middle of a battle to the death with his German accent. Firemen in this book start fires instead of putting them out, though what they burn is books, because books are forbidden. The logic is that ignorance is bliss, and a society of dumb but conforming people watching big TVs (which, due to changing technology, are smaller than mine) is a happy society. There's a suggestion of war in the distance - subtle in the book, extremely subtle here - but on the whole going around torching books is viewed as a way to keep things peaceful and suppress dangerous thought. Through the course of events, Montag has an intellectual awakening, spurred on by talkative neighbour Clarisse (Julie Christie, also playing his rock stupid wife Linda in a well done double role). The film and book divert in interesting ways - something that always annoyed me about the fate of Clarisse in the book is resolved in a more sentimental but better executed manner here - but the spirit remains the same.

This is a very clever movie, but the cleverness never overwhelms the content. From the opening credits, with color tinted images of television aerials (the viewers of tomorrow will have no idea what those are) with the opening credits read out rather than printed on screen. Subtle, but you don't have to read, which plays neatly into the entire message of the film. The devil is in the details, and this is filled with little jokes and hidden messages that require a bit of thought to fully understand. From Montag taking a bite of an apple in the initial raid - obvious biblical reference, but not overplayed, which is key - to the title of the books - including a special appearance by Cahiers du Cinema, which Truffaut wrote for and was the spark behind new wave movement. A great number of the books were works considered dangerous at a time, but it's such a subtle reference that I wonder if it passed some viewers by.

There's a lot of that, and I think that helps the film. It rewards repeat viewings just by having so much detail there's bound to be something that went unnoticed the first time, and none of it is overplayed. For example, technology continually stops working for Montag the more he reads, suggesting a society that is rejecting him. It's never overplayed, just set there for people to do with what they wish.

Not that all the details were perfect, the production design didn't completely work, for one. I can see what he was going for, something clean, sterile and artificial. Unfortunately, instead we get something annoyingly toy-like. The fire truck and hall belong in Busyland, not a science fiction dystopia. There's one note that does work, and that's a school which is given a very unsettling vibe by recalling images of the Hitler Youth, from the overall design to the uniforms of the children. A fantastic touch, and it makes up for the flaws in other aspects of the design.

I can't imagine someone outside of the New Wave really doing this film justice, since it plays into the movement's strengths so well. The intellectualism of Truffaut is the perfect match for that of the book, and the appreciation for literature goes hand in hand. In the final scene, with people reciting the books they have memorized, one gets a sense of the beauty of the words, and the value of literature as a whole, just from the way the characters have memorized it, and the way their recitations blend and stir together. It just makes you want to read something, and to interact with the world and culture in a meaningful way. That's one of the things good art can do.

Election

2009-10-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

One of the troubles with democracy is that the losing side never seems to take it well. Take the anger directed towards the Obama administration in the US, or its predecessor, the anger directed at the Bush administration. In fact, right now, the entirety of Canadian politics is structured around the bitterness of the losing side. If Election is to be believed, even the triads (they're kinda like the mafia I guess, for a parallel more familiar to North American audiences) in Hong Kong have to deal with election problems, as the loser just doesn't want to admit they're not in power. It's like regular politics, except with machetes.

Election starts as just being about an election, between two potential chairmen of a triad. One is Lok, as portrayed by Simon Lam. His platform is based on loyalty, brotherhood, and the expansion of property. The other is Big D, by Tony Leung Ka Fai, easily the second best Tony Leung. His platform is based on a solid foundation of giving everyone lots of money. There's also a symbolic baton, which is very important in a very traditional outfit like the triad. Big D loses, so he decides to hijack the baton and start a war, leading to two separate yet equally important storylines. One is the journey of the baton, as the two opposing sides in the battle attempt to gain control and give it to the person they like best. The other is the older people in the triad trying to convince Big D to stop being so foolish and prevent the triad from being destroyed. Caught in the middle are the police, who, more than anything, just want to make sure there's not too much trouble on the streets.

The fantastic thing about the story is that director Johnnie To has created genuine tension in this story. First, there's a side to root for, since Lok is a bit less of a jerk than Big D, and he won fairly. This makes you care about what happens to the baton, and whether or not the triad can survive. Yes, it's still a criminal organization, but considering the alternative Lok is someone you want running it. Second, as Lok and Big D play their respective influences and change the minds of other triad bosses, there's a sense of complete unpredictability. Someone's side can change in the space of a phone call. Add Big D being a complete loose cannon, and you honestly don't know what's going to happen, or whether or not peace or chaos will reign. From beginning to end, it's a complete unknown what's going to happen next.

The story is tense, but it's helped along by an insistent guitar score. In essence, you know something is soon happening, even in what might appear to be a relatively banal sequence. Since anything can happen, it keeps you on your toes, and since there's payoff early and often, it never feels like the movie is lying to you. Car chases aren't high speed, and there's really only one extremely elaborate fight scene, but there's always a sense of violence lurking under the surface, a necessary component to keep the viewer curious.

The closest the film has to a weak point is the ending, which flops around not knowing when to call it a finish. It's certainly not a bad ending, and a succession of twists are all worthwhile, but it gives a sense of someone who didn't quite know how he was going to piece together the ideas he needed to express. Even the editing and cinematography get a bit haphazard at this point, but it doesn't make it bad by any means. Besides which, the final twists are worth whatever inconsistency there is.

The best thing is that it takes the mud slinging and back stabbing of normal politics and makes it literal, and that's fantastic to watch. As a demonstration of the problems of democracy, it's pretty spot on. That's not to say that democracy is a bad thing by any means, but that every time your party loses, you should just let it go and start preparing for the next election.

Raising Arizona

2009-10-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

It can be argued that it is quite easy to make a very personal situation universal. After all, many people experience many similar situations, and the stages of life are often repeated between generations. Following that logic, can one make a completely absurd situation seem universal? Well, Raising Arizona is evidence that is possible as well.

From old Movies at Random favorites the Coen Brothers, in a relatively early example of their being totally awesome at movies, we get a simple story about a couple wanting a baby. The couple in question consists of pre-crazy Nicholas Cage as H.I., a convenience store stickup...well artist really isn't the right word, since he gets caught all the time. He falls in love with Ed, played by Holly Hunter, the police officer who is always booking him. He decides to go straight so they can get married and raise a family. The family doesn't come, but discount magnate Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) has five babies! Five! Since they figure they'll never have one of their own, H.I. and Ed decide that the best thing to do would be to steal one. Then a bunch of increasingly bizarre chases happen - including a pure genius one involving the police, dogs, and a supermarket - and we have a situation that has never actually faced anyone, but is completely universal.

Raising Arizona is all about anxiety, especially the anxiety inherent in becoming a parent for a first time. There are questions about whether or not you can get a kid, whether you can raise them when you do get one, and whether a gigantic guy with a beard and grenades will try to steal him away. Okay, that last one is more symbolic than an actual fear by many parents, but that's kind of the point. It lets you laugh at the increasingly ridiculous worries these people face, since you know that an embryonic version rests in all of us.

One day I'll talk about pre- and post-crazy Nicholas Cage, but I think we need a good post-crazy entry before we get to that point. While he's so goofy you wonder how he became a leading man, he's turns in a great performance here. H.I. needs to be a strange looking guy with a goofy voice, and if there's an actor alive who fits that description, it's Steve Buscemi. However, Nicholas Cage also fits that description and he can play a loser with the best of them.

Now, I've never been a parent, though I know people who are, but I am no stranger to anxiety. Worries can start small and escalate into a scary bounty hunter of a concern if they're allowed to persist, and it's nice to see a movie that confronts the ridiculous things resting in the subconscious head on. It's nice to see that all the worries a parent might ever experience are confronted head on in a variety of different ways. It's as though the film is saying, it's okay, it's normal to worry, if just by including anything one could be anxious about somewhere in the film. That's the beauty, no matter how ridiculous it might be, you're going to see something you've worried about represented in the film.