Over at the A.V. Club there is a feature which was posted recently titled Say Goodbye To The Blockbuster: The A.V. Club's Summer Movie Preview. It is divided into two parts, Part 1 being posted yesterday, and Part 2 being posted today. They are as indifferent to the Summer Movie Lineup as I am, which is hard to do, considering that I don't feel like seeing anything in theaters come Summer Movie Season. Most action movies bore me, even if the hero is wearing a nifty, elaborate superhero costume. Sex comedies are fine, but I'm not too keen on spending $15.99 on frivolity. Some people go see movies strictly because of frivolity, but I don't watch films merely to be entertained. I love entertainment as much as the next person but I'm usually only entertained if my mind is being engaged. Yeah, I'm one of those.
Anyway, so here's my lackadaisical analysis of the crap you'll be wasting your money on the next four months:
May 2
Iron Man
Looks aight, pretty aight I gotta say, mostly due to Robert Downey Jr. It puzzles me because if that level of smugness was coming from anybody else, I'd want to punch him in the face. Yet Downey's is humorous. Maybe it's the deadpan comic timing. Oh yeah, and Explosions!! Flying! WHOOOOOSSHHHH!!! Rocket packs!! I might be willing to put it on my Netflix queue come October.
May 9
Speed Racer
"Cool Beans"? No doubt Diablo Cody was responsible for inspiring that.
"Racing's the only thing I know how to do and I gotta do something." Well it's good that the very thing that must be done to save the day involves racing.
The ideal audience for this is people who like shiny things.
May 16
The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian
You didn't actually watch that whole thing, did you? If indifference were pennies, then I would have enough pennies to buy Peter Jackson a 30-acre Manor in the Netherlands. Thanks Mr. Jackson. Without your trail blazing, we would not have this, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and The Spiderwick Chronicles, and The Bridge to Terabithia, and The Golden Compass, and the next 1,478,635,209 fantasy fiction novel movie adaptations.
May 23
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Well, I didn't feel the wave of nostalgia I was expecting, and don't share the sentiment of a guy over at the A.V. Club who posted that watching it made him feel like he was 14 again. Shia Lebouf doesn't help. His presence just hammers home the reminder that this new Indiana Jones is conforming to the 21st century. Indiana Jones doesn't conform to the 21st Century, the 21st Century conforms to Indiana Jones! Either way, I'll be seeing this out of obligation and fanboy hope. Please, please, please don't let me down, Steve.
May 30
Sex and the City: The Movie
I don't think I need to show a trailer for this. If you're a fan of the show, you'll see it. Otherwise, you don't care. Also, shoes.
The Strangers
There are two trailers, the long one and the Teaser. The Teaser is better, so I'll show that one.
Come on. This looks pretty good. Loved the slideshow of the houses with the Ink Spots' 1939 recording "If I Didn't Care." So creepy.
Beneath comment: What Happens in Vegas... (May 9)
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Happy Birthday Uma Thurman
As I said last week, I've been inspired by one of my favorite bloggers to maintain a regular feature using my favorite actresses' (or female actors')birthdays as an opportunity to celebrate my obsession with them, and I usually have pretty good reasons to be obsessed with a particular actress, considering that I find 75% of them to be either undistinguished or actively bad. Well, despite not having liked a single movie she's been in without "Directed by Quentin Tarantino" attached to it, I am deeply in love with Uma Thurman.
Disclaimer: I have not seen Hysterical Blindness (2002), Tape (2001), Sweet and Lowdown (1999), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993) or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).
Her filmography is not great, but generally, if she is in a shitty movie, she is somehow able to transcend the shittiness of the whole enterprise. It could be her otherworldly loveliness, her charming sheepishness (witnessed more from interviews with her than from the characters she plays), her very unusual facial features (you'd never confuse her with anyone else), or maybe it's the way the sun shines down on me and I hear birds chirping and a choir of angels when she smiles and laughs. Ethan Hawke is a fucking idiot.
Anyway, the #1 reason she knocks my socks off is her tour de force performance in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2. Even if you don't like Quentin Tarantino or kung-fu movies or spaghetti westerns or kung-fu movie homages or spaghetti western homages or crazy violent swordfights or pure adrenaline-surging badassery, you have to admit that Uma Thurman is SPEC-TACULAR, like a performance that'll make her a Legend, if she's not one already, at the young age of 38! 38. And she's a fucking Legend. Quentin Tarantino can do that for your career.
Despite Quentin Tarantino's waning credibility among film elitist snobs, I still consider his oeuvre a guilty pleasure of mine, and have yet to see a film by him that I didn't like (Yes, I liked Death Proof). He's as smitten with Ms. Thurman as myself, moreso, and it must either be an immense treat or an endless parade of stifled overtures of affection to work with her, talk to her, stand next to her, breathe the same rose-scented air as her...but somehow he manages to not let the magnetic force of her allure distract him.Yeah, so, um, wow, she's just exceptionally attractive and sexy and wonderful, but I did not find her to be any of these things when she played Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction. Mia Wallace is the relatively smug, badly-coiffed, sneering, jaded moll of prodigious gangster Marcellus (Ving Rhames) and is not really likeable. Okay, she is sexy, I suppose, despite the hair, and does warm up to Vincent Vega considerably after getting back home from Jack Rabbit Slim's. She seems untouchable and smells of danger. She is also rather insightful when it comes to the mechanics of social exchanges:
The color of her hair seems to play a large part in the chameleon transformation from icy, wicked bad-girl Mia to lovable, sunny good girl (with bad-girl fighting skills) Beatrix Kiddo. I could totally buy that glaring girl with the dark hair getting mixed up in a lurid fiasco involving a hypodermic needle hanging out of her chest. Beatrix, not so much. Despite being a world-traveled assassin who has sliced off people's arms, legs, heads, and scalps, she is a pretty wholesome gal. I could go on and on about how she holds TWO ENTIRE FILMS on her shoulders, strains every fiber of herself, physically and mentally, to play "The Bride," or how she becomes a walking embodiment of pure awesomeness, an Icon of Cool, or I could just show a wild montage of the phantasmagoric fight sequences and color palettes shimmering from the movie, but instead I'll show you a quiet clip from Volume 1, the moment she first meets Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba) after arriving in Okinawa:
The rolled up sleeves, the pony-tail, the smile, the warmth, the playfulness, the lack of pretension, the eyes, the way Tarantino lights her, this was the moment where I fell in love with Uma Thurman, and drooled like a pervert all over my lap. Now that the DVD is available, I can drool in the privacy of my own home.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The A.V. Club Presents....
The New Cult Canon: The Blair Witch Project
By Scott Tobias
April 24th, 2008
"I make one film as a filmmaker, but the audience, based on that film, makes 100 movies in their minds. Every audience member can make his own movie. This is what I strive for. Sometimes, when my audiences tell me about the mental movies they have made based on my movie, I am surprised, and I become the audience for their movies as they are describing them to me. My movie has only functioned as a base for them to make their movies." —Abbas Kiarostami
I first heard the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (A Taste Of Cherry) espousing his ideas about how the audience "completes" his movies around the time he released The Wind Will Carry Us in 1999. That also happened to be the same year The Blair Witch Project became a cultural phenomenon. For someone weaned on Hollywood movies, the thought was heretical, especially in reference to a film as difficult as The Wind Will Carry Us: Why can't Kiarostami finish his own movie? Aren't we, as audience members, entitled to see a filmmaker's complete vision? And isn't this just a ready-made excuse for work that's half-conceived and half-executed?
It didn't occur to me at the time, but Kiarostami's radical concept is the reason The Blair Witch Project became an anomaly of anomalies, a $60,000 independent film that somehow found its way onto thousands of screens and ran off with $140 million. It's also the reason some viewers left the theater flummoxed and angry over paying hard-earned money (why do those who feel ripped off always work so hard for their ill-spent dollars?) for a horror film that offers nothing more tangible than bundled twigs and piles of rocks. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez were fiendishly clever on two levels: They came up with a found-footage gimmick that flowered in people's imaginations long before they even entered the theater, and they made a movie that the audience actively participates in creating, just as Kiarostami describes it. To some, like myself, the experience of padding around the film's dark, uncertain twilight zone of a forest remains terrifying to this day; to others, it's just a bunch of twigs and rocks, and thus possibly the biggest bait-and-switch scam ever perpetrated on the American moviegoing public.
The Blair Witch Project opens with this epigram, written in elemental white-on-black typeface:
In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.
Genius. With a premise that good, making the movie almost seems superfluous. Indeed, between the film's première as a buzzed-about midnight movie at Sundance in January and its official release in late July, the Blair Witch legend flourished on the website, which did nothing to suggest that the events described in that famous epigram weren't real. The classic campfire yarn of a centuries-old witch still haunting the woods outside a Maryland town gained instant urban-legend status well before most people saw the movie. And I'm guessing that the website and the movie's straight-faced verisimilitude had a handful of people believing that the footage they were seeing was going to be as real as the debris in Al Capone's vault. After all, if three student filmmakers did disappear into Burkittsville's fabled woods, and their equipment was discovered in a backpack a year later, then naturally you'd look to the footage to see what happened to them, yes? (And if you believe that it really happened, I'd advise against visiting the sewers of New York City. I hear there are alligators down there.)
Using their real names for added realism, actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams star as Heather, Josh, and Mike, the director, cameraman, and soundman, respectively, on a documentary project about the legendary "Blair Witch." Armed with a video camera, a 16mm camera with black-and-white stock, and a DAT (Digital Audio Tape) sound recorder, the three head out for a weekend shoot in the woods. They stop first in Burkittsville for some man-on-the-street interviews, which have been improvised to such uncanny effect that viewers can be forgiven for assuming temporarily that they're watching non-fiction. (The anecdotes also prime the pump for events to come, including the famed final shot.) We learn that the town was once called Blair, and that in the '40s, there were an unusual number of disappearances, especially among the town's children. We also learn that some of the townspeople are certain that the woods are still haunted, and that one citizen—a creepy old woman named Mary Brown—claims she encountered the Blair Witch, whom she describes as a hirsute half-human creature. (Many message-board denizens have speculated that Brown herself is the Blair Witch, since she's the only one to have survived an encounter, and the fence leading into her trailer is assembled out of sticks.)
Once in the forest, the three follow their not-so-trusty map to locales like "Coffin Rock," the site of a ritualistic murder involving a disemboweled search party, and a cemetery that's perpetually on the horizon, but somehow never reachable. As day passes into night and the trail seems to wind in a perpetual loop, the gang encounters an escalating series of unsettling events: Strange cracking and cackling sounds emanating from 360 degrees outside their tent; an unnatural formation of rock piles in a wood clearing; and finally, a fresh rock pile in front of their tent the morning after a night of spooky activity. They try to explain away the problem as the locals fucking with them—which only gives them a tiny measure of solace, since they've no doubt seen Deliverance—but when they come across sights like the following, they find it hard to deny the presence of a supernatural hand:
During the day, Heather, Mike, and Josh frantically search for a way out of the woods, but the map isn't getting them anywhere; worse yet, it seems like no matter what direction they choose, they wind up circling back to the same log and the same stream. At first, the guys take out their frustration on Heather, who orchestrated what was supposed to be a well-scouted hike, but never seemed to know where they were or where they were going, in spite of her protestations to the contrary. When the map goes missing, Mike (who crosses the crazy threshold first) claims to have kicked it into the river because it was useless; naturally, his mates are apoplectic, not least because they know he's right. The map won't lead them out of the woods, and neither will the compass. Shortly after they embark on their misadventure, the forest seems to close in on them, its borders still indeterminate, but its parameters somehow shrinking until they can hike all day long, then sleep in roughly the same spot they did the night before.
My friend and current Esquire critic Mike D'Angelo likened this aspect of The Blair Witch Project to Sartre's No Exit, and for me, it's one of the most compelling, sophisticated aspects of the movie. It would be enough for Myrick and Sanchez to have these kids get hunted by a witch, but they instead turn the woods into an abstract place—as much a psychological landscape as a physical one. As in Sartre, the three certainly discover that "hell is other people," particularly as it relates to Heather, who shoulders much of the blame for getting them into this predicament. There really didn't need to be a witch at all, because they're so mentally frayed by the fruitless days and sleepless nights that they'd approach madness without the help of rocks and twigs.
Like many of the movies featured in Cult On The Cheap Month, Blair Witch doesn't have the budget for spectacle, so it has to find other ways to take root in viewers' imaginations. In addition to the souped-up mythology, Myrick and Sanchez make exceptional use of inexpensive tools like sound and offscreen space. At night, the light at the top of the video camera reveals just enough territory to make the darkness seem all the more enveloping; on other occasions, we just hear the raw sound coming into the DAT recorder, and can only sit paralyzed with fear like our three heroes. Blair Witch basically confirms a basic horror principle that's been around since the days of Val Lewton: Show little and hide everything else in shadow. Audiences are scared by the unknown, and as an added bonus, the unknown and unshown doesn't cost any money.
Aside from those poor saps who hate Blair Witch for its rocks-and-twigs minimalism or its shaky-cam aesthetic (which seems quaint now that it's been brought mainstream in movies like The Bourne Ultimatum), some still can't abide Heather Donahue's performance in the lead. "Annoying" is usually the response it gets, to which I say, "And?" There's probably something to be said here about men getting bothered by women in positions of power, but I'll generously assume that people's animosity toward Heather comes from a genuine place, and isn't revealing of some deep-seated misogyny. But think about it: What does Heather do wrong here? The other guys are angry with her for getting them lost, but we know that no map or compass could have led them out of the woods. In fact, based on the evidence here, she's a competent director: They get the interviews they needed in Burkittsville proper, she brings them to one of the cemeteries and Coffin Rock, and we know that she has hiking experience and can find her way around woods that aren't, um, haunted by a 200-year-old witch.
The other issue: Why doesn't she put down that damned camera? The joke answer is that Myrick and Sanchez could really use the footage, but the real answer is more complicated. At one point, Josh snidely speculates that she keeps the camera running because "it's not quite reality," and she "can pretend everything is not quite the way it is." And with that, I think he nails the sense of detachment and fantasy that most movies are expected to provide audiences, and that might give comfort to a film-addled student like Heather, who uses her camera like a desperate wish to convert her grim circumstances into a kind of escapism. All of which makes her famed "confession" on the last night more resonant, because by then, she realizes that the camera won't keep the evil spirits at bay. And really, no matter how many times it's been parodied, the scene hasn't lost any of its iconic power, thanks to Donahue's astonishingly raw performance:
It's funny to revisit The Blair Witch Project today, since it was such a product of its particular moment in time, like leg warmers or pet rocks. There was a groundswell of buzz and hype, leading to the bizarre spectacle of a no-budget indie doing blockbuster business, and then the comedown that all movies experience once they hit video and sit on the shelf for a while. It was a movie that captured the public's imagination briefly, yet I'm not convinced it's faded entirely into the woodwork—not when faux-doc fictions like Cloverfield and the upcoming Quarantine continue to spin off its original innovation. In the cult spectrum, I'd happily file it next to Carnival Of Souls, another creepy cinematic one-off that came out of nowhere, cost nothing, and quickly deposited its makers back into obscurity.
I Love Don Hertzfeldt
Back in 2003 or 2004, I had a friend who was obsessed with cartoons, specifically the [adult swim] Network, which shares channel space with the children-oriented programming on the Cartoon Network. [adult swim] began as a "spinoff" of Cartoon Network, premiering on September 2, 2001 with the airing of Home Movies. The first anime broadcast was Cowboy Bebop. On March 28, 2005, Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting split [adult swim] from Cartoon Network so Nielsen Media Research could treat it as a separate channel for ratings purposes. Though I very nearly detest all forms of anime, the humor found on [adult swim] is about as transgressive and sick as you'll find on the entirety of cable television. I'm speaking of Metalocalypse, Sealab 2021, The Tim & Eric Awesome Show, and my two personal favorites, Squidbillies, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
But this post is not about [adult swim] or their shows - it is about deliberately rudimentary animation utilized to display dark and twisted comic genius for my viewing pleasure. Some people do not like the crudeness of the animation found on [adult swim] shows, but that is to miss the point - the crudeness only underlines the minimalist sophistication, deadpan wit, and profoundly bizarre non-sequiturs of these demented shows. But before all these shows even existed, there was Don Hertzfeldt, now 31 years old, who pioneered this technique with short works such as Billy's Balloon (1998) and Rejected (2000). These make Aqua Teen Hunger Force look mainstream in comparison.
The first time I saw Rejected was when that friend I mentioned earlier attended one of the annual Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Animation Festivals back in 2003 and brought back a DVD compiling all the stuff that played there. Some were just disturbing, some were sickening, a few were fairly innocuous, but one that especially stood out was Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected which, at 9 minutes, seemed like a magnum opus compared to the others:
Your reaction to this will speak volumes about your sense of humor and/or your perception of things in general. Some might find what you just witnessed to be "stupid" or "frightening." But if you're like me, you found it to be brilliant and wonderfully absurd. This Hertzfeldt must be some kind of lunatic, you might be thinking if you know nothing about him watching it. I think I enjoy his earlier Billy's Balloon even more. If you did not care for Rejected, it is likely you will not enjoy what you are about to see:
But this post is not about [adult swim] or their shows - it is about deliberately rudimentary animation utilized to display dark and twisted comic genius for my viewing pleasure. Some people do not like the crudeness of the animation found on [adult swim] shows, but that is to miss the point - the crudeness only underlines the minimalist sophistication, deadpan wit, and profoundly bizarre non-sequiturs of these demented shows. But before all these shows even existed, there was Don Hertzfeldt, now 31 years old, who pioneered this technique with short works such as Billy's Balloon (1998) and Rejected (2000). These make Aqua Teen Hunger Force look mainstream in comparison.
The first time I saw Rejected was when that friend I mentioned earlier attended one of the annual Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Animation Festivals back in 2003 and brought back a DVD compiling all the stuff that played there. Some were just disturbing, some were sickening, a few were fairly innocuous, but one that especially stood out was Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected which, at 9 minutes, seemed like a magnum opus compared to the others:Your reaction to this will speak volumes about your sense of humor and/or your perception of things in general. Some might find what you just witnessed to be "stupid" or "frightening." But if you're like me, you found it to be brilliant and wonderfully absurd. This Hertzfeldt must be some kind of lunatic, you might be thinking if you know nothing about him watching it. I think I enjoy his earlier Billy's Balloon even more. If you did not care for Rejected, it is likely you will not enjoy what you are about to see:
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Happy Birthday Judy Davis
Inspired by one of my favorite bloggers I've decided to christen a new regular feature, namely, celebrating the birthdays of my favorite people, notably the actresses who charm and fascinate me or drive me to consider becoming some kind of deranged stalker.
So, as 2008 unravels, I will slowly reveal my favorite actresses (or female actors, if they prefer) as the dates of their births arrive. And I cannot think of a more fitting woman to start the feature than the great Judy Davis.
A singular female presence, she is peerless at effortlessly conveying cerebral formidability, often playing the wife or lover of an almost equally scary male intellectual counterpart. She plays the wife of Kevin Spacey in The Ref. She plays the muse to not one, but two fictional alter egos of brilliant writers, the girlfriend and typist of the thinly veiled representation of William Faulkner, W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) in Joel & Ethan Coen's Barton Fink and the wife of William S. Burroughs author surrogate, Bill Lee (Peter Weller) in David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. And she played both parts in the same year. She has appeared in 3 Woody Allen films, and is especially memorable in an early scene from Deconstructing Harry, where she confronts Allen's character, her ex-boyfriend, a writer, about a book he wrote in which he mines intensely personal and embarrassing details of their relationship for story ideas:
She is brilliant at playing nervy, tightly wound, fearsome women who can summon a vicious wit when crossed or wronged. She could wither many men with a single glance. But she is simultaneously able to do so without being a hateful bitch, because beneath her contempt, is a delicate vulnerability that has been tragically wounded. My single favorite performance of hers is from Ted Demme's The Ref, an underrated comedy from 1994 where she out-acts both the great Denis Leary and the great Kevin Spacey. Here's a quite humorous clip from The Ref:
She turns 53 today.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
In the Valley of Elah (2007)
Yes, I remember strongly disliking Crash the one and only time I saw it in the theater back in the summer of ’05. I still expected good things from this, because from what I had gathered, Tommy Lee Jones took up about 95% of the screen time.
Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield (this name fits perfectly for some reason I can’t explain), a man with the austerity of a monk. He is also severely patriotic: upon seeing the American flag inexplicably hanging upside-down when driving past an elementary school, he stops his truck. Cut to: Hank watching a Hispanic custodian bringing the flag down to right it and when part of the flag briefly rests on the concrete, Hank says, “Never let it touch the ground.” Whoa. He explains to the custodian what an upside-down flag means, and goes on his way.
Hank is an ex-Sergeant himself, both of his sons are in the military as well (we find out that the older boy was killed when his helicopter was shot down) and he has just received a phone call informing him that his last surviving son, Mike, has gone missing from his base shortly after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. He packs a suitcase and drives to his son’s base, and asks to see his quarters, where he meets some of his son’s bunkmates and fellow soldiers. Haggis is able to convey a sense of military omertà among these young men deftly - Hank is not going to find much here, except dubious condolences, and before long, he gets a knock on his motel room door from a marine in a beret. Hank tells him to wait a moment while he uses the bathroom. When Hank steps out, he is greeted by an eerie, striking image: the soldier in the beret is standing at attention, saluting, in the doorway, with the door still wide open, the daylight flooding into the room, shadowing the soldier so that he appears to be a saluting spectre. Hank pauses to process the oddness of what he is seeing, and then returns the salute, at which point, he is informed that his son, Mike, has been found.
This film is inspired by the real story of Richard Davis, a soldier who disappeared in the summer of 2003 after returning from a tour in Iraq. The young man’s father, Lanny Davis, a retired veteran, began his own investigation, and it was later revealed that Davis was murdered by four other soldiers who served with him in his tour of duty, his brothers-in-arms, his comrades. Reading about the night of Davis’s murder offers as little motivation for the killing (he was stabbed 33 times) as the film does, other than explaining that his buddies were drunk, pissed off at him, and were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The film keeps all these details, but increases the number of stab wounds to 42. Needless to say, I was almost as upset to hear that number as Hank was, when sparing himself no mercy he demands to hear every detail from the medical examiner.
Tommy Lee Jones is fascinating to watch in this, and his performance really deserves to be in a great movie. It is obvious from the film’s somberness and overbearing dirge-choir that Haggis thinks his film is Important, and though I admire much of it, it basically becomes a pretty standard Murder Investigation in the Military Film. This might be a legitimate sub-genre of the Police Procedural, but Haggis’s film hasn’t transcended its peers, A Few Good Men and Courage Under Fire, though it labors under the delusion that it has because it covers a current topic. Is it relevant? Yes. Is it a film worth watching? Yes. It has some fine moments, such as when a Detective (Charlize Theron) invites Hank over for dinner in order to share some information about the case with him. Theron’s character is a single-mother of a 9 or 10 year old boy, who likes to have his bedroom door left ajar after lights out.
Hank is asked to read him a bedtime story, but because he can’t make sense of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Hank tells the boy a story from the Old Testament: David and Goliath. This Bible story is where the film’s title comes from.
After telling the boy the story and a comically terse “goodnight,” he closes the boy’s bedroom door, leaving him in the pitch darkness. I was waiting for Theron’s son to cry out “Door!” like he did earlier when she did the same thing, but he doesn’t. Hank walks past Theron who tells him that her son likes the door ajar, and Hank informs her, “He’ll be okay.” Seconds later, the boy cries out “Door!” and Theron opens it a bit, and the boy tells her to close it more than usual, but still leaving it a bit open. We see the vertical rectangle of light on the boy narrow until just some of his face is lit. This is a perfect and not openly acknowledged symbol of Hank’s, and to a larger extent, the Military's, deluded attitude about thrusting young men into war: sure, they are men and men are tough, so they’ll be okay, right? No, no they won’t.
Grade: B-
Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield (this name fits perfectly for some reason I can’t explain), a man with the austerity of a monk. He is also severely patriotic: upon seeing the American flag inexplicably hanging upside-down when driving past an elementary school, he stops his truck. Cut to: Hank watching a Hispanic custodian bringing the flag down to right it and when part of the flag briefly rests on the concrete, Hank says, “Never let it touch the ground.” Whoa. He explains to the custodian what an upside-down flag means, and goes on his way.Hank is an ex-Sergeant himself, both of his sons are in the military as well (we find out that the older boy was killed when his helicopter was shot down) and he has just received a phone call informing him that his last surviving son, Mike, has gone missing from his base shortly after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. He packs a suitcase and drives to his son’s base, and asks to see his quarters, where he meets some of his son’s bunkmates and fellow soldiers. Haggis is able to convey a sense of military omertà among these young men deftly - Hank is not going to find much here, except dubious condolences, and before long, he gets a knock on his motel room door from a marine in a beret. Hank tells him to wait a moment while he uses the bathroom. When Hank steps out, he is greeted by an eerie, striking image: the soldier in the beret is standing at attention, saluting, in the doorway, with the door still wide open, the daylight flooding into the room, shadowing the soldier so that he appears to be a saluting spectre. Hank pauses to process the oddness of what he is seeing, and then returns the salute, at which point, he is informed that his son, Mike, has been found.
This film is inspired by the real story of Richard Davis, a soldier who disappeared in the summer of 2003 after returning from a tour in Iraq. The young man’s father, Lanny Davis, a retired veteran, began his own investigation, and it was later revealed that Davis was murdered by four other soldiers who served with him in his tour of duty, his brothers-in-arms, his comrades. Reading about the night of Davis’s murder offers as little motivation for the killing (he was stabbed 33 times) as the film does, other than explaining that his buddies were drunk, pissed off at him, and were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The film keeps all these details, but increases the number of stab wounds to 42. Needless to say, I was almost as upset to hear that number as Hank was, when sparing himself no mercy he demands to hear every detail from the medical examiner.
Tommy Lee Jones is fascinating to watch in this, and his performance really deserves to be in a great movie. It is obvious from the film’s somberness and overbearing dirge-choir that Haggis thinks his film is Important, and though I admire much of it, it basically becomes a pretty standard Murder Investigation in the Military Film. This might be a legitimate sub-genre of the Police Procedural, but Haggis’s film hasn’t transcended its peers, A Few Good Men and Courage Under Fire, though it labors under the delusion that it has because it covers a current topic. Is it relevant? Yes. Is it a film worth watching? Yes. It has some fine moments, such as when a Detective (Charlize Theron) invites Hank over for dinner in order to share some information about the case with him. Theron’s character is a single-mother of a 9 or 10 year old boy, who likes to have his bedroom door left ajar after lights out.
Hank is asked to read him a bedtime story, but because he can’t make sense of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Hank tells the boy a story from the Old Testament: David and Goliath. This Bible story is where the film’s title comes from. After telling the boy the story and a comically terse “goodnight,” he closes the boy’s bedroom door, leaving him in the pitch darkness. I was waiting for Theron’s son to cry out “Door!” like he did earlier when she did the same thing, but he doesn’t. Hank walks past Theron who tells him that her son likes the door ajar, and Hank informs her, “He’ll be okay.” Seconds later, the boy cries out “Door!” and Theron opens it a bit, and the boy tells her to close it more than usual, but still leaving it a bit open. We see the vertical rectangle of light on the boy narrow until just some of his face is lit. This is a perfect and not openly acknowledged symbol of Hank’s, and to a larger extent, the Military's, deluded attitude about thrusting young men into war: sure, they are men and men are tough, so they’ll be okay, right? No, no they won’t.Grade: B-
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Grand Canyon (1991)
Is it possible to be too likeable? If it is, then I’m going to say that Kevin Kline is disgustingly likeable, which is to say I think he is wonderful. Especially in Grand Canyon, a film which must be admired for not only its almost uniform likeability, but its ambition: it’s gonna cover the Big Issues! Existential Meditation – yeah, that’s the ticket!
It was scripted by Lawrence Kasdan, who also directed, and it’s clear, whether he wanted it to be or not, that he is a good-hearted individual, despite instances of gang-violence, urban decay, infidelity, and mid-life crises. The film’s sense of humor is what tips you off immediately – it’s warm, like its characters, who are mostly, well, very, extremely likeable. Danny Glover as Simon, during a blind date with Alfre Woodard fumbles and is unsure of himself, and the two are obviously mutually impressed, yet Glover’s awkwardness is delightful – he escorts her to his yellow car, “Well, there’s my car. It’s…yellow. (A beat) Of course it’s yellow, what am I saying?” Alfre Woodard finds it just as adorable as I did. It’s been a while since a scene has made me smile so hard.
Danny Glover plays Simon, a tow-truck driver who saves Kevin Kline’s character, Mack, when his car breaks down in a rather urban part of Los Angeles. Kline is in the process of being menaced and humiliated by five shameless black thugs who know an uptight whiteboy lost in the ghetto when they see one. This scene takes place within the first five minutes of the film and immediately hooked me, an uptight whiteboy, as I was scared shitless for Mack. Simon pulls up, like a guardian angel, and defuses the situation in a brilliant exchange with the head thug (the one who’s “strapped” as Simon’s nephew, Otis, would say). I would describe the scene further, but it is a wonder to discover for yourself, this brief dialogue between Simon and Ghetto Hood #1, that basically defines a whole subcultures’ ugly dilemma with a short, tense conversation.
The film is not so succinct, as a whole, however, and has many different subplots and auxiliary characters, none of which are bothersome, but add an unnecessary girth to the momentum of the story. I’m speaking of Mack and his wife, Claires' son, Roberto (a young Jeremy Sisto) whose role seems rather minor compared to the others. I grew impatient with his scenes at Summer Camp. He has a scene where he learns how to drive with his father that is compelling, but the scenes involving him consoling a bullied boy at the camp, and his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s parents introducing themselves to Claire all could’ve been removed without taking much from the film. Claire (Mary McDonnell) and her discovery of an abandoned infant wailing in the foliage when she’s out jogging struck me as particularly false. In a story like this, contrivances are requisite in order to establish the threadwork that ties all these disparate stories together, but this particular plot point was such a clumsy device – unsatisfied older woman facing Empty Nest Syndrome miraculously stumbles upon Hope wriggling in a bundle in the brush – that I often found Mary McDonnell’s entire character to be a weak spot. Sure, the film makes her say to Mack that it was “a miracle,” just like the curious moment when an absent-minded Mack was yanked back by a total stranger from stepping in front of a speeding bus. However, Mack’s character had an interesting story given to him, so anything involving him, I was much less inclined to grow tired with. The baby in the brush seems like a rather transparent script construct conceived (literally) to give an unassigned character something to do, much like Roberto and his Summer Camp romance, and to a lesser extent Mack’s secretary (and one-night stand), Dee (a 27-year-old Mary-Louise Parker) and her troubles. Though I must credit Kasdan for not forcing any melodrama involving Dee threatening to tell Mack’s wife, blah, blah, etc. Otis’s story also was not fundamental to the success of the film.
Like I said, though – the film is a success, and despite sometimes overstating themes about man’s smallness in the indifferent face of a natural behemoth like the Grand Canyon, there is a lot of wisdom about the way human beings struggle and persevere in the face of chaos and hardship. Mack, troubled why class and racial differences impose barriers between him and Simon becoming friends, seeks Simon out weeks later, after a bizarre and revelatory dream, and asks if he can buy him breakfast, one likeable all-around decent guy to another. Over breakfast, Simon tells Mack about his father’s worn, beat-up face:
The strangest character in the film is Davis (played by Steve Martin), a rich movie producer and friend of Mack and Claire. In a funny scene, we see him viewing the fruits of his labors (well his money) when watching a satirically gruesome scene of trigger-happy killers screaming obscenities and shooting passengers on a bus they have hijacked. Davis smiles at the unfortunate mayhem, and when there’s no “money shot” he gets up, turns around, and yells at the director, “Where’s the brain matter?! Where’s the viscera?!” He is later shot in the thigh in an abrupt car-jacking and after getting out of the hospital, tells Claire and others that he has had an epiphany – no more movies with explosions, no more glorification of violence, no more ugliness. Of course, by the end of the film, when Mack commends him on his change of heart, Davis asks, “What? Oh that! Fuck that.” This is followed by one of the best scenes in the film - as Mack drives Davis around the back lot of Davis’s studio in an upscale golf-cart, Davis explains why movies about violence need to be made:
It was scripted by Lawrence Kasdan, who also directed, and it’s clear, whether he wanted it to be or not, that he is a good-hearted individual, despite instances of gang-violence, urban decay, infidelity, and mid-life crises. The film’s sense of humor is what tips you off immediately – it’s warm, like its characters, who are mostly, well, very, extremely likeable. Danny Glover as Simon, during a blind date with Alfre Woodard fumbles and is unsure of himself, and the two are obviously mutually impressed, yet Glover’s awkwardness is delightful – he escorts her to his yellow car, “Well, there’s my car. It’s…yellow. (A beat) Of course it’s yellow, what am I saying?” Alfre Woodard finds it just as adorable as I did. It’s been a while since a scene has made me smile so hard.
Danny Glover plays Simon, a tow-truck driver who saves Kevin Kline’s character, Mack, when his car breaks down in a rather urban part of Los Angeles. Kline is in the process of being menaced and humiliated by five shameless black thugs who know an uptight whiteboy lost in the ghetto when they see one. This scene takes place within the first five minutes of the film and immediately hooked me, an uptight whiteboy, as I was scared shitless for Mack. Simon pulls up, like a guardian angel, and defuses the situation in a brilliant exchange with the head thug (the one who’s “strapped” as Simon’s nephew, Otis, would say). I would describe the scene further, but it is a wonder to discover for yourself, this brief dialogue between Simon and Ghetto Hood #1, that basically defines a whole subcultures’ ugly dilemma with a short, tense conversation.
The film is not so succinct, as a whole, however, and has many different subplots and auxiliary characters, none of which are bothersome, but add an unnecessary girth to the momentum of the story. I’m speaking of Mack and his wife, Claires' son, Roberto (a young Jeremy Sisto) whose role seems rather minor compared to the others. I grew impatient with his scenes at Summer Camp. He has a scene where he learns how to drive with his father that is compelling, but the scenes involving him consoling a bullied boy at the camp, and his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s parents introducing themselves to Claire all could’ve been removed without taking much from the film. Claire (Mary McDonnell) and her discovery of an abandoned infant wailing in the foliage when she’s out jogging struck me as particularly false. In a story like this, contrivances are requisite in order to establish the threadwork that ties all these disparate stories together, but this particular plot point was such a clumsy device – unsatisfied older woman facing Empty Nest Syndrome miraculously stumbles upon Hope wriggling in a bundle in the brush – that I often found Mary McDonnell’s entire character to be a weak spot. Sure, the film makes her say to Mack that it was “a miracle,” just like the curious moment when an absent-minded Mack was yanked back by a total stranger from stepping in front of a speeding bus. However, Mack’s character had an interesting story given to him, so anything involving him, I was much less inclined to grow tired with. The baby in the brush seems like a rather transparent script construct conceived (literally) to give an unassigned character something to do, much like Roberto and his Summer Camp romance, and to a lesser extent Mack’s secretary (and one-night stand), Dee (a 27-year-old Mary-Louise Parker) and her troubles. Though I must credit Kasdan for not forcing any melodrama involving Dee threatening to tell Mack’s wife, blah, blah, etc. Otis’s story also was not fundamental to the success of the film.
Like I said, though – the film is a success, and despite sometimes overstating themes about man’s smallness in the indifferent face of a natural behemoth like the Grand Canyon, there is a lot of wisdom about the way human beings struggle and persevere in the face of chaos and hardship. Mack, troubled why class and racial differences impose barriers between him and Simon becoming friends, seeks Simon out weeks later, after a bizarre and revelatory dream, and asks if he can buy him breakfast, one likeable all-around decent guy to another. Over breakfast, Simon tells Mack about his father’s worn, beat-up face:
The strangest character in the film is Davis (played by Steve Martin), a rich movie producer and friend of Mack and Claire. In a funny scene, we see him viewing the fruits of his labors (well his money) when watching a satirically gruesome scene of trigger-happy killers screaming obscenities and shooting passengers on a bus they have hijacked. Davis smiles at the unfortunate mayhem, and when there’s no “money shot” he gets up, turns around, and yells at the director, “Where’s the brain matter?! Where’s the viscera?!” He is later shot in the thigh in an abrupt car-jacking and after getting out of the hospital, tells Claire and others that he has had an epiphany – no more movies with explosions, no more glorification of violence, no more ugliness. Of course, by the end of the film, when Mack commends him on his change of heart, Davis asks, “What? Oh that! Fuck that.” This is followed by one of the best scenes in the film - as Mack drives Davis around the back lot of Davis’s studio in an upscale golf-cart, Davis explains why movies about violence need to be made:
The reason I like this scene so much is that it’s unclear how Kasdan wants us to feel about this speech. Should we think it’s a crock of deluded bullshit (which it certainly seems like)? Or is there some truth to what Davis is yammering about? After Davis says all that, he hobbles out of the golf-cart and asks Mack if he’s seen Sullivan’s Travels. When Mack says he hasn’t, Davis says, “It’s a story about a guy, he’s a filmmaker like me, who loses his way, and forgets what it was he was put on earth to do. Fortunately, he finds his way back. It can happen, Mack. Check it out.”
Grade: B
Friday, April 11, 2008
Hard Candy (2005)
Warning: Do not read unless you have seen Hard Candy. A computer screen: Lensman 319 chats, Instant Messenger style, with Thonggrrrrl14 and does not flirt so much as write cringe-inducing sexual overtures. Thongrrrrl agrees to meet him: cut to portentous black – I was hooked. They meet in a coffee/pastry shop and we meet Hayley (Ellen Page), 14, ostensibly all wide-eyed innocence and seeming very susceptible at first, as Jeff (Patrick Wilson) wipes cake-cream residue off her bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger clenching her chin suggestively at the same time, immediately establishing his sexual dominance.
They talk in the coffee shop and he realizes she is no ordinary girl: she is, at first charming, then troubling, in her precocious ness. They go back to his place, and my disgust with Jeff turned into sympathy and my sympathy for Hayley turned into disgust, as she quickly establishes her intellectual dominance with her smug dismissive analysis of his personal belongings, and he struggles to keep up while remaining cool despite his rapidly deteriorating superiority. He offers her a Screwdriver, but she reminds him of the foolishness of accepting a drink from a stranger, especially when the mixing of the drink was out of sight. She says she’ll make the drinks, and when she brings his to him, he drinks and before long, he is disoriented and has lost consciousness.
He awakens to a gloating Hayley and tied to a swivel chair. The rest of the film is Hayley gloating and torturing him, physically and psychologically, while Jeff earns the audiences’ sympathy more and more with each panicked plea for mercy. His crime: being a pedophile that preys on underage girls on the Internet. In theory, this is an interesting role reversal, but as executed by the cocky, abrasive Ellen Page and the likeable Patrick Wilson, there is very little swinging of sympathies as the director and writer expect. From the moment Jeff finds himself tied to the chair, my sympathies were never with Hayley as her idea of justice is vindictive cruelty. So any elevated display of biting social commentary on the parts of the filmmaker devolves into pointless sadism and moderately compelling cat-and-mouse games ending with an ineffective climactic confrontation between Jeff and Hayley atop the afternoon-sun-soaked rooftop of Jeff’s house. An idealized ex-girlfriend of Jeff’s is used as a weak motivation for Jeff’s acceptance of Hayley’s offer to hang himself with a noose she had tied on his roof earlier. Hayley walks away from Jeff’s home, victorious in ridding the world of a single Internet predator, but proving absolutely nothing, except that individuals that torture scumbags are just as guilty of torture as scumbags who torture innocents.
Grade: D+
Just Got Both 2-Disc Collector's Edition DVD and Regular 1-Disc Edition DVD
This is a classic character arc told with the kind of sober restraint common among directors three times as old as P.T. Anderson. His last 4 films, as great as they are, were all obviously made by a young man. There Wil Be Blood is an old man's film.
What I mean by that is it has all the characteristics of a film directed by an old man: the austerity, the formalist's rigor, and the absence of sensational elements (sex, gore, pop music). I would say excessive formalism is a narrow (and favorable) manner of conducting aesthetics. I agree that this narrowness allows for fewer mistakes and could describe 3/4 of There Will Be Blood. The final scene in the Bowling Alley, we see Anderson let go of the formalist's leash on Daniel Day-Lewis's grim mad dog. I think the direction over the acting in the bowling alley scene is actually expansive, and incongruous to the style of the rest of the film, which is why it's so strange and seems so out of place. Plainview doesn't just lose control, the film loses control: just as a narrator in a Faulkner novel loses his grasp on sanity, so too does the prose become fragmented and disorienting. The volcanic lunacy on display in the Bowling Alley, and to a lesser extent, the Baptism, is like the psychotic loss of composure you witness in Jack Nicholson as he taps on the bathroom door in The Shining, “Not by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin?!” Is such flailing ham good acting? Well, not exactly, but it sure is interesting to watch. If Plainview’s outburst at the end had been less wacko, it wouldn’t have had viewers anguishing over what they thought of it days, weeks later, inspiring second trips to the theater. I think the ridiculousness and the monstrousness of Plainview’s outburst is perfect.
There Will Be Blood towers over the other best films of 2007, even, in my opinion, No Country For Old Men.
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