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Kevin_Maness
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Le fantôme de la liberté (1974)
Great movie, but Monty Python got there first
I read couple of essays about this movie, not being very familiar with Buñuel's work, and they were very philosophical and praised the film most highly as one of the director's finest works.
To me, it seemed pretty much like a long episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus that made me smile a little and shake my head rather than laugh out loud or wonder why in the world anyone would think this is funny. That, and the transitions between sketches were smoother.
Don't get me wrong: I liked it, and I appreciated the social satire, the absurdity, the iconoclasm, the relinquishment of narrative convention, and especially the excellent timing of the transitions (which were almost unerringly placed just when I got really interested in how a story would play out). It's not that any of the erudite film analyses were wrong or that they were overreaching, necessarily. It's just that I kept noticing that I'd felt this way before watching something else, and when I realized it was Month Python, it simply fit so well. At first, I thought Buñuel's film must have influenced the Python people, but then I looked up Monty Python and was reminded that the TV show ran from 1969-1974; so it might actually be the case that Monty Python influenced Luis Buñuel! There may be a master's thesis in this for some aspiring film critic who doesn't mind causing a kerfluffle among very serious art film fans.
American Gods (2017)
Not enough for a series
I love Neil Gaiman, but there are books and groups of books that need to be made into multiple seasons of TV episodes, and then there are books that might make a fine movie if handled very skillfully, and American Gods is definitely NOT the former. Consequently, the show's creators have produced a rambling, meandering mess that uses boobs, buckets of blood, and vintage pop songs to distract viewers from the fact that the entire show run is a single idea (old gods vs new gods) spread way too thin.
I finished season one, forced myself to watch half of season two, then practiced self-compassion by letting myself stop.
Absentia (2017)
How?
Every. Single. Thing. About this series is derivative, but somehow it works. I'm scared, I can't stop watching. Totally gripping. I'm not sure why.
Warning: This Drug May Kill You (2017)
Think opioid addiction is someone else's problem? Think again.
This HBO documentary is an OK introduction to opioid addiction as it exists in 2017. It's only an hour long and features a handful of families sharing their stories of addiction. In each case, the opioid addiction started with individuals being prescribed opioids for pain relief, but without needed education, support, and oversight. Individuals were prescribed high doses of multiple medications for too long, and they became addicted and then progressed to heroin when the prescriptions are cut off by the doctor and the (now) addicted person learned that heroin is cheaper than buying pills on the street.
I hear this story all the time in my work with people with substance use disorders. It's like a bad dream that recurs over and over again. But it's real, and I'm only seeing a drop in a larger ocean of pain.
I do wish HBO had gone ahead and made a 2-hour film (at least) with more in-depth information, including how the drug works in the brain/body of the addicted person, why one person becomes addicted and another doesn't, what kinds of treatment are most effective in supporting long-term recovery, the ways for families and other loved ones to support people in addiction and recovery, and the kinds of policies and programs needed to reduce the incidence of addiction and to help those who are addicted, etc. (I know HBO touched more on these matters in their 2007 Addiction movie, but that was 10 years ago.) It seems unfortunate to me that the movie introduced the problem with so little to say about what can be done to address it. Especially at a time when the current Republican government seems hell-bent on cutting insurance coverage for addiction treatment!
In a nutshell, this isn't a bad place to start if you've heard about the so-called opioid epidemic but don't know anyone affected and feel that the problem is someone else's and could never happen to you or your loved ones. But, it leaves a ton of questions unasked and mostly unanswered.
Fireproof (2008)
As a film, awful--As an educational video, not so bad
I am a Christian, but, perhaps because I grew up in the 70s and 80s, I've developed a knee-jerk antipathy against any pop culture products that are explicitly labeled "Christian." I'm a big fan of the "in it, not of it" concept, and when Christians start labeling their music, "art," movies, books, bookstores, t-shirts, summer camps, and breath mints "Christian," that strikes me as being more "neither in it nor of it." Anyway, I watched Fireproof because I thought I should, and I wrestled with my get reactions all the way through.
As a film, I thought Fireproof was utterly wretched. The acting is contrived and amateurish, the screenplay is simply horrifying--completely lacking in art or subtlety, and while the production values aren't bad, the two music video montage sequences made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.
But this isn't really a movie, in any normal sense of the word. It's really an educational video. It's a self-help book on saving your doomed marriage combined with a Chick tract on becoming a Christian, and then translated into a made-for-TV- or after-school-movie format. As didacticism, it's not bad. I was married and divorced young, and I kinda wish someone had given me some of the advice, guidance, and support Kirk Cameron's character received in this movie.
I guess that's my conclusion about Fireproof. If you put it alongside other educational media--I am Joe's Stomach or Merchants of Cool--it fares pretty well because it gets its message across very clearly and it's occasionally entertaining and even emotionally moving once or twice. But if you compare it to actual movies about domestic turmoil--American Beauty or The Savages, for instance--it looks like a pile of crap. This movie's idea of artful dialogue is an early conversation in which Cameron's fire-fighting protagonist tells a fellow firefighter, "You have to stay with your partner, especially in a fire" and then oh-so-cleverly bringing that line of dialogue back toward the end of the movie in relation to Cameron's marriage. Basically, the philosophy of screen writing here is: "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them," which is fine for a student speech in COM120, but not so wonderful on the big screen.
Classified X (2007)
good, but...
I've meant to watch this documentary for quite some time, primarily because Spike Lee cited it as a major influence on his own narrative film, Bamboozled. Classified X is good, especially in its presentation of 100 years of movie representation of African Americans. I especially like its useful designation of periods in film history (the decades of independent black cinema, the "new Negro" period, the "no Negro" period, etc.).
There are a few times when I wish the film provided more careful explanation of how the discrimination against African Americans generally and African American films specifically happens. For example, near the end of the film, Van Peebles says that, with movies like Malcolm X and Panther, theaters siphon off the profits at the box office. I'd like to know what that means. Is it a problem of how many screens the movies are shown on? Or how many screens are hogged up by movies that the studios support more wholeheartedly?
I plan to use this movie in a college course about race in the mass media, and I think it will be provocative and educational, but the occasional lack of detailed explanation will be a slight stumbling block for my mostly white, mostly middle class students (as it is at least a minor disappointment for white, middle class me!). Perhaps this movie will simply be a bold starting point for a longer and sometimes difficult learning journey.
David & Layla (2005)
laughing, violence, conflict, dancing--yup, it's a wedding!
David and Layla is a romantic comedy, a light-hearted and optimistic take on the star-crossed lover theme that so often ends in tragedy. David, a Jewish-American man, falls in love with Layla, a Kurdish immigrant who hopes to stay in America (after the death of her family at the hands of Saddam Hussein). When their families find out, hijinks ensue.
I imagine some people will find the movie un-funny, if not offensive, because the couples work out or gloss over their differences in order to get married. In the "working out" process, there is enough to make people on all "sides" of the issues represented feel slighted. In America, especially, people tend to gravitate to the extremes when it comes to their understanding of middle east conflicts: either we know (close to) nothing about it, or we feel that such serious matters should never be joked about because they're too dire.
Jonroy chooses a middle way. His movie repeatedly acknowledges the centuries of conflict between Jews and Arabs and between Jews and Muslims, and it even pauses to provide some straight-up education about the oppression of the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, especially. That's somewhat bold for a romantic comedy, but he walks the fine line well. Jonroy's comedy doesn't depend on ignoring, belittling, or (God forbid) posing simplistic solutions for these problems. Rather, the local, romantic celebrations in this movie are joyous in spite of the hideous and exhausting violence that forms a sort of context for them. One character sums up the movie's "philosophy" when she says something like, "tolerate the differences, and enjoy life" (I'm paraphrasingdon't remember the exact wording). Toleration, in this case, doesn't mean pretending they're not there; it means seeing them, fighting about them, crying and yelling about them, and dancing at a wedding anyway. To me, that's what comedy is about.
I was reminded of Sullivan's Travels while watching this movie (and while listening to the director talk about it afterward). In Sullivan's Travels, a comedic filmmaker decides to make a serious film about the "plight of the poor" in America. After striving to understand the experience of poverty in America, he decides to make a comedy instead, realizing that his gifts would be better used in providing laughter in an unfunny world than trying to "make a statement" that would only tell the poor what they already knew while telling the rich nothing they cared to understand.
David and Layla fits into that traditionit's a comedy that says, "the world is hard, and its problems can't be solved by a movie, but let me remind you that there is still love, there is still joy, and there is still dancing." When it comes right down to it, the movie is much more about love, sex, celebrating, and family than it is about "politics." P.S. Many of the comments on IMDb refer to a sort of "beta" version of the movie that made the festival circuit last year (2006). This (summer 2007) version is complete, so it's production values are generally better, and the music for the score is finished.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Not all that great, actually
The Bourne Ultimatum, like the other 2 movies in the so-called trilogy, promises to be three things, and fulfilling any of the three promises would make it a satisfactory moviefulfilling all three could make it great. It promises to be a political thriller, a psychological drama, and a pure action movie. Unfortunately, the Bourne films, especially this one, fail to deliver on all three promises. The first two are obviousthe politics of the movie are way too vague to support a plot (ooooh, there are shadowy conspiracies running amok in the higher echelons of the security establishmentso original), and the Bourne character is so underdeveloped (and the amnesia plot so hackneyed) that I don't see how anyone could care about these movies as psychological dramas. That leaves action.
The Bourne Ultimatum comes closest to delivering when it comes to its promise to be a good action flick. There are fight scenes, chases, explosions, near-death experiences, and tense confrontations. But I have a problem with the way the action sequences in the Ultimatum are filmed (this has been true of all three Bourne movies): the fight sequences are so fast and chaotic, that you really can't tell what's happeningyou take it on faith that Jason Bourne is kicking the bad guy's ass, and when the bad guy's on the ground when things settle down, you figure you must have been right. I guess it's kind of like the Psycho shower scene on crystal meth. And maybe that's the point. Hitchcock would have liked to have shown more actual violence, gore, bloodshed, and nudity, but he knew he could never get that kind of scene past the censors, so he got creative, and since Hitchcock was a genius, his creativity produced a murder sequence that is probably better than anything more gory and explicitly violent could have been. I have a feeling that the action sequences in Bourne have been shot and edited in this hyper-fast, frenetic style, in part, to secure the valuable PG-13 rating. After all, what's Bourne supposed to be good at? Inflicting unthinkable injuries on people in a very short time. If we really got to see this clearly, it would be gross. It would not be PG-13 fare. Plus, Matt Damon would have to know how to fight really well, or the filmmakers would have to get even more clever with stunt doubles. Instead, we get fight scenes in a blender and chase scenes shot so close that we don't know whose car we're seeing, what direction we're going in, or who's crashing into whom.
OK, so, what's the problem? After all, I love Hitchcock, and I think the impressionistic shower scene was brilliant. So why do I dislike the action sequences in Bourne movies? Well, when I see an action film, I guess I've grown accustomed to seeing the action. My complaint about Batman Begins was the same: this guy trained to be a bad-ass fighter, and now whenever I see a fight scene it's too sliced up and dark for me to get a good look at him using those hard-won skills. Give me Jet Li or Michelle Yeoh...or even Bruce Willis...anydayI'm paying $10.50 for my action, so I'd like to see it please.
There will be more Bourne movies. But I think I've paid to see my last one.
Charlie Bartlett (2007)
A big cut above the typical teen movie, but...
I saw this in a members' preview at the wonderful Bryn Mawr Film Institute.
I truly enjoyed this movie. It was smart, hilarious, well-acted (especially Downey, Yelchin, and Davis), and well-scripted. I definitely recommend it, but not with the type of superlatives that other commenters have used here.
If my regard for this movie fades over the coming days, it will be in part because it's so easy to write a "recipe" for the film: it's 3 parts Pump Up the Volume, 1 part Rushmore, a generous dollop of closure, and enough cuteness and sweetness to smooth all the potential edginess out of the subject matter. Unfortunately, it's the sweetness that renders this movie inferior to both of those earlier movies (which are excellent). Once I was struck by the Pump Up the Volume comparison, I couldn't shake it, and I kept thinking that, although it has not aged wonderfully, Pump Up the Volume was the more honest and hard-hitting movie, and Rushmore was simply better.
Rocky Balboa (2006)
legitimately could have been great, but it settled for "not horrible"
(I think I've written this review without "spoilers," but, really, how could any review spoil the end of a Rocky movie?) I went to see Rocky Balboa with a friend last night, mostly because he had given me the special edition of the first Rocky movie on DVD, and it came with a free ticket to see Rocky Balboa. Over the past few days, I'd been surprised to see quite a number of positive reviews of the new (and hopefully last) Rocky movie (from now on, I'll call it "RB"). So I went into the movie with a pretty open mind, although I couldn't stop thinking that people probably liked it because they went into it with such abysmally low expectations. If you're expecting "horrendous" and you just get "fairly bad," you might end up thinking that the movie was a reasonable success, right? As it turns out, I think that's what happened for me, too. I didn't hate the movie, and I certainly got my money's worth (it was free after all). But I wouldn't go so far as to say that the movie was good. In fact, I gave it a 4 out of 10 on IMDb, and here's why...
Stallone and his collaborators basically had a choice to make: this could either be a good movie, able to stand on its own as a cinematic work (not unlike the first Rocky), OR they could make a movie that would pay its respects to the whole Rocky franchise and basically put the old horse (or stallion) to rest. Stallone et al. chose the latter. And I can see how it would have been difficult to make any other choice--this movie definitely seems to be designed to provide Rocky with a fitting send off, and most viewers seem to appreciate it as such. My complaint is that the movie could have been something better if it didn't need to be an homage to the rest of the series.
In my viewing experience, I VERY quickly grew impatient for the final fight. As the supposed human interest subplots flickered in and out like dying florescent light rods, and as the actors kept delivering clichéd nuggets of pseudo-populist street philosophy (all of which seemed designed to stud the pages of some kind of 365 motivational thoughts for the stereotypical guy from South Philly), I lost interest in everything but the boxing match at the end. The only question that remained for me was whether Rocky would win the big fight and teach Mason Dixon (seriously, Mason Dixon???--who comes up with this stuff?) a lesson about heart, or would he lose the big fight and teach Mason Dixon a lesson about heart? And the fight at the end did its work: as I left the theater, I felt for several minutes as if RB had been pretty good, all in all. But that was only because the fight sequence was exciting and overstimulating (and dialogue-free) enough to make me forget what had gone before it.
In short, RB has the unfortunate task of needing to resolve too many story lines in the hour before the final fight--it has to deal with Rocky's inner demons (which are left oddly undefined--alternately referred to as "the stuff in the basement" or the "beast" within), his memories of Adrian, his alienation from his son, and Pauley's failed life (really, has Pauley had anything constructive to offer in any of these movies?), all legacies from the previous Rocky movies. And, to make matters even more impossible, the movie takes on the added burden of creating, developing, and resolving several new plot lines: Rocky's efforts to be a positive force in the lives of Little Marie and her son, Steps; the potential for a romantic relationship with Little Marie; and the character and career of Mason Dixon. There's too much here to work with when everyone knows that the climactic fight is really why we're here.
If Stallone had chosen to make this a real movie, rather than a bookend, he could have done this many ways. I think one interesting approach would have been to focus on Rocky, his son, and the young champ, Mason Dixon. All three of these characters are fighting with opponents that come from within, and even though Rocky has learned this lesson before, he continues to struggle with it--even so, he has some wonderful insights to pass on to his boy and to his opponent, Dixon. We don't really need Pauley, Marie, Steps, or any of the other distractions--we don't even really need the memories of Adrian, although they could probably still be worked in. This approach would necessitate finding some skilled, capable actors to play the young Balboa and Dixon, and it would require time spent developing these characters into complex, round, dynamic characters. But that extra character development would have the potential to come together explosively and dramatically in the final fight sequence--we'd care much more about the fight if Dixon mattered as a human being (rather than just a generalized stereotype of a young, black, hip-hop athlete), and if Rock's son in the corner meant something real to us as the audience.
...anyway, it's just an idea.
If you're a Rocky fan, you virtually must see this movie. And if you just kinda like the Rocky series, you'll probably still enjoy the movie. But I can't help regretting that this movie could have been something great (which is more than I can say for 2, 3, 4,...), but it settled for being something not horrible.
The Painted Veil (2006)
Third world pestilence as the backdrop for domestic reconciliation
Painted Veil is not a bad movie. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit as I watched it, but all along I realized that it was offering very little new (yes, I understand that it's a remake of an earlier film, so perhaps new is not to be expected). Although the first reel or two offered some promise (provided you have enough stupid pills to induce belief in the massively improbably chance that Norton's character would ever submit to marrying Watts's character, or vice versa), as Ed Norton's character showed an unexpectedly venomous streak of hatred and vindictiveness. But for the final 2/3 of the movie, there was little in the way of surprises. I said there would be spoilers, but, even so, all I'll say here is that it can be no shocker to any audience member who's seen a movie before that the couple finds reconciliation in the wilderness and, yes, someone important dies. Cue the tragic ending music here.
Again, I sound more negative here than I feel. It's a pleasant enough movie. There is some gorgeous scenery--China is a beautiful and many-splendoured country. There are some rewarding moments. But, all in all, this seems to be one more movie in which the suffering of the "exotic" poor in some third world country serve as the backdrop for some white, Western couple to discover something about themselves, as if the entire world exists to facilitate the navel gazing of British and American people who struggle to "find themselves" at home. The filmmakers seem to realize this: there's a near-obligatory and very politically correct subplot about Western imperialism, which I applaud, as far as it goes, but it seems like too little, too late--a kind of apology for symbolically exploiting the country again! Needless to say, the movie is not about Western imperialism in China--it's about two people who should never have married finding some sort of common ground just before one of them dies, thus ending the marriage on a brief high note.
Hmmm...maybe I didn't like it that much after all. I'd better stop writing before I convince myself that this movie sucked.
Naomi Watts is pretty.
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
All good things must end
This movie is much more an elegy than it is a narrative. There's really no plot or story. In fact, Altman is fairly aggressive in refusing to let narrative concerns dictate the movement of the film. This is not all that odd for Altman--this movie frequently reminded me of the superior 1977 film Nashville--but it was especially pronounced here, mainly because Altman employed a kind of MacGuffin plot device. As the movie opens, we're quickly informed that the independent owners of the theater where A Prairie Home Companion (APHC) is staged and broadcast have sold out to "a big radio company in Texas," which is hard not to see as Clear Channel. In fact, that night is expected to be the last night of APHC. We're also told that a corporate exec from the big radio company is arriving to oversee the shut-down of the theater. So, it seems utterly clear that this will be another re-making of that movie where the gutsy lifers in a dying institution convince the cold, calculating capitalist to change his mind and let the institution survive after they bring back his fond memories of childhood loss, right? Wrong. The actual movie diverges from this presumptive standard plot in countless ways. Perhaps the most troubling is Garrison Keillor's adamant refusal to get excited about the demise of his 30 year old radio program, even though this demise probably means he won't see many of his fellow performers ever again. He's not in denial--he believes that the show will end, but the prospect is anything but troubling to him. In fact, he seems, at times, relieved and at other times merely philosophic.
Meanwhile, subplots swirl and dissipate--a distant love affair between one of the singing Johnson Sisters and GK, a morbid Johnson daughter who is nevertheless super-excited to make her stage debut on the show, a befuddled and bumbling Guy Noir (a real man born from one of the recurring mini-dramas on the APHC radio show) wanders through the film like a confused thespian who's become detached from his Greek chorus-mates, and a strangely wooden and not-quite-fully radiant angel haunts the cast and crew bringing death and hope (sometimes at the same time) wherever she goes.
It's a somewhat disorienting potpourri, and I think it works, but I'm not entirely sure--there's just something unsatisfying about the movie as a whole. The film weighs in at well under 2 hours, and that might be part of the problem. It's a rare Altman movie that doesn't break the 2 hour barrier, and I think this one could have used an extra 30-60 minutes to deal more fully with promising messes that it made. As it turns out, I think it's safe to say that none of the subplots I mentioned in the previous paragraph get resolved. And the main decoy plot fizzles as well. But, I have a feeling that this was probably the intent of the filmmakers.
SPOILER coming up--don't read if you think you might see the movie. You can skip ahead to the last paragraph if you'd like. It'll be a safe one.
In the end, the theater and the show are not saved. That in itself is mildly surprising, but the movie reacts much as Keillor has been reacting all movie. It simply moves on, accepting the death of APHC as a matter of course, something that is inevitable and, like the death of an old man, something not to be mourned excessively. After the closing of the theater, we're shown a kind of epilogue, maybe a few years later, as the cast considers a reunion tour, but there's no sense that it will actually happen. Really, they seem satisfied sitting in the diner reminiscing over old times and re-telling corny jokes that just get better and better over the years.
The entire film seems designed to convey this sense of inevitable demise, of grief tinged with joy and warmth. As might be expected, I think the movie is a sort of response to the changing media landscape that threatens staples of media history, like radio theater. But, far from marshaling the troops to save their beloved old friend, the movie seems more interested in softening the blow that will surely come, in reminding us that all good things must end, and that death is part of life.
I liked this movie, even though, as I mentioned earlier, I sometimes longed to see more of its secondary intrigues and conflicts (and more Lily Tomlin, who gets a little eclipsed, I think, by Meryl Streep's strong performance). Also, as funny as Kevin Kline was as living fiction Guy Noir, I think his character and his performance were a little half-baked. The funniest, purely comic moments of the film came from Lefty and Dusty (John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson), the cowboy comedian/musicians who bust out with one corny, off-color joke (and a few loud farts) after another. In all, I think this movie does a fine job capturing the "no there there" delightfulness of the radio show, and, despite some of my little disappointments (in fact, I think my disappointments were entirely in compliance with Altman's intentions--I don't think we're meant to get full satisfaction from the main narrative or the subplots; the only really satisfying things about this movie--and, perhaps, about life itself--are the small moments, the stories, the memories, the emotions, the people), it was an enjoyable film, and I think it is a beautiful, wistful invocation of the "glory days" of radio and the radio people who refuse to let them slip away: the cast and crew of A Prairie Home Companion...hopefully their demise is still years away!
Superman Returns (2006)
Spacey is tremendous!
First, a rant about 3-D movies. Let me say that I didn't mean to reserve tickets for a 3-D showing. I wanted to see Superman on the IMAX screen and didn't realize that the IMAX version was also a 3-D version. I find 3-D movie screenings really annoying. It makes sense that people in the 50s were into them because technology was so peachy-keen back then--people would try anything as long as it was new and cool. But high technology, to me at least, is a little more routine these days, so I want my high tech gadgets to have real impact. At the very least, the impact should far outweigh the inconvenience or sheer corniness. 3-D movies don't make the cut, as far as I'm concerned. Those disposable plastic glasses are uncomfortable--they cut into the bridge of my nose--plus, they don't fit well over my own glasses. Not only that but, hello, DISPOSABLE? In 2006, should we really be finding new plastic crap that we use for 2 hours and then dump in a landfill where they'll last for hundreds of years? Not the best use of precious petroleum, in my opinion. OK, so that's little picture suddenly becoming very big picture (no IMAX or 3-D puns intended). Also, there's something undeniably campy about 200 people all putting on their 3-D glasses at once when they see the little flashing signal on screen--which, I guess, could be either fun or annoying, or both. Add to that the fact that the 3-D effect made scenes with rapid action difficult to focus on, and you begin to see the problem. I would MUCH rather have seen the movie on a big huge screen with really loud surround sound. So, if given the option, DON'T see this film on 3-D--at least, that's my vote.
But do see the movie. Superman Returns is exactly that, the return of a movie franchise that's fun for the whole family. Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth are easy on the eyes, the special effects are quite good, and the Christian overtones are pretty overt and actually contribute just a little bit of moral heft to the picture, which I think I liked. Moreover, I think the movie avoided some of the production decisions that made the 1978 film age about 3 decades in 3 years.
But I've determined that there is a first rule for making a comic book superhero movie. Somewhere down the list of rules, there are commandments like: have good special effects, get a John Williams score or something like one, get a hunky but wholesome male lead, get a lovely female lead, include a dog, call the city something else but let everyone know that it's really New York (even if you film it in Canada or Australia or wherever), etc. But Rule #1 should be: do whatever it takes, pay whatever is required, but get a top-notch actor to play the villain (a corollary of this rule should be to have only one villain). No offense to Christopher Reeve, but the liveliest moments in the 1978 Superman were scenes starring Gene Hackman. The same goes for Superman Returns. Brandon Routh is fine, but at best he's an "everyman" and at worst he's a cipher--he looks good in the costume, and he doesn't suck at acting Super. But Kevin Spacey is the guy in the movie who can act, and act he does. Spacey's performance here, as in so many other movies, is worth the price of admission. He's coldly sadistic, satirically humorous, brilliantly jaded, and, as Lex Luthor must inevitably be, ultimately bungling. Plus, he looks pretty good with no hair.
I think we're in for more Superman movies. Let's hope the new franchise doesn't go the way of the Batman travesty. If the filmmakers remember the rules--especially Rule No. 1--they should be fine.
P.S. Just a side note. It's hard to complain about looking at Kate Bosworth on a really big screen for 2 and half hours. The filmmakers knew this, and they included plenty of close-ups of all the film's leads. But she's no Lois Lane. Lois should be pretty and all, but she needs to have an edge to her, and Bosworth is all soft curves--no edges in sight. I'm not sure who should have played Lane, and Bosworth doesn't ruin the movie or anything, but she's just not quite right.
Monster (2003)
horrifically disturbing movie
I watched Monster last night, and it's one of the very few movies that's ever stayed strongly with me this long after it was over. I had trouble sleeping because the movie's scenes kept playing through my mind, and then I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep because I couldn't stop replaying the horrifically disturbing scenes of Aileen's life as a prostitute.
I guess I'll comment briefly on Charlize Theron's performance--everybody else has. It was good, but not as great as I've heard over the past couple years. Her facial make-up sometimes seemed like a mask that obscured her expressiveness, but then again, maybe she was playing it a little dead at times to show the numbness that Aileen sometimes must have felt. OK, I'm not sure this will come out right, but I'm just not really into the idea of a very attractive actress dressing down to play a rather non-attractive woman. In a way, and I don't mean to cheapen this by analogy, but it's kind of like blackface. Here we have Hollywood, where beautiful women get almost all the roles available, and out comes a movie with an amazing role that calls for a woman who's not the gorgeous Hollywood glamor type, and who gets the role? A gorgeous Hollywood glamor type. That's what I mean by the blackface comparison--it's a little like having a movie with roles for black actors and choosing instead to cast white actors with painted faces (although Theron's portrayal was not, in itself, derogatory, unlike blackface). It happens all the time--"need an Arab? cast a dark-skinned Italian." In Monster, it's, "need a woman whose life's pain has made its mark on her face and body? cast a woman whose face and body perfectly represent our nation's weirdly skewed ideal of beauty and then make her fatter and, pardon me, uglier." Just doesn't seem quite fair to me. Perhaps it has something to do with the Academy's penchant to give awards for this kind of role (think of Hilary Swank's role for Boys Don't Cry), and part of it probably also has to do with the fact that Theron was one of the film's producer.
Anyway, the film made me feel ill, and that's a good thing in this case. I have a lot of trouble believing that there are so many men who would hire prostitutes along the side of the road (or anywhere else for that matter). Or, rather, I don't want to believe it, but I guess it's sadly not hard to believe. Even more broadly, I think the film is another scathing indictment of a wealthy society that cares so little about its poor, particularly its poor children. I'm not so naively "liberal" as to agree that Aileen's character had no choice but to do what she did to survive, but I think it's painfully obvious that the choices available to her were fewer by many orders of magnitude than the choices available to me, or to people of the wealthiest groups in our nation. What can we do to open up more opportunities for the poor, and when will we do it? Good movie, although I hope I never see it again.
Nacho Libre (2006)
Jack Black does funny things
Nacho Libre has many funny moments. All of them involve Jack Black singing, talking, hollering, fighting, or just making faces. I like Jack. He is funny. He is silly. He is overweight and jiggly. His friend has crooked teeth. Ana de la Reguera is pretty.
Seriously, though, I laughed out loud many times (most uproariously when Jack sings his special song close to the end of the movie--wait for it), and while this is not the best movie ever or even among the funniest, it's nice to go to a movie and laugh at things that were meant to be funny (unlike, say, the recent Omen remake where most of the audience laughed at things that were meant to be spooky or, I imagine, the new movie Lake House, where foolish paying customers will laugh at Keanu Reeves trying to act serious). For some reason, I'm not a big fan of comedy films in general--they don't make me laugh much, with some notable exceptions. But this one was pretty entertaining.
More seriously, I would love to know how this movie goes over in Mexico, or even among Mexican-Americans. Is it a loving satire of several aspects of Mexican culture, including wrestling, or is it a racist exploitation of age-old derogatory stereotypes of Mexicans? Or, perhaps, both. I guarantee you that some people will be very offended, and I can certainly see why. It's one thing to parody American rock stars (as Black often does) or American high school students (as in Napoleon Dynamite, the director's previous hit), but another thing to parody people who have always been parodied, generally with either malice or ignorance or both. It would be an interesting conversation to have, anyway.
The Boondock Saints (1999)
More cool than good
College students love Boondock Saints (speaking in generalities, of course). And college students often have a good eye for what's cool (on the other hand, if facebook is any authority, The Notebook tops the list of popular movies in many colleges, so perhaps I need to revisit my "college students know cool" theory). And, I suppose, Bookdock saints was cool, but it was NOT a great movie, in my opinion.
The thing I liked best about Boondock Saints was its portrait of three central characters (the twins and Rocco) who really made no distinction in their own minds between real life and movies. I loved the bit with the brothers using the ventilation shaft to enter a hotel room, and of Rocco thinking he's Wyatt Earp, wielding two handguns to blast his victims. The whole idea of vigilante justice, of course, is intertwined with media representations of crime, justice, and violence in our culture. The movie was at its best when it immersed itself in this weird postmodern hyper-reality.
I think the movie falls short of greatness because the filmmakers are just not that good. In a funny, ironic way, I think the filmmakers are almost exactly like the MacManus brothers. Like the Saints, the filmmakers scrabble together a lot of really cool things they've seen in movies like The Usual Suspects, True Romance, and Tarantino's films, and because they're imitating and remixing "cool" source material, they sometimes succeed in creating some cool cinema. Like the Saints, the filmmakers here are well-intentioned and lovable, but maybe not all that competent, when it comes down to it. After watching the whole movie, I don't get the sense that there's a strong central vision or real coherence to the movie. Although the idea is solid, the dialogue is less-than-stellar, and the cinematography sometimes makes the film look like a made-for-TV movie. Still, to the extent that Troy Duffy is the "auteur" here, it's not at all bad for a directorial debut. I'd probably see a follow-up, if there ever is one (not a sequel--God forbid; that would be a really misguided venture--what I mean is that I'd see a sophomore directorial effort by Duffy).
I enjoyed Boondock Saints, but boy am I ever glad I rented it from Netflix instead of impulse buying the DVD! Did I use the word "cool" a lot in this review? I think that's significant, actually. I just get the sense that Duffy is far more interested in making a cool movie than in making good cinema. A great movie, in my opinion, might be able to do both at once!
She Hate Me (2004)
Better than the conventional wisdom allows--it's NOT a 1 out of 10 (sheesh!)
As I've mentioned before here, I love Spike Lee, but it's still taken me over a year to get around to seeing She Hate Me, partly because I've heard such bad reviews. After seeing the movie, I could understand those bashing commentaries, but I also had new and more complete appreciation for Roger Ebert's review, where he bucks the conventional wisdom to cast a vote in favor of this troubled flick. Now, I'm as sick as the next American of seeing Ebert's thumb going up (oe even WAY up, whatever the heck that means) for seemingly every crappy movie that comes down the pike, but I think he just about nails She Hate Me, as much as it's possible to nail such an elusive movie. I'm going to quote an excerpt from his review in a second, but you can get the rest via IMDb's site:
"But this is the work of a man who wants to dare us to deal with it (my comment: i.e., the movie itself, in all its messiness). Who is confronting generic expectations, conventional wisdom and political correctness. Whose film may be an attack on the sins it seems to commit. Who is impatient with the tired rote role of the heroic African-American corporate whistle-blower (he could phone that one in). Who confronts the pious liberal horror about such concepts as the inexhaustible black stud, and lesbians who respond on cue to a sex with a man -- and instead of skewering them, which would be the easy thing to do, flaunts them.
"His movie seems to celebrate those forbidden ideas. Why does he do this? Perhaps because to attack those concepts would be simplistic, platitudinous and predictable. But to work without the safety net, to deliberately be offensive, to refuse to satisfy our generic expectations, to dangle the conventional formula in front of us and then yank it away, to explode the structure of the movie, to allow it to contain anger and sarcasm, impatience and wild, imprudent excess, to find room for both unapologetic, melodramatic romance and satire -- well, that's audacious. To go where this film goes and still to have the nerve to end the way he does (with a reconciliation worthy of soap opera, and the black hero making a noble speech at a congressional hearing) is a form of daring beyond all reason.
"My guess is that Lee is attacking African-American male and gay/lesbian stereotypes not by conventionally preaching against them, but by boldly dramatizing them." What makes me so happy about Ebert's review is that he explicitly acknowledges that Lee is a master director who knows what he's doing. Sometimes, I think it's really important for critics to approach some art with the assumption that the artist knows his/her business. This doesn't mean that critics slavishly admire an artist's every move or abdicate their responsibility to analyze it as they see it. It just means that sometimes it may be good to assume innocence before assigning guilt.
She Hate Me is a mess. It really is about 5 movies in one, most of which don't survive the whole 2 hour running time. But, like Lee's Bamboozled (which I like quite a bit better than She Hate Me--I disagree with Ebert on Bamboozled, seeing it as a much more successful movie than She Hate Me) what doesn't necessarily add up to a complete, coherent whole is thoroughly engaging and often shockingly powerful in its parts. In fact, maybe it's safe to say of these two movies that the whole is less than the sum of its parts, but the parts really do add up--or maybe they multiply--into something spectacular, thought-provoking, and entertaining.
Nevertheless, I was a little offended by She Hate Me at times. The moment that leaps out at me the most is when Jack decides that he will be a husband (of sorts) to two lesbian women who have borne his children. No one is surprised to see his bisexual ex-fiancée Fatima except his offer with a passionate kiss, but when her more-or-less man-hating, jealous partner goes along with it as well, even signaling her agreement with an equally sexually super-charged kiss, that seemed absurd and insulting to me. Spike Lee often uses various stylistic elements in the film to announce clearly when he's being ridiculous, satirical, and downright rudely comical, whether it's animated sequences of sperms bearing Jack's face or low-budget DV sequences featuring bad impressions of Watergate conspirators. But this scene with Jack wooing the lesbian is filmed straight up and could easily be read as a misguidedly optimistic (misogynistic, homophobic, reactionary...) vision of how the plot's bizarre love (insert many-sided geometrical shape name here) might be resolved positively. I didn't like it.
Even so, I found the movie enjoyable, if not as good as several of Lee's other films.
By way of comparison (and this falls into the apples and oranges category, I have to admit), Get on the Bus is a movie that surprised me when I first saw it, and surprised me again--the same way!--this week when I saw it again. It took me years to get around to seeing it for the first time. I guess I was convinced that the pseudo-documentary style would give way to preaching (which some might say that it does). Whatever! Get on the Bus is a moving and passionate exploration of the state(s) of black masculinity in the U.S. today, and, in typical Spike Lee fashion, it pulls no punches while also refusing to give any easy answers. Go see it!
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
thank goodness it's the last one!
I saw X-Men 3 the other night, and it doesn't really merit a long comment here, so this will be brief.
I went for action and entertainment, and I guess that's what I got. But I find that it's hard to separate a desire for entertainment from a desire for a quality story. I mean, I'm not thoroughly entertained by a massive display of special effects and rapid movement. X-Men 3, therefore, is only partly satisfying. Overall, I think it succumbed to the same flaw that damned all the Batman movies after Tim Burton's original one: too many characters. I guess this would be a challenge for any superhero movie about teams of heroes and villains, but it's especially evident in this third X-Man movie. For me, and I'm no comic book aficionado, the potential of modern comic stories is in the depth of their characters. Frank Miller's Batman, for instance, is not just an all-around good American guy in tights--he's a real, aging, conflicted man who fights crime for a host of sometimes-contradictory reasons. In X-Men 3, all the complexity of the characters is stripped down to a couple of chin-quivering moments for an otherwise under-written and disappointingly lame Rogue, a few seconds of epic indecision for Wolverine, and an almost completely unbelievable flash of remorse by Magneto. I didn't care about any of the major characters, and there were so many nameless and personality-less minor characters that I didn't really care about them either after their first couple special-effects laden stunts.
Maybe this kind of ensemble cast demands a comic book format that can unfold over time and across hundreds of pages (say, Grant Morrison's run writing for The New X-Men). Or, maybe it demands a deliberately designed series of movies, written as a series and not a sequence of more-or-less stand-alone sequels. I'm thinking something like the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the the Samurai trilogy, or even the (less successful) Matrix trilogy. The makers of these movie epics realized that their visions could only be realized over the course of several films, and they were wise enough not to try to cram the visions into a single 2-hour blockbuster.
I would love to see a comic book movie with that kind of conviction. Can comic book movies, like the comics themselves, rise above the mediocrity imposed by the 120 minute time limit of most mainstream popcorn-crunching movies? We have yet to see it happen, in my opinion, but the best examples made the difficult decision to focus on a very limited cast of characters (the Burton Batman, for instance, cared only about Batman and the Joker--everyone else was peripheral).
Big old spoiler coming up here, so don't read if you want to preserve the mystery of the movie (and, comics fans, please don't jump all over me if this is a stupid question for whatever comic-book lover's reason): why did Wolverine have to kill Jean Grey at the end? Why didn't he just de-mutant her, like he did to Magneto? She might have grieved over her lost power, but might that have been better than dying completely? Hmmm...this just wasn't given enough play in the movie.
Match Point (2005)
almost, but not quite, the Woody Allen we know and love (and miss) so much...
I heard a lot of hype about Woody Allen's most recent film, Match Point. So I was really looking forward to watching it. Finally, I did, but although the film was OK, I was rather disappointed.
First, let me say that I am a Woody Allen fan, although I've lost interest in his recent work. I think I've seen most of his movies up through Small Time Crooks, but that one was so bad that I decided to read reviews of his next several films before investing the time and money in seeing them, and until Match Point I never saw a review that made me think I'd return to Woody. Melinda and Melinda seemed like a possibility, but I never got around to it. So, when Match Point made its way back to Oscar contention and scored on many critics' top movie lists for 2005, I decided to give it a go.
It wasn't bad. Overall, I liked the style and the acting, and there's no doubt that the story was fairly taut and suspenseful. I mean, I always felt pretty sure I knew what was going to happen, but at the same time I was aware that I could easily be surprised, so the tension mounted nicely as I watched the plot unfold slowly over 2 hours. That part I liked, and perhaps this is partly what makes some critics call the film Hitchcockian (that and its exploration into how evil a normal, everyday person can be).
But the film seemed to fail in several respects. For one, it seemed somewhat derivative. I've seen this movie before, not least in Allen's own oeuvre. I kept feeling like I was watching Crimes and Misdemeanors with younger characters, less overt philosophizing, and no comic relief. SPOILERS COMING UP, SO STOP READING IF YOU WANT TO PRESERVE THE MYSTERY. I mean, guy has affair, the "other woman" threatens to tell the wife, so the guy is finally backed into a position where killing the "other woman" seems to be his best bet since his legit life is too good to surrender. Along with this basic plot comes C&M's question (less overt here) about whether it would be better to be caught or to get away with such a crime.
Another movie that came to mind was the Talented Mr. Ripley. I actually liked that movie--perhaps more than it deserved--partly because I think Jude Law was quite good in the film, partly because I think it was an homage to Hitchcock in many respects, and I think it worked on that level. When I saw Chris Wilton reading up on Crime and Punishment (and its Cambridge Companion) and then heard that he used that material to get in with his girlfriend's pop, I thought, here's the poor kid conning his way into a wealthy and powerful family. It was clear that he didn't really care that much about Chloe at any point in the movie (I found this particularly affecting because I thought she was lovely, bright, and joyful--I would like to marry her myself!), which just emphasized his cynicism and ambition. But this aspect of the plot is strangely neglected. We actually come to know very little about Chris's background or his aspirations and intentions. So the murder plot is all we're left with, and although it works, it is not particularly interesting in and of itself.
Finally, there's Scarlett Johansson, who was very sexy in the movie, but that was more or less it. She seems to be getting a lot of attention in the movie world these days, but I have yet to see her act in any way that would merit that attention. I feel like her allure is more in the Lolita sense (after Lost in Translation)--she is alluring and provocative, but doesn't seem to have much range. Most of her lines were delivered in a husky monotone that left me a bit drowsy. The only thing about her character that I found easy to believe (aside from the notion that someone might want to shoot her with a large gun) was that she was having trouble finding work as an actor. What is it with her? What do people see in her besides another pretty face--one that is slightly atypical in its allure? Like I said, this movie is not bad--it's just not quite the great work that I was expecting after hearing the hype. Perhaps some of the critics, like me, are longing for the return of Woody Allen so deeply that they invested this movie with a little more import than it actually possessed. I'm still waiting for the real Woody Allen to please stand up.
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
PT Anderson will need to make at least 2 really good, non-Adam-Sandler movies to make up for this crap
I like P.T. Anderson. I liked Boogie Nights a whole lot, and I really loved Magnolia (despite that fact that some of my best friends found it to be nauseatingly bad), but it's taken me this long to finally see Punch-Drunk Love. You see, I really think Adam Sandler is one of the worst things to happen to Hollywood since the Production Code. I really don't like him or his movies. He's one of those SNL alums who demonstrates perfectly why some people are good at sketch comedy while other people are good film actors--he's only funny for about 3 minutes at a time, and not always funny for that long. Anyway, for some reason I've lumped this movie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind together in my head as two movies people liked and that I should see. When I finally saw Eternal Sunshine (and really liked it) I guess I just figured it was time to see Punch-Drunk Love.
Or, maybe not. I really thought it was horrible. It's like 10 different ideas for 10 different decent movies all thrown together and then stirred a little bit and half-baked. It was a little like a Coen brothers film--quirky and random (think Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski), but it was, at best, a cheap knock-off of the Coens. Adam Sandler was, well, Adam Sandler...again--childish without being innocent or cute, pathetic without invoking sympathy, and spastic without being funny (I'm not a big Jim Carey fan either, but his physical humor is miles beyond that of Sandler). I would have liked him so much better if he stuck to singing those silly spoof songs to his own lovably lame guitar playing on SNL, mugging for the camera and laughing at his own jokes and funny faces.
The plot of the film is incidental, at best. Don't worry about trying to keep track of it or "figure it out" because it just doesn't matter. All that matters is Adam Sandler and what/who he'll beat up next when they mention the sliding door and the hammer. Don't get me wrong--a lot of great movies are less plot based and more character based, but this is a movie based on a character who is one dimensional, played by an actor whose thespian aspiration is to develop one full dimension. It just didn't work for me.
It's a shame, really, because Emily Watson is a fine actress, and she's inexplicably adorable here in this movie. What a waste. (Also falling into the "what a waste" column is Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance--why would a great actor like him even agree to be in this movie, let alone to play such an under-developed, oops-we-didn't-cut-this-guy-all-the-way-out-of-the-movie character?) Did I mention that I didn't like this movie? Don't see it. You'll want those 90 minutes back, but there's just no way to get them.
The Omen (2006)
some bad horror movies are lame-funny; this one's just lame-lame
No one should go see this movie. Not because it's evil or satanic or whatever, but because it's a waste of time and money. Actually, if causing other people to waste their time and money is evil (which it may well be) and frittering away one's God-given creativity on crap like this is evil (which it almost certainly is) then I'd have to rescind my earlier comment--perhaps this movie is evil.
Allow me to elaborate...
I'm still not exactly sure why I went to see The Omen (which, if you don't know, is a remake/updating of a "classic" horror movie from the 70s). Or, rather, I know why. The fact is, I was bored, I had nothing to do, I was all alone in New York City (which would seem to counteract the first two reasons, but I'm rather poor, which makes it especially possible to be both bored and to have little to do in NYC), and I'd seen little news blurbs about 6-6-6 (i.e., June 6, 2006) all day, so I guess this all tickled my sense of humor. In fact, I even went to see the 6:00 screening, which was not be trying to tempt the devil as much as when I happened to come up with the bright idea of seeing a movie. There being nothing else out that I felt even the slightest inclination to see, I went to see The Omen in the East Village.
It sucked. The original movie was not particularly good--it somehow attained a cult status--not sure why. But this movie was just lame, lame, lame. I didn't expect anything else, really, but I was hoping that the flick would be lame-funny, not just lame-lame or lame-boring. Unfortunately, even my extremely low expectations were not met. The movie wasn't funny, it wasn't scary (except for 2-3 "boo" moments which were physically effective mostly because of the soundtrack, not what you were seeing on screen), it wasn't even creepy, despite being about the child of Satan. How is this even possible? Beats me.
Now, the Exorcist I think is a very creepy, good horror movie. It freaks me out each time I see it. I think it's because in the Exorcist, the film focuses on the humanity of the little possessed girl before she gets possessed, so you actually care about her a bit, which makes the demon possession that much more horrifying. Damian is a cyborg from the moment we lay eyes on him--he's a creep, so of course he acts creepy--I will say that his absurd "evil" looks were a little bit funny, at least, but I felt that the audience was stretching to chuckle a bit here and there when we got a close-up of Damian's robotically non-expressive face. Plus, the parents are idiots. All of a sudden, his mother dislikes the child--this makes sense, of course, but there's little work done to show us her progression from proud mother to frightened future-victim. The father is actually mentally deficient enough to accept some unknown woman's child in the first place (which requires a massive dosage of stupid pills for viewers at the very outset of the movie), and then ethically deficient enough to keep his ludicrous decision from his darling wife, even after she begins to get the willies around Damien. Anyway, you know all this--I'm just saying that if the movie is neither funny nor scary, that's about all there is because there's certainly no great plot, and the characters are impossible to care about or like. Plus, Liev Schreiber has several chins and no discernible jaw bone, despite the fact that he's not fat. What's up with that?
Don't see it. It sucks. Don't pay to see it in a theater, don't rent it, don't even accept an offer from a friend willing to pay for your ticket. The best we can hope for is that it won't make it through this coming weekend, which is one expectation which the movie might actually live up to.
It sucked--did I mention that?
Oh, one interesting moment. Early in the movie--first 5 minutes or so, Vatican astronomers/astrologers interpret various prophecies of the apocalypse, and they posit that the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks were one fulfillment of prophesy. There was an image of the towers burning, and I'm pretty sure people in the audience gasped. I wonder if that only happened in NYC, or if that will happen all over the country.
Last, the East Village theater where I saw the film was very cool. It still had some of that old movie-palace art deco decor, and I miss that.
Munich (2005)
terror cannot be a solution to terror--just say that and then shut up, Steven
Munich was pretty good. I don't have too much to say about the movie itself. What I will say is that I was happy to see it go beyond a revenge thriller, and I wasn't surprised that it did. Spielberg is a good director--he's very popular, and that can sometimes make movie critics and movie lovers assume that he's a sellout or whatever, but I think Spielberg is something like Hitchcock (I'm not saying that he's as good as Hitchcock, as I'm quite convinced that he's NOT): he's a good director who knows how to make audiences happy while, at the same time, producing some good cinematic art. This movie took its time, which I was thrilled to see, and in so doing it let us feel the discomfort that its protagonist felt--the array of emotions from grief and vengeance to hesitation and regret that go into a human being who's signed on to do some incredible inhuman things to other human beings. I recommend seeing this movie--it raises questions that politicians today have trouble raising without being blasted as unpatriotic or as terrorist sympathizers or whatever.
What I do want to mention, though, is the introduction that Spielberg opted to append to the beginning of the DVD version of this film. It's disappointing at best, and spinelessly cowardly at worst. I suggest that, if you have not yet seen the movie and plan to, you should skip Spielberg's intro and go straight on to the movie. You can always check out the intro afterward. You see, I tend to like artists best when they do their art and then shut up. I don't love when artists offer their own interpretation of their work, and I especially don't like it when artists engage in defenses of their work in response to criticism (either aesthetic or ideological). In the introduction to Munich, Spielberg rushes to defend himself from two charges--one: criticism of Israel, and two: advocacy of non-response to terrorism. His comments really angered me for a number of reasons. First of all, he made the movie, it raises good questions, and no intelligent viewer could possibly think that Steven Spielberg was making a movie that slammed Israel. The movie is too obviously a question, not an answer. As for non-response, I feel sick that Spielberg should make this fairly nuanced film, and then, in this gutless introductory apologetic, contribute to the black or white illogical that has framed the debate about the war on terror, as if violence and nothing are the only alternatives we have when choosing to respond to terrorist tactics. It burns me up to see a filmmaker make a complex movie and then almost take it back by issuing one-dimensional, wheedling commentary on his own fine film It's especially angering because he's so clearly responding to ideological criticism, not aesthetic criticism. I'd be less emotional in my response if he was defending his film-making or choice of cinematographer or editing, or whatever, but he's clearly defending his politics. "No, no, no everybody, I love Israel. And of course we have to fight the war on terror, I mean, duh." Give me a break. This is even worse that Francis Ford Coppola using his audio commentary on GFIII to defend his decision to use his talentless daughter to play Mary Corleone (talentless as an actor, anyway--my jury's still out on her skill as a director).
Munich is right to suggest that violence begets violence, and when both sides (as if there are only two sides, which is another fallacy) of a violent conflict are willing to fight for hundreds of years and countless generations of children, violence is the only tactic guaranteed NOT to solve the problem. He had the courage to make a movie that articulated that message, and I just wish he had the courage to let that message be and not back down in the face of (probably Zionist) criticism.
Bottom line: see the film, disregard the DVD intro by SS.
Tsotsi (2005)
good take on a familiar plot
About the "spoilers": I'm not giving away any details, but I am summarizing the plot's general pattern. I most likely will not reveal anything that you wouldn't predict in the first few minutes of the movie. Read on, reader.
I finally saw Tsotsi tonight, after hearing about it for several months in the media and from a friend from South Africa. It was really quite good. I appreciated the emotional tone, the story of Tsotsi's rediscovery of his own decency and the value of human life. I don't want to take anything away from the film--you should definitely see it--but it wasn't anything incredibly original. In fact, you can likely predict almost every single thing that happens in the movie long before it actually happens. We're used to this tale: young, urban, poor guy kicked around and/or neglected as a child, grows up hard and cold, something happens to awaken his deeply repressed ability to love others. All this is, really, is an adept re-telling of this tale of rebirth, and it's both moving and satisfying. Perhaps it could have been better of the filmmakers had spent another 30 minutes or so allowing the narrative to unfold more gradually. I found that Tsotsi's transformation from thug to nurturer was extraordinarily fast--even though it was obvious that it was going to happen, I think there would have been tremendous value in taking more time to make it happen slowly. Even so, a good movie that should have been available in a wider and longer release here in the states. It seems that it played for a few weeks in major art house theaters and then took a whirlwind tour through the second tier of art houses (like Bryn Mawr Film Institute here in my hometown). I almost missed it!
Shadowboxer (2005)
pretty pretentious and ultimately unsatisfying
This movie was pretentious and mediocre, at best. I liked the performances by Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Helen Mirren, and a decent job by Vanessa Ferlito (who I found difficult to enjoy when she appeared in season 3 of "24"). But the direction and cinematography were cloying and manipulative. There were all these hazy, diffused, slow-motion images of leaves falling and sun glinting and naked bodies rolling around in bed or on the ground. I think the director is one of many contemporary, pedestrian filmmakers whose only means of depicting emotion is a close-up of an actor emoting, and whose only means for showing intimacy between actors is a sex scene. Eventually, though, even though I admired Gooding's performance, I got tired of seeing the soft-focused, beefcake photography of his naked or semi-naked body.
And the writing fairly sucked, too. Not only was this yet another movie about an aging, dying assassin questioning his/her moral status and the existence of God, but the movie constantly brought up plot points and character conflicts that it, seemingly, had no interest in. What exactly is Gooding's relationship with Mirren? Who is the Gooding character? Is he anything other than a weird, incestuous, lover/son/boy-toy and business associate of Mirren's? There were other points that needed exploring as well, but the movie seemed to have no problem forgetting them, so I've already forgotten them as well. And there were other things, too, like elements of the story that were purely for the sake of narrative convenience. Like the entire character played by Stephen Dorff. I keep looking forward to the day when we get fed-up with movies that must establish early on that their villains are irredeemably evil sadists who deserve any horrible fate that awaits them in the final reel. But Daniels apparently doesn't think we've gotten to that point, yet. Another unexplained narrative convenience is the 5-6 years that pass in an instant so that the child in the movie is suddenly about 7-8 years old. I think the only reason for this is so that the kid is old enough to use a gun well enough to emerge as the filius ex machina at the end of the movie. Meanwhile, every other character, conflict, and relationship in the movie is in suspended animation while the kid gets old enough to be the budding little button man that he eventually becomes.
I guess that's one of my gripes. I think this could have been a better movie (still derivative, but stronger) if it had allowed Gooding's character to be the main character in the movie. But instead of revealing his character, all Daniels managed to do was to reveal was his stony face, rock-hard biceps, and trim buttocks. I didn't get anything close to a satisfying glimpse of what made him who he was, other than the clichéd childhood traumas concerning his hit-man father. But even if that was the anchor issue in his life, the movie doesn't reveal Gooding working through it or even the extent to which it matters to him. Apparently, the movie thinks this pop-psych backstory is important, since the movie ends with Gooding's life echoing in that of surrogate son, but since I never quite know what Gooding's childhood meant to him, I don't really care about what it might mean to the monstrous little Anthony who has magically learned to kill and be fine with it.
My sense is that in this film's rush to be important, it missed every opportunity to be "important" (whatever that means) as well as the chance just to be entertaining. It could have focused fruitfully on either Mirren's character or Gooding's, but instead it flitted from Mirren to Dorff to Gooding to the doctor and Mo'Nique, etc. I'm curious to see what happens when this movie gets out into the world (apparently in June). I can't imagine it being a wide release, but in the art house circuit it will compare very unfavorably to movies that are better directed and better written.
Corpse Bride (2005)
visually stunning, but the plot was skeletal (ha ha)
I thought Corpse Bride was visually stunning and really funny--I really liked the overall feel, and I think I fell in love with Emily, despite the maggot and all. But, and I feel horrible saying this, I felt that the story had some unforgivable holes. Why, for instance, does Victor care that much about Victoria in the first place? OK, let's accept that he does immediately fall totally in love with her, then why does he suddenly decide to sacrifice his life to marry Emily forever? Then why does she suddenly decide not to marry Victor? How did he free her? I feel like Burton got a little caught up in crafting the "experience" of Corpse Bride (which was superb) and forgot to pay attention to the story line. Perhaps one might argue that he should be forgiven since it's "just an animated movie for kids" but I think that writing for young audiences is no free pass--you still have to take care of the writing first, the oohs and ahs second (unless you're building a roller coaster).