Return of Dawn of the Dead

I want to watch the new Dawn of the Dead again, which says something about my movie-watching habits. I watch Paris, Texas once, and I think I know everything about it. With Dawn of the Dead, I feel as if I have only scratched the surface, so I need to watch it again. It doesn’t make sense, I know, but sometimes pop culture holds some hidden gems, and this one is definitely pop culture: special effects, terrible acting, and all-around silliness. I'm not sure if it holds any hidden gems, but, boy, is it fun.

In case you don't know (or more appropriately, live with a spouse that doesn’t let you watch horror films), Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) is a remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). Like many people I know, my spouse doesn’t let me watch horror movies (I have to watch them after she goes to bed), and my libraries don’t have the original version, so I haven’t seen Romero’s original in many years. From what I remember, though, it was very different from this remake, in ways that make it sometimes less interesting.

Snyder’s version has some great points. In fact, I think it’s one of the better horror films to come out recently. It begins with some scenes that continually caught me off guard, even though we all know what is eventually going to happen. It open as a nurse sees some bizarre stuff in her night shift, but nothing is so remarkable that it makes much of an impression on her. One memorable part occurs as the nurse is leaving: she sees some paramedics bring in a badly wounded guy on a gurney, and as she walks out of the hospital, she sees the ambulance there with two legs sticking out of the back. She gets startled and goes over to it, thinking that something has happened to the driver, which is the same thing we are thinking, but it’s just the paramedic resting. And that’s genius, yes it is. That’s the way horror movies are supposed to work. Snyder knows that we know what is going to happen—the world is going to be taken over by zombies—so he has to make the lead-in play on that knowledge. I kept expecting a zombie to appear everywhere during the first fifteen minutes, whether at her car window, in the morgue, in the ambulance, or on her doorstep. And the movie knows this! So it keeps messing with me, teasing me, letting me into this person’s normal life, until it all goes to hell in a way I wasn't expecting.

And to hell it goes pretty quickly. We don’t just see one zombie here—no way, there are immediately hundreds of them everywhere, killing everything, and they cause all kinds of chaos. With zombies running everything, there is of course no power, no water, no TV, no nothing. Eventually, this group of survivors is left with nothing, which would have made this an appropriate remake for 1999-2000. The zombies here are not the caricatures of old, either. Sure, some of them are funny looking, but they’re fast, too, more like in 28 Days Later (2003) than in Night of the Living Dead (1968). When they see people they want to eat, they immediately go after them en masse.

So Snyder’s version is smart, but really only a technical or plot level. That’s where this one fails the original. If I remember it correctly, the original had more about consumerism. Here, it seems to be a coincidence that the survivors hold up in a shopping mall, whereas in the original it was a comment on our consumer society. We get one comment from Ving Rhames’s character that the zombies go to the mall perhaps out of habit or instinct, but this idea is never developed. Yeah, it’s a good hideout, but the story never reaches anything beyond the plot level, or even nearing the level of allegory. The way the people attempt to escape to a create a new life could be allegorical, but the movie doens't explore this idea--it's ripe for it, but it doesn't let us go there. Zombies are not a metaphor here, not like in previous zombie films (fear of nuclear holocaust, fear of technology, rage); they’re just zombies, and you have to get away from them or they will eat you.

Which makes for a decent horror film, but I don’t think it moves much beyond that. That movement beyond is what I generally appreciate about horror movies, and this one just doesn't deliver it. Still, it’s a fun ride.

Grade for Dawn of the Dead: 6

I didn’t know there was a Paris, Texas

I’ll be honest here. Wim Wenders is one of those directors I have always heard about and never seen. Nope, I have never seen Wings of Desire (1987) or Until the End of the World (1991). The guy has around thirty movies to his directing credit, and I have never seen a one of them. I was interested, sure, but his movies always sounded like they would be boring, and I tend to veer away from those really intelligent movies.

Then my wife starts looking for movies about Texas—we live in Houston, after all—and she stumbles across this film called Paris, Texas (1984) that she has never heard of. So of course she requests it from the library, along with View from the Top (2003) and The Trouble with Angels. I figured they were all of the same caliber—terrible, that is.

As it starts, I see that it’s directed by Wim Wenders, and now I’m intrigued, because I’m supposed to know this guy, being a film lover and all.

Paris, Texas chronicles the story of Harry Dean Stanton’s character, and the film opens with a shot of him wandering through the West Texas desert wearing a ragged suit. He manages to make it to an apparently empty bar in the middle of the desert. He’s parched, so he goes to the refrigerator but finds only beer, so he grabs a cube of ice, begins to suck on it, and then collapses. There was some guy sitting there all along, and the film cuts with the guy murmuring, “What the hell?”

It’s quite beautiful, actually. I think it’s one of the best scenes in the entire film, and that’s saying a lot, for there are a lot of good scenes here. We don’t know anything about the guy, and my biggest complaint is about how it finally reveals the back-story. This same scene is also really interesting and compelling, however. It’s a bit pretentious and long-winded, but the works in a remarkable way.

So I’m having trouble saying anything coherent about Paris, Texas, and think this has to do with both the meandering plot and the way I will be forced to give everything away simply through the process of describing it. Let me not do this by giving you several reasons to see this movie:
· Parts of it take place in Houston.
· It was made three years before Blue Velvet (1987), and it traces a lot of same ground, except in Texas, which makes it more interesting.
· It will make you appreciate what you have—families are fragile and precious, after all. If there’s one thing that this movie does well, it’s showing us how all of our positions are relative and how those things shift so easily.
· It’s named after a place that you never actually see, except in a photograph—now that’s interesting.

Harry Dean Stanton is an Everyman who wants to make everything right after he screwed everything up. It’s sad, yes, but it’s interesting to see this child-like character attempt to make up for his own childishness. Watching him grow throughout the movie isn’t as interesting as it could have been, but Paris, Texas still does it pretty well.

So the bottom line is that when I have to deal with an intelligent movie, I’m without words. I think my strength is drawing out pop culture drivel. And with that in mind, I will review the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) next time. Now there’s a movie with some undiscovered layers! When it comes to Paris, Texas, it seems like it’s all rather obvious. It’s too smart to draw anything out because Wenders meant for all of it to be there anyway. Which sounds as if I’m saying that these other films don’t know what they’re doing, which isn’t quite the case.

Maybe I will explain all of that later…

As a sidenote, I think I am going to start watching movies about Texas and especially about Houston. I would love to get recommendations from readers—the two or three of you who keep coming back….

Grade for Paris, Texas: 8

It Sure Ain’t the Top

For a while there, I was stuck on trying to figure out whether movies were conservative or liberal, and my aggregate response should have been obvious: we’re talking about Hollywood, not the New Republic, so of course films tend to be conservative. Yet I have been determined to find a conservative film. I know they exist, in early films at least, but I just want to know if there are any conservative filmmakers out there.

I think I may have found one. His name is Bruno Barreto and he’s Brazilian. I know none of you have heard of him, which probably has something to do with the fact that his average rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 49%. Yeah, pretty much his film seem to suck, and View from the Top (2003) is no different.

Yep, I actually watched this piece of crap. I could blame my wife—she’s the one who picked it—but I still sat through it. It’s not as bad as Bridget Jones 2, but it never made me laugh and a few scenes made me cringe. I know I tend to say this a lot, but what made Gwyneth Paltrow make this movie? She’s an Oscar-winning actress for crying out loud! Why, Gwyneth, why?

But let’s not go on about how bad this movie is, or why Paltrow decided to star in a film with Christina Applegate. Let’s move on to how this film is conservative.

The plot is typical, although the setting isn’t. A country girl—Paltrow—wants to break away from her small-town heritage and make something of her life. Her destiny seems to be to marry someone who will more than likely beat her, and to work at Big Lots for the rest of her life, so she decides to go for the glamorous job of stewardess. She gets a job at a small company and eventually proves herself and moves onto a big company. She finally makes it! But there’s a catch. In order to strike it big-time (which means flying international from New York to Paris), she has to leave her boyfriend, who is sticking around Cleveland. Well, guess what?

--I’m going to spoil the movie now, but I don’t feel bad because I don’t want any of you to actually watch this piece of drivel.—

She does it! She leaves her boyfriend behind and becomes a super-successful stewardess! Yep, she makes all feminists proud and decides that she doesn’t need a man to be happy! She strikes one for team Steinam!

She isn’t happy, of course, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she has broken away from our patriarchal strictures and made something of herself that is independent of man.

But then she goes back to him! She leaves it all behind and decides that being with him is much more important than her job. In the final scene, she goes crawling back, and he says (the words are not exact quotes here), “So you’ll stay here in Cleveland?” Yep. “And you’ll be happy?” Yep. She gives it all up, because the women should stay where their men are. That’s right. Women have to give it all up for the men they love.

At this point, I was really happy. Here was the conservative film I had been waiting for. Never mind that not even Mike Myers could make this movie funny. Never mind that Paltrow sports a rural accent and what seems to be a mullet through most of the movie. Here was my conservative film!

But then there was one more scene, which came on briefly as the closing music started. It showed an airplane flying, and a somewhat familiar voice was speaking to the passengers. Then it shows us Paltrow in the pilot seat! Yep, she’s now flying internationally from Cleveland as the pilot!

Damn, I thought. Foiled again.

As somewhat of a sidenote, the movie equates mullets and Southern accents with unsophisticatedness. By the end of film, Paltrow has lost her accent. Not uncoincidentally, she has also become a pilot.

Anyway, the movie turns out to be less conservative than I thought. Even thought the pilot scene seems to be an afterthought, it lessens the conservatism without particularly ruining it. Paltrow still stayed with her boyfriend, after all. She had to give it all up and start anew because that’s what a good girl does for her man. Sure, she takes over the traditional male role as pilot, but it was staying with her man that forced her to have to do that. And how many years did she have to rot in Cleveland to get there?

Overall, this film stinks, and I don’t want any of you to watch it.
Take my word for it, please.

By the way, I will be reviewing a Wim Wenders film next. So all of you who have been waiting to see me tackle something more intellectual, this will be your chance…

Grade for View from the Top: 1

More Woebegone Films from Kevin Smith

I can’t tell what Kevin Smith is doing. I mean, why would someone who obviously has oodles of talent make schlock like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back? It could have been good, though. After all, it chronicles the two Quick Stop hangouts that have been ubiquitous since Clerks, who, incidentally, made some of the funniest scenes in that early film. I’m sure they will even be a major part of Smith’s new one, The Passion of the Clerks, which is set to come out this year.

Basically, the Bluntman and Chronic strip has been sold to Miramax, and Jay and Silent Bob have to stop it. Why? Because people are using this newfangled thing called the In-ter-net to comment on how stupid the characters are. So they have to travel from New Jersey (bold move, Smith!) to Hollywood, falling in love and causing mischief along the way. It’s a plot as preposterous as Bluntman and Chronic itself. In fact, it all seems to be a ruse to show Hollywood that it “had it coming,” as the tagline suggests, because there are intermittent spurts of movie parody that verge on becoming no different from Scary Movie or any other parody of film. These spots are probably the weakest in the film, too, offering absolutely nothing new.

The whole thing makes me question why Kevin Smith made this piece of drivel. The only redeeming feature is the charisma of Kevin Smith himself, aka Silent Bob. His little quirks are quite endearing, and he reminds me more and more of one of my friends who recently moved to Austin. Just some of Smith’s gestures make him charming, smart, and humourous, too. These really are funny guys, but a bunch of profanity does not make for a good movie. Yes, I think the number of times the f-word is used is ridiculous. Come on, Smith, South Park did it first, so there’s no use in trying to outdo the amount of profanity you can fit into 90 minutes. At the end, one of the characters says that Hollywood turned Bluntman and Chronic into one big gay joke, and heck, that’s all this movie is, too!

Which screams self-referentiality! Jay and Silent Bob makes the most references to itself as a movie than any other film I have seen. It doesn’t do it subtly, either. In case you don’t catch some of the references, characters actually look at the camera to remind you that you’re watching them in a movie. It’s not like The Simpsons, where a character makes a statement, “There’s never anything good on Fox,” and then they move on. Here, they make that kind of statement, pause, and glare at the camera, before moving on to say whatever it is they’re getting at (which is generally nothing, by the way). But even the plot appears self-referential, too. People talk about how dumb Jay and Silent Bob are? No, when would people ever do that? Should I expect these two guys to show up at my door and kick my ass, like they do in the movie?

If this film references itself so many times, does that mean that Kevin Smith made the film he meant to make? I sure hope not. Yes, there are really funny parts, but they’re also very stupid. It’s as if Kevin Smith wanted to make his own Dumb and Dumberer. I hear that he made the movie on $20 million, which means that all of the famous actors basically volunteered to be in the movie. Are they happy with the product? Was Kevin Smith happy with the product?

After watching Clerks for the first time (see one of my previous blogs), I was ready to give Kevin Smith his due. But now, I’m not so sure. And Jersey Girl is sitting on my counter just waiting to go in the machine…

Grade for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: 4

Feel the Rays

Yes, Jamie Foxx was wonderful portraying Ray Charles, and he probably deserved the Oscar for it. Foxx was able to somehow embody Ray Charles; at various moments, I thought I was actually watching Ray Charles on screen, not watching Foxx’s portrayal of him. It was quite weird and amazing at the same time.

Besides Foxx’s great acting, however, Ray didn’t have much to offer. And it made me think about why I didn’t like it. In the same way that Runaway Jury made me question why I don’t like crime/jury dramas, Ray made me realize that I generally don’t like biopics. I always thought it was partially because I don’t like the way they age characters in movies, and I still can’t stand that. Watch A Beautiful Mind, and you will see what I mean. The aged Russell Crowe just looks silly, and nevermind great young actors trying to act old. It never works. But Ray didn’t really age through the movie. They gave him a little bit of gray hair at the end, but they didn’t overdo it. I guess that’s due partly to the fact that the main action of the film ends by 1970. So I can’t really blame my dislike of the film on the “aging.”

I think it’s just something about the biopic that doesn’t make for a great movie. They’re always flawed. Of course I’m speaking generally here, that the movies are bad, when really, a lot of respectable people love these films, so maybe I’m just talking about my own personal taste. But, to my own personal taste, these films are well, never all that great.

People are fascinating, yes, and the hour long biography on A&E can be quite engrossing. But a movie is a different animal. We need one central plot that can be wrapped up in two hours or so, and people’s lives can’t generally be reduced to that. Ray did a better job than most, I admit. It managed to tie everything together with his flashbacks. I was glad it didn’t just start with him as a kid because the flashbacks helped us see how the past fit into his present. But consider all of the plots here: the death of Ray’s brother, his marriage to what seemed like an angel, his old manager, his new manager, drugs, rehab, and the list goes on. Too many plots? Maybe not, because the film did a good job of making everything tie into Ray’s brother’s death.

But too many things were left unfinished. What about his marriage? Did it become a real marriage? Or what about his son? What happened to him? Did ever become a real father? What about his new manager? Was he actually stealing from him? What about any of the other characters we were introduced to throughout the film? If they’re not with Ray, they’re simply offscreen, forgotten, dismissed. But what about his mistresses? Did he continue to have them? Did he adopt his other son?

Yes, I’m being hard on it, I know. Overall, it’s a decent film, and it was enjoyable to watch. The drug and rehab scenes were way too overdone and seemed to be taken directly from Requiem for a Dream, but the movie was beautiful otherwise. So this film has flaws, but it’s still worth watching. Is it best picture quality? No, so I’m glad it didn’t win. But it’s still good.

Grade for Ray: 6

The Allegory of Clothes

(Please take this with a grain of salt…)

I slacked off this week because I have had some difficult movies to deal with: Hotel Rwanda, Ray, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Hitch, and Contantine, to be exact. How does one write about such powerful movies?

Through allegory, of course.

I will focus on Hotel Rwanda for right now and leave the other movies for later.

Kevin Dettmar has a great essay about Clueless and Wayne’s World that argues that these movies are allegories of music. How do we know whether a person is “good” or “bad?” By the music that is played when they enter. Good music, good person. Sorry music, sorry person. It makes sense.

And then there is the allegory of clothes. The title of Thomas Carlyle’s 1833 work Sartor Resartus means the “clothier reclothed” or “tailor retailored,” and it establishes the allegory of clothes. It tells the story of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, whose name translates to “god-born devil’s dung,” who describes how the world (especially Britain) is ready for a new set of clothes. Clothes represent revolution of the French kind, and Carlyle establishes that the same should go in Britain. He is tired of philosophy and wants people to act, almost inciting revolution himself: “Thou foolish Teufelsdröckh! […] Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand this much: The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?”

Hotel Rwanda, too, is an allegory or clothes, although not quite the same way. Here, the main character, Paul, is immaculately dressed. It does two things: it shows how much he has bought into the West’s business ideals, and it paints him as very different from everyone else. While the rest of the people are dressed very modestly, if not poorly, Paul always wears a suit. By the end of the movie, however, he is unshaven and barley able to put on a shirt. It’s a neat transformation, and the movie charts the progress of the country through Paul’s own clothing degeneration. It’s an allegory of clothes. By the end, he has no longer bought into the West’s ideals. He no longer has to look his best, because, well, he’s just trying to stay alive.

The most powerful moment, besides all of the killing, is when Paul has to change his clothes because they are bloody. He puts on a shirt and begins tying a tie, but he does it incorrectly. So he breaks down. It’s as if the clothes just don’t work anymore, just like the West. Or they just aren’t worth it, just like the West. Or they’re too difficult to maintain, just like the West.

Do the business models of the West translate to Africa? Not when the country’s in chaos, they don’t. Of course it’s much more than that, but Hotel Rwanda is also an allegory of clothes.

Rating for Hotel Rwanda: 8

These Are Real Women

I generally don’t enjoy films that are merely snapshots of people’s lives. Too often, these movies have no controlling plot, at least not one that is woven throughout. Real Women Have Curves is a snapshot of one girl whose plot traverses just a few weeks but encompasses the girl’s entire life. And that, I can appreciate.

The main character, a young girl from a rather poor immigrant family, graduates from Beverly Hills High School and must deal with her conflicting pressures to go to college, to work at her sister’s factory, and to get married. Her life is foreign to me, for I’m more like her boyfriend, from a standard middle-class family whose parents share his same views on life. The main girl's family, however, just doesn't understand her. The girl's mother turns out to be the villain, but it’s not because she’s actually villainous; it’s just because she tries to hold onto a lifestyle that is difficult to maintain in the United States.

The part that I really can’t understand is that the mother doesn’t seem to wish that her daughter will have a better life than she had. She has this idea that her life was difficult and she managed to plow through it, so now it’s her daughter’s turn to follow in her footsteps, to get married and take care of her children. There’s something to that, I guess, but I just can’t understand it.

Not with my daughter, I kept thinking. Sure, she’s only one year old, but I want her to have much MORE than I had. She should have someone there to tell her that graduate school in English is NOT the way to go…Alright, so I’m projecting, and I’m basically doing what the mother in this film does, I know. Even though I pretend to want my kids to be independent, some element of me wants to control them just like every parent. The difference, I guess, is rather minor, but it means that I don’t want my kids to be just like me. I know my life isn’t perfect, and I understand where I screwed it up, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to my kids.

If a movie can inspire this kind of dialogue within me, then that’s gotta be a decent movie, or at least provocative. And Real Women Have Curves is definitely a decent movie.

I have one complaint, though, which is also a kind of praise. The title is heavy-handed enough, but most of the movie doesn’t hit you over the head with the idea that real women with curves are beautiful, too. One scene, however, is way too much, as it tries to hammer it home that these are real women, and they don’t have to look like models; they’re beautiful just the way they are. It’s funny, but it also made me wish that they would stop. Not because I don’t believe it, but because I’m a chauvinist pig, I mean because I can’t stand it when a movie simply preaches. Overall, this film is pretty subtle, but this part was just way too preachy. If it’s Michael Moore, I expect it. When it’s a narrative, I don’t want it.

That same scene, and the rest of the movie, however, did make me appreciate the way people are, including myself. It's cheesy, I know, but there's something really pleasing about this movie. It's provocative, yes, but it's also rather nice. I won't say "feel good," becuase then I won't like it, but there's something about this film that makes me appreciate who I am and what I have. And it's still a good movie.

Grade for Real Women Have Curves: 8

The Art of Bridget Jones

Consider this blog entry a response to one reader who told me the following:

“You … criticize whatever intellectual wankery is thrown your way but you review these movies that are like the dross of popular culture. … You should check out The A List by Jay Carr and start going through that or Ebert’s The Great Movies. I want to see your critical mind deal with movies like Red by Kieslowski or Ikuru by Akurasura or Through a Glass Darkly by Bergman. I think you would have more fun with these.”

I take these responses to heart, so I am now changing the format of “My Life in Movies.” In light of this change, I will now review that little-known art house flick, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. This movie not only fully engaged me but made me question my own perceptions of beauty and reality. The title’s provocative ambiguity sets the stage for a film that moves through dream and reality to make a statement about people’s need for affection…

Ah, I can’t keep this up. This film sucked, big time. This movie is the worst of the “dross of popular culture,” as my friend called it. Sometimes popular movies can be subtle comments on morality, reality, or temptation, but this one is none of those things. Whoever decided to throw this movie together had already fallen off Bridget Jones’s edge of reason.

I enjoyed the first one because it was atypical, but this one is merely a cheap rehash of the first one. In fact, everything about this one is exactly the same as the first one: woman looking for love can’t choose between two men, even though she knows she should choose her sense instead of her sensibility. The only thing vaguely interesting about this movie is seeing how much weight the waifish Renee Zellweger put on. But then we’re forced to watch her waddle around in some terrible shots that are designed to highlight her weight. There are several plot turns that are new here, but they are completely ridiculous. I normally don’t use words like “stupid” to describe movies, but this one deserves it. It’s stupid, pure and simple.

So, my friend, I won’t keep up prattling about Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. This movie is terrible, and shouldn’t even garner a review. Maybe next time, I will get a chance to review a Werner Herzog film…

Grade for Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason: 0

The Horror and the Thrills

Rewatching Jaws has spawned a new debate within me. Basically, I can’t figure out what to call this movie. Is it a horror film, or is it a thriller? Is it a thriller with horrific elements or is it simply a thrilling horror movie? In the past, I have discussed horror as a wide genre that incorporates Psycho, as well as Halloween and The Sixth Sense. But that may be too broad. Is The Silence of the Lambs a horror film? It certainly scared me, and in some ways, the movie is very similar to Halloween, which no one can deny being a horror film.

I think Spielberg may have the key here, but in some ways, he's misleading. He said that when he read the script for Jaws, he thought it was basically the same story as one of his previous films, the wonderful made for TV movie Duel. It's about a semi-truck that terrorizes this a salesman, who acts as a kind of everyman. The whole movie is kind of like one big tense car chase, but the truck itself is quite horrific. Jaws is the same thing in the water, except that the mechanical beast has become a living beast, one that will not stop pursuing the Orca and its crew.

It sounds like a great horror movie to me.

What are the elements of horror? Scares? Jaws is scary, but I don’t think it’s all that scary, at least not past watching it the first time. For most of the film, the guys on the boat are perfectly safe as they walk around the boat with Jaws safely in the water, out of reach. The only way one would get killed is if he were to fall in. The shark itself looks pretty mechanical, too. Not very scary looking. The opening scene could be scary, but not once you know what is going to happen.

Blood? Yeah, there’s blood, but Jaws is not exactly a gore-fest. The disembodied leg that floats to the bottom is pretty gross, but it’s not Texas Chain Saw Massacre-gross. Even when Quint buys it at the end, we don’t see the guy get cut in half. It’s pretty gross just because you watch him fight to keep out of the shark’s mouth, kind of like when Hooper is in the tank and Jaws breaks through it. You just know they’re going to die, and yet you watch them try to fight to stay alive. Yeah, that gives me the creeps.

But I’m still not sure. My impression now is to call this a thriller and not a horror movie, even though it scares me so much I can’t stand to go in the ocean.

Maybe next time I will talk about Edmund Burke’s notion of the sublime and how terror and horror fits into that. Or may I will talk about how what my one-year-old daughter and terrorists have in common.

As Kurtz says, "The horror! The horror!"

Why I Hate Water

My favorite line in Jaws is when Brody’s wife (Brody is the chief of police, played by Roy Schneider) tells Hooper (the shark guy) that Brody won’t go near the water. She says that it’s something from his childhood, and she asks him for the clinical name for his phobia. He mumbles one word: “drowning.”

That’s genius.

If my wife asked me why I hate to go in the ocean (or sometimes even lakes and swimming pools, especially at night), I would probably mimic Brody and mumble one word, but my word would be a little different. Mine would be “Jaws.”

I remember seeing Jaws when I was way too young, probably around six or seven years old (what were you thinking, Mom!), and that film freaked me out. Of course, I didn’t even have an opportunity to go to the ocean until I was older, about six years later. And at that time, I didn’t really think about sharks. Yeah, I guess I remembered the movie, but my fun in the ocean overcame whatever residual fears I had. But then I saw the movie several more times, read the book and its sequels, along with other Benchley books, and now I am completely freaked out by the ocean. In fact, it’s only getting worse as I get older.

Yep, I blame Jaws. I know it’s a cliché, but that movie really did make me afraid to go in the water. Like Brody, I have read about the ocean, and I am mystified that they still don’t know what’s down there. Oh, great, yeah, they finally got live footage of a giant squid. Yeah, that makes me feel a lot better. Did you hear that? A GIANT FREAKING SQUID. Those are supposed to only exist in Jules Verne books, not actually in the ocean. But they’re down there, and there could be other despicable things down there.

Here’s my take on it. The ocean is like space. In general, mankind is not meant to be there. We can’t breathe in either environment, and if the technology screws up, we’re dead. There are two main differences between space and the ocean in my eyes. One is that you don’t have people “swimming” in space for fun. Nope, that’s left for professionals. In the ocean, anyone can just jump in, no telling what is under there. And that brings me to the second difference: we have no proof that creepy things live in space. Yeah, it’s scary because it’s space, but we should be relatively certain that nothing is going to fly under us and bite us in the keister. In the ocean, there’s all sorts of creepy stuff under, and like space, they’re not even sure what’s down there!

That’s my view of it, and that’s why, the older I get, the more afraid of the ocean I become. Last time I went out on a boat in the ocean, we jumped off to go snorkeling, and I tool one look under the water and saw that it was so murky that I couldn’t see anything. So I began hyperventilating and jumped back onto the boat. No thanks.

So this one isn’t really a movie review, but it’s inspired by Jaws, which I’m in the middle of rewatching. I will give my complete review later.

Maybe Revenge Isn’t So Sweet

This entry will be short (thank goodness, you say!). I wrote the last entry sometime last week about The Count of Monte Cristo and The Italian Job, and then the sermon at my church on Sunday happened to be about relationships. The pastor touched on revenge, of course, and it made me think about the films through this light.

It seems that revenge is one of those things that I never really think about, especially in film. Whereas whenever I see adultery or other things like that, I immediately balk and begin ranting about how a movie can glorify such things, I never really consider how the notion of revenge is very similar. There are tons of films that are based solely on revenge; in fact, it is a common tenet in most movies—a person is wronged and must get back at the wrongdoer. Nearly any action film has a component like this, and they generally make the wrongdoer the villain and the person seeking revenge is the hero. But this isn’t the way the Bible sees it.

There are plenty of passages in the Bible that condemn the notion of revenge, leaving that for God to decide. There are some others, especially in the Old Testament, that call for revenge, but I think we have to read those as if the people are called out to do God’s direct will. We don’t really have that luxury today, I think. (I understand that there are lots of theological points here that could be debated, and I would love to hear anyone else’s point of view.)

Yet it seems that we still yearn for justice, which is a good thing, right? The desire for revenge may be wrong because of our self-righteous or angry motives, but the underlying desire for justice is right. Of course we want the guilty to be punished. It’s like when someone cuts me off in traffic, and I secretly want them to get a ticket. My dad curses them with “I hope all of your children are born without hair,” but I can’t quite get past simply wishing that they will crash and burn—literally.

But that’s just not right, is it? And it isn’t right when Mel Gibson does it, or Inigo Montoya does it, or Al Pacino, or anyone else. Maybe I need to start thinking about what these revenge movies are telling me, and perhaps even doing to me. Until now, I am ashamed to admit, I have always taken them at face value. They’re just action movies, after all…

Sweet Revenge in France and Italy

Due to the life-upheaval that we Houstonians knew as Hurricane Rita, things are just now beginning to settle down. Therefore, I will begin blogging again! Not that I haven’t been watching movies, mind you, for I have watched quite a few while staying with family and then back at home.

For this installment, I have decided to join two movies of similar caliber and overarching plot: The Count of Monte Cristo and The Italian Job.

The Count is the newest one with Jim Caviezel and Guy Pierce, which came out several years ago. Overall, I think this movie is pretty good. I don’t remember seeing Jim Caviezel in anything before The Passion of the Christ, so it was nice to watch him portraying an actual flawed human being. I couldn’t get Jesus out of my head while watching him, especially every time he would brood, and he does aheckuvalot of that here. Yep, this movie is all about revenge. The story is by Alexandre Dumas of The Three Muskateers fame, so this film is a historical action drama concerning the double-crossing of Jim Caviezel and his consumption with revenge.

I’m not sure if the premise translates too well to modern times, however. I felt kind of like I was watching Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet again, even though The Count sticks to its historical premise. Still, when Guy Pierce (spoilers here, but most of you have probably seen SOME version of this film) betrays Jim Caviezel’s character, I’m not sure if the motive really comes through. Supposedly, he does it because he envy’s Caviezel’s character, who is of lowly birth, which Pierce’s character is of noble birth. But that reasoning doesn’t really work nowadays, especially with our American dream and all that crap…I mean, stuff. It’s just that we don’t really believe so much in that—people are not held down by their birth status, at least not to the extent that they were back then. And most rich people don’t begrudge people who work their way up. Yes, I’m simplifying here, and I realize that we do have a kind of embedded class system, but it’s still much easier for a person to make good, even if their parents did not. I could have a whole blog about this, but I’m afraid I will say something upsetting.

So we leave France and go East to Italy, even though most of The Italian Job doesn’t take place in Italy but in L.A. I have mentioned before that heist films are one of my favorite subgenres, so I naturally enjoyed this film, even the second time around. This movie basically wants to be Ocean’s Eleven, and it couldn’t quite do it. The snappy dialogue just wasn’t there. And the heist wasn’t all that compelling, either. They spend just a few hours planning it, and then it happens and that’s really it.

I have two favorite parts here: one is when the jewelry store clerk talks about the mercantilism centered around Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I enjoyed that historical fact, and I loved the way the guy realized where the spoil was from. It really was a nice touch. My other favorite part is every part with the Russian, who was awesome. I loved the way, it just kept showing him, although we had no idea how he would fit in until the end. That was clever.

The Italian Job is way too much like a long commercial for the new Mini, however, and the film came out right as the Mini came out, which was not a coincidence. I know it’s a remake, and someone told me that the old had the old mini’s in, but this one didn’t even really need the cars. The original idea didn’t even pan out, so it was just three people driving around in supped-up Minis. I didn’t like that aspect.

The Count of Monte Cristo: 6
The Italian Job: 7

Both these films are flawed, but they’re still enjoyable, and I really enjoyed both of them.

I Want to Run Away!

Runaway Jury (2003) showed me why I don’t like these John Grisham-style legal thrillers. I have never seen The Practice or any other legal TV show since L.A. Law and Ally McBeal went off the air, and these shows weren’t even about the courtroom. I never consciously avoided these other shows; I just never got around to watching them, just like I have never seen The West Wing or 24. Even though I love to read (even popular fiction), I have never picked up a John Grisham novel. I saw A Time to Kill (1996) and The Rainmaker (1997) back when they came out, and I remember enjoying them but thinking they were a bit overdone. I don’t avoid Grisham novels and movies because I’m a snob (I’ll be one of the first to see The DaVinci Code, after all), but simply because these thrillers generally bore me.

I know that seems improbable because these movies are all about suspense. The idea is to keep you guessing what will happen or how it will be proven, and both sides generally engage in duplicitous behavior that is exciting yet also deplorable. But these films are also kind of simplistic.

I’ll keep my comments to Runaway Jury for now because I just watched it last night. Overall, it’s a decent film featuring decent writing and decent acting. With a cast of Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack, and Gene Hackman (who I generally love), it should have been much better, though. Rachel Weisz was in it, which made it more bearable, for I think she is one of the prettiest women in movies, but she couldn’t make up for the unbelievable plot.

I know gun companies are evil, and if there is anyone who doesn’t think so, Runaway Jury sure pounds that home. I think this is one of its flaws, too. They’re way too evil here. They meet in dark smoky rooms to discuss buying juries, and they engage in all kinds of evil behavior such as breaking and entering, arson, kidnapping, etc. The head of the company doesn’t even care about the law, and he even threatens Gene Hackman, who is working for him. Gene Hackman isn’t exactly evil here—that job is left to the gun corporations—because he is what seems to be a moral relativist. He doesn’t believe in what cannot be bought or pressured. But the gun companies are evil. Just by hiring Hackman and thinking they can buy the jury, they have demonstrated their contempt for the law.

So the plot was a bit too much of good vs. evil for me, at least for a thriller like this. Is this the way all courtroom dramas are? Now I’m thinking about A Civil Action (1998), which I remember as being decent, and it seemed to be the same way. Maybe that’s why I generally don’t like them. Real life isn’t like that. Give me a conflicted character who is caught between two positions and that’s more believable. These characters here are just too bland. But then again, I love Star Wars, so maybe it's about pretense...

The only thing that redeems the film, perhaps, is that Cusack and Weisz are morally conflicted characters, at least through most of the movie. Sure, they turn out to be the good guys, but we don’t learn that until close to the end. I’m sorry if that gives away the plot, but you really should see it coming from a mile away.

Grade for Runaway Jury: 5

Sometimes I Feel Like I Am Julia!

I remember hearing about Being Julia when it came out last year, but then I didn’t hear anything more about it. I happened upon it on the library movie list and decided to take a chance on it. Although it isn’t the type of movie I typically enjoy, it turned out to be quite interesting.

Despite my enjoyment by the end, the beginning of Being Julia is probably one of the most meandering plots I have ever watched. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a single plot, just a series of wanderings by this character Julia. That may be the point, but it doesn’t make it that entertaining.

Juila is a popular actress on the London stage before the start of WWII. Despite her continued popularity, she is aging (like Annette Bening herself) and feels as if she needs a major change. In fact, she wants to quit acting altogether, at least for a while, and her husband, played by Jeremy Irons, doesn’t want her to because they would lose a ton of money invested in the play. Basically, she is in a mid-life crisis where she has everything she wants and still doesn’t know what she wants. I generally respond to this plot because it seems to be what we all go through. It’s a bit demoralizing when the person is so wealthy, however, and acts just plain spoiled. In fact, I tend to have no sympathy for those people. It’s mean I know, for we’re all human, and we all have the same basic intangible wants, such as true appreciation and love and security, along with interesting conversations and good music (alright, I added those in). But sometimes the rich seem to have it made, and if they don’t appreciate that fact, they should give me some of their money. Maybe that will make them feel better. Of course no one ever gives me any of their money, though, so everyone just stays miserable.

For Julia, her misery lasts until the young American male comes along, and the movie slides into a glorification of adultery. Here, the film tries to make this okay by suggesting that the husband is okay with it. I’m not quite sure if that’s true, but whatever—it’s still weird. Things don’t work out with the young man, and I’m not giving anything away here, because everyone knows it won’t, except for Julia, who thinks she has fallen in love with him.

And that’s when the real plot begins, over half-way through the film. The turn it takes here is interesting and quite enjoyable. I won’t give this part away because it is a surprise, and a good one at that. This is where the movie and its characters redeem themselves, and it makes this otherwise muddy, mediocre drama quite enjoyable. All of the actors in the film are excellent, but if the plot had not taken this turn, I probably would have hated this movie.

But because it did turn, Being Julia gets a 6.

Glad I Never Worked at a Convenience Store

Actually, I did work at a convenience store: my first job was stocking the cooler everyday at a local fooder, stop and shop, grab and go. I didn’t talk to anyone, though. I just went in, restocked everything in the cooler, swept and mopped the floors, collected my $8 for two hours of work, and left. What do you want? I was only fifteen.

But my lack of interaction with witty store employees makes me wonder about the movie Clerks (1994). I am behind the times, I know, for this is my first time seeing it. I enjoyed the twoKevin Smith movies I have seen—Mallrats (1995) and Chasing Amy (1997)—but I didn’t love them enough to watch all of his other films. When it came out, everyone told me that Clerks was really boring, and I was on a bit of an independent-hating kick, so I didn’t go see it. But everyone else saw it, so I had no one to watch it with. Now all I can say is that that “everyone” who told me the film wasn’t that great are a bunch of idiots.

Sure, it’s low budget and the acting is sometimes terrible, but the witty banter is excellent! I have blogged about my love of witty dialogue before, so I won’t rehearse that here. But I really liked seeing people discourse about the politics of the Death Star in Return of the Jedi (1983) and the chosen destiny of video store clerking. The character Randall was a terrible actor, but his lines were excellent. He was random and spontaneous but completely purposeful—somewhat like people I knew in college—and I responded to him.

But let’s face it: I’m more like Dante, as I’m sure most of us are. I may not cheat on my girlfriend/wife (I don’t, I swear!), but I’m one of those people who can’t tell anyone no, just like Dante. And his name isn’t coincidental, either—Dante Hicks. He is the purveyor of the hell that is the town where they live. Stating it like that may be making it a bit too austere, but that’s really what he seems to be doing.

He is an observer of everything, not usually a willing participant. While everyone else does whatever they feel like, which seems to be the film's mantra, we don’t see Dante do anything that we judge as completely wrong. He is guided by a set of loose rules that make sense to me. In fact, I would probably do most of what he does (EXCEPT go out with another girl while I’m dating someone else, I swear!). But this guy simply observes everything that goes on around him. He participates in it sometimes, but only because other people goad him into it. They’re always pushing him to do things he doesn’t want to do. And although we only see one day in the life of Dante Hicks, the film leaves us with the idea (NOT the optional ending, mind you) that this is what happens to Dante everyday. The next day will be just like this one, even though he keeps saying that it’s a terrible day unlike any other. We know it’s not.

The real plight of clerks, then, is the monotony. They have to engage in witty banter because that seems to be what their life consists of. Randall may be the foil for Dante, but he’s really no better off, except, as he says, he has come to terms with his monotonous life. Dante, however, is merely an observer, like his namesake. He won’t stay long.

Grade: 8

Not when I was Thirteen

I remember hearing a couple of years ago about this small art film called Thirteen (2003) that was co-written by one of its young actors. After seeing the film, I think you can tell that it was written by someone so young. However, I don’t that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Let me begin with the worst thing about this movie, which is the acting. These actors are young and inexperienced, and it shows. However, they’re also convincing. I believed that these kids were going through this, so their acting couldn’t have been all that bad. One of the girls played up the fake nice girl too much, and the other one played up the irate bad girl too much, always screaming at her mother that she hated her. But perhaps real life is like that. In some ways, these girls appeared as stereotypes or caricatures, with the exception that they change over the course of the movie. But maybe caricature is the point. Perhaps we’re all just caricatures when we’re thirteen. In some ways, I know I was like the main character. I rebelled against everything my parents had or did, like most of teenagers. But watching it onscreen is demystifying, like pulling the veil back on the wizard to find some horror beneath it. This isn't like watching kids in a Disney flick; this is like watching you when you were thirteen--not a pretty sight.

So if the acting was the worst thing, and I still found it convincing, then this must be a good movie, right? Yeah, it really is. The problem, though, which has nothing to do with the quality of the movie, is that the plot is terrifying.

I have daughter that is nearly a year old, you see, and I am dreading the point twelve years from now, primarily because of this movie. Yes, I always dreaded the teenage years, but, man, this film made me AFRAID of them! Watching the downward spiral this nice girl travels is one of the worst things I have ever seen. I was afraid that she would end up dead or in a hospital, but, as my wife called it, there is a touch of hope.

Watching Holly Hunter (wwho was excellent, of course—I have always loved her, ever since Raising Arizona (1987)) struggle with her daughter was disheartening and hopeful at the same time. I won’t tell you what happens at the end, but it really is very neat without being cheesy. In some ways, my wife and I are probably like Holly Hunter’s character. We’re both still into popular culture, and I want my daughter to do what she wants and make her own decisions, as long as she doesn’t hurt herself. That’s what Hunter tries to do here. Even though her daughter fights her every step of the way, she still struggles to reach her, and it’s wonderful to watch, although, as I keep saying, scary, too.

Overall, this film is pretty great. Yes, it’s a bit too much at times, but not on the scale of Kids (1995), which is just hopeless and so unbelievable (yet true, I’m sure) that I can’t consider it. This film seems somewhat realistic, which is what also makes it so scary.

Grade: 7

The Tide has Come!

As I have said many times, I generally love action movies, as long as they feature an exciting plot with amazing action sequences, good acting, and decent dialogue. Yes, it’s difficult to get those things in action films, but sometimes it happens. Sometimes one will overrule the others, such as when a movie’s action scenes are so amazing that the cheesy dialogue doesn’t matter. Although I haven’t seen Top Gun (1986) since I was a kid, I remember it being that way. Yes, the dialogue was cheesy and the plot was overdone, but the airplane sequences were great! At least when I was a kid. So I have liked director Tony Scott ever since I saw Top Gun back then.

Until now, I couldn’t tell you any other movie Tony Scott had directed. I can rattle off many of Ridley Scott’s films, but not his brothers’. On a whim, however, I requested Crimson Tide (1995), and when the credits came on, I felt like my friend who saw The Fugitive (1993). When they announced that Tommy Lee was in it, his jaw dropped, and he uttered, “Nawwww….”, until they showed that it was actually Tommy Lee Jones and not the drummer for Motley Crue. In other words, I had no idea that Tony Scott had done this movie, or that he had done any other movies besides Top Gun.

Based on these two films, my love for Tony Scott is solidified. Yes, he has tarnished his record with some terrible films so forgettable that I hardly remember them—Days of Thunder (1990), anyone?—but Crimson Tide is an excellent submarine film (True Romance (1993) and The Hunger (1983) are both worth watching, too). I don’t love submarine films, or maritime films in general, because they’re always so claustrophobic. I know that’s part of the point, but it makes me a bit uneasy. Yes, Das Boot (1982) is great, but these films are generally unexciting and uninspired.

Crimson Tide, however, is quite riveting. My only complaint is that the film is a bit too long. At a running time of nearly two hours, my heart couldn’t take it. With the series of “mutinies,” the movie is simply too taut to be bearable for two hours. And I kept thinking, “I hope he’s right; I hope he’s right!” If you have seen the movie, you know what I mean, and if you haven’t seen it, well, you should.

Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman are great together. They’re both such good actors that it’s nice to see them play off one another. And there are some other familiar faces that I enjoyed seeing, as well.

Overall, Crimson Tide is a great action film that features superb dialogue and great acting. The plot is interesting and engaging, although not the best I have seen. The action scenes are pretty sparse, though. Perhaps I should call this a thriller rather than an action film because it really doesn’t feature too much action. But the movie is so tense that I didn’t miss it.

Grade: 7

Transport Me Outta Here!

With The Transporter 2 coming out soon, I figured I had better watch the first one to see why the need for a second one. And frankly, I just don’t see it.

In short, there is nothing worthwhile in The Transporter (2002) that I can’t get in far superior movies.

Martial arts action scenes? They’re far better in any other martial arts film: try Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (1999) or Hero (2004). In The Transporter, they’re too long and not that interesting. And they don’t fit with the plot that well, either. They were probably one of the best things about the movie, but they just weren’t executed well enough to make them engaging. And then I saw that the DVD included extended fight scenes. I avoided them.

Car chases? It could have been good, but the editing was way too choppy. Go for The French Connection (1971) or Ronin (1998) instead.

Plot? Terrible. Simply one of the worst plots for an action movie I have seen in a long time. I like the idea of “the transporter,” and especially one who simply gets mixed up in something, but the inclusion of the girl as the love interest didn’t work at all. And the daughter/father thing was tacked on and terrible.

Jason Statham was the best thing about this movie, and yet even he couldn’t make it work. He’s a hard-ass, and I love his ability to never crack a smile, but it gets old after a while. Snatch (2001) is one of my favorite movies, however, and watching The Transporter made me think about why I liked him there and not here. Statham needs a foil, a buddy, a side-kick, someone who is goofy that he can play off of. In Snatch, there was the guy who bought the gun that didn’t work. Statham played the same basic stoic character, but he was there to play off the other bumbling idiot. It’s like Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis—the comic needs a straight man. But the straight man needs the comic, too! And here, there is no comic. Here, it’s simply straight man. And it makes for a really boring movie.

The Transporter gets a 3 out of 10 simply because the scenery is beautiful, and the action scenes were interesting for a brief while. You definitely won’t find me in the theater for the sequel, unless it’s to see a different film. I will probably get it from the library when it’s available, though. Even though the first one was stupid, I can’t pass up an action film.

I Guess I’m In Good Company

Since the terms conservative and liberal have come up several times, I decided I would dedicate another blog entry to them. Specifically, I have been trying to figure out whether In Good Company is conservative or liberal. I know it’s one of them, but I’m not quite sure which it is yet. Maybe I will just explain why I think it is either conservative or liberal and let you fill in the rest.

Before I do that, though, let me say that I think this movie is excellent. In fact, I think I would say that it is one of the best drama/comedies that I have seen in a long time. The acting is superb, even from Topher Grace, about whom I was unsure at first. Scarlett Johanssen was as beautiful as ever. Her dad, played by Dennis Quaid, portrayed fatherhood with interest, compassion, and sincerity.

A lot of this good acting is due largely to a great script, full of wonderful dialogue that was witty yet not over the top. I used to love Dawson’s Creek, and now I love Gilmore Girls (I know, I know, I deserve a lot of flak for these loves), because those shows have characters whose dialogue is fun and funny and smart and exciting. But let’s face it: none of use actually talk like that. In Good Company isn’t that way. The characters sound like real people, and they have real problems that everyone seems to go through. It’s tear-provoking and then hilarious, the way real life is.

Perhaps that’s why I have trouble knowing whether it’s liberal or conservative—because portrayals of our lives are not liberal or conservative. I’m actually quite liberal politically, but I look over my blog, and I come across as a freakin’ prude. Maybe I’m both! But that’s the point. In Good Company seems to be both, too, and that makes it compelling.

In order to explain what I mean, I am going to have to spoil the movie for you, at least partially. So if you haven’t seen it, you may want to stop reading.

The main point of the movie is that Topher Grace is a mover and shaker in a sales firm. He is put in charge of sales for a magazine, something that he is probably not ready for, and he is put in way over his head. Dennis Quaid was the boss before him, and now he is made an underling of this twenty-something kid. At the end, though, the kid is fired, and Dennis Quaid is made boss again.

What’s the point here? The old can do it better than the young. That’s a conservative viewpoint, a kind of romanticizing of the old days. Dennis Quaid continually says that they can’t fire his team that has been with him for seven years, even though Topher Grace wants to. For Grace, it’s all about the bottom line, at least at first. Then he realizes that Quaid may be right: maybe these people are good at their jobs. They have families they have to support, and their jobs are their lifeblood. It’s difficult to fire someone when you know their situations, after all. Perhaps companies should not be concerned solely with money. Perhaps there is a human factor here, as well.

But wait! Topher Grace is actually pretty good at his job. Yes, he spends way too much time working and loses his wife because of it, but he’s also a good employee. He may stink as a boss, but it’s only because he demands so much of his employees. And he gets cut in the end, not because he has failed in some way, but because the company is sold and everyone belonging to the last guy is fired.

The company does make fun of the new idea of synergy, as expounded on by both Grace and Teddy K, played by Malcolm McDowell, and Grace’s idea for cellphones for kids is laughable, too, but only because it works. Whereas Quaid does well because he believes in his company, Grace does well because he knows what works, even if it is shallow.

So I guess it comes off on the conservative side. I hope that’s not why I liked it…

Grade for In Good Company: 9

Finding Sentimentalism

I haven’t revealed my source of movies yet, but I’m not too proud to say that I get them from the library, both my university library and my public city library. This source means two things, besides that I get my movies for free: 1) about half of the movies I get screw up in the middle because they’re scratched, and I never get to finish them, and 2) I rarely get to watch very recent movies.

I did manage to put Finding Neverland (2004) on hold a couple of months ago, and I finally got it and watched it. My initial reaction to this movie was that it was great: although a bit overly sentimental, it was still charming and uplifting.

I know he’s a favorite of many, but I generally don’t like Johnny Depp. He seems a one-trick pony to me. He’s always the slightly goofy guy who either doesn’t smile or smiles too much. It fit Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), but we had seen the same character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and Blow (2001). In fact, I was beginning to wonder whether Depp knew how to pick good scripts. He had hopefully already done Secret Window (2004) before Pirates was released. Now he’s choosing wisely. We have Finding Neverland and the anticipated, well-received Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). He’s great in Neverland. His Irish accent was good, and he was imaginative without being childish. Depp was gold here.

Although I have never really liked Johnny Depp (except in his 21 Jump Street days), I have always liked Kate Winslet. Ever since Heavenly Creatures (1994), Winslet has proven herself a good actress who knows how to pick quirky, good movies. Her list of movies is really impressive, with only a few dark spots (Titanic and Life of David Gale). And even these dark spots are somewhat redeemable. She is excellent in Neverland, too. She isn’t flashy, but she’s still beautiful, and she comes across as simply an excellent actress.

The kids are great, too, but they seem beside the point. Yes, the Peter character is well-done, but he really just has to stand there and either smile or look brooding. It’s Depp and Winslet who carry the show.

So this is overall an excellent movie. My favorite part was the editing, which was so necessary. This film was obviously much longer to begin with, and the editor did a great job of cutting to scenes without explanation. Yet we were able to figure out what was happening. It was wonderful to see a great drama that wasn’t drawn out. See my review of The Horse Whisperer to hear me gripe about these overwrought films.

But I’m thinking about the message of the movie now, and it makes me question it. People are never really gone if you imagine them—that’s not all that bad, is it? No, not really. It’s a nice sentiment, but that’s what is, a sentiment. I can live with that.

The part I can’t live with is Barrie’s relationship with his wife. Perhaps it’s the fact that I just finished reading Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth last night, but the movie didn’t spend much time on the scandal of Barrie, Mrs. Barrie, and Winslet’s character. As society players, all three of them would have been shunned for their actions. The mom was right when she criticized Barrie for putting Winslet up in the summer cottage: that’s what a rich man does for his mistress, not for a simple friend. And those things are expected to be “paid for.”

But let’s take a step back. Mrs. Barrie gets a bad rap here as a general witch, but she’s not all that bad. Barrie says that she has no imagination, but she’s right, too: she couldn’t join him in his flights of introverted fancy. Perhaps he never let her join, or perhaps she couldn’t, but it’s sad to see him forsake his marriage nevertheless. That’s what really bugs me here. Instead of trying to save his marriage, he lets it all go for another family of kids. Could he not have children of his own? Would that have satisfied them? Sure, they’re his “muses,” but couldn’t he have found that in his own family?

Barrie doesn’t exactly commit adultery, but he comes close to it. In fact, an argument could be made that he DOES commit adultery. The film makes sure we know that his wife runs off with another man, so that she becomes the bad one, but it’s really Barrie who has pushed her away.

Those kinds of strange familial messages bother me. They don’t take away from the quality of the film, but they do make it a bit more than simply a nice sentimental movie. If my kids watched this, I would have to have a long talk with them about marriage.

Yes, I know I’m becoming conservative in my old age. Perhaps I should just accept it.

Grade of Finding Neverland: 8

Friday with Friday Night Lights

Billy Bob Thornton has always been a good actor. His movie choices, however, are hit or miss: some are really great (see Sling Blade and Bandits) and some, well, not so much (see Armageddon or The Alamo). There’s no consistency here about the types of movies he chooses—some seem like small arty films, and others are huge, big-budget blow-ups.

Friday Night Lights is one of his good ones, but not because of Billy Bob Thornton. He’s good, of course, but this movie is really about the players and only incidentally about the coach, played by Thornton. What makes this film good is a) the truth behind small-town high school football, b) the way the individual characters are dramatized, and c) the ending.

Throughout the movie, we are shown shots of the high school stadium, as well as the small Texas town where the movie takes place—Odessa, in West Texas. During the games, the entire town basically shuts down, and the businesses write “Gone to the Game!” on their windows. In fact, the town seems to internalize the school’s victories, putting tremendous pressure on the players and coaches. After one loss, the coach finds 20 for sale signs in his yard—that’s how committed these people are to this team. It’s a lot like my high school in South Carolina. In these small towns, there’s nothing to do, so the people take their local sports very seriously.

I appreciated these details, because they made the characters so real, which brings us to the next reason the movie was good: the individual characters were remarkably real. Everything here had been done before, sure, but these characters were not caricatures or one-dimensional kids; they were real people with real problems. My wife actually left the movie half-way through because one kid was abused by his father. It was gut-wrenching without being trite or over-emotional.

Which is what I loved about the ending. I won’t give it away, but it is powerful. This is not your typical movie, let’s just say that. Remember when I mentioned that all films were about overcoming adversity? Well, this one does isn’t standard. I really did almost cry here.

As a side note, there is only one piece of music throughout the entire movie, unless the students were at a party or something. The entire night I kept telling my wife, “I know this song!” I told her it sounded like a band we had seen open for Fugazi about five years earlier called Explosions in the Sky. She didn’t even really remember seeing the band, but I waited for the credits at the end, and ... sure enough, was them! I was vindicated!

Overall, this is a great movie, even for those of us, like me, who don’t like football. Grade? I give it an 8, and this could go up to 8.5, but I will stick with 8 for now. It’s not one of the best movies I have ever seen, but it’s good.

Terrorism Lessons from the Movies

I was listening NPR—you know, that liberally biased station that should be shut down—and they said that the terrorists in Iraq had struck again, killing three more people. And that term was there, just as it’s always there: terrorists.

So I began thinking about ways to deal with this term, and whether there were any examples from movies that may help us understand it. As you know, all of life’s lessons can be garnered from film. So this entry is dedicated to that—a look at terrorism from the viewpoint of film.

Let me give two disclaimers here: 1) Filmmakers, and, thus, films are generally fairly liberal. We have to understand that before we begin. If we go to films looking for conservatism, we’re going to have a hard time, as I have already said in a previous blog entry. 2) I have not seen every film, so I can’t reference every mention of terrorism. In fact, I will have to use several of the films I have already reviewed here. I will try not to just rehash, but some of it will come up again.

First, there is X-Men 2, which I just watched again (since writing the review here, in fact). Yes, the bad guys are the U.S. military, or at least the corporation that operates under government and military jurisdiction. The bad guy’s name is Colonel Striker, after all. There’s an interesting reference to the first X-Men film, where the Senator, who is actually Magneto’s friend in disguise, asks Striker how he knows about the X-Men mansion. Colonel Striker says that he learned it from one of the “Liberty Island terrorists,” meaning Magneto.

But wait, terrorists? Who in that battle is actually a terrorist? According to Striker, and almost all of the general population, they’re probably ALL considered terrorists. The point is not that Magneto is a terrorist and the X-Men are good. No, all of them are bad, and therefore, they’re terrorists. Yes, Magneto wants to destroy things and kill all humans, so he’s really bad, but there is really no distinction between him and the X-Men in the mind of most of the human characters in the film. For us there is, sure. The X-Men are the cool good guys who just want to save the day. Watch Wolverine brutally kill those soldiers that are just doing their job, though, and we can’t quite say that. We’re supposed to “support the troops,” right? Not kill them.

Then I began thinking about that 80s movie Red Dawn (1984), starring Patrick Swayze. I liked it when I was a kid, and I really want to see it again, so I will have to look it up. But I was thinking about the plot of it: the Soviets invade and easily take over the U.S., so it’s up to a bunch of kids to start their own army to overthrow the Soviets. How do they do it? They stage ambushes, hide and then attack, and then generally try to kill every Soviet they see. If I’m remembering correctly, that’s what they do. And we call them heroes, patriots, freedom fighters. The actual war was over, though. The military had been defeated. What would the Soviets call those people? Terrorists?

Ok, ok, I know the analogies aren’t perfect—Iraq was ruled by a cruel dictator, and we have a democratically elected government.

But what if we were supporting a revolution in Nicaragua, say, when they had a government that we didn’t like? We didn’t invade, but we funded the “rebels” or terrorists. France, meanwhile, likes the government of Nicaragua and tells us we have to stop supporting this terrorism. We say no, so France invades the U.S. and easily overthrows our government, while all they want to do is to have new elections and have a new government.

Well, I live in Texas, and there would be a lot of Texans who would be exercising their right to bear arms and trying to kill every “Frog” they came across. Would they be freedom fighters, patriots, rebels, or terrorists?

Just some ideas that I’m pondering. Yeah, I know I sound like I’m saying the Iraqis are right for killing U.S. troops, but I really didn’t say anything like that. I don’t want any U.S. troops to die, or anyone else for that matter!! I’m really talking about the word “terrorist,” and how we use it. Our terms are loaded, and we use them as they help us define people, not as they really are.

Movies teach us that much.

It Whispers to Me

As I was saying yesterday, my initial impressions of Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998) were pretty negative. The movie seemed too emotional, trying a bit too hard to make us break down and cry, and contained so many unnecessary scenes that consisted mainly of the beautiful Montana countryside.

So I was kind of dreading finishing the movie.

But then my wife commented that she thought the film was formulaic: a character is hurt and must overcome adversity, and we’ve seen that a million times, according to her. Yeah, she’s right. We have seen it a million times, because overcoming adversity is the basic story of all human life, or at least all human storytelling. So I couldn’t say that that generalization made the film formulaic. Every movie, novel, play, and short story follows that formula. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that this film was NOT formulaic.

As a side note, let me say, that is generally how my mind works. Someone like my wife (and it usually is my wife) says something, and I have to disagree with it. It’s in my nature to disagree with people’s assertions. I am argumentative, I know. But thinking about people’s assertions is what allows me to come up with my own ideas, you see? I tend to begin by disagreeing and then try to come up with why. It pisses people off, but it helps me understand things.

So the plot of The Horse Whisperer, I decided, was completely non-formulaic. It isn’t just about a person overcoming adversity. Where does the horse fit into that? So I thought that maybe we see the horse overcome adversity, as well, but Redford doesn’t try to get into the horse’s thoughts. Sometimes he shows us what the horse sees, but it’s almost always just a blurred shot of Scarlett Johanson. The horse is important to the story, but it’s not really a character. I even began to see that Scarlett Johanson’s character isn’t the main focus. Nope, it’s Kristen Scott Thomas, who I had not seen since The English Patient (1996).

And this person has no adversity, at least not outwardly! She’s a highly successful writer (yea!) who has everything, except, well, a good relationship with her daughter and husband. The entire film seems to boil down to her making choices about ways to make her life more complete. Yes, she has everything, but she eventually realizes that she has nothing (yeah, yeah), and so she has to choose between going back to her life in New York or staying on a ranch in Montana.

It's an idea that could so easily fail miserably. Put a little too much emotion into this part, make it too obvious, and I would hate it. But the emotion I talked about earlier isn't about Thomas--it's about Johanson.

The film doesn’t hit us over the head with Thomas's plight, and I appreciated that. While it’s not exactly subtle, it’s not boneheaded, either. Scarlett Johanson’s accident becomes a catalyst for the end of Thomas’s character’s life as she knew it. As she struggles to help her daughter, she eventually learns who she is and what she wants from life. Could be terrible, yes, but the film's strangeness works.

The horse, for example, is a really odd element. It becomes a metaphor, I think, for the scarring of the people. Yes, it’s traumatized, just like Thomas, Johanson, and Redford are all scarred and must make choices. Redford even goes to the horse and tells it something like, “you have something to do tomorrow.” That’s the day before it “chooses” whether to be well or not. People keep asking Redford, “when will Pilgrim [the horse] be better,” and he always replies, “That’s really up to Pilgrim.”

Yeah, that’s right, Mr. Redford. We make choices about “overcoming our adversity.” Sometimes we don’t even know we have adversity, and we just feel miserable. Redford gets it right when he says it’s up to us to choose when we’re ready to be happy. I don’t want to get into any complex psychological theories about depression, and I don’t think this film tries to do that. It ends up making a profound statement, however, about how one deals with tragedy.

And I appreciated the way it did it. Sure, it was a bit too emotionally tugging, but it turned out to be pretty good, after all.

Grade: 7 out of 10. Definitely fresh.

The Baby/Horse Whisperer

I have a nine-month old girl, and a friend of ours leant us a video-tape a few months ago called The Baby Whisperer by a woman named Tracy Hogg. She died sometime this year, I think, and I feel bad talking her, because I’m sure she was a very nice person. From the video, I got the feeling that she is very caring and understanding and really loves kids and people.

Nevertheless, she was a bit of a freak.

One of the things she said was that she always asked the baby if she could change its diaper before she took it off. What? Ask the baby? The baby is crying its head off because it has a load of crap sagging down its behind, and you ASK it for its permission to change it? She didn’t say, you wait for a “sure, go ahead,” but it was implied that the baby will give you permission. Weird, indeed.

It was the first time I had ever heard of this “whispering” thing, which seems like a way to say, “communicates with things that speak another language.” Tracy Hogg is a baby whisperer because she is able to understand and communicates with babies (it makes her weird, too—she says she likes to create an “aura of respect” around the baby—sheesh).

And now I have finished watching Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). The movie came out before Tracy Hogg’s books, but I wonder about this term “whisperer.” The movie says at one point that Redford’s character is a “horse whisperer,” and he replies with something like, “is that what they say?” It’s almost as if they expect us to know what a horse whisperer is, and I certainly would not have if I had not seen The Baby Whisperer.

Anyway, I watched this movie over the course of a week, and my initial perception of the movie was that it needed a good editor. It took me a week to watch it because it was 2 hours and 48 minutes long! There’s really no need to for a movie like this to be that long. There are good ones, I know, but these are generally movies that are attempting something grand—like Gone with the Wind or any of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Horse Whisperer was NOT an epic film. In fact, its scope was very small. Besides an introduction that takes place in New York, the entire movie took place on a ranch in Montana (with a brief interlude in “town” at a hoe-down). There are only a few characters, too. That’s all fine, but this movie is not epic, so it doesn’t deserve nearly three hours.

Much of that nearly three hours is spent looking at scenery. It’s beautiful, of course, but I would rather turn on PBS to see shots of beautiful scenery devoid of people and plot. Redford displays his mastery of “the shot” in this film by giving us the majesty and awe of the untrammeled country, but it should have been a part of a nature special, not a movie like this.

So my initial reactions were negative, to say the least.

Next time, I will tell you why I think this is actually a decent movie. You will just have wait until then. In the meantime, if you want to know what it’s all about and you have three hours to kill, go rent it or get it from the library like I did. Just try to make it past the first half.

Captain of the Atmospherics

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) came out last summer, and I really wanted to see it in the theater, but I just never got around to it. My action movie partner saw it before me, so there was no one to go with, and I had heard mixed things about it. I imagined that it was a really neat-looking movie that would end up lacking the umimportant things such as plot. Turns out I was right.

But this may not be a bad thing, at least not wholly. I watched the “making of” video that came with the DVD, and it was really interesting (and yet kind of sad) to see these guys work on a six-minute “trailer” for four years. Then they showed that trailer to people, and a major studio just ate it up. It actually turned out to become some of the first parts of the movie, where the giant robots invade. These scenes are by far the most memorable and interesting of the entire movie.

But the plot here is actually beside the point. Yes, there is a “world of tomorrow,” and the earth will be destroyed in the process, but all of this seems to have been created after the original movie short, which was just about robots invading.

And these robots, as well as everything about the film, are visually stunning. It’s not like War of the Worlds, where I asked “How’d they do that?” I ask that question because everything looks so realistic in that film. Sky Captain is more like Spielburg decided to make his remake look like the original film. It doesn't look realistic, but the creative way it is shot and even written makes it appear like a pre-WWII film.

Which makes me wonder the point of it. It’s really neat that a film can be made to look like one from the 1920s, but why not just watch a film from the 1920s? Everyone looking for style and creativity should watch this movie, but I don’t think there is going to be a slew of films copying it. It’s slicker than a 1920s film, of course, and there are the beautiful and funny people in it, but it seems like a one-shot sort of thing. There’s no point in doing it again if it’s already been done.

It’s kind of like listening to John Cage’s song where someone just sits at the piano and doesn’t play for four minutes. Yeah, it’s interesting and intriguing to listen to everything around you as music, but I don’t want to put this piece of “music” on each time I want to listen to something. There’s just no point.

As a side note, I have decided that my reviews will actually contain something about the movies themselves instead of just interpreting them, or at least part of the time. So I have decided to begin rating movies using the Rotten Tomatoes rating system of 1-10, where 6-10 means it’s fresh or good, and 1-5 means it’s rotten or bad.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow gets a six, just putting it in the fresh category. It gets this because it really is visually amazing, and it’s worth watching just for that. There are some funny parts, too, although they don’t really belong in the film. Nevertheless, they made me laugh.

And that can’t be a bad thing.

The New Horror, Part II

I am trying to post at least two things a week on this 'blog, but it’s difficult. Creating such fabulous critiques takes time! Not that anyone’s reading, anyway. I just like to think of myself as having a web presence.

As I mentioned last time, I love horror films, but most of them never actually scared me. And then I saw The Blair Witch Project, long after it had become a phenomenon. I actually saw it in a dollar movie theater, and my wife and I were the only people in the entire theater. Yet the door kept opening throughout the movie, and I would look back, but no one was actually coming or going. Shivers here...

And then there was The Sixth Sense, which scared me, as well. And I’m actually frightened to even talk about The Ring, that movie scared me so much. I went to return a movie at 11:00 PM on a Friday, and I decided that I might as well watch a movie that night, seeing as my wife can’t watch horror movies, and she was already in bed. So I got The Ring, went home, and watched it until 1:30 AM. Sitting alone in my house in the dark watching that movie was absolutely terrifying. Especially because the DVD had a hidden special feature, where “the movie that kills” would come on. And it couldn’t be stopped! Nothing would turn it off! And then it went blank, and the phone rang. Gimmicky, yes, but actually very creepy.

And that adjective brings me to why I think these movies are scary, especially when juxtaposed with older horror films. The scare in those older movies is pretty generic. We know Jason or Freddy, or Michael is watching (sometimes we even get interesting camera shots from Michael’s perspective), and we know he is going to kill them, but we don’t know when. The how seems beside the point, too. With A Nightmare on Elm Street, we would see Freddy, and he just looked so silly that I couldn’t take him seriously. Yes, it was different because he wasn’t bound to using knives to kill people (being in nightmares, after all), but we knew it was coming, and it wasn’t scary. The only scary thing in those films is the “jump,” as I call it—when the killer jumps out from nowhere, or even when the cat jumps out from the closet. Yes, they would fake us out, and yes, we would expect it, but it was still scary. But then it was gone. It didn’t matter. It was just, whoo, breathe again.

New horror movies have improved on this jump tremendously, and that is why they’re scary. Whenever I watch a horror film, and I see a closeup of someone’s face, I get nervous. Why? Because the closeup means that I can’t see what’s going on around them. It means a “jump” is coming.

But the jumps have changed now. They’re no longer just, whoo, breathe again. Now they’re “oh my, that was creepy.” The Sixth Sense has perfect examples. At the beginning, when the kid tells Bruce Willis that the school was where they used to hang people, Willis doesn’t believe him, but then they walk past a stairwell, and BAM! there it is at the top of the steps—people hanging. It’s a jump, to be sure, but it still gives me the willies. When the kid meets the little girl vomiting all over the place, she just appears inside his tent when he turns around, and she’s really scary! These jumps are now so creepy that they get stuck in our minds as images.

The best one is actually from The Ring. At the beginning, when the reporter goes to the dead girl’s room, the mom opens the closet door, and it flashes the scene of how she found her daughter’s body. It isn’t traditionally scary because there is no danger—no one is going to die at this point, after all. But the image of the dead girl that flashed ever so briefly on screen is completely terrifying.

Someone told me that horror films are scary now because they’re more psychological, but I think that’s kind of a cop-out. Yes, they’re more psychological (if it can get more psychological than The Shining), but one of the reasons is that they’re projecting not just killers, but images of things that are simply, well, creepy. And that creepiness gets stuck in our heads and makes us say that, yes, this movie is scary.

Older horror films never made me say that.

The New Horror, Part I

I used to love horror films. As a child, I relished A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980), and even the B-films such as The Evil Dead (1981) and Sorority House Massacre (1987). My wife says it explains a lot about me, and I agree, although I think I have different reasons for saying so. As an undergraduate, I even took an entire class on “the horror film,” taught by a great professor of film—Mark Charney at Clemson. We watched a lot of amazing horror films in that class, everything from the original Frankenstein (1931) to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to The Shining (1980), yet I don’t ever remember being scared by any of the films.

Now I find myself getting way too scared by horror movies. Some of them don’t scare me, like Jeeper’s Creepers (2001), or any other movie about a simple killer/creature. These movies are all the same. I just watched The Grudge (2004) last night, though, and I was pretty creeped out by it, at least until the end. Overall, it was a pretty terrible movie, I think, not explaining much about the killers, etc. In fact, it was pretty similar to the plot of any 80s horror film—creature comes back from the dead to kill everyone, and now we get to watch as the people die in their various ways. Not too exciting, to say the least. All we’re really doing is waiting to watch the people die because we know that’s what’s going to happen anyway. Even the death scenes weren’t that compelling, either. One of my friends would always comment that you could tell a good horror film by the death scenes (The Omen (1976) being a wonderful example), and this one couldn’t even pull those off.

But the movie made me think about other horror films that still scare me when I think about them, and I can point to three of them in particular—The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999), and The Ring (2002). Yes, two of them are big budget Hollywood films, but I have never held that against them as some horror critics do. And The Blair Witch Project is an amazing movie for many reasons that don’t need to be rehearsed here. It redefined the genre and scared me in the process. Many people say it isn’t scary, and I don’t understand them. That movie freaked me out.

Then there is The Sixth Sense, which most people call a thriller. But let’s face facts here: as the director of Cabin Fever (2002) (another great horror film, although not scary) says, The Sixth Sense is a horror film that calls itself a thriller in order to win Academy Awards. There are images from that movie that still frighten me when I’m alone at night.

The Ring, however, is the scariest film I have seen in a long time, and watching The Grudge made me think about why these new horror films are scary. As a side note, let me say that I saw Ringu (1998) after seeing the American version, and I didn’t like the Japanese version nearly as well. It wasn’t as visually scary, and it didn’t develop the plot like The Ring did. I understand that the American version used elements from the sequels, and I think it made for a better movie.

I will have to give you my take on new horror films another day, though. This has already run a bit too long. Stay tuned next time for Part II.

As a side note, I’m halfway through Drew Barrymore’s Ever After (1998), and I’m contemplating putting it in the horror category.

Robin Williams and The Fisher King

Finally a post that doesn't try to give some silly, unsubstantiated analysis of a film. This time, I pick on actors.

You see, sometimes there are actors that generally annoy me. Drew Barrymore is one. She generally picks terrible roles, and her persona off-screen seems to be a conglomeration of her characters on-screen.

Robin Williams is another of those actors that has always annoyed me. When I was a kid in the 80s, I loved him. Mork and Mindy was great, and Popeye (1980) was awesome. The way his forearms swelled always reminded me of my Dad’s strength. What do you want? I was four years old…I saw The World According to Garp (1982) when I was really young and didn’t really get most of it (Why did you let me watch that movie when I was eight, Mom?). And Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) is a wonderful film. Even Aladdin (1992) is my favorite Disney film, perhaps the only watchable one, because Robin Williams just goes crazy in it. Watching him on old talk shows is great, too, because he really is a spot-on, manic, funny man.

But then he started trying to act, and it all went downhill. Dead Poets Society (1989) was just overwrought and overly romantic. Awakenings (1990) was decent, but it kept beating me over the head with a silly message again and again. Cadillac Man (1990), Toys (1991), Hook (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and on and on goes the list of terrible films he has been involved in. And don’t even get me started on The Birdcage (1996). People kept trying to get me to see that movie, and I actually went with my parents, who freaked out at all of the homosexual stuff. I was embarrassed and couldn’t even laugh at the funny parts (which were limited anyway). Nathan Lane was the film’s only saving grace, and he was drowning in his own hamminess.

And then I saw Good Will Hunting (1997), and I didn’t even recognize this guy. Here, the story was good, the dialogue was good, and Robin Williams was actually quite powerful. He wasn’t even trying to make me laugh, and he was pulling it off. But then he went right back to the schlock of Patch Adams (1998), Jakob the Liar (1999), and Bicententnial Man (1999). Until Insomnia (2002), where he again shined. He was convincing, and the film was good (probably due to the great director and Al Pacino more than anything else).

Now I just watched The Fisher King (1991) for the first time since it came out. I remember liking it fourteen years ago, but it didn’t make a huge impression on me. This time, it did. Sure, it’s a bit hokey, and everything is wrapped up too quickly at the end, but the plot is great, the actors are great, and it isn’t just completely cheesy with one-dimensional characters. Even, gasp! Robin Williams is spectacular in it. He’s kind of the same character in parts as the one he played in Patch Adams, but it works in this film. We see parts of him we don't see again for five years.

So it appears that Robin Williams made a good dramatic film fourteen years ago. Am I wrong about him, then? Should he be crossed off the list of annoying actors? Not yet.

Williams started on Laugh-In in 1977, and in nearly thirty years, he has been involved in 66 film or television products. That’s more than two a year! No wonder he bricks more than he scores! This guy can’t seem to turn down a film, even crappy ones. He just cranks them out like the terrible sausage they are, one after the other, until finally he gets a good one. And then back to the sausage mill he goes cranking out another five years of bad films.

So Williams, my advice is to be a little more choosy. One movie a year is plenty. Then maybe I will cross you off my annoying list.

Isolationism and Troubled Times

I admit that I may have been misleading last time. I can’t think of any conservative films, at least not right now. And after thinking more about it, I have decided that the film I wanted to talk about is really a condemnation of conservatism, at least of the kind practiced by the Pat Buchanan types. But this film also projects at least initial support for Bush-type agendas.

I’m sure you have all guessed the film by now. It is, of course, M. Night Shyamalan’s newest film The Village. Yeah, it’s pretty blatant isn’t it? Not really, I know, but sarcasm doesn’t come through too well in blogs like this. Perhaps sincerity is a better tactic: The Village condemns isolation for a more interventionist policy.

I hate to just rehash plots, but I have to to make this analysis work. Shyamalan’s films are all centered around a “surprise” at the end, and I’m going to give that surprise away here. If you have not seen the film, go onto my next blog.

In The Village, a group of adults in the 1960s/1970s has each experienced a terrible tragedy related to the horrors of city life. And they meet one another in a counseling center, probably discussing the tragedies of their lives. So they get together and decide to forsake the city to create a new life as Luddite-type people who are completely removed from society. Not only do these people not participate in any activity associated with contemporary life, but they create scary monsters and stories to keep future generations from ever leaving the compound to see what city life is for themselves. The one girl who does leave is treated with kindness, and she even comments that the person she meets is not like what she expected from “the towns.”

The life on the compound is actually treated with great respect by Shyamalan. He doesn’t condemn it or suggest that it's ridiculous. Instead, it is seen as a valid alternative lifestyle. At least until the end, that is. Jealousy, evil, and even murder cannot be kept out of the compound, as we see everything basically crumble, and the alternative lifestyle becomes partially untenable. Then the people must break their vows to never return to the towns in order to get medicine that will save Phoenix’s character.

It’s a provocative premise, if not a great movie. The “surprise” at the end works against the premise, I think, because we forget about the premise by the end. Instead, it’s “Oh, so that’s what that was.”

But the plot is basically about isolationism as a viable alternative, treated with respect, and perhaps even the better way to live. But this isolationism cannot be sustained, and really doesn’t produce a perfect society, anyway. The people must break their vows and go outside their compound in order to survive.

So isolationism is out and interventionism is in. We are left to wonder how far they take their new relationship with the towns, but the fact is that it’s now an alternative. And once that happens, it’s…well, Iraq all over again…