Monday, August 07, 2006

The Flux of Casanova

I have talked before that movies must have several things to make them good:
· An interesting and engaging plot.
· Good acting.
· Good dialogue.
· Enjoyment.
I think I may be paring this list down to two basic components, however. Now I say that every movie must have
· A good idea and
· Must be well-executed.
I can define these however I want, of course, and they encompass the previous list.

Let me give an example. The new live action Aeon Flux (2005) is a bad idea well-executed. Now I must explain that, however, because the idea is really quite interesting. I remember watching the original mini-series when it came on MTV. I don’t think I saw every episode, and I certainly couldn’t get anything like a coherent plot out of it, but man, my memory says that show was awesome. Now that I watch the new Aeon Flux, I think perhaps I was a bit mistaken. The mini-series didn’t need a coherent plot. It didn’t need anything, really, because it was done in short segments, and it was only meant to look cool. This new movie does the same thing. The plot is confusing and when everything is finally revealed, it’s, well, stupid.

But boy does it look cool. I think the special features on the DVD were more interesting than the actual movie because they’re so concerned with set design and the filming of the movie in Berlin. Yeah, the settings are awesome. But the idea is a stinker.

The new Casanova (2005) with Heath Ledger is the same way. It’s a beautiful film, and I love the filming of historical Venice. So it’s well-executed. But the idea is stupid. Nothing about it makes any sense, and the historical inconsistencies drove me up the wall.

So when it comes to thinking about movies now, I will think in these terms. How do I know a movie is really good? When it’s a great idea and is well-executed. When it’s bad? A bad idea poorly executed…

These two films are simply bad ideas well-executed, and that makes them tolerable. But they’re anything but good.

Grade for Aeon Flux: 4
Grade for Casanova: 4

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

An Episode in the Life of...

Capote is a rare thing: a beautifully shot film that subtly develops its characters through action and dialogue.

And that’s really about it.

The story’s okay, and the acting is good, of course, but those things are not nearly as compelling as the way this film develops the character of Truman Capote. I think what I like best about this character development is that the movie doesn’t try to be an all-encompassing biography. It gives us a snapshot into Capote’s life by showing him during a four-year period, concentrating almost completely on the writing of In Cold Blood. It’s not a biopic by any means, and yet I think it defines Truman Capote much better than most biopics do with their main characters, including the recent Ray. Give me a subtle movie like Capote over a drawn out life of a celebrity any day.

I’m not saying it’s perfect, for in some ways, the story drags on. As Capote waits to find out what happens to the killers, we the audience wait with him, wondering what will happen. It's kind of like being stuck on the ship in the middle of the Atlantic in Master and Commander. The main character’s in limbo, so we’re in limbo, too. But Capote manages to pick up the pace again rather quickly, and we watch with Capote as he witnesses what appears to become a seminal event in his life. The events of the novel Capote writes aren't that interesting, either, and watching Capote become a part of the killers' lives is only partially interesting. It's the way the movie develops Capote with this one event that continually moves me.

Watching this one event unfold and witnessing how it effects the main character is truly fascinating.

Grade for Capote: 7

P.S. For those skeptics, I have a few stinkers I’m waiting to review. They can’t all be good, right?

Monday, July 24, 2006

A Good Night, Indeed

George Clooney’s sophomore directorial effort—2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck—is pure entertainment. Sure, it’s couched in terms we all know: constant preachy-ness, actual news footage, pretentious black and white in the age of color, and an all-star liberal cast coming together to make a statement, but this is still a movie that entertains and means to.

Everyone seems to want to talk about the statement, which is important, granted. Remember George Clooney’s speech at the Oscars? He said something about the way entertainment needs to do more than simply entertain; it needs to educate by tackling the tough issues of the day. That’s what Good Night, and Good Luck does. It says something or other about the importance of the media to do more than kowtow to either the authorities or the public sentiment, which generally tow the same line, anyway. The media needs to report the news, but not simply objectively. Reporting means to dig deeper, to go behind what people say to actually investigate how or why people say it. I appreciate that kind of investigative journalism, but that’s not what makes this movie good.

As I have constantly said, issues don’t necessarily make for good movies, so let’s forget that this is an issue-movie. First of all, it doesn’t present itself as an issue movie. Yes, it’s about the fall of McCarthy, but it’s really about the characters. In fact, I would call this movie itself a bit of investigative journalism. Instead of simply describing what these characters did in order to help expose McCarthy, it tries to give us a glimpse of these characters at specific moments in time in order to make us understand how they could go about it in the first place.

What I appreciate about it is that it doesn’t try to present every aspect of each character. In fact, we only see two of the characters outside of work, and even that is unnecessary. The two characters in question, played by Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson, have to hide that they’re married, and I kept wondering why we needed to know this fact about these two characters who do nothing to advance the plot. But their marriage is the point because it shows us the time period we’re talking about. Whereas Clooney knows he’s dealing with an educated audience—he offers no introduction to the main character or McCarthy, after all—he wants to give us a glimpse into what real life was like in those days. We never leave the CBS offices at all, except to see how this couple who works there has to hide their own marriage. Sure, CBS may not censor its reporters, but it certainly isn’t a bastion of liberalism, either.

The kind of censorship the movie deals with, then, is the censorship of a period, a moment in time, and that message is much more powerful now than the simple message about the media. When Ann Coulter’s books Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism and Godless: the Church of Liberalism become bestsellers, we know something about keeping our mouths shut. Especially if one happens to be a Democrat and—gasp!—a Christian.

But I digress.

What makes Clooney’s work so entertaining is that it isn’t a bit pretentious. Sure, it’s an issue film, but it’s doing so in the guise of presenting fact. The facts take up less than 90 minutes, too. And in the age of three-hour-long epics, that’s a fact I can appreciate.

Grade for Good Night, and Good Luck: 8

Monday, July 10, 2006

Tribes and Rituals in Jackson's Kong

Before we watched Peter Jackson’s King Kong, my friend asked me, “I want to know what you think about the portrayal of the natives.” So I was looking for them, hoping to see something juicy.

I wasn’t disappointed.

In the original King Kong, the natives have an interesting civilization. They live on one portion of the island, and they sacrifice young women to Kong in order to appease him as the lord of the jungle. Besides taking the woman off of the ship, however, the natives are basically harmless. Sure, they may worship Kong as a deity, but they also go about their daily lives. We don’t see any of that, of course, but their part of the island seems just as lush as the rest, and the people have to survive.

In Jackson’s version, we get numerous hints that this civilization is doomed. We see absolutely no infrastructure or evidence that the people actually live decent lives. There are a few rotting fish on a stick, which shows that they probably get their subsistence from the ocean, but the overall view of these people is completely bleak. I hope a group of explorers don’t visit my town or come into my house and say, “it’s obvious that this civilization died out years ago” when in reality, I’m just laying down in a back room taking a snooze. Jackson takes great pains to make this village seem completely foreign to us:

  • Nothing but jagged rocks
  • No visible communication among residents
  • Murder of all they contact
  • Creepy girls who greet visitors by slowly raising their arms

The list could go on, too. But my real question about this society is where do all of the skulls come from? The island is supposedly the last blank space on the map. So is it feasible that other tribes still go and the tribe fights wars? The rest of the island is huge, but it’s inhabited by the dinosaurs, and this seems to be the only tribe on this side of the wall. So are these just the skulls and bones from their own dead? Or do they routinely kill off half of their citizens?

No matter what the truth is, we’re meant to think it’s weird and scary. Is Jackson meaning to make this tribe out to be a bunch of bloodthirsty incomprehensibles? It sure seems like it. They aren’t too tough, of course, because we don’t see them again after the initial killing. Even though there is only one person guarding the gate, he’s enough to ward off the entire tribe.

The fact and problem is this: the people on the island don’t appear to be any kind of viable civilization. How they have survived so long is a mystery, and they’re probably about to die off, if their surroundings are any indication. We aren’t meant to have pity them, and we certainly aren’t meant to think about them after they disappear and their primary deity is seized. In the original, we see Kong kill some of the natives, and we see them as real people. Here, they're monsters.

An interesting minor plot point to say the least.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Does the New King Kong Rule, Too?

Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005) deserves several entries, so the next couple or few will be devoted to analyzing and teasing out some of the strands Jackson includes in his latest epic. This one, however, will simply review it as a film.

Not that that task is as simple as it sounds. The problem is that Jackson is an auteur. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he was held back by a giant story that was in some ways unmanageable. As the series went on, it became more and more tangled and messy, eliminating certain necessary plot points and adding in some others. In King Kong, however, he doesn’t have that problem. The original story is actually quite simple, and Jackson knows what he’s doing here. That’s the auteur in him. Because the story is simple, he can and does do whatever he wants. There is no part of King Kong that is not absolutely purposeful. He wasn’t held back by anything, and he thus created an epic film that defies simple reviewing.

Not that it’s that great, however. It’s worth watching, certainly, and there are parts of it that are amazing. As a whole, however, it’s actually too epic. I told my movie-watching partner that the movie was too overdone, and he asked me, “What, you expect subtle out of a giant monkey movie?” And I wonder: is it a “giant-monkey movie” or a “giant monkey-movie.” It’s both, of course, and that’s where the problem comes in.

There is so much action here that we don’t get to really see these characters. In fact, they become caricatures. The first half of the movie is a vaudeville film, an example of an early comedic drama. The second half turns horrifying, especially as we watch King Kong bounce through the jungle destroying his beloved prey. Where the characters developed in the first half are caricatures, the characters we see in the second half bear no relation to them. Characters are killed off willy-nilly, and we see these characters do things that are completely uncharacteristic.

But this isn’t a movie about characters, you may try to tell me. It’s an action film, right? Yes, it is, and the action sequences are astounding. The fight between King Kong and three tyrannosaurus rexi is incredible, possibly one of the best action sequences I have ever seen. The dinosaur sequences don’t let up, and I found myself wishing they would stop. While it was too much, I still could not look away.

But that’s really it. Sure, it’s also a monkey love story, but that part is actually kind of beside the point. It’s touching, but then we see the main female lead go back to her standard male beau at the end. Why doesn’t she reject him completely?

So as a film, King Kong doesn’t really hold up. It’s all purposeful, yes, and Jackson certainly knows what he’s doing, but that doesn’t mean that it makes for a great movie. It’s a good one, of course, and it’s a lot of fun to watch—a spectacle, in fact—but it doesn’t get ranked as high as I thought it would. Yes, I'm disappointed.

Grade for King Kong: 7

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Corking The DaVinci Code

So many people write about unlocking it, I want to say finally that the whole thing should be corked, put a stopper in it, toss it out to sea for someone to find a few million miles or years from now. Maybe they will find it fresh again.

Ron Howard’s The DaVinci Code (2006) focuses on one thing—talk, talk, talk—and all of that talk makes one movie boring.

First, I need to apologize to my audience. Yes, I went to see this terrible film. I was hoping it would be good (for I enjoyed the book), but my expectations weren’t too high. I know I should have resisted and not gone to see it. I know I should have boycotted it even on DVD. Why should I pay to see something that will be so terrible? I know, I know. I have no excuses. My mom is in town, and she enjoyed the book, as well, so she and I went to see the film. It was nice to get out, too.

Even if the movie did stink.

It kept going and going, like an old, worn out Energizer bunny. Imagine watching the Energizer bunny beat on his drum for two and a half hours while you get very small glimpses of Paris or London, and you will know what this movie is like.

If we didn’t know it before, be assured that an exciting book does not necessarily make for an exciting movie. The car chase at the beginning is so blurry, in fact, that I couldn’t tell what was happening. The rest of the action is like that too—blurred and muted in favor of explanatory dialogue delivered by an excellent cast. I love Audrey Tautou in Amelie (2001), Dirty Pretty Things (2003) and L’Auberge Espanol (2003), but she is probably the worst one here. Her smile is too vibrant for Sophie, and when she tries to brood, she reminds me of my cute daughter who is obviously faking her tears. I hate Tom Hanks (Maybe I will explain why in some future entry.), but he is really good here. His long hair doesn’t look stupid, and he is able to make the lines convincing. Ian McKellan is awesome, as usual, and the best scene is when we watch Hanks and McKellan banter about the Holy Grail, arguing as to what is historical and what is myth. Paul Bettany and Jean Reno are not at their best here, but they’re still good and interesting to watch.

Besides having a bunch of good actors, though, this film has absolutely nothing going for it. Sure, it’s filmed well, too, but neither of those things can make up for a plot that doesn’t hold together in its film version.

So I say cork it.

Yet I fear there’s an Angels and Demons (2007?) waiting in the wings…

Grade for The DaVinci Code: 4

Monday, June 12, 2006

If I Could Flow, I Would Hustle

The event that got me blogging again after a few months’ hiatus was The Academy Awards and the fact that the Three-Six Mafia won for best song.

After watching Hustle and Flow, I now see why they won.

This is a good movie, probably better than Crash, the film about race that won Best Picture for 2005. It’s better because it’s subtler. It details all of the same issues—race, poverty, crime—but it does so in a way that is simply about real life, especially one person’s struggle to overcome the situation he’s in.

The way Terence Howard portrays D-Jay is difficult: difficult to understand his speech, difficult to follow his actions, and difficult to comprehend his motivations. But that’s just it, isn’t it? People are complicated and individual. What I like about Hustle and Flow is that it doesn’t try to become a stand-in for all black people or all people in the ghetto, like Crash tried to do. The characters in Crash are allegories or “everymen.” They represent the people of their race or of their situations. When I watch Crash, I am meant to see myself in the characters, more than likely in the Brendan Fraser character, or possibly in the young cop character—you know, the white people who don’t think they’re racist, but they really are. This is all white people, the movie says: “even though you think you’re enlightened, you’re really just covering up your prejudices.”

It’s a good statement, and more true than most of us would care to admit. It’s also a bit heavy-handed. Issues don’t make for good movies, in general, and Crash is an issue film, a movie with an agenda.

Hustle and Flow may have an agenda, too, but it’s just to show the circumstances surrounding one man’s life and his dream to escape it. The fact that his escape is through music makes it even better. My only complaint is that the movie didn’t spend more time on how they created the music. I could watch Sugar sing those lines over and over… “You know it’s hard out here for a pimp…”

Grade for Hustle and Flow: 7

Friday, June 09, 2006

The Fog of Doom

No, it’s not a new documentary about Donald Rumsfeld. It simply combines the titles of two of the worst films I have seen in a while. I guess we’re in the dog days of originality because every script that isn’t a comedy or drama seems to be based on a comic book, video game, or even an earlier film. Did someone decide to remake The Omen just because the date June 6, 2006 was approaching? It seems so. These remakes are coming out willy-nilly and The Fog (2005), a remake of John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) is a useless example of it.

Let’s take the story on its own without looking at the original, which I haven’t seen. It is far and away one of the worst horror films. I have written quite a bit about the new style of horror that is scary while being visually creepy. This one does neither. It hearkens back to an older style of ghost story that just doesn’t hold up. I’m scared pretty easily, I think, and no part of this movie scared me. When I watched it at night by myself I didn’t have to turn the volume down or look away because I knew something was coming. In parts, I think I laughed at the plot’s “coincidences.” Nevermind the silly relationships among the half-plotted characters; let’s examine why the fog kills whom it does. No, wait, we can’t do that because there is no relationship between their deaths. Sometimes the fog targets specific people and just tries to get rid of them quickly. Other times, it takes its time and tortures them. It has to leave during the day, too, because, well, fog only comes at night, right?

Stupid. Just plain stupid.

Doom (2005) was so much better that I felt vindicated. Don’t get me wrong, it was still bad, but it was at least enjoyably bad. Whereas The Fog was serious and didn’t know what it was doing, Doom knew that it was a silly premise and it seemed to relish it. At one point, there is what looks like a cage match between one of the monsters and a marine. At the end, the two main characters strip down and have a superhuman wrestling match, which is awesome. Sure, it attempts to be serious while it’s doing these things, but how can it really? How can it go into a first-person shooter mode at the end and turn around corners just like one does in the video game and not know how silly it is? The Rock tries to be so serious as he orders around other maries that I can't help but laugh.

Stupid, sure, but fun, too.

I’ll take Doom over The Fog any day.

Grade for The Fog: 0
Grade for Doom: 3

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Immigration and Race in The Last Stand

I did something that I haven’t done in a long time: I went to a movie theater and saw a new movie. Heck, it wasn’t even free.

What would inspire Chad to pay $7.50 to see a movie? X-Men 3, of course. The first one was okay and the second one was one of the best superhero films I’ve seen. I was leery of the third one, however, for it wasn’t directed by Bryan Singer. Nope, he left to go do something silly like Superman Returns (which I’m looking forward to, as well).

I don’t even want to talk about the merits or detriments of the film, however. Let’s say that it is decent—not inspired and full of more holes than my pair of leftover 1980s jeans.

What I find compelling is the resonance of these films according to when they are released. In an earlier blog entry called “Terrorism Lessons from the Movies,” I discussed how X-Men 2 became a film about heroes labeled as terrorists and an evil military industry trying to convince the world to go to war with these terrorists for its own selfish reasons. How interesting that the film is then released in March 2003, right as the US is invading Iraq.

Here, the dichotomy isn’t between the terrorists and non-terrorists, but becomes a question of innate properties. In fact, X-Men 3 captures the intent of the original X-Men series, which began in 1963, when the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. The X-Men are mutants, meaning that they are somehow genetically different from all “normal” people. Some mutants have super powers, but some are just physically different. They’re seen as inferior because they are different, even though they have done nothing to choose their difference. As X-3 points out, there are lots of mutants that aren’t even “out of the closet,” so to speak. These mutants want to be like everyone else, and for the most part, they fit in.

In X-3, a company releases a cure for being different. Mutants can be permanently cured if they take a serum. This unleashes some mutant outrage, too, because many mutants don’t think there’s anything wrong with being mutants; they’re different, yes, but they’re also gifted. There are protests on both sides, and one group of mutants (Magneto, et al.) want to destroy all of the normal people and establish their own rule. The X-Men side doesn’t agree with the dichotomy of normal/mutant, but they don’t think violence is the answer—diplomacy is.

And when is this movie released? When the immigration question is at its height. Racism, immigration, reaction, and questions of belonging are all tied up here. In fact, it’s the most compelling thing about X-Men 3.

Grade for X-Men: The Last Stand: 5

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Judd's Twisted Demise

Ashley Judd needs to stop. I hereby proclaim that the Ashley Judd thriller (and its imitators) has played itself out and needs to retire.

Sure, I enjoyed Kiss the Girls (1997) when it came out. Heck, I even thought Double Jeopardy (1999) was somewhat entertaining. But now there’s Eye of the Beholder (1999), High Crimes (2002), and Twisted (2004), along with the perhaps-promising Bug (2006), which is being directed by William Friedkin.

While visiting with my folks recently, my dad told me I had to see this great thriller playing on cable, but he couldn’t remember the name. If you know my dad, you know that’s not unusual. He never knows the names of anything, and half the time he sleeps through movies. It’s kind of his thing.

So I vote to watch House of Wax (2005), which looks humorous, but he realizes after five minutes that he has, yep, already seen it. So we turn to Twisted, against my will, and after fifteen minutes, he realizes that, indeed, this was the thriller he had been telling me about. “It’ll blow your mind,” he says.

Not only did it not blow my mind, but it wasn’t even twisted, not in the least. I called the whodunit during the first thirty minutes, even explaining why the killing was done and noting the other murders that had been committed. I even told my dad, who was probably asleep by now, how Judd’s character was knocked out to be able to do it.

In other words, this was a twisted thriller that wasn’t exciting or twisted and left me feeling gypped of two hours. The only thing that was the least bit interesting here was the main character’s penchant for casual sex. Such a thing isn’t really unusual in Hollywood, of course, but it is generally accompanied by some sort of romance or love story. Here, Judd’s character picks up a stranger and then has a kind of masochistic sex with him, and we never see him again. And this isn’t the first time she has done this. We learn that she is trying to find companionship, even following in her mother’s footsteps, but it’s still weird for a heroine to do such things. What happened to the good Ashley of yore?

What the casual sex points out is how everyone in this movie is twisted, which may be the point. The only good character is the one who is supposed to be bad, played by a very bored Andy Garcia. Twisted comes out demonstrating the Calvinist tenet of total depravity. The entire world is twisted, it claims, even the ones we think are good.

Grade for Twisted: 2

Thursday, May 25, 2006

The Life Hectic with Wes Anderson

I watched Rushmore (1998) one time and fell in love with it. Its characters were smart, engaging, and sincere in an innovative way. The fact that the film was made in Houston right after I moved there made it all the more attractive. Then came The Royal Tennenbaums (2001), and I didn’t love it at first. It was engaging and intriguing, but it didn’t grab me right away, making me dub it One of Those Movies That Has To Be Watched Several Times, like The Big Lebowski (1998). Now comes The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and I can’t even call it that.

Regarding a film as One of Those Movies That Has To Be Watched Several Times is a type of copout, anyway; I realize that. It’s what you do with movies that are good but not necessarily fully enjoyable the first go-round. Almost all of the Coen brothers films are that way, for example. They’re great on first watching, but they get better with multiple viewings. Then there are movies that are intriguing but not enjoyable at all. Some of the more arty films are this way, especially the really out-there ones like David Lynch’s earliest, Eraserhead (1976). I know they’re interesting, but I don’t want to watch them again, or at least only in an I-can’t-turn-away-from-the-accident stare.

The Life Aquatic is one of these movies, and it may be partly because of my viewing habits that I say this. My wife likes these kinds of movies, so I have to watch them with her, yet she can’t bear to watch more than 45 minutes of a movie in one sitting (she starts feeling like she has to “do something,” which I don’t understand one bit. Like watching a movie isn’t “doing something?” Wait, that’s a sluggard talking…). Watching The Life Aquatic in four sittings really changed the viewing experience, and it pointed out the fact that this is really two different films about the same person.

The first two segments were boring. Nothing happened, and the characters weren’t even compelling enough to make it into a drama. Bill Murray is such a non-plus actor that he appears to bumble through every scene he’s in, and it didn’t work in this movie because the dialogue or situations didn’t make up for it. I wanted to quit watching after the first segment, but my wife wanted to keep going. During these first two segments, I felt as though the movie violated rule number two: a movie must be enjoyable in order to be good. There are different ways to be enjoyable, of course, but this one didn’t have any of them. I wanted to stop and burn it like we did with 13 Going on 30.

But then came the third segment, and all of sudden this drama turned into an action film. Suddenly, the characters were chasing pirates and I was intrigued. The change happened very suddenly, but it was also quite subtle. One moment Bill Murray is tied up and trying to stay alive and the next moment he is wielding a machine gun blowing people away.

And it worked…sort of. The change is purposeful, I know: it demonstrates Steve Zissou’s mid-life crisis and change and he becomes a hero for his son. Where he was a bumbling fool, he is now a rejuvenated man who takes charge. He rescues his crew and destroys the bad guys in the process.

It doesn’t make up for the first two segments, however. Even if it’s purposeful, I still have to enjoy a film. So I rate The Life Aquatic barely fresh.

Grade for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: 6

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The Tensions of Being Zorro

The Mask of Zorro (1998) saw the emergence of Catherine Zeta-Jones and the solidification of Antonio Banderas as American movie stars, and they’re both perfect for their roles. What I find intriguing about these stars is that the two of them now command multi-million dollar salaries, and they gained their status (at least for Zeta-Jones) through a movie that is about--to put it simply--protecting the poor.

Like I say, that is putting it simply, but the main plot of The Mask of Zorro is about the plight of the poor workers who, whether free or slave, are forced to serve the people in power. These people are sometimes literally chained, but they are always metaphorically chained. Zorro is their savior, first by helping to banish Spanish rule and then by preventing the evil men from coming back to subjugate the same people is the name of, not colonialism this time, but a type of industrial capitalism. These poor people’s lives don’t seem to change during any of these powers, either. I guess it doesn’t matter who’s in power, it sucks to be poor.

So in effect, Zorro accomplishes nothing. Sure, he drives the Spanish out of town, but nothing really changes for the people. He tells his wife that he’s done, but all he has really done is, well, driven the Spanish out of town. And that’s before the Spanish ruler comes and burns his palace down, leaving him with nothing. Then it becomes Banderas who has a fortune to live as he pleases, and promises not to fight anymore. Has the plight of the people changed? Probably not. We know Santa Anna promises to take care of them, but he’s too busy waging an expensive war, isn’t he? Besides, all he says is that he will give them some food. Heck, he probably makes them join his army.

The poor Zorro character, however, marries rich and now has his family and fortune to think of. No more worries for him. No more being drunk on the street fighting for booze. He has made it through his hard work and dedication to swordfighting and fighting for people who could not fight themselves. Or at least to his good looks and dancing ability, for those are the things that captivated Zeta-Jones's character.

What would call Zorro today? We would probably brand him a terrorist, but I probably shouldn't say that. It's a movie, after all, and there have to be villans and heroes and never the twain shall meet. Besides, he’s doing good for the people against the conniving capitalists, so it’s all okay.

What a revolutionary movie that doesn’t even seem to have a clue about its own revolutionary tendencies. No one ever mentions the tension between the rich Zorros and the poor people they are supposed to protect. The movie insists that what he does is right, but it’s odd to think that the capitalists are simply being industrious and doing what they need to do in order to make their money. Heck, they are even working to free California from Mexico, which is a good thing, too, right?

Let’s see a tortured hero who sees the conflict between his own riches and the complete lack of the people around him. He lives poor, too, and he serves the people by providing food for them, as well as independence. Independence is necessary, sure, but I would rather have food...

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Zorro and Childhood

As I have mentioned before, “the heist” is my favorite genre. They’re generally smart and witty, because, well, criminals who can get away with such antics have to be smart and witty.

As a child, however, my favorite genre was the action/adventure film. I loved Indiana Jones and his bumbling swashbuckling. I loved watching every kind of action/adventure film, such as Romancing the Stone, King Solomon’s Mines, Die Hard, Big Trouble in Little China, any Swarzenegger film, and any funny, action-packed hero adventure.

I admit I still have a penchant for this genre, even though my wife seems to despise those films. No, that’s not quite fair. She actually likes them based on their ratio of humor to action. If there’s a lot of humor and not that much action, i.e. killing, then she enjoys them. If it’s really an action movie with a little humor, she doesn’t want it. But this humor/death ratio is especially difficult to quantify, so I tend to play it safe and watch these movies without her.

So I watched The Mask of Zorro (1998) by myself this week, mainly because I was tired after working until 10:00 PM but not quite ready to go to bed (the wife was already in bed, of course). This Zorro film is a return to the action/adventure comedy of yore. There’s lots of yucks and lots of yells, including some tantalizing swordplay for the 12-year-old boys. It reminded me of a movie I would have loved had I seen it in 1985. Heck, I loved it in 2006. It’s all well-done, and it all works.

The problem is that it’s all been done before. Literally. Perhaps I am getting too old for this genre, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. It’s not the “oh, another man in search of revenge who learns from a great master how to defeat the object of his ire…yawn” thing. No way. I love the action and loved this movie, in general. But a lot of it is taken directly from Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. At least half of the plot is borrowed, stolen, shanghaied, as it were, from a nineteenth-century novel.

I won’t divulge too many details here, but if you have seen any of the decent movie versions of The Count of Monte Cristo (and you have tons of versions to choose from), you know what I mean. The half of the plot that is not stolen from Dumas is actually really interesting, but I couldn’t forgive the cheapness of the escape from prison scene, which is taken almost directly from Dumas.

As a whole, I still love this genre, and I wanted to love The Mask of Zorro. But it can’t be rated that high when several of its main plot points are plagiarized.

Grade for The Mask of Zorro: 5

P.S. Next time I will discuss communism and poverty in The Mask of Zorro…If I feel like it, of course.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Faith Renewed!

All is right with the world, for The Skeleton Key has renewed my faith that Hollywood is still churning out stinkers.

The Skeleton Key (2005) is a “thriller/horror” film starring Kate Hudson and Peter Sarsgaard, who sports a terrible southern accent here. I first saw Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, and her mix of naivete and young maturity there made her irresistible. Since then, she has done nothing but crap. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days was moderately entertaining as far as romantic movies go, but the rest of the Hudson oeuvre has been terrible. The Skeleton Key is no different, and I wonder why the producers decided that she was the best one for the role.

The problem with The Skeleton Key is not the acting, though, which is generally fine. It’s the mix of thriller and horror that just doesn’t work here. The back of the DVD compares the film to The Sixth Sense, and I knew it was going to be bad right then. When a film has to compare itself to some other great movie, it doesn’t have its own thing going for it. What made The Sixth Sense great was not just its originality but its truly horrifying sequences. Sure, there was drama and tenderness, but it was also really freaking scary. The Skeleton Key tries to do the same thing. It builds up the scares throughout the entire movie, making us anticipate that something really terrible is going to happen. Even these anticipatory scenes aren’t scary, though; they’re merely anticipating a scare that, well, never actually comes. The ending, which tries to present itself as a “switch” or “play” in The Sixth Sense vein, doesn’t even work. Here, we do know what’s coming, and it fails to be scary.

That I just can’t handle. The “thriller/horror” dichotomy doesn’t work anymore, and when a horror film isn’t scary, I’m distraught. I love horror films, and I am more scared of them as I get older, with scenes stuck in my head for weeks and years. If a horror film can’t even do that, trash it. The Skeleton Key has absolutely nothing going for it, except a moderately interesting plot. If it can’t scare me, it isn’t worth watching, though. The very title is a metaphor for the entire movie: a weak attempt to make it seem scary without really being scary. The title has something to do with the movie, yes, but it is not the key to it by any means. The producers simply thought it sounded good. Weak, boys, weak.

What I did like about this film is its racial plot. Blacks and whites intermingle here in a way that is different from any other film I have ever seen. The entire idea is only specifically mentioned once, at the end of the movie, but it’s there underneath the entire time, at least if we read the movie backwards, knowing what will happen at the end. Some of the plot takes on strange overtones if we see the characters as their “true” racial selves. Notice I didn’t say “racist,” although there’s some of that. I’m talking about a mixing of races that is truly original. I can’t really say more on this subject without giving away the twist at the end, but this one facet of the film brings it above a zero and makes it, well, not exactly worthwhile, but not a complete waste of time, either.

Grade for The Skeleton Key: 3

Thursday, May 04, 2006

A Dearth of Badness?

What has happened to all of the bad movies? Since I haven’t had a chance to actually watch another movie, I have been reviewing my own reviews to review how I re-viewed several films, and I was astonished by the number of high ratings I have been giving. Heck, it’s been since November 10, 2005 that I gave a rating below a 5, and that five was given to Femme Fatale mainly because of my disappointment with Brian de Palma. What has happened to all of the bad movies? Why are my reviews consistently high?

There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon, so let me go through them:

1. I rate things too highly. There’s something to this one, I admit. If I bother to watch an entire movie or read an entire book, I generally like it, and it’s not until I have time to ponder it that I realize that it’s actually a stinker. I recall one situation when I couldn’t quite condemn Blair Witch Project 2, even after a friend’s goading. I still haven’t gotten over that one. However, I do think I’m willing to call a movie on its own stupidity, at least after some thought. I’m a teacher, after all, and even if I like a student, I know when a thesis is a piece of garbage, and I have to rate it as such. The same goes for movies, and I have given some low grades in the past.

2. Movies are getting better. Hah! I can barely write that without chuckling through my keyboard. Let’s see: R.V., Stick It, Silent Hill, Scary Movie 4, The Sentinel, The Wild, and The Benchwarmers all tell me that #2 just isn’t the case. There are still a lot of bad bad movies being made. And those are just the bad ones in the top 10 grossing movies of the week…

3. I’m more choosy. If numbers 1 and 2 aren’t the case, then this one must be true. With so little time to watch movies these days, I must be more picky in the films I choose to actually watch. My wife requested the Jennifer Garner film 13 Going on 30, and we watched fifteen minutes of it before turning it off and returning it to the library. Life (and time, these days) is just too short. I would much rather watch some great old film or an established modern classic with my precious movie time.

Don’t worry, though. I will go back to reviewing crap soon enough. My work project is about over, so I should be able to settle down into a life of active sloth by working the remote every night. And let’s see what’s on the queue: Garden State, The Legend of Drunken Master, Dr. T and the Women, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Mask of Zorro, Ride the High Country, Flightplan, Goldfinger, Layer Cake, Stalag 17, Corpse Bride, Enron, A History of Violence, Collateral, and Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Life will be good.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

A Bunch of Good Ones

Yet another week without much movie watching. Life is sad.

On to The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah’s classic starring William Holden and Ernest Borgnine.

Let me be honest: I don’t like westerns. I have never enjoyed them because they are generally so much like morality tales. After watching The Wild Bunch, however, I now see that Westerns should be divided into two camps: the John Wayne camp on the one side, with its heroes and the white man’s triumph, and the Clint Eastwood camp on the other side, with its anti-heroes and struggles with honor.

I’m sure you know which side I like.

I’ll be honest again: I didn’t mean to get The Wild Bunch. I thought I was requesting The Wild One (1954) with Marlon Brando. I was upset when I got the movie but not after I began watching it. The Wild Bunch is far and away the best western I have ever seen. It’s high praise, yes, but keep in mind that I don’t really like westerns and haven’t seen very many of them. I plan on changing the now by requesting all of the Clint Eastwood westerns, the version of the western I like.

The Wild Bunch is far more than a Western. It takes place right after World War I, so there are a few cars, machine guns, even political maneuverings of the Mexican kind. Its setting sets it apart, first of all: the movie is set at the end of the West itself. There are no more Apaches to kill. Instead, there is a Mexican general name Mapache. The people who terrorize towns can no longer do so because the capitalists have the capital to fight them through any means necessary, which means hiring bounty hunters and getting people out of jail to hunt their old comrades.

Along with the end of the West comes the end of the characters’ way of life. They’re smart and they’re honorable, but they’re also endangered. One cannot be a smart, honorable anti-hero and get away with it anymore. The people in power—whether they be railroad capitalists or Mexican generals—will destroy whatever gets in their way, and that thing in their way seems to be the smart, honorable anti-hero. Forget trying to make their way in the world today, for that way of life has simply ended. What we see here is that the West is now a place of stark contrast, where the poor live in complete poverty and the rich live in absolute splendor. The two only meet when the poor serve the rich.

Besides the setting is the plot itself: aging gunmen flee their way of life in America while being pursued by an old comrade who now works for the railroad. They end up in Mexico, working for a general who is terrorizing the Mexican populations while fighting for power in his region. There is a poor resistance movement that enters the picture, as well, but we can’t expect that these aging gunmen will join them. All they want is to make money and stay alive. One doesn’t do that by joining the resistance.

So everything about this movie, including its scenery, brutish violence, and stark sexuality, set it apart from anything else I have seen before 1970. It’s an amazing story, and I can’t think of any way to make it better. Therefore, it receives my first 10 rating.

Grade for The Wild Bunch: 10

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Is Kong Really King?

Don’t worry, everyone! I’m not going away for another few months like I did in November. Nope, I have just been a bit too busy to watch many movies. This entire past week, I have only watched one movie, and that isn’t nearly enough for my taste. If I had my way, I would watch one a night, at least. My wife would go crazy, but it would be worth it…

I haven’t watched Peter Jackson’s King Kong yet, but I decided to do some preparation by watching the original 1933 version with Fay Wray.

On the one hand, I completely understand why every director probably wants to remake this movie. It has everything! Special effects, large beasts, beautiful women, carnage, heroes, and even metacommentary on filmmaking. I want to remake this movie! It is probably the perfect movie in a way that James Cameron’s Titanic is a perfect movie. These perfect movies incorporate every possible plot into an end-product that is interesting, satisfying and appeals to everyone (as King Kong even points out through its own meta-narrative).

On the other hand, I see no reason why this film should be remade or why any self-respecting director would think that he or she could do it better. As a perfect movie, King Kong even incorporates great acting and amazing special effects. Sure, they pale in comparison to what can be done today, but man, those effects still look cool. You actually get to watch Kong crush people with his teeth and destroy overhead trains. And it looks pretty good, too. Okay, the special effects could be redone, but what does this really do for the movie?

Basically, I really wanted to see Jackson’s version, but that was before I watched the original again. Now I want to see it even more to understand why Jackson felt as if this was the movie he had to make. If it’s just an homage, there’s really no point. Just watch the original and get the same thing. If Jackson thinks the old one is flawed and needs updating, then the man needs to read Shakespeare on hubris. Lady Macbeth might have something to say about his big head, after all.

My question is this: What does Jackson do that makes a remake worth it? I haven’t seen the 1976 Jeff Bridges/Jessica Lange version since I was a kid, but I don’t remember it being that spectacular. The only thing I can think is that Jackson felt that younger audiences needed to be exposed to King Kong. What young person is going to watch and enjoy a film from 1933? Probably none. I know I didn’t like it when I saw it many years ago. I thought it was hokey and slapsticky. Now I know it’s all a part of Merian C. Cooper’s genius.

After all, Kong is King, at least the original one…

Grade for King Kong (1933): 9

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Coens Fail!

I love the Coen brothers. They are perhaps the best team of producers/writers/directors out there. Not everything they do is gold, but it’s always quality fun. Raising Arizona, for example, is my favorite comedy of all time. I laugh just thinking about that movie.

The Coens have always seemed to defy genre. Or perhaps they blend genres together. What is Fargo, for instance? Do we call it a comedic thriller? Or a thrilling comedy? And don’t ask me about O Brother, Where Art Thou? I have no idea what to do with that gorgeous monstrosity.

On viewing Ladykillers (2004) this weekend, I have now seen every Coen brothers film, and I can now confidently claim that they’re all, well, good. Not much more to say than that. Sadly, Ladykillers is the weakest of them all.

Ladykillers is a comedy wrapped in a heist film, but of course it’s not really a heist film at all, so I don’t consider it a part of that—my favorite—subgenre. It features Tom Hanks leading a group of robbers to the vault of a casino. They pose of Renaissance-era musicians to practice in an old woman’s basement in a small Mississippi town. Sounds like Coen gold, right?

No, not really. I don’t think I laughed at all during the whole movie. We get to watch Tom Hanks stumble over very stilted dialogue (purposeful, of course), but his character is interesting in theory and boring in execution. Not that Hanks doesn’t do a good job, for he is obviously a talented actor. It just isn’t really funny; when a character has a method of speaking that is odd, and he must keep that method up throughout the whole film, it must be continually funny and also completely necessary for that character. When Nicolas Cage does it in Raising Arizona, it works because it’s actually a funny way to go through life and H.I.’s way of speaking incorporates everything about the character. Here, it’s not funny, just odd. And he has to do it throughout the whole film. Sigh.

Ladykillers, is, though, a morality tale in true Coen brothers fashion. Who wins in the end? Well, Bob Jones University for one. You know, the one thirty miles from my home town. The school that didn’t allow black people to attend until the late 1970s, that maintained its “Biblically-based” policy against interracial dating until 2000 when the scandal broke over visits by prospective Republican presidential candidates, that doesn’t allow any kissing or hand-holding or anything else on campus or off, that doesn’t allow dates off or on campus without a chaperone, that doesn’t allow women to wear pants or anyone to wear shorts on campus.

I won’t tell you how this school wins, but the irony is strewn all over the place like Linda Blair’s vomit. I snicker when I think about it, but the movie’s execution of the scenario isn’t funny. Sure, the events are interesting and ironic, but they aren’t funny like I think they’re supposed to be. In fact, I think this film would make a much better hour-long TV episode of The Twilight Zone. As a movie, I’m disappointed.

So come on, Coens, go back to giving us something really good…

Grade for The Ladykillers: 6

Thursday, April 13, 2006

The Symbology of the Feminine Fatale

Rating Femme Fatale and re-evaluating Brian de Palma wasn’t very fun. I like de Palma, you see, and I don’t want to downgrade his status from auteur to talented hack. But sometimes these things are necessary as directors let their talent slip.

I have never watched a Brian de Palma film looking for symbolism before, but I think I will have to from now one, because Femme Fatale included some of the most blatant symbolism I have ever seen. And frankly, I feel gypped by it.

Although we don’t quite grasp the importance of the symbolism until the end of the film, it’s all over the place. During one scene, I was really intrigued by the fishtank, which seemed to be overflowing. I couldn’t see the bottom of the tank, however, so I didn’t know if it was purposeful—if there was some kind of recirculating system or something. I kept wondering whether the fish wouldn’t just jump out. At the end, you see the same scene again, and it’s normal now: ah, I said, it was overflowing to show how different everything is in that reality. It also mirrors the bathtub, which was overflowing. And her emotions, which are... you get the point.

Then there are the posters all over Paris, which all include pictures of the main character, along with the words “déjà vu.” How bizarre, I kept thinking. I guess she’s famous (and she is, in the movie). But there’s more to it than that, which I can’t reveal without giving away a bit too much of the plot.

I love symbolism, but in movies like this it seems a bit too much. I remember my English teachers who would variously try to convince us that everything was symbolic of either God, gods, sex, or emotions, depending on which teacher I had. One teacher told us that the river in Heart of Darkness was female and the boat traveling on it was like the sperm trying to reach the grand, final place of the female to implant its imperial seed. We all tittered and made fun of her sexual preoccupations. But Joseph Conrad probably had something like that in mind, although probably not quite so blatant.

But movies aren't imagined in the same way that books are. When I read, I have to picture the characters and events in my mind, whereas in a film, the director has done that for us. Film is mimetic in a way that books are not, and the difference in symbolic effects lies therein.

Real life doesn’t include such symbolism, you see. As a reflection of an imagined reality, films fail to reproduce any semblance of reality when they include symbolism. I wish real life were that way, but it isn’t. I wish I could tell my wife were angry because she is wearing red, but she doesn’t wear red when she’s angry. I wish rivers were really metaphors for the turmoil of society, but they’re actually just rivers. Sometimes a rose is just a rose, sure, but it’s always that way in reality. In a poem, a rose can take on multiple meanings. In real life, it’s just a rose. Sure, we can imbue it with meaning by giving it to someone we love, but then it’s really just, “I love you, so I’m giving you this rose.” If we want to be poetic and score points with the women, we may make up some crap about how the opening petals represent our burgeoning love, but we all know we’re just making that up. It's really just a rose.

In a mimetic visual medium like film, symbols just don’t work as well as they do in books. I still like ‘em, though, and I’m thinking about changing my title to "symbologist." Maybe I can get my PhD in the field and go teach at Harvard…and go on adventures interpreting the sacred feminine...

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Rise and Fall of Brian de Palma

I have seen most of Brian de Palma’s movies, and I tend to enjoy them all. Whether I am watching one of his mobster films, such as Scarface, The Untouchables, or Carlito’s Way, or one of his horror thrillers such as Carrie, Sisters, or Dressed to Kill, I tend to like Brian de Palma. Even his bad films are well done. Mission to Mars and Snake Eyes are terrible films, but there are still entertaining parts to them. They attempt new things and, although they may not always succeed, they’re generally interesting to watch.

In continuation of my quest to see movies by famous contemporary directors, I requested Femme Fatale (2002) from the library. It wasn’t until I actually got hold of the movie that I realized that it was that movie. You know, the one you heard about with the gratuitous sex scene between Rebecca Romjin-Stamos and some other woman. I was let down, for I had heard the film was bad, but I was also piqued that I got to watch that movie.

Like all Brian de Palma films, there are interesting things here. The sex scene, for instance, while not quite as titillating as I was hoping, err, as I had read, is still rather interesting for such an actress. The good girl Romjin-Stamos, indeed, is no good girl here. She spends the rest of the film screwing people over, both literally and figuratively. It’s weird to watch because, well, this is ex-Mrs. John Stamos! They are divorced, aren’t they? Anyway…

De Palma even includes some interesting split screen shots, as he has done in previous films, but they’re only necessary here because the shots themselves are so boring. Watching the split screen was less exciting than watching one decent single screen.

So what’s redeeming about this film? It’s certainly not the story. That part of the movie is so convoluted that I can’t begin to explain it without giving away some major part. It’s all surprise, you see, but it isn’t really, because we don’t really care as we watch it. That’s the biggest problem here. When things unfold, I sigh. I don’t scream or gasp. Nope, I sigh. Okay, I say. That kind of makes sense. De Palma doesn’t make me care about these characters enough to care what actually happens to them. And that's a sure sign of weakness. It's like when Obi-Wan's master gets killed in Episode 1 of the new Star Wars films: frankly, I just don't care. It's a strong director that makes me care about the characters, and this movie didn't feature that strength.

So have I re-evaluated de Palma? Yes, I have. I still want to see his latest project, another crime thriller, but right now, I think he’s mainly just a really good hack. Yes, his movies are all well-done, and there are good parts to each of them, but they’re not stunning. Yes, I’m including Scarface and Carrie in here, too. They’re good, sure, but they’re basically good action and horror films. And let’s face it, Scarface gets boring in some parts. (I actually think Carlito’s Way is the better gangster film.). Carrie is a great horror movie, on the level of The Shining, but isn’t its greatness in large part due to its source material? Could any other director have done these movies? Maybe not any other, but with such good source material, the movies should have been good, nonetheless.

Grade for Femme Fatale: 5

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Seeking the Truth and Other Cock and Bull Stories

With Ron Howard’s movie version of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code coming out in a month, I want to offer some thoughts on the book.

First, everyone should read Mark Bertrand on The Da Vinci Code. I agree with most of what Mark, as well as most of what the Salon article he references, say about Dan Brown’s novel. Basically, Mark dismisses Brown as a terrible writer, while the Salon article assumes that he’s a terrible writer and then dismisses him based on the bogus history purported as truth within The Da Vinci Code. All of this stuff is great. Me, I enjoyed the first half of the book and then simply finished it because I felt like I had to. I admit that I felt some tinges of guilt as I was reading it. Even though I reacted with anger that such typical and trite stuff could be so popular, I still kind of liked it. But don’t tell anyone.

The problem is that people tend to dismiss Brown very quickly, in a huff of deserved intellectual highbrowness. Yes, he’s a hack author who basically passed off some very suspect “history” as fictionalized truth. But The Da Vinci Code is also one of the bestselling books of all time. I have gotten emails from Christian groups describing how people have "lost their faiths" over this book, and that we, as Christians, need to know how to combat it or how to minister to people who have had their faiths shaken. My own mother-in-law, who was visiting while I was reading it, wondered why I would read such a blasphemous book. I guess she thought I should have better things to do with my time. While it's easy to dismiss these kinds of responses very quickly, as well, I'm not sure that we should dismiss either of them.

Yes, it's true that Brown is not a great writer. The book is engaging in the way that a silly action movie is engaging (and full of the same number of holes, too). One page chapters are a sure sign that an author is trying to create a false sense of suspense, after all. All of that contributes to its popularity, surely. But what do we do with a book that is so popular because of its false religious/historical suppositions? How do we engage a novel and a culture that is enthralled with the novel? We can’t just dismiss it, because this means that we dismiss the public as a bunch of gullible idiots who are “going to hell” by virtue of their own gullibility. The argument would be something like, “if someone is going to lose their faith over The Da Vinci Code, that person didn’t have real faith in the first place.” There’s something to that argument, sure, but we can’t let it rest there, either. All of these religious refutations aren’t quite the right track either, because why bother reading “history” from either side, when the people involved clearly have such agendas?

Will I go see the movie? You bet. I can’t wait, in fact. I think it will be good, and that’s enough for me to go see a movie no matter how blasphemous it is. Am I a “good Christian” for doing so? Maybe not. But at least I’m “seeking the truth,” as the tag line to the film claims I should do. Hah! That gets me every time I see it. Seek the truth by, well, not believing this movie is truth.

I haven’t rated a book here before, but why not, just so I can compare the book with the movie?

Grade for Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: 4 (silly but engaging)

Monday, April 10, 2006

Transcribing Mamet's Oleanna

I like David Mamet. If there is one director/screenwriter who is best at the snappy dialogue, it’s Mamet. House of Games (1987) and Heist (2001) are two of my favorite examples of my favorite genre—the confidence game or the heist. I consider the two kind of interchangeable, after all, even though one is the other but the other isn’t necessarily the one. Yeah, it’s confusing. Think rectangle and square…

I taught an Introduction to Drama class for sophomore university students a few years ago, and Mamet’s Oleanna was included in our text book. Since my reasoning that semester was to only teach things I had never read, I included it on the syllabus, and my students had a hard time with it. Everything the professor did that was “wrong” was so subtle that my students couldn’t see it.

The movie version loses that subtlely. Because we generally watch movies in a single sitting, we watch the three acts of Mamet’s Oleanna (1992) one right after the other, and the professor’s “badness” really shines through. Even though we may not pay attention to what he does in the first act, when the student brings it up in the second, it’s blatant that, yes, he committed those wrong actions.

Most of you are lost, I know. This film is not well-known, and for good reason, I think. Mamet was attempting something different here: to film a play as a movie. A movie with only two speaking characters. And no music. And have the actors act like they were acting in a play.

But a play is not the same medium as a movie, and simply changing a few camera angles doesn’t make for a good movie. It’s tedious and, well, boring. The dialogue is typical Mamet fare, but we’re forced to listen to a professor who speaks like your boring college English professor; you know, the one who used all of those big words without explaining them, the one whose convoluted sentences required diagramming to understand them, the one who could never get to a point because he said he wasn’t trying to preach but to make you think. Damn that guy, right?

Damn straight. And here he is again. In the play, I respond to it because I can slow down and read it. In his movie incarnation, the professor becomes sometimes incomprehensible, and his incomprehensibility is purposeful, I think, to demonstrate the student’s perceptions of him.

But wait, did you say there were only two speaking characters? Yep, a teacher and a student. It’s weird. Let’s just say that the teacher tries to “help” the student and the student then vies for power. The three acts are basically the three versions of who holds power in the student/teacher relationship. That part is really compelling, too.

The bad part is that the girl is left holding the cards at the end. Sure, the teacher can overpower her, but she wins in the end. She claims she just wants understanding, but that’s what he wanted, too, right? It’s all a vie for power between groups who have it and groups who do not.

Wow. This blog entry has failed, I know. It failed because I’m rambling, but also because I’m rambling about a provocative movie that most of you have not seen. Where I want to go off discussing the film, I’m forced to step back and try to explain what happens in it, and that just ruins it.

Grade for Oleanna: 5

Monday, April 03, 2006

Naturally Bad Santa Kills Thirty in the Bad Lands

Terrence Malick doesn’t make movies very often, and until 1998’s The Thin Red Line, he had not made one since the 1970s. No wonder that I didn’t really know who was until then. He now has four movies to his credit: Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), and The New World (2005).

The Thin Red Line was impressive: its scale was remarkable, the characters were interesting and engaging, and the photography was vivid and teeming with life. The only problem was that those things don’t necessarily make for a good movie. I have to actually enjoy movies to call them good, and The Thin Red Line wasn’t enjoyable. Sure, its technical work was some of the best I had ever seen, but the movie was just a bit too sprawling—it needed a lot of editing to make it into a good, coherent film.

So I had never really sought out Malick’s other films until I noticed Badlands in the library. Knowing that my wife was going out with her cousins on Friday night, I grabbed it. For those of you who know my wife, you know that it’s better to keep these movies from her. Trust me.

Now I am a Malick fan. This one had all of the beautiful technical details of The Thin Red Line without the lack of editing. It included all of the beautiful scenery and photography, but it wasn’t overdone like in his newer film. Here, it’s all set to serve the story of these two lovers, played wonderfully by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Those two actors are so good that they made me believe that these characters would actually do the terrible and crazy things that they do in the film. Few actors could have done that.

Badlands made me reassess Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994), too. Notice that in my review of Stone’s films above, I didn’t mention Natural Born Killers as one of his masterpieces, and that fact is that Killers suffers from its overdone style. While it attempts something interesting, the style of the film eventually overpowers its own story and leaves the movie and its viewers a bit, well, empty. I’m sure its defenders would say that this is the point, but all stone achieves is a satire on our fascination with criminals, and I don’t see the point of that when Malick had already done it in Badlands.

These two films—Badlands (1973) and Natural Born Killers (1994)—share a similar plot but with different ends. Natural Born Killers is there to glorify and make us love the characters while undermining their glory at every turn. In other words, its purpose is to make us question our own love of violence. And it does it in a sick and playful way that I think works against its own theory. Badlands, however, isn’t content to make fun of its characters. Where Natural Born Killers’s psychology within the film remains on the level of “violence is cool, so it’s cool to be a killer,” Badlands takes us inside its characters and explains how they could actually do the things they do. Some things are left up to mystery, but Martin Sheen does what he has to, not what he wants to. Woody Harrelson is humorous as a killer, while Sheen is tortured.

It's a big difference, one that makes Badlands a remarkable movie.

Grade for Badlands: 9

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Bad Santa, Good Movie

Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa is hilarious. I don’t think I have laughed so hard at a film since the third time I watched Raising Arizona, and it’s no coincidence that the Coen brothers produced this movie.

I want to stop right there, but I can’t. Let me tell you two things: first, I used to teach at Prairie View A&M University, and my students there loved this movie and couldn’t believe that I had never heard of it. Second, my wife tells me that I make inappropriate jokes and laugh at inappropriate things.

Those two facts probably tell you why I found Bad Santa so funny. First, I didn’t know anything about the film, and second, I share the inappropriate humor of eighteen-year-old freshmen.

Billy Bob Thornton is the bad Santa, and he is such an amazing actor that his comedy appears completely believable. Whereas another actor may have hammed this film up, Thornton plays it like he is a character from Monster’s Ball. So I watch him curse at eight-year-olds and stumble around drunk staring at women's behinds, and I crack up. It’s so preposterous, yet so believable coming from Thornton. I must have laughed a million times just hearing Thornton say “What the f*** do you want?” or some variation to a five-year-old. It’s just hilarious. I laugh just thinking about it.

But that’s where this movie’s goodness ends and its badness begins. The other actors are terrible: Bernie Mac, who I generally like, has a bit part, and he serves no purpose in the film. I think he's only there becuase he's cool. John Ritter’s role is more important and funnier, but he only appears in half of the film (I think he died during the filming, God rest his soul). The actor who played the elf is actually pretty good, but his character’s actions are completely unbelievable, which brings me to the plot of Bad Santa.

The plot is, well, stupid. Every part of it makes no sense: a drunk bum who can crack uncrackable safes? A Santa and elf who have robbed stores for seven years in a row? Has no one caught on to their scheme? The ending is completely preposterous, as well. Such things wouldn’t happen.

The bottom line, I guess, is that Bad Santa is not a good movie. It’s funny, sure. Man, is it funny. (“What the f*** happened to you?” Hah!) But it’s only funny if you like inappropriate humor incorporating vulgarity, sex, and little kids, not particularly in that order, thank goodness. And I guess I enjoy those things…

Grade for Bad Santa: 6

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

From Nixon to the Fourth of July

 
From Nixon to the Fourth of July

If I haven’t mentioned it yet, I have been trying to go through the back-catalogue of important contemporary filmmakers, and today I will briefly discuss Oliver Stone. His oeuvre is impressive: Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, JFK, The Doors, Heaven and Earth, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, U-Turn, Any Given Sunday, Comandante, Alexander, and the much anticipated first non-documentary film about 9/11, World Trade Center.

He has made some great films—Platoon, JFK, and Wall Street—but he has also made some real shite—U-Turn, Alexander. This weekend I watched two of his films that I had never seen before: Born on the Fourth of July and Nixon. And they’re both good. It may be strange to compare these two films or to review them together, but they share a common theme that runs through most of Stone’s movies: communism is good and government conspiracies abound. Yes, they really are the same theme, for most of the government conspiracies involve communism in some form, especially Cuba. JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, and Nixon all involve Cuban/American conspiracies, although the idea is just hinted at in Born on the Fourth of July.

It’s no coincidence, then, that Stone’s documentary Comandante is actually a glowing portrait of Fidel Castro. Part of Stone’s film-making mission is to make American government look bad (especially Republicans) and to make Cuba look good. Nevermind that he never actually takes us to Cuba: the point is that we know its there and our government has used it in a myriad of ways, from patsys to excuses for war.

I’m not criticizing Stone for making movies with disagreeable politics. I’m no neo-con myself, and I sympathize with nearly all of Stone’s sentiments (stopping way short of praising Castro, of course). But political statements and movies don’t always mesh. That’s the problem with Born on the Fourth of July, which was a big deal when it came out. The simple fact is that it’s not that great of a movie (I hope you're getting used to me stating my opinions as facts). It’s well-done, but it’s too heavy-handed. The first half is really good, but then the movie descends into a simple argument against the Vietnam War. If it had remained a movie about a vet’s ability to cope with the war, I would have been much more receptive. Making the main character into a hero makes it much too simple.

Even though Nixon is the lesser-known film, it’s the better of the two. Stone isn’t content to bash Nixon. He gives him his due, I think, and he uses the Nixon tapes as a way to flesh out what happened with Watergate. Some of it is conjecture, sure, but conjecture can make a good movie—just see JFK. Nixon is a complicated figure whose childhood and family relationships all play a role in his descent. Stone doesn’t merely argue that Nixon got a bad rap, either. The film indicates that Presidents or all people in positions of power get embroiled in intriguing situations that we, the public, would probably be better off not knowing about. And that kind of message makes for a decent movie. The editing gets confusing and annoying at times, and we can see the style of Natural Born Killers coming through, which brings the film down. Overall, though, this is the better movie.

Grade for Born on the Fourth of July: 7
Grade for Nixon: 7.5
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Monday, March 27, 2006

Dreams of 3 Women

No, I’m not talking about orgies here, although that theme recurs throughout Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977). Like Martin Scorsese, Altman is one of the most acclaimed (and prolific) directors who has nevertheless never won a best director Academy Award. Probably rightly so, too. Don't misunderstand me: I like Altman’s films. Short Cuts and The Player are two of my favorites, and Gosford Park was an amazingly clever reinvention of the mystery.

But his films just aren’t best picture material, are they? They’re all really good—that’s why the Academy awarded him the lifetime achievement award this year—but they’re all flawed. It’s as if someone keeps interfering with his films, inserting annoying little traits or characters. Sometimes that overlapping dialogue trick gets confusing or simply grating, and the camera just doesn’t stop moving, zooming in at what seems like inopportune times. Sure, it’s neat, but it’s not best picture stuff.

3 Women is different from anything else he has done. For the first half, I was completely engrossed: the characters were interesting and the plot seemed completely fleshed out. On second thought, the characters were one-sided, but it was completely appropriate, considering the turn-around halfway through the film. The characters had to be one-sided to make the twist work. Everything changes at this point, and the characters begin to morph into one another. I won’t give anything away, but it gets really interesting and quite confusing. The ending seemed like a let-down, but on second thought, it wasn’t. I can’t say what happens, but it gets weird. What we thought isn’t the truth, and all of it becomes very dream-like. It isn’t until the end that we really understand who the three women even are, but even then, we can't be sure that it's the final word.

The film’s confusion and play on reality makes it a precursor to Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which appears ten years later, or even more so to his Mulholland Drive. It’s interesting that Altman made a film like this at all, for it’s a complete departure from any other of his films, which, although perhaps not traditional, at least have somewhat coherent plots. 3 Women kept me guessing during its second half, and I only partially feel as if everything was resolved. In that way, it may be better than a Lynch film where nothing is resolved.

Overall, this film is worth watching. I had never heard of it before, but I think that’s because of its complexity and subtlety on the one hand and its competing simplicity of character and overt metaphors on the other. It may not be a M*A*S*H or Nashville, but it's still good.

Grade for 3 Women: 7

Thursday, March 23, 2006

We Three Kings

I know I shouldn’t start a blog this way (or the way I just did), but I have been trying to figure out what to say about David Russell’s Three Kings (1999). I saw the movie when it came out, and I remember liking it back then, but it takes on an eerie prescience now that there is another “gulf war” and another "invasion" of Iraq.

The soldiers keep wondering what they’re doing in Iraq, but they definitely support their own mission to free Kuwait. It’s a worthy goal, perhaps. But the people of Iraq want the Americans to finish the job and support their own rebellion against Saddam. Bush told them to rise up against him, but then he left and wouldn’t pursue the dictator. Now, seven years after the movie, American soldiers are attempting to do what everyone felt like they should have done back then: remove Saddam.

But what has happened in the meantime? If we take this movie as the truth (which it isn’t), then the people of Iraq wanted Saddam gone. Everyone except the people in power wanted Saddam gone, and many of the soldiers didn’t want to be in his army, anyway. But now that the US has actually removed Saddam, it seems that everyone has turned against the Americans. They thought we (at the peril of including everyone in the US military) were evil then because we abandoned them, and they think we’re evil now because we didn’t. Perhaps it’s really all because we abandoned them? What has happened to make us invade NOW rather than twelve years earlier?

The only answer is 9/11.

But that’s an incomplete answer, isn’t it? A bit of a ruse, perhaps? Saddam was NOT connected to 9/11 no matter what percentage of the population thinks he was. So the question becomes unanswerable—there is no reason to invade now rather than back then, and the soldiers still don’t know what they’re doing there. Whereas they were freeing Kuwait back then, they think they’re freeing Iraq now. The difference is that Iraq doesn’t seem to want to be freed.

Yes, I have descended into a diatribe, although I didn’t want to. But I guess that’s the power of a movie like Three Kings. I intended to write about how the style of the film competed with it’s serious and often gut-wrenching story, but all of that is overshadowed by the very plot of a war in Iraq. Is it even possible to talk about a movie about the 1991 Gulf War without discussing the present war? I guess it is, but I can’t seem to do it.

Maybe next time I will tell you why Three Kings doesn’t deserve an A. Or maybe I will continue with why this film depresses me…

Grade for Three Kings: 8

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Is There Really an Upside to Anger?

I have actually been trying to post, but I think Blogger has been having some problems. Sorry about that. Now on to my review:

It’s not that Upside to Anger (2005) is a bad movie, for it is actually quite good if you consider all of the criteria for a good movie: it features good acting, pretty good dialogue, and a somewhat interesting storyline. It’s just that it’s rather bland.

Yes, that description is bland, but I really don’t know how else to describe it. It should be a good movie, but nothing about it gripped me. It reminded me of one of the Weitz brothers movies (About a Boy, In Good Company), but it wasn’t witty enough to be one of theirs, and it was a bit too implausible, too. Without the wit or realism, where is a comedic drama?

Nowhere, that’s where, and that’s why I have trouble recommending this film. My wife had two responses to it. Afterwards, she said that it was a “good movie.” But during, when the young daughter propositions her “boyfriend” with sex in her bedroom, my wife declared that our own daughter was not allowed to have boys in her room. And that sums the movie up for me. No, it’s not that provocative. No, it didn’t make me ponder any mysteries except some contingencies about strict parenting. In fact, the few things it tried to make me ponder were simply ridiculous.

That same young daughter, for example, enters as the narrator during a few parts of the film, and that’s where the title comes. She says that there is an upside to anger at the beginning, and then at the end she reveals what that upside is, and I just don’t buy it. She says that “the upside to anger is the people who come out of it.” The reason I don’t buy this is I have no idea what it means.

It could mean that people change because of their anger and they’re better people at the tail end. That’s the more plausible explanation. But the mother, the angry one, becomes a bitter wreck and everyone hates her, including all four of her daughters. They claim that she used to be the sweetest, nicest, most loving person on the planet, but I couldn’t help muttering "bitch" throughout the movie, which kept earning askew glances from the wife. So there’s no upside to anger there, at least from what I can see. It could be that she reverts to her sweet self after the film’s resolution, but we don’t get to see that, so I can’t assume it. All we see are the three years when she's just plain mean.

The other meaning to the upside to anger as the people who come out of it is that there is a new person in their lives in the form of the drunk and stoned Kevin Costner. Sure, he’s a nice guy, and everyone loves Fun Bobby, or Fun Costny, but is that really the upside to anger: that it attracts drunken bums? Maybe, but that's doesn't really seem like too much of an upside to me.

I guess I just don’t get it.

Grade for The Upside to Anger: 6

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

To Eternity and Beyond!

In lieu of actually reading James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, my book club decided we should just watch Fred Zimmeman’s 1952 film version starring Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Deborah Kerr. After watching the movie, I wish I had just read the book.

I know, I know. It’s one of the “singular cinematic experience, one of the landmarks of American film,” “the most daring movie of 1953,” “an acting bonanza,” and I agree that it is all of those things. The cast and their acting was incredible, I admit. Even though I had never heard of Montgomery Clift, he prefigures James Dean, especially the Dean of Giant. And Burt Lancaster, whom I had seen before but never really paid attention to, was amazing as the duty-torn sergeant.

The females, however, were almost negligible, and not really because of their acting. The romances just weren’t developed. Parts were good, such as the first interaction between Kerr and Holmes in their bedroom discussing his infidelity. But the affairs were ridiculous. They’re scandalous, yes, but in a very veiled way. For instance, when Lancaster and Kerr first kiss, the screen fades to black, and I think, whoa! What happens in that blackness? I assume they must have had sex. But then when they meet again, it doesn’t seem that they have because she mentions how his kiss is so great. That second meeting, by the way, is the famous romp in the sand, and it was quite a disappointment. It’s over before you know it.

The entire romance portion of the film seems tacked on, too. It just isn’t necessary to the story, which is really about three soldiers who can’t get attached to women. One of my book group said that yes, the romances were tacked on. But she was glad they were, because they made the movie more palatable for women. But the romances seem to be written by guys: the females are either damaged or completely needy, and the men feel as if they would be better off without them. The entire movie seems to be a romantic male fantasy.

I mean "romantic" as in the sense of freedom, which seems to be what the army represents. Sure, it’s its own repressive society, but it’s also a version of male freedom from responsibility, at least home responsibility or feminine responsibility.

What I appreciate about the movie is its unconventional nature. For 1953, this film was probably a breakthrough: adulterous love affairs, living with unmarried women, the debauched life of soldiers, the corruption of the army, and the conflicts within soldiers toward their own sense of duty. All of that’s really great, and I know it.

The problem is that I’m watching this movie in 2006, and it doesn’t seem that interesting. Sure it’s not a one-dimensional John Wayne film, but it’s also weak compared to Platoon. Still, I have to give it its due.

Grade for From Here to Eternity: 8.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Oscars Reloaded

What a strange Oscars night it was, too. I didn’t make it through the same thing, which I may have to complain about later, but I got to see what I think was the strangest Oscar moment ever. No, I’m not talking about Ben Stiller’s funny but drawn out “green screen.” No, I’m not talking about the running theme of go to the movies—it’s better on the big screen! I’m talking, of course, about the Three 6 Mafia winning the Oscar. Sure, Eminem won it a few years ago for “Lose Yourself,” but he didn’t show up to perform it or to accept the award. Eminem’s a bit different, anyway. It’s like Ludicris introducing Three 6 Mafia. They both clean up nicely, and, heck, they can both almost act, graduates obviously from the David-Duchovny-school of non-acting.
The whole music award was insane, anyway. First, there’s Dolly Parton with an uninspired song, and she’s the only person on stage! Then comes “In the Deep” from "Crash," and it’s one of the most cluttered stage performances I have ever seen. I guess the song is so boring they had to give the audience something to look at. It’s a good song, sure, but the focus was on the background, not on the singer or the song. Then came Three 6 Mafia and they had a similar sort of “from the movie” montage during their performance. And I couldn’t understand a word of it, except for the amazingly catchy chorus, which I have been singing ever since. Yeah, it’s a good rap song. Yeah, the hook is good. Yeah, it probably fits well into the movie.
But it’s definitely a departure from what generally wins Oscars.
Don’t get me wrong. While I’m not the biggest fan of rap music, I do like some of it. Some of my best friends are rappers—no, wait, that’s my excuse for something else. Yes, I do feel like a character from the movie “Crash” right now. Anyway, it was weird to see the performance and definitely weird to watch the acceptance, which, as Jon Stewart said, was the most inspired acceptance he had ever seen. Man, was it ever.

I plan on continuing this, by the way. Next time, expect to hear about the stagy-ness of the Oscars.