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

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?

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

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.

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