"Is That Your Finger?"

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005; d. Shane Black; Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan) Following an abomination of a style piece like Domino with another style piece is dangerous. Style pieces often don't work, which sets me up to see yet another awful film. Style pieces don't work as a function of a timeworn principle of mine, which states that 'you are neither as cool nor as shitty as you think you are.'

To build a film around flashiness, deconstruction, and pithy self-awareness, you have to be supremely convinced of your coolness and your uncoolness all at once. You have to say 'look at me,' even as you undo the skein of whatever it is that you're doing that makes you interesting. Take for example, Hudson Hawk. This movie was an exercise in stylization. At no point did the movie let you forget that you were watching a movie. It played with time, setting, ended scenes randomly, and broke the fourth wall constantly. Either you find this anticness endearing and loveable (as I did, but I freely confess that Bruce Willis is a personal hero, and that his run on Moonlighting, which featured many of these same tricks, were formative for me--more on this another time) or you find the movie to be atrocious, because it holds you at a distance, mocks you for watching it, and laughs at you as often as you laugh at it. Which are also reasons that I love Hudson Hawk.

I've already cited Domino as an exercise in stylization that does not pay off. Again, it plays with time, setting, and never quite lets you forget you're in a movie by employing 90210 actors as themselves. However, I believe Domino holds you at a distance with contempt. It has no sense of humor about itself, instead snarking about you and your bourgeois values about storytelling cliches like character and plot. Domino is the hot stupid girl at a party who regards you with a gimlet eye without realizing she has toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

Another example of a style piece that doesn't work is Scream. Scream is often cited as a classic in deconstruction, which I've never quite understood. It is a well-done slasher film, that's all. It doesn't say anything about what a slasher film is or what it does, nor does it illuminate the drawbacks or limitations of the form. Just because it cites what it's going to do before it does it doesn't make it smart or interesting. We all have friends who can loudly anticipate their mistakes, but go through with the bad decisions anyway. We call them idiots.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang works. Sure, it says offensive things. Sure, it plays suicide and murder for laughs. Sure, it lies to you about what's going on. Sure, it's needlessly complicated, while simultaneously making a massive joke out of the proceedings. But unlike Domino, events matter. An arm is removed in Domino for shock value. A finger is removed in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but it means something. The loss of the finger gets Downey stoned and passed out in the back of the car, which moves the plot along. The loss of the finger works as an allusion to the other film noirs that deface their heroes, like Chinatown. The way in which the finger is lost also parodies those genre conventions. Downey loses his finger to his dream girl by accident, not a cruel and impersonable enemy who is threatening him off the case. In that parody, however, the moment reveals something about their relationship; throughout their relationship, she has damaged him and continues to damage him, and he keeps coming back for more. It positions Michelle Monaghan as an accidental femme fatale (dangerous because she makes bad choices, not because she is evil) and Robert Downey as clumsy, dogged, and loyal.

Similarly to the layers of plot, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang also works because the characters matter on multiple levels. Although we are held at a distance by the stylization, Downey and Kilmer play likeable characters. The distance again has a function, allowing two talented actors to fill a role, but also parody their public persona. There is a special frisson in seeing Downey's character stoned at a party or breaking into a stranger's home. We are able to engage with Downey as both his thief/actor/detective who self-sabotages his attempts at fulfilling his full potential, and as Downey the celebrity talent self-saboteur. Similarly, Kilmer's general dickishness play well as the character and as the public persona of Kilmer.

Is it a great film? No. Most meta experiences aren't, because they are too clinical and too cold. On the other hand, I admire its sheer audaciousness, the fact that it works to be cool and eager to be loved all at once. If nothing else, it is a virtuoso performance by writer/director and stars, and if that virtuosity is ultimately junk food for the soul...well, sometimes you want the creme brulee, and sometimes you want the McDonald's fries.

Next Time: Roadhouse.

First!

People say they hate movies all the time, but do they really hate movies? Hate implies a whole different relationship of mutually assured destruction--a commitment to sustained anger at this film for wasting your time, resentment for its continued existence in your frame of experience, and an ongoing effort to convince others that their enjoyment, or even their neutrality, about the film is hopelessly misguided. That somehow, they just don't get it. That somehow they have to join you in lighting the torches and chasing these monsters up into the tower. That's why DVDs will never replace movies. They limit our opportunity for a communal experience, be it love and spontaneous applause, or mob rule.

Here's my humble invitation to join my mob. Hate with me.

1. "Domino"
The inspiration for this list, as well as for this blog. As previously reviewed by your humble reviewer on the estimable http://mogworld.blogspot.com, this movie is a mess. As befits a movie about models-turned-bounty-hunters, it is all looking and posing, with no actual action until the last twenty minutes of the film. Anything that actually happens in the first two thirds of the movie stands a risk of being undone by the director deciding to simply rewind the film and have Keira Knightley scowl prettily over her flat narration.

On the other hand, Domino features Dabney Coleman and That Guy from Melrose Place and Models, Inc. in key roles, so possibly it's just too Advanced for me. Roger Ebert did give it his usual three-star booby review, even though he said basically the same things I am saying. It is a tribute to the power of my hate that I liked a complete stranger who I generally had positive regard for just a little bit less today.

2. "Father of the Bride"
I am a fan of Steve Martin. I am not reflexively opposed to remakes. I even have a soft spot for vaguely xenophobic cameos of English-speaking actors as foreigners with accents of unclear ancestry (come home, Bronson Pinchot, all is forgiven). But I hate this movie, not only because it nearly ruins a classic, but also because the movie turns on the fact that the director acts as if the audience is to look at Steve Martin's character like he's cheap, disdainful, smug, and an idiot, just because he doesn't go along with each and every bizarre thing that his family wants to do on the wedding. In other words, the keystone of the movie is a character arc in which Steve Martin must come to accept a blissfully incoherent worldview as a means of accepting his daughter's imminent marriage. Which includes fully accepting Martin Short's advice. One look at Martin Short's film career tells us clearly what should be done with Martin Short's advice.

To me, this is either bad writing or bad directing. Everyone else tells me that Steve Martin is everything the director suggests, and that is the point. I stand with the beleagured dad. I feel you, Steve Martin, I feel you.

3. Any Retard Redemption Film
Retard Redemption is an unfortunate phrase. If there was a way around it, I would not employ it, because I know many people suffer from pervasive developmental disorders, or suffer with family members with pervasive developmental disorders, and the use of retard is actually hurtful. However, I strongly believe that this is likely to be the phrase used in pitching this ugly genre of Oscarbait, based on the anger and condescension implicit in every frame of these films.

Prime examples of these movies include Regarding Henry, That Sean Penn Movie I Prefer to Forget Exists (not Shanghai Surprise, incidentally), Riding the Bus with Rosie O'Donnell, and the Pope of Retard Redemption, Forrest Gump. These movies are predicated on the notion that brain trauma/mental retardation/taking a sharp blow to the head makes you a better person. There are a couple key things wrong with this:

First, these movies stoop to condescend. Any movie, such as the Sean Penn movie that time forgot but I can't, that presumes to put a character in court to defend their basic humanity, doesn't believe in the basic humanity of the characters. Who is making the argument that someone who is mentally challenged is not human, deserving of respect, or capable?

Exactly.

And yet these movies set up the straw man argument, jerking the main character around with a viciousness that even real life fails to accommodate, and then keeps right on going, elevating the character all the way to American Idol. It is not sufficient to be recognized as complex human beings with their own strengths and limitations. Instead the mentally challenged have to be better than--better parents, better attorneys, better humans. And I guarantee, the elevation occurs in direct proportion to the level of viciousness to the level of degradation that happens in the first and second act. It is, to borrow a term, the soft bigotry of low expectations giving way to sainthood.

Second, these movies reflect a particularly insidious brand of anti-intellectualism. Forrest Gump the novel is a modern American Candide, in which the limitations of the main character serve both to satirize the too smart for their own good and the over-serious, but also to illuminate the naivete of the collective American people, carried along by history without actually acting to change things. Forrest Gump the movie ratifies the idea of being a passenger on life, stating that by simply going with the flow, you will be happier and more fulfilled than those who think or challenge (e.g., Jenny, who challenges the status quo of her physical and sexual abuse by her father, and for her trouble winds up a drug-addicted prostitute who marries an idiot and who dies of AIDS). The movie undermines the idea of volition, choice, or the American ideal of the pursuit of happiness. I hold Forrest Gump directly responsible for the election of George W. Bush. And the War in Iraq. And the coming Avian Flu.

And don't get me started on the soundtrack.

I take back what I said about these films having no particular order.

Forrest Gump is the most hateful movie ever.

Fuck you Tom Hanks.

4. Titanic
Similarly condescending, though not as morally reprehensible, is Titanic. This is not because it was the biggest movie of all time. You can't criticize a cultural phenomenon. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out, a tipping point is an accrual of momentum, and once enough is accrued in the culture, it is the nature of the cultural phenomenon to happen, and Titanic happened. It had no choice in the matter, therefore it can't be criticized for that.

No...what bugs me is this. James Cameron called Titanic his "chick flick." He spent two hours inventing a drama, while understanding very little about what it means to be a woman, or the context or subtext of the scenes he ripped off from far better films. The corset scene, for example, is heavy with metaphor about class, gender, and social norms, only it's been done before, many times. Unfortunately, Cameron chose to mirror the version told that included Snidely Whiplash. You can't have a subtle drama and an over-the-top Billy Zane (although one or the other tends to be fantastic).

But even this isn't the worst. I can handle melodrama. What I can't handle is the devastating scene of the old couple clutching onto each other as the ship goes down. That was real. That was sad. And that was 30 seconds. And what about the poor folks dying below deck. Cameron understands those things. He paints them in broad, confident strokes. And then, just as we understanding the true awful majesty of this tragedy....we are back to a contrived romantic finish where (SPOILER ALERT) Kate Winslet won't move over to let Leo onto the board so he won't freeze to death/drown.

Just scoot over, bitch.

Key to not making a hateful film? Don't give any sign of what the movie could have been. Don't waste Kate. Don't add context that is more confident than your main plot. And earn the emotional payoff through characterization in noncontrived situations.

5. Adam's Rib
Adam's Rib is a great premise, inhabited by two great actors. The idea is to fight the battle of the sexes as two lawyers, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. It is well acted, sharp, and often very funny. It is considered a classic of the form. And it cheats. Katherine Hepburn's representation of women hangs on the most spurious, underwritten argument in the world, one that does not even follow from the strands of argument that she has used the entire film. It is as if they decide on an ending where everyone is equally humiliated.

Go. Watch it. I'll wait here.

See.

For a counterperspective:

5 movies that I love that my friends call 'hateful.'

1. Moulin Rouge
2. Magnolia
3. Tank Girl
4. The Brown Bunny
5. Talk to Her (a retard rapist movie, by the way, which is entirely different)

Talk to me.