Ride The Liger

Something FRANK Should Like (But Probably Won't)

2006-10-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

Frank is my friend. He is a filmmaker and a musician ("musician" if you're Danny) and an all-around creative force. Frank is famously open-minded and generous, but also resistant and hard-headed when it comes to new things. He is also the inspiration for the first in my ongoing series of things I'm obsessed with that my friends should be obsessed with too. Because masturbation is fun.

Reasons Frank Should Like The Hold Steady:

1. Because Dan Hamill Speaks The Truth when he calls them "terrific storytellers with a keen sense of humor whose favorite topics include the misfits and the marginalized of their respective environments."

2. Because even if you think their recorded work is overrated, live this band brings a sheer energy and joy to what they do that is impossibly catchy--kinda like vintage Afghan Whigs. Yeah, I namedrop. If you don't know about the Afghan Whigs, try this for the recent shit. And get the fuck off my blog.

3. Because they are middle-aged guys thoroughly enjoying being rock stars--in other words, two stops down the Frank Jeffrey highway. Viva la Hype Factor!

4. Free beer cozies!

5. Because I get a special prize for being the 1,000,0000th blogger to write about The Hold Steady.

Reasons Frank Probably Won't Like The Hold Steady

1. Because we fear change.

2. Because after the Pitchfork review of the latest album (Boys and Girls in America), the moment of cultural backlash is nigh.

3. Because, conventionally speaking, the lead singer Craig Finn has a voice that is to singing what Action Jackson is to great American filmmaking1.

4. Because point #2 of Reasons Frank Should Like The Hold Steady is dangerously close to Brandon Flowers' justification for Sam's Town. And I apologize for that.

Reasons You Should Care What I Think, Even If Frank Doesn't
Because even if you don't agree with those sentiments, the world needs more no-bullshit, straight ahead, meat and potatoes rock and roll. Indie rock is starting to sound a lot like Bruce Springsteen (see also: Ben Kweller's latest album), and I, for one, am okay with that2. Because you can't let the risk of being labelled a hipster douchebag keep you from being happy. And because your life will be 10% better after you hear "Southland Girls" for the first time3.

Footnotes:
1. Obligatory shoehorned film reference.

2. Sorry about the Bruce Springsteen comparison. Jesus guys, it's really inevitable.

3. Mileage may vary.

Did I Really Namedrop Spielberg and the Coen Brothers in this Thing? Yeah. Yeah, I Kinda Did

2006-10-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

Gwoemul (The Host) ( 2006; d. Joon Ho-Bong, s. Kang Ho-Song, Hie-Bong Byeon, Hae-il Park, Du-na Bae, Ah-sung Ko). I owe it all to The Kidd. I read the good reviews of Memories of Murder, the first American release from Joon Ho-Bong, but I don’t know that it would have sprung up to the must-see list without a little prodding from him. And keep in mind that The Kidd and I very rarely agree on movies. We nearly got into a fistfight after V for Vendetta, for god’s sake. Nobody should fight after V for Vendetta.

If you haven’t seen Memories of Murder, stop right here, go rent it, and then come back. I’ll wait. Seriously.

Welcome back.

Now that you’ve seen it, you know that Memories of Murder plays like the Coen Brothers with a social conscience. The artful and unique camerawork, the juxtaposition of humor with truly harrowing scenes, and the emotional distance recall Blood Simple or Fargo. But Joon Ho-Bong adds to it by clearly using the vehicle of the serial killer to talk about the relationship both between North and South Korea, and between South Korea and the West. And he does this through imagery—there is no pause for metaphorical clarification. I know about as much as W. about the Koreas, but it’s clear that the time and place of this serial killer’s arrival are well chosen, and that the director sees something particularly Western about the serial killer phenomenon.

And now The Host ups the ante. Considerably. The camerawork remains bold and assured. The comedy remains deadpan and very, very funny. The director remains at a distance when it comes to making moral judgment. The darkness remains...well, dark. This time, however, the storytelling is audacious and the characters are not merely vehicles for symbolism and amusement. You can stand up and cheer in this movie (and trust me, we did), while at the same time acknowledging that it's more than sheer plot device when the firebrand brother who participated in democratic protests while in college is coming to a final conflict with an American-borne monster loaded up with Molotov cocktails.

Mixing the emotional beats of Spielberg with the cynicism of stylists like the Coen Brothers usually gets you, well, a mess.This movie, however, is funny, scary, and smart. Each character gets his or her chance to shine, including the monster—not that the monster becomes anything but an eating machine, but it has moments of both clumsiness and unexpected beauty (the CGI is tremendous, minus the end—this monster lives and breathes). Like Spielberg, the movie isn’t afraid to exploit the clichés for the sake of a good story (you don’t show a bow and arrow in the first act without having it go off in the fifth act), but like the Coen brothers, it’s not afraid to exploit those clichés for the sake of twisting your assumptions and giving you a truly thrilling and unexpected experience—not because there’s some awkward twist at the end, only because you’re truly unsure where this ride is going. Also, like the Coen brothers, Joon Ho-Bong knows how to make proper use of really weird dudes.
And, yeah, it’s another big monster ravaging a city movie, and yeah, that monster is the product of American influence in the area, but you know what—Godzilla’s got nothing on The Host.

This is a movie about crisis and hope. A movie about human mistakes, and the consequences of those mistakes leading to higher and higher escalations. About people trying to do the right thing, and blocked by a series of missed identifications, faulty assumptions, and resultant disasters. It’s probably one of the best post-9/11 movies of the year (sorry United 93 and World Trade Center), if only because it points out the arrogant American assumptions of late are only the latest in a string, and that arrogance is not only an American trait (although we seem to be particularly good at it—this is also the best use of bad white guy actors I’ve seen outside a Paul Verhoeven movie).

In a week when I got to see Scorcese return to form in a huge way, it was a privilege to watch another great appear on the scene. My world just got a little bit bigger. And when’s the last time you said that coming out of a horror movie.

And before you accuse me of wretched excess, think how'd you'd feel if I left in the references to Kubrick and The Third Man.

Next Time: Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

P. S. I know I haven’t been doing this for a while. Blame it on Lucky Number Slevin. I’ll be back with the roundup of a terrible summer soon.

Comfort Food

2006-04-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Inside Man (2006; d. Spike Lee; s. Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster). I was watching Top Chef this weekend on Bravo, and thinking about how this reality show separates from other shows. Don't get me wrong--I watch a lot of shit. The Slither review is coming any day now, for example. But the reason those other shows are shit is because they ultimately have so little at stake. It's funny to see beautiful women get worked up and humiliated for something that will be worth very little, because while attractive, they're not models. I think the reason the drama gets so thick on those shows is because they all recognize that they won't be stars. Instead, the suffering has to bring value.

But on Top Chef, you watch talented people do their thing, with minimal fuss. Any interpersonal problems become just another obstacle to doing your job--if you lose your shit, you lose the game, simple as that. And very little tops the simple pleasure of watching a talented person enjoying him or herself at work.

Hence, Inside Man. Inside Man is about smart talented people going about their business, both inside and outside of the movie. Within the fiction of the movie, the characters are all smart and insightful and good at what they do. The script ambles along, drifting here and there, and wiping out questions of right and wrong with regards to Owen and Washington. Instead, the conflict is approach-approach. The characters are so well drawn that I rooted for both of them, and the tension I felt derived from being unable to see how the movie could resolve itself in a satisfying way (e.g., neither man loses).

In this sense, the movie itself is the heist. The director and performers give their all to showing you exactly what they are doing the entire film (Denzel is cool, Spike is stylish and New York through and through, Clive is dangerous, Jodie is smart and cynical) and daring you to figure out how they're going to pull it off in the end. When it does happen, it's a pleasure to be fooled.

The best part is, the personal drama that invades the other movies (Spike's occasional forays into wretched excess, for example) is kept to a bare minimum. The characters are focused on the goal the entire time. Which makes this movie a surprise joy--not because it does anything new or different or innovative, but because talented people know what you want to see, and they give it to you just the way you want it.

It's funny--along with Night Watch, 2006 seems to be a celebration of going back to the basics. At least for me. If I start blogging about missing Matlock, somebody shoot me. (Columbo's okay though.)

Next Time: The Real Cancun

Requiem for a Dreamer

2006-03-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

Nochnoy Dozor (Night Watch) (2004 ; d. Timur Bekmambetov, s. Konstantin Khabensky). Hero with a Thousand Faces could be the death of me. Joseph Campbell's magnum opus and Robert McKee's Story are distinguished in my life as the most influential books that I have never read. What matters is a ton of people read these books, who I in turn watched and read made movies that I saw and thought about and emulated. Joseph Campbell helped George Lucas turn the high art of The Hidden Fortress into high adventure that still managed to be successful art. Campbell and McKee do everything wrong with art--they argue that plot dictates character, versus the other way around. (Keep in mind I am admittedly and purposefully getting this wrong--everything I know about these guys comes from internet postings and Adaptation).

Night Watch openly rips off the Star Wars, Highlander, and about 80 other fantasy films (although, sadly, not Willow), but it's got flaky ideas rooted in Russian re-interpretation of the ideas in American fantasy, which, as Campbell points out, is pretty much ripped off from myth in the first place. Night Watch is the kind of movie you're vaguely embarrassed to enjoy--not because it's a guilty pleasure (it's too well made for that) but because it's simple-minded and hits beats that you aren't supposed to hit and is old-fashioned and predictable, even in where its surprises will come. You can feel the structure of the ideas. It's the cinematic equivalent of Law and Order (Okay, it's 9:46--here comes the twist).

I enjoyed Night Watch. I might have enjoyed it less if it was more proximal to the movies it rips off. But the thing is, Americans don't do this anymore. Much of the 90s and the 00s have seemed to wrestle with character dictating plot, the way art should, but at the end of things, it's felt like awkward hybrids of the dramas of the 70s with the blockbusters of the 80s.

Which means we have fewer extraneous sex scenes happening in the third acts of movies. And more politics and monologuing. American film seems reluctant to be ridiculous. Meanwhile, this movie has vampires running around eating each other, instead of pontificating about it. And has little toys sprout spider legs and take off running. And thrives off ridiculous contrivances to keep the pedal to the metal. And somewhere in the universe, Luc Besson makes movies in which Jet Li is raised as a dog and Jason Statham is a driving badass fighting villains with terrible accents and it is ridiculous, but it's fun.

Night Watch reminds me of the old promise of a Lambert movie, a Seagal movie, an Adrian Lyne movie. It violates everything I believe in, it kills me that Campbell and McKee widescreen a complicated and nuanced process that grows and changes over time into an absolute blur of common structure. But it works.

So hey everybody, let's get retarded.

Next Time: Jacob's Ladder

'Johnny Utah IS Hot.'

2006-02-25T12:11:00.000-08:00

Point Break Live (2006; s. Julie Feuer, d. and also s. a bunch of random fucking geniuses). Point Break (1991) is a throwback to a simpler time, when major studio released action movies could be about cryptohomo relationships between male leads, star Lori Petty and Flea, and proteges of James Cameron, like proteges of Prince, could still get work.
That's all I have to say about Point Break. Now we're going to talk about Point Break Live. Point Break Live is a fairly straight telling of the saga of Johnny Utah, ex football great, now FBI agent, out to track down a devious group of bank robbers called the Ex Presidents.Kicked to the side by the F.B.I. brass ('cos that's the way shit goes down in the 80s), Utah is taken under the wing of another misfit, who has a name, but is, let's face it, Academy Award Winner Gary Busey.
Anyway, Busey has this Crazy Idea that the bank robbers might be surfers. So he sends Johnny undercover. You know, because great football players with bum knees make great surfers.

Until Johnny is recruited by Bodhi, a zen master of what it means to lead the life free of fear. A life of 100% pure adrenaline.

Ultimately, Johnny finds his loyalties divided between the straitlaced stuck up assholery of the F.B.I. and the intense, dangerous surfers.

Ultimately, however, the surfers reveal that they ARE the Ex Presidents, and that, as always, when in doubt we should listen to Busey. However, Johnny's cover is also blown. Violence ensues, innocents get hurt

And Johnny has to take Bodhi down. In the most dramatic scene of the movie/play, Bodhi attempts to escape by skydiving, and Johnny chases him down. Without a parachute. Because that's how Keanu rolls, mother fucker.

But Bodhi gets away.
Johnny chases Bodhi around the world, finally catching him in Australia during the 50 year storm, which brings it with the hardcore waves.

They fight, and Johnny gets the better of Bodhi, but then lets him go, sacrificing him to the storm. Again, that's how Keanu rolls.

Despite my multiple Keanu references, you've probably figured out that isn't Keanu in the pictures. Overcoming performance anxiety, Julie decided to bring it with her Keanu impression and win over the crowd.

Now, the Keanu impression is an underrated art. It's almost surfer, but dumb instead of Zen/stoned. It's almost dumb, but with an edge of something that you can almost pretend is smarter than what it is. Now, you really have to appreciate the degree of difficulty here. First, it's not like Julie was rehearsing or anything. Her basic directions were 'read the cue cards' and 'if we push you over, go limp.' Maintaining The Keanu Voice the entire time, whether she was taking major bumps while being taught how to surf, being tackled by the big breasted production assistant with a massive sleeping bag (I've had dreams like that), or robbing a bank with cap guns and NO RUBBER MASK.

And how did she do?

A star is born.

Despite catcalling from the audience in appreciation of her fine work, and a proliferation of douchebags in the corner who looked like they were living the whole "we're the pretty boy jock fraternity from every 80s movie (sans Billy Zabka)," it was pretty remarkable what they were able to pull off in the performance space, including two kick ass skydiving scenes.

So What Did I Learn from All This?

1. I have a new pick for which of my friends is best equipped to be an action star. (sorry Danny)
2. You gotta live to get radical.

3. It's really kinda hot to watch a beautiful woman simulate bank robbery and sky diving. And sell meatball sandwiches.

Next Time: Roadhouse: The Musical

The Accidental Anarchist

2006-02-23T21:12:00.000-08:00

The Matador (2005; d. Richard Shephard; s. Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis). Film is inherently collaborative. Here’s where I make a solemn pitch: trust the actor. When it comes to something like Hamlet, the actor’s interpretation will be what defines the play, moreso than the director doctoring the formula, having (SPOILER) Hamlet survive or mow everyone down with a machine gun, for example. Similarly, as much as people complain, no one really wants anything substantial to happen that might be life-changing for Batman or Superman. It inevitably fucks with the formula, and the formula is a comforting one.

But just because there is a formula, does not mean there cannot be innovation. Shakespeare wrote a whole lot of sonnets with a set structure. And let’s not get started on haiku. Or, consider the case of Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan has been a generally successful Bond. However, Brosnan’s best work has involved giving the piss to the Bond franchise. Remington Steele was a thinly veiled Bond joke, providing us with the suave, roguish British enigma who is secretly so incompetent at everything but conning people that Stephanie Zimbalist looks like Jack Bauer next to him. The early years of the show are amazing romantic comedy, so much so that the Bond producers (missing the joke?) offered him the Bond gig.

Even within the Bond set, there is an element of subversion to Brosnan’s performance, particularly in the best of his run, Tomorow Neverf Dies, which I believe features his defining moment as Bond. During a routine Bond movie stunt, Brosnan is steering a car by remote control from the back seat, and manages to do the usual Bondian con that results in the bad guys taking themselves out. But then, Brosnan breaks into a boyish laugh at his own cleverness. It’s a defining moment for his version of Bond—distinct from Connery’s cold machismo, Moore’s ironic detachment, Dalton’s angry solemnity, and Lazenby’s…blandness? There’s a very real sense that Brosnan plays Bond as being just as surprised as what he gets away with as we are, but only able to show that delight and surprise in private—behind the suave mask, he’s a little less cold, a little more relatable.

Plus, during his Bond run, Brosnan did a little number called The Tailor of Panama, where he again undid the Bond myth, showing what it means to be a charming and sophisticated amoral killer in the real world, when your actions have real consequences.However, despite evidence that the formula was working (nice bump in Bond receipts, nice ratings for Remington Steele), the Powers That Be fucked with things. In Remington Steele, they started to explore the back story, started to make Brosnan a little more competent. (Maybe this was a Brosnan call—it is rather emasculating to play the romantic equivalent of Inspector Gadget). And the Powers That Be in charge of the Bond franchise decided to innovate the franchise not by playing to what has been successful (letting a solid performer innovate within the formula) but instead by doing what has sunk each performer (“updating” the formula with darkening plots such as the James Bond-gone-rogue bits, or strengthening the female characters and pretending that it has always been a great honor to be a Bond girl. It sure did wonders for Tanya Roberts and Maud Adams, right? Right?).

In other words, the formula conformed to what the audience expected (or more precisely, what the audience was perceived to expect), versus capitalizing on what the actor might bring to the table that was new and different and interesting.And now comes The Matador, Brosnan’s first important role since his official exit/discharge from the Bond franchise. The movie itself is fairly average—the typical hit man meets ordinary guy and both lives are changed independent movie set-up of the last few years. Kinnear (a decent actor) and Davis (a great actress who has done more with less) are stuck in hoplelessly didactic roles, maybe a notch above narrators.

Brosnan lifts it up however, by doing what he does best, trashing the Bond myth. He plays his assassin, Julian Noble, as not a robot or ubersuave killing machine, but as a bullying child, gleefully lying, manipulating, and changing his identity to match whatever the situation requires. Even before the crisis of conscience Kinnear’s character is supposed to induce, Brosnan is already needy and wheedling, begging for some kind of recognition or favor from others. He’s cursing like a sailor, he’s shifting from crass to angry and paranoid to capriciously funny in a matter of seconds—he’s not cut off from his emotions, he’s running strictly on his emotions.

Performance-wise, Brosnan is loose and free-wheeling in a way he hasn’t been since that Bond moment, or perhaps that movie where he plays the divorced Irish da trying to get his daughter back—I was already choking up in the trailers for that one, so I refused to see it to save whatever tattered shreds of dignity I have left.

What’s sad about The Matador is the movie fails to follow the actor to his logical conclusion, instead opting for something warmer and fuzzier. Like many of the post-Tarantino indie films in the mid-90s: the family is clearly rejuvenated by their partial adoption of Julian Noble and the introduction of bloody violence into the family, but nobody follows that to its natural conclusion. Is Brosnan’s manchild a new son for them, someone for them to take care of? What about the flirtation that Brosnan engages in with Davis (which essentially gets mentioned and dropped, despite the intriguing and queasy possibilities)? What about Kinnear’s clear mancrush on Brosnan, and the intriguing and queasy possibilities of that? What about the suggestion that Brosnan keeps his propensity to violence? Instead, the movie becomes: do Noble’s panic attacks get resolved? In other words, they take a damaged, vulnerable, self-satisfied guy and make him more competent, more conventional, more emo. More like us.

Depressing, isn’t it.

Sure, Noble’s a mess, but Brosnan makes him a compelling mess, and frankly watching him start to give a substantial shit (as opposed to the mild cases of giving-a-shit that bring on his drinking and whoring binges and drunken apologies) is boring. The world needs a little anarchy, and watching Brosnan bring that kind of structured anarchy to the table is a rare pleasure. Sometimes, we don’t want to see growth, or change. Sometimes, we just want to see bad people do what they do, and get a little vicarious thrill. And is that so wrong?

Next Time: After the Sunset

Come What May

2006-02-23T20:42:00.000-08:00

Perhaps Love (2005; d. Peter Chan; s. Takeshi Kaneshiro, Jackie Cheung, Xun Zhou) Hong Kong films understand myth. They literalize metaphor, making theme into the guiding force of a relationship, often moreso than any recognizable human behavior. I would say this was an ethnocentric position, but there is a direct correlation between John Woo’s willingness to make manifest his particular obsessions and themes in the absolute wonkiest way possible, and the success of the work correlated exactly with how explicitly they treated the metaphors (tracked in a straight line from Hard Target to Broken Arrow to Face/Off, and then back down the line again through MI: 2. And The Mirror Has Two Faces).

I hoped the restraint of the studio system might create an interesting tension with the unhinged brilliance of the Hong Kong stylists; instead, with rare exception, Hollywood just watered them down.

If there’s anything more stylized than an action film (with its doublings and who watches the watchmen identity switching), it’s a musical. Needless to say, you didn’t need to ask me twice to watch my first Hong Kong musical. And it was everything I hoped it would be—all the energy and insane passion of Moulin Rouge!, along with a didactic presentation of the themes in the narration and the music, along with some of the most brutal romantic reversals I have ever seen on screen outside of Crossroads.

Things they do better in Hong Kong:

Antagonists get to be equals. It seems like a fairly simple principle—your hero is defined by your villain. A great villain makes for a great hero (Exhibit A: Alan Rickman in Die Hard, with Exhibit B: Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves missing by a hair only because his great villainy was still overcome by Kevin Costner’s very mediocre performance. You still forget how truly bad that movie could be). Importantly, the antagonist in Perhaps Love is not a villain. Although I love Richard Roxburgh’s ability to swing from Snidely Whiplash to a character of real menace in Moulin Rouge!, it would have been interesting to see him do what Jackie Cheung does in this movie, play a powerful man driven to distraction when the woman he loves cannot see him as more than a business transaction. He begs, he threatens, he violates, he accepts, and then pulls a grand gesture that generates an entirely unexpected ending.

Similarly, Kaneshiro isn’t left to be just an idealized pretty boy hero—he indulges in an act of emotional violence that is almost worse than Jackie Cheung’s own gesture. And which again relates to the movie’s overall themes (sung by the Angel character at the beginning) regarding the present and past being mere traps, and life needing to be lived in the present.

Since I mentioned him: here's a little something for the ladies. And Frank.

There’s room for three. The female character is not blown off in this film. She is not a victim, she is not a passive prize for two powerful men to fight over, she is not an idealized love object. You get to see her ambition, her betrayals of herself and Kaneshiro, and exactly why she lives the way she does. They don’t cheat and make her a traumatized victim to explain her mysterious past; instead, all her reactions are legitimate functions of her choices, which are selfish, but understandable. Even if we kept calling her ‘whore.’ Hey, just because you have three equals in a movie doesn’t mean you can’t have a rooting interest in somebody.

They understand myth. This is a movie that is not afraid to be about big ideas. It hangs Big Ideas out there in the songs, and throughout the movie, even though it’s insulated around these three people (no ancillary people are breaking out into song), it’s scoping for something epic. A lot of people got turned off by this in Moulin Rouge!—the idea that the people were barely recognizably human in sanding a musical down to its bare essence. And as with Moulin Rouge!, the themes in Perhaps Love are nothing new—life is a circus, life is a movie, we’re all performers, memory is treacherous. Still, when you’re so inventive with the characters, and you come up with one hell of a brave ending (including a swaggering, self-satisfied smile all over the Angel’s face, who as far as I can tell mostly fucked everything up in a way that may or may not have been for the better), you’ve earned the right to at least get the discussion started.

This movie looks great, sounds great (even when you can’t understand the words), and while it’s not reinventing the musical like Singin’ in the Rain or The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, it does mine out something unexpected, just when you thought you knew what you were in for. It makes me want to go back and watch the opera of The Killer, and wonder what would happen if they let Chow Yun Fat break into song here and there. Now that’s an experiance that we would find most kaliente.

Next Time: Tsotsi!

DVD Corner #1: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

2006-02-18T21:20:00.000-08:00

Grizzly Man. (2005; d. Werner Herzog and Timothy Treadwell) As you’ve probably already heard, Grizzly Man is Werner Herzog’s documentary about the crazy dude who lives with bears. And, as already noted by millions, if Herzog’s calling you crazy….Herzog does a phenomenal job of giving full voice to Treadwell’s belief that there was some secret wisdom in nature, while still creating a powerful counterpoint in his own position that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and best not spent living with bears. And I was surprised that despite Herzog’s own determinism, his ideological opposition to Treadwell, and the clinical detachment with which he dissects Treadwell in the back half of the film, he is still so visibly moved and empathic to Treadwell’s motivations and position. Still and all, though the movie is like nothing else, it is also a dead end moment—it is didactically exhaustive in its position, moving with such clarity in presenting the two arguments that I think it actually stifles any ambiguity or conflict in the two positions, and winds up being more a really interesting debate than a film I would revisit over and over again.

SPL (2005; d. Wilson Yip, s. Sammo Hung, Ken Chang, Donnie Yen). A movie of men, by men, for men. Not in a Brokeback sense. SPL features the stock Hong Kong crime drama set up of a cop and a ganglord who become so obsessed with each other, that the destruction of the other man becomes more important than each's own survival. SPL screws with the stock set up by involving a third man (played by Donnie Yen), and getting downright apocalyptic with the ending. I haven't seen an ending this over the top affecting since Old Boy. And props to Donnie Yen for some of the most innovative fight scenes I've ever seen. Like sex scenes, fight scenes can often feel distinct from the progress of a movie, which is an interesting problem considering most movies are built around one or the other. In SPL, there aren't many fight scenes, but, like the movie, the scenes feel sweaty and desperate, and enhance the feeling that wherever the conflict between these three men is building to, it's nowhere good.

Tarnation (2004; d. Matthew Caouette). Whereas Grizzly Man felt too complete, Tarnation almost felt too oblique. It leaves ellipses everywhere—almost always absolutely infuriating me. Sometimes, it’s obvious that the gaps were just material that was too hot to touch, like the first important relationship intersecting with Caouette’s almost off-handed mention much later in the film of his multiple suicide attempts and phases of acting out at the same time. Other times, it is obvious that Caouette is just as confused as we are, and choosing to portray the questions instead of the answers. Each choice feels organic and honest, a feeling only reinforced by the homemade quality of the movie. It’s easy to see why this movie feels like a revolution.

Meta This

2006-02-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005; d. Michael Winterbottom; s. Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Kelly MacDonald, and Jeremy Northam). The trouble with meta-stuff is, it’s all frontal lobe.

(Admittedly, this is an ironic sort of comment for this blog.)

Meta-anything bridges similarities between concepts or cognitions or physicals; therefore, it’s all application of knowledge as opposed to feeling. Among my dearly adored Charlie Kaufman movies, I feel like I only truly love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because only that film feels truly emotion-driven, as opposed to high concept driven.

Edit: I take that back. Charlie Kaufman films are emotional—it’s just a novel emotional experience. He actually evokes (or maybe invents) a new emotion in me, something blending admiration and fondness and jealousy and anxiety. Is meta-emotional a word?

Anyway, if you’re sitting back and gathering your thoughts, it’s hard to actually have a direct emotional response. You're thinking instead of having an experience—it’s the age-old distinction between criticizing and doing.

And part of the reason movie critics hate as many movies as they do—because it’s hard to shake yourself out of a distanced response to something, unless it’s new or interesting or resonant or ego-feeding. Particularly when you think how much easier it is to pun out 500 versions of ‘it sucked’ than denote your unique experience of Pulse.

I’ve actually read Tristram Shandy the book, back in a Beginnings of the British Novel class in college. It was a great class—it finished with the Jane Austen books (where most of us begin and end when it comes to early British literature), and you can see the great drunken staggering of the beginning of an art form. For instance, there’s The Monk, which presages the Great Trash Novel, but does it so much better, because there’s no context to know when you’ve gone too far over the top—there is no Top yet.

And then there’s Tristram Shandy, the purely commerce-driven art form, where the hero takes an age to be born, simply because the author was determined to make this book his steady source of income. Imagine that—he set out to write one book, for the rest of his life. And to make sure that happens, he barely ever gets born. And thus, postmodernism, and all its winding plots that become snakes eating their own tails and their deconstruction of social forms, is born of the most linear and primitive of social structures, the token economy.

And dick jokes. Lots of dick jokes.

The movie is, in its own way, a good adaptation. It introduces the characters faithfully, before breaking set and showing the architecture of the medium (the novel within the novel in Tristram Shandy, the movie within…well, you get the idea). Like the author, the movie keeps going not through action or plot, but giving people the room to talk and behave in a somewhat formless fashion, and then having other people come along and talk about what’s going on—the production assistant who lectures on the authenticity of the endeavor, the star who suggests plot changes based on what best serves his ego (mistakenly, because of his ignorance of what happens), the professor discussing the Major Themes of the Work, and the director, screenwriter, and crew arguing about what will happen next strictly because of what it will cost. None of whom actually explain anything. Instead, all their attempts to explain it all generate further distance between their desires to create something, and the actual behaviors. Kind of like the way friends, lovers, bosses, and our own theories about how life works and our secret desires about how we wished it worked, make living the chaotic negotiation of an ever-growing gap between what everybody wants and what it all means, ultimately resulting in a product that mystifies everybody and satisfies few.

Which, as Stephen Fry says, is exactly the point.

Problem is, the movie does its job too well, and like life, is at its most scintillating when people are just talking instead of thinking. I’ve never enjoyed a metanovel half as much as a novel, just because it always seems like a joke too clever by half. Watching Coogan and Rob Brydon riff on the color of Brydon's teeth or do dueling Pacinos? That’s direct experience, and that’s funny. And it casts the rest of the film in a pallid light.

So, yeah, I got the point. But the movie itself is kind of like granola—a little bit of flavor every now and then, and probably good for me, but it sure as hell doesn’t beat the sweet kick of a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Next Time: Leprechaun in the Hood

All Are Punish'd

2006-02-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

Cache (Hidden) (2006; d. Michael Haneke; s. Daniel Auteil, Juliette Binoche). As with the horror film, the thriller is the most moral of films. It’s not a new observation to notice that as much blood- and intestine-shed and depravity as there is in the seminal Friday the 13^th series, ultimately conservative values are rewarded in the rush to restore order. Similarly with the thriller—while certainly we might spend our quality time and sympathy on the criminal, more often than not, bad gets punished, or it gets away and we have to cope with our own disappointment that things did not go to plan. But whatever happens, the anarchic effects of the original crime are somehow suppressed and order is restored, whether through conventional means of crime and punishment, or through deceit—the criminal has some crucial bit of information that encourages the hero (or antagonist, if the criminal is the antihero we’ve been tracking for the entire film) to let him or her go in the service of a greater good. Although not a proper thriller, see for reference Chinatown, where the crimes are so unspeakable that once blood has been shed, the actual history must be expunged. Order above all.

There is so much preamble to the discussion of Cache in part because I ramble, but in part because never have I been so tempted to spoil a movie so I can talk about it effectively. The four or five reviews I read prior to seeing the movie each spoiled the ending of the movie, which also tempts me to continue the cycle of abuse. The ending is not a major twist ala M. Night, but I think knowing what happened structured my viewing and kept my focus elsewhere, so my experience of the film was very different from my friends who were completely confused by the thing. Well, I was confused too, but in a more constructive way, because I had time to brace for the gimmick all the way through (which also buffered me from the emotion of the ending, which I will also not spoil).

What I can say—Cache is the story of a well-to-do, intellectual French couple being terrorized by mysterious (and somewhat innocuous) videotapes indicating someone is watching them.

What I will say—there’s a way that Cache is very conventional. It follows nearly every formality of the thriller. Daniel Auteil and Juliette Binoche fracture under the pressure of the tapes. The police ignore them. Auteil (in another great performance—I love this guy) takes the law into his own hands. Order is restored. Sort of. And as with every good thriller, guilt drives the action, mysteries are revealed, and hubris is punished.

However, Haneke uses the structure of the thriller to subvert and critique those conventions. Ordinarily, we feel relief at the close of a thriller, or at least some sense of closure, because order has been restored. Here, we feel welling despair. Haneke finds a whole new clever way of ripping off Hitchcock and John Carpenter and putting the audience in the antagonist POV. There is no music in the film, and it is shot on digital video almost entirely in flatly constructed wide shots, so you are often unclear whether you are actually watching the surveillance videos or the actual film until the movie starts rewinding abruptly. The film plays elliptically, willfully turning away at points that might be revelatory or emotionally resonant, just as a guilty conscience does.

Even as it glances around, Cache still manages to touch live wires of race relations in France and the U. S.—the psychological correlations between the white guilt in this movie eerily presage the riots in Paris and the response to Katrina in New Orleans. Our past doesn’t go anywhere. We can deny it, ignore it, even to ourselves, but some crimes have no reparations, and instead we wind up trying to go on like nothing ever happened.

And Haneke doesn’t leave Auteil out there on his own. Guilt, as any good psychologist will tell you, is an emotion based on a construction of how we feel we are perceived by others. As opposed to more "innate" emotions like happiness or sadness, guilt depends on our awareness of an invisible audience.

Via his direction and his attention to the characters, Haneke makes that psychological construct manifest, turning us into a literal invisible audience watching and judging all the way through as Auteil’s choices become progressively devastating to him and his family (if understandable). Still, as the pressure mounts and we get more clues that Auteil knows the secret of the tapes, we are encouraged to ally with Juliette Binoche, to tell him to confess. In one brief, ambiguous scene late in the film between Juliette Binoche and her son, we get the suggestion that although Juliette Binoche has been prodding her husband throughout the movie to open wider and let her in, she may have some secrets of her own. This scene is also critical because it flips the game on the audience as well. In this scene, the son passes judgment on her (correct or not), and each audience remember is encouraged to reflect on his or her own glass house. Like Closer taught us, it isn’t always the truth that builds healthy relationships; sometimes it’s just what you need to believe to get by.

Cache is a perfect elliptical little mystery of a film, in part because it is rooted not only in the relationships between the characters, but also in the audience’s relationship to the film. It’s no mistake that the videotapes themselves are almost innocuous, with little or no threatening material, other than flatly depicting Auteil and Binoche’s life and creating an awareness of some outside observer. Once you know you’re being observed, guilt and self-consciousness seeps in, and things break down. I’m sure the fact I saw race relations and male/female relationships was motivated in part by my own little guilty preoccupations

but I’m also sure that the movie’s flat spaces leave a lot of room for some other guilty preoccupations to emerge, and for the audience to leave with a little sense that they have been seen, been judged, and somehow found wanting. So even though you get the payoff on this story, order ain’t restored. Order is part of the crime, because it keeps us safe, but keeps us from truly seeing ourselves, and, as they say, learning and growing.

Which is bad. Because as we all know, knowing is half the battle.

Next Time: Shadow Conspiracy

What's So Funny About Peace Love and Mediocrity?

2006-01-31T14:42:00.000-08:00

Pulse (2006; d. Jim Sonzero, s. Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, Christina Milian, Samm Levine, and Spanish from Old School) I am dangerously unqualified to review horror films, basically because I watch even the worst of them through barely spread fingers or, if I'm in a more public setting, using the thousand-yard stare.

However, unqualified is probably best for this film, because when I say I didn't need to employ any of my usual techniques to get through the movie, it pretty much clues you it to just how lame it is.

That said...

I saw a free test screening of this movie, which means I waited in line with my friend out in the New York January for a good long time (about an hour), bonding with the couple in front of us about how men are too often goofy-sarcastic with the women in their lives (with the argument going that this is how we relate to other men, and sometimes we just forget). In addition to talking gender politics, this particular couple told us how they went to test screening about once or twice a week. Now, I set a good movie pace, but that's a whole lot of movie going. And then they talked about the movies they actually saw, such as the devilish dilemma of whether to see Big Momma's House 2 versus Underworld: Evolution.

This is my vision of Hell by the way.

We wound up sitting in front of the couple during the movie. After the movie, as the tracking passed out the surveys and the pencils, and all I could hear was the couple saying the movie sucked, it was the worst movie ever, it was an absolute disaster.

Although I have no real interest in defending the artistic merit of Pulse vs. Big Momma's House 2 or Underworld: Evolution, mostly because that would involve me seeing the other movies, I have the strong feeling Pulse was not the worst movie I have ever seen. It really didn't achieve enough to suck for me, at least compared to these movies.

It makes me wonder, because it seems increasingly that movies are not allowed to be average. Perhaps I'm more sensitive to this after what seemed like a fairly average year at the movies, when with rare exception

I found most of the films to be a little more or a little less than what I expected, but none to be truly great or truly gawdawful. Even Roll Bounce underachieved (mostly by being sort of good).

But when I went reading movie blogs this year, the level of discourse had to be Crash sucked/was the best movie ever; BBM was overrated/the best thing since sheep; Good Night and Good Luck was a clarion call for our times/overwrought propaganda that obfuscates the facts of the McCarthy era almost as badly as McCarthy did. And so on and so forth. When in fact, Crash was just the same good-for -you, socially conscious stuff that Hollywood generates every now and then(cf., Gentleman's Agreement, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Philadelphia) with a splash of underdone P. T. Anderson; BBM was simply a very good Hollywood romance in the vein of Love Affair and English Patient, only with two dudes; and Good Night and Good Luck, well, I'll get back to you on that one.

Obviously diagnosing the culture off blog postings is deceptive, because the easiest way to have a discussion is to motivate it with emotionally overwrought, provocative statements. And maybe people really believe what they're saying/typing. But maybe after you pay $11 (not counting concessions, babysitters, etc.), or wait in the cold for an hour, you need to feel something. Maybe that's why we go to the movies in the first place. And maybe when you don't feel much of anything, well you need to get charged up in the opposite direction. And perhaps the pressure to feel something only mounts as the costs get higher, the theaters get more elaborate, and the technology gets splashier. Hey, if it's that big, and that expensive for the studio, and that expensive for you, it has to mean something right?

On the other hand, that creates an interesting cultural dilemma, because as noted above, the movie no longer is what it is. It's what you need it to be. So maybe Harry Knowles is prescient when he includes what type of corn is in his shit prior to the movie when he reviews Armageddon. Or maybe instead the movie doesn't have room to breathe anymore, to mean what it is as opposed to a forced coding into some dichotomous, visceral sucked/best movie ever coding system.

Did I just write a manifesto? And wasn't I supposed to be writing about Pulse?

Oh yeah. It sucked.

Next Time: Jerry Maguire

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

2006-01-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

Threat (2006; d. Matt Pizzolo, s. Carlos Puga, Keith Middleton, Katie Nisa). In The Moviegoer, Lurch-favorite Walker Percy drops in the Kierkegaardian principle of 'rotation' to highlight the protagonist's alienation (how's THAT for a pretentious opening!). Binx, the moviegoer in question, finds that when he sees familiar places on film, it somehow reinvigorates those places, and makes them feel more real to him. Similarly, he talks about seeing celebrities on the street and again, their fictional personages appearing in real life enlivening his experience of the world.

It is deceptive to call Threat a 2006 film, since good friends Matt, Katie, and Anna (as well as the rest of their warrior cast and crew have been working on it for years). Listing it by release date somehow completely fails to capture the extent of their labors. Although that's true of every film, as I well know from good friend Frank, and his yeoman labors on his own major label opuses.

However, seeing the likes of Keanu Reeves and Christian Bale punk bitches is half a world away from watching the likes of Katie Nisa get punked by a bitch, and respond by beating said bitch to death with one of those hooks they use to lower security gates over bodegafronts in the LES. It's a visceral kick to see a woman who you mainly process as a puckish, happy, and energetic soul bleeding and making someone else bleed. I can only wonder what Matt felt when he was directing the damn thing.

(n.b., above observations may or may not count for friends and family of Christian Bale and Keanu Reeves.)

I note this because for the rest of the night, I couldn't get into any conversation with Katie without saying, "You killed a man. With your trident." I couldn't make eye contact. The experience of Threat had literally changed my experience of her.

I literally felt overwhelmed by Katie for the entire night. Even though I knew it was all shadows and light, the sight of her killing someone completely overrode my ability to see her that night. That's good booking...it's more than a philosophical idea or a metaphor in a great book, or the vestigal remnant of our infant experience of filmmaking where we have to be reminded that it's all playacting and pretend, or even that first historical exposure to movies when people go running out or wondering where the people on the screen are hidden. It's the crossover point between the filmmaker's secret fantasy that you'll change somebody's life and the filmgoer's secret wish that the film will change his or her life. Even if it's just for a moment.

So brava kids. And Katie, I'll try to make better eye contact next time I see you.

Next Time: Burn Hollywood Burn! An Alan Smithee Film

I Come to Praise Jake Gyllenhaal, and to Bury Him

2006-01-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

Brokeback Mountain (2005; d. Ang Lee, s. Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway) Since I'm all about the parallel processing, can we talk about how the Brokeback Mountain perfectly captures the arc of the Jake Gyllenhaal career? First, there's the splashy debut of a slightly flamboyant stranger with the air of someone with secrets...

...who reveals himself as someone with dreams of being a star...

...but who has other complex desires that may or may not be congruent with those star dreams...

...and who ultimately finds himself negotiating an unfortunate position somewhere between the two poles, really pleasing nobody...

Are we ready to say it isn't going to happen? Gyllenhaal's had major star turns this year in Proof, Jarhead, and Brokeback Mountain. Only Brokeback Mountain has gotten the love, and the lion's share of that love has gone to Heath Ledger, followed by the quality turns by Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, and my new favorite, Anna Faris--can we talk about the fact that the chick from Scary Movie is your go-to if you need a star turn for the Ditzy Blonde Role?

Lesson Learned: the Wayans Brothers spot Talented White People.

If only their quality control applied across the board.

What matters is Gyllenhaal meant to be a Star, a new-look combination of leading man looks with puppy dog eyes and a smart, sensitive indie soul, and instead he keeps getting steadily moved off the board, whether it's being outshined by the Peter Sarsgaard's of the world in the parts he was built to shine in, or whether it's being outshined by the Heath Ledgers and, well, the Peter Sarsgaards of the world in the movies that Gyllenhaal is supposed to be carrying. Hell, even Randy Quaid outshines Jake in this movie.

In fairness, there are things working against Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. Part of the reason Heath Ledger's turn is getting so much attention is that the acting, which is stupendous, is kind of the last thing we expected out of him. I liked A Knight's Tale more than the next guy, but let's face it, nothing the guy has done so far prepared us for such a fully emotionally realized depiction of such an emotionally stunted man. Add in the unexpected pleasures of the aforementioned actresses and their stunning performances, and, well, we just expect it out of Jake, so forgive us if we don't notice while we're trying to take in the sweet surprises of the movie.

If one stereotypes broadly (here we go...), Jake's turn is the traditionally feminine role in BBM. I mean traditional in the sense of the observations about Hollywood and film that I have already made several times in this blog about the job of the actress in movies in general it seems (cf., any reference to Catherine Keener in this blog), and well, actually not even the stereotype--Jake has a lot more in common with Michelle Williams and Linda Cardellini in this movie. After initiating the opening of the relationship through one assertive act, Jack takes the reactive role, waiting for Ennis and the endless dictatorship of his absolute passivity to collapse in some emotional coup. Ultimately, like Michelle Williams and Linda Cardellini, Jack is driven to contemplate a life without Ennis, not out of absence of love, just out of sheer desperation (although he doesn't quite make good on his escape).

As a result, Gyllenhaal's very good performance still directs our eyes primarily to the work that Ledger is doing, since he's dictating all of Gyllenhaal's action, and any of Ledger's responses to Gyllenhaal are merely to negate any postive action he takes. Thus, Gyllenhaal winds up shunted to the reactive role, which is also a good way to get your work underestimated. Kind of like an offensive line--if the line isn't there, the flashy plays aren't happening, but it sure is hard to take your eye off the ball in the air for the beauty of a great block.

That said...when does Gyllenhaal not take a back seat? Jarhead was a war diary--it became an ensemble piece. While sure it makes sense thematically for the movie to focus on multiple characters, Gyllenhaal is still the man with the central arc--we have a relationship with his girlfriend, we see him prior to and after the war. Why are Peter Saarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, and even Lucas Black more indelible memories after this movie? It doesn't seem the masterplan was for Gyllenhaal to take the supporting roles (otherwise, he has a lot more explaining to do about The Day After Tomorrow). He was supposed to be a star. But add in Moonlight Mile to this list, and maybe we should stop waiting for the superstar turn. He's had plenty of chances, and it ain't coming.

All this is not necessarily a bad thing, just a curious one. It's like an indie level equivalent of the old Tina Brown Vanity Fair covers pimping every blonde starlet as the Next Big Thing (where have you gone Gretchen Mol?). Donnie Darko gave us a star, but not the Star he promised to be. And maybe Donnie Darko and Jake Gyllenhaal were perfectly matched, as two slightly passive victims of the whims of others, be it the Ennis or be it the Future. Still, while we may not have our holy cross of Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, we do have our next dreamy-eyed, sensitive version of This Guy:

Which is good, cause the old version was showing some tread.

Next Time: Jennifer 8

Breaking Up Is Hard to Write About

2006-01-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

The Squid and the Whale (2005; d. Noah Baumbach, s. Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, and bad m.f.'s Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline).

Wow.

Just...wow.

I promised (myself) that I wouldn't go 'dear diary' style on this thing, in part because to paraphrase my friend, I don't always find my week more interesting than anyone else's life. Still, it's a little pertinent context here (kinda like my own personal spin on The Great 'Critics Like Sideways Because It Gives Them Hope Middle Aged Frumpy White Guys CAN Fuck Virginia Madsen" Theorem posited by A. O. Scott last year).

My parents divorced when I was 5 . Since I was so young, and they were so present in my life, I never thought it had too much of an effect. I just kept right on putting one foot in front of the other. It was only after I went through my own first serious break up, which just happened to coincide with my dad's separation (and subsequent divorce) from my stepmother, that a lot of things started falling into place. Like how fast I fell in love with a girl I barely knew. Like how I had always harbored secret fantasies of marrying before I was 22 (that snort you hear is my parents laughing somewhere). And like how the freakiest part of my breakup was the gloomy inevitability when it actually happened--no shock, just a deep sigh of resignation and a whole lotta life goes on.

But I was younger then, and I'm so much older now.

Anyway...Squid and the Whale hits close to home. And, as the Man said, I was dreaming when I wrote this, so sue me if I go too fast,

but I took in the miracle of this film two days ago and I can't let it sit but I can't figure out exactly how to crawl inside it either. Which is how I know it must be love. So here are my unfinished thoughts on The Squid and the Whale:

Hacktastic Pull-Quote: The Squid and the Whale is an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, as directed by Wes Anderson. This isn't the movie pitch. It's the only accurate way to talk about the emotional tone of the movie. It has the sly, hilarious, misanthropic, anxiety-ridden, angry bitterness of Larry David's magnum opus, while simultaneously brimming with the humanist, melancholic miniaturism of Wes Anderson's best. How's that for effusive?

I guess the worry when you walk into a movie like this, like a Wes Anderson or a Larry David project, is that it's going to be so inside its own ass that there will be no room to breathe (cf. the last Seinfeld episode, or to a certain segment of the population, the entire Wes Anderson filmography--we hate this segment of the population, BTW). It certainly slowed me down from seeing the movie. Plus, for the above-noted reasons, it's just hard to watch this kind of thing.

Like the characters in Wes Anderson's movies and Larry David's comedies, the characters in this movie are completely trapped in their own concerns, their own narcissism, and their own narrow world views. However, these characters are more recognizably self-involved--it's hard for us to separate them out. Wes Anderson springs his revelations as traps, letting us comfortably work through the emotional resonances in displacement, by making the concerns of his characters more oddball.

This movie is about putting you in there with the semen and the shouting, and as a result is much harder to watch. And more laugh-out loud funny. And, as the best movie about divorce ever (up yours Kramer vs. Kramer), Squid and the Whale captures a universal in its specifities. It's about how relationships succeed and fail as a function of the complementary flaws of the people involved, and how people who are absolutely wise and brilliant can absolutely fail to have the words to express what they are feeling. And how we solve the failure of the relationship by laying blame and taking blame as individuals. The key mystery of the Squid and the Whale is solved when you see that the predator and prey are equals, and intertwined such that it is impossible to see where one ends and the other begins--or even necessarily who is predator and who is prey--the impassive, massive, lumbering whale, or the quick, many-tentacled, mysterious squid.

And, most insidiously, it implies that the whole process is the most natural thing in the world.

Hacktastic Pull-Quote #2: Dakota Fanning is Owen Kline's bitch. Man, get this power duo in a movie stat--maybe this should have been the cast for the little kid Woody Allen movie earlier this year.

This kid gives the most foul-mouthed, brave, relentless, hilarious, and sad performance of the year--I worry for the state of Kevin and Phoebe's marriage, because he inhabits the emotions with the divorce so fully. He's got the look in his eye of pain and fractured identity, and you buy it all the way down. I don't think kids are supposed to be able to do this; it's only as an adult that you can forcefully diffuse your identity this way. But he manages it, and becomes the vehicle for the sadness in the movie while his older counterparts struggle not to deal with the truths.

Everybody will talk about Jeff Daniels. Rightfully so. Everybody should talk about Laura Linney and Jesse Eisenberg. Rightfully so. But Viva Owen Kline.

n.b., I will explain the Theorem of Dakota Fanning at some later date. It involves what she did to these men:

I didn't see a more affecting movie last year, which still feels like damning this film with faint praise. I have often said that Walker Percy is my favorite novelist, because he has a way of noticing the little bit of magic in the ordinary that we are elated by everyday, and finding the exact words to communicate the poignancy of that observation. They are literally magic words. And that is how I feel about this movie. It's the magic words.

Next Time: Uptown Girls

Second Best Quote of the Year

2005-12-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

This morning, on Hot 97's best of the year retrospective, they featured clips from an interview with Kanye West. When the d. j. asked him what he was listening to, Kanye responded (and I paraphrase) "Mostly white music, you know, stuff that won't get played on 'urban' stations--System of a Down, White Stripes, Black Eyed Peas."

Preach on Kanye. And Happy New Years, folks.

The Last Temptation of Peter Jackson

2005-12-30T09:37:00.000-08:00

King Kong (2005; d. Peter Jackson, s. Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrian Brody, and One Big Fuckin' Monkey) It's taken me a little while to write about this one--I saw it over two weeks ago. At first, I thought this was indication of another blase blase response to the film. But that didn't account for the way I giggled during the centerpiece T. Rex/Kong handicap wrestling match, or the suffocating dread with which I confronted the third act in New York.

Disclosure: A little suppressed emotion probably does account for the delay--I saw the movie on a second date, and fuck me if I was going to cry on said date over the loss of the monkey. Whether I wanted to or not.

Shut up.

Kong is the first movie that I can get on board with critic complaints that it's too long, mostly because I can actually specify the unnecessary parts. The early frames depicting the tent-towns in Central Park following the Market Crash gesture toward a Seabiscuitish abuse of Theme. Much as I love any appearance by Jamie Bell

there is again a lot of gesture toward Theme in his character, but absolutely no narrative payoff. Yes, I get it. Jack Black/Martin Sheen/Heart of Darkness. Show me, don't tell me. I suspect that Jackson is a great director. I fear that he's on the verge of pomposity, the pulp heart that drove Dead Alive and The Frighteners and even to some degree Heavenly Creatures, extracted from his chest by the sheer ambition of the LOTR flicks and the Oscar-driven desire to be Important.

Actually, that's not fair. There's plenty of evidence that the pulp heart is willing in Kong. See the aforementioned T. Rex/Kong fight scene (which also pays off beautifully in the XBox 360 game. Thanks Evan!). See the ice-skating monkey scene. See the sheer go-for-broke racist brilliance of the scenes with the savages--credit Jackson for the insight that "hey, it won't work unless we make it as Birth of a Nation as possible," even after the drumbeats of criticism (if you'll pardon a turn of phrase) following the accusations of racist iconography of the Orcs vs. the Aryans.

Or even moreso, the sheer go-for-broke love affair between Naomi Watts and the Monkey. All Haters, disembark here. Naomi has It, whether it's macking on Chad Everett in Mullholland Drive, working her tortured soul in 21 Grams, or just being luminous. She's stylish, vulnerable, and surprising. She's able to make left turns in character seem revelatory and complicating, rather than inconsistent. Unlike many people, I liked most of the first act (post-Theme montage), because it sets you up to understand how this woman comes to love this monkey--she's been betrayed and victimized her whole life, just when she is opening up to her dreams and most needs protection. Here comes the Ultimate Warrior, primed to give her that protection, and then what happens--she moves from victim to victimizer, becoming the unwitting agent of his betrayal. That's Shakespearean, bitches.

And Jackson feels it, plays the relationship on a sheer emotional chord, without worrying about Themes, or Importance, or other cloudy abstractions.

And thinking about how well the pulp primitivism worked in this film, and how poorly the gestures toward theme worked, got me into why I dug this film so much ultimately. King Kong is Peter Jackson's 8 1/2, or his Life Aquatic. It captures a filmmaker reflecting on himself, looking with both joy and dismay at both his showmanship heart and his belief that he has something else stirring, Something to Say. Or worse, requires Something to Say as penance for the desire to thrill/shock/awe us. It's the last temptation of Peter Jackson, to see if he feels he needs to justify his existence by moving from his Jaws and Indiana Jones phase into his Amistad/Color Purple phase. Or god forbid, his Beloved phase. Isn't it interesting how we see this happen over and over again to directors, even though we keep telling them that they had it right the first time?

This is a meditation for another time, however. King Kong is great, and underperforming slightly at the box office, because for whatever reasons movies about the directors tend to do that kind of thing (see Life Aquatic, Vertigo, etc.). I suspect it is a movie that will only be appreciated as more than a remake much later. We are watching a man put his dreams up on to the screen. Better yet, we are watching him at the phase in his life when he's just been given the keys to the Chocolate Factory, and confronting the question of 'what happened to the boy who got everything he ever wanted?'

God help us, if those dreams look too much like The Lovely Bones and not enough like Halo.

Next Time: Alone in the Dark

Reflections on Shopgirl

2005-12-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

Shopgirl (2005; d. Anand Tucker; s. Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzmann)

This movie may be ultimate proof of my grand unifying theory of human relationships: 1. Boys are stupid. 2. Girls are crazy. 3. It's all about Me.

I don't understand the deal with the half empty glasses in every scene. In a fairly well directed film, Tucker fetishizes objects over and over again. But there is minimal connection between the commerce and the relationships in the movie. Yes, Steve Martin in part buys the love of Claire Danes, but that is kinda secondary to the emotional arc of the movie, and undermined by the resolution.

Steve Martin, when he's funny, is still a little sad. When he's sad, he's depressing. I guess he is making his shot at being the L. A. Woody Allen. And this movie is his Interiors. That's not a good thing.

I'm sorry. I meant what was it about the half full glasses in every scene?

This movie would've been 40% improved by judicious editing of the Steve Martin makeout scenes.

Mandatory Recommended Dose of Blog Hyperbole: Jason Schwartzmann is a national treasure.

I liked this movie better when it was called Lost in Translation.

Next Time: Super Fuzz

Rhapsody in Newman

2005-12-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

I was watching Slap Shot for maybe the billionth time the other day with Frank, Dan, and Irene. The occasion was supposed to be inauguration of Irene into the cult of the Hanson brothers. But for whatever reason--maybe it was the repetitive viewings, maybe it was the sluggishness brought on by the fatal combination of hangover and chicken and waffles, maybe it was just kismet--I found myself locked onto Paul Newman.

It's a tremendous performance. He is an absolute, go-for-broke asshole. He lies, he cheats, he manipulates, he seduces. He calls an 8- or 9-year-old kid one of the few things that Irene won't permit to be said under her roof. And he never loses a second of twinkling charm. Frank and Dan kept on voicing absolute astonishment that Newman would ever read this script and decide to do this movie.

That's when it struck me that during most of his career, Paul Newman absolutely quixotically crusaded against his image. He played assholes again and again and again. You can make the case that this was all the vogue in the 70s--to be the leading man who was also the character actor. And character actor tended to be code for complex, which was code for "frequently acts like an asshole."

But there is something special about Newman. He is not primarily remembered as an asshole. As Dan pointed out, Newman is kind of an awful human being in Hud. But you still kind of understand why the kid would want to emulate him. Cool Hand Luke? Awesomely cool. And...asshole. And on and on--The Hustler, The Sting, The Verdict...

And of course, not The Robe.

And I never experienced Newman as an asshole in Slap Shot. I rooted for him, I believed him, I never mistook him for anything but the hero of the movie. Even better, I remember my friend Aleta having a mad crush for Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and being caught somewhere between dumbstruck and angry with me when I laughed about how much she and Maggie were completely focused and deeply obsessed with Brick, yet completely unaware that he was obviously gay. Trust me, Aleta doesn't usually miss this kind of thing. Nor, I imagine, does Elizabeth Taylor.

In many ways, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a signature metaphor for Newman's career. Despite Brick's obvious ambivalency and failures as a person, Maggie and the family persist in seeing him as the thing they need him to be. Meanwhile, Brick rages against that image. Newman too seems to have that thing in him--that full attack on his image. Trouble is, the man is so damn handsome and charming, we persist in seeing him the way we need to see him. No matter how far out he pushes (for instance, to the edge of sexual assault), we hold onto him--for his character's potential if for nothing else. It's a thing that his partner-in-arms Redford never had; in his morally questionable parts, he still needed to be a good guy. Newman, even as the good guy, has to be the bad guy.

Perhaps adding to the realization has been Newman's parts in recent years. Although excellent, Nobody's Fool, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Road to Perdition don't have the iconic weight of the earlier movies, so it's easier to accept the heel turn. But, even though it's less of an uphill battle against his looks now, Newman still carries the heavy burden of his past. I still feel a rooting interest in Newman, even if I'm against the character.

And when you realize that one of the handsomest actors in the history of Hollywood has a Fight Club mentality, leading him to get in the ring and try to beat the shit out of his image to feel alive in every great role he ever took, and then fail to even dent that image--well, it makes for a great tension when you're watching the greatest hockey movie ever made.

Next Time: Youngblood

The End of Liberalism

2005-12-04T11:24:00.000-08:00

Syriana (2005; d. Stephen Gaghan, s. George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Peet, Matt Damon). Syriana is a throwback, The Parallax View as filmed by Robert Altman. Or, more glibly, it’s Traffic with oil. This is the kind of pull quote criticism I hate, but there it is. Like Traffic, Syriana employs a cascade of nonoverlapping storylines assembled in what initially feels like a chaotic jumble, until gradually the pieces assemble and culminate in the depiction of an implacable juggernaut of corruption that is destroying us all. It is worthy of note that Gaghan’s two styles of writing apparently vary between this:

And this:
But I digress.

What separates Traffic and Syriana from their 70s predecessors is a certain depressive inexorablity. They are deadly earnest liberal diatribes about the evil of the government/ corporation axis. However, the paranoid thrillers of the 70s, no matter how depressing their endings, carried a certain nervous enthusiasm about them…you at least had the illusion that the main characters might be able to change things, if one or two things had worked out differently. In Syriana, there is no hope. The most earnest of characters either must corrupt themselves and join the system, or die. Or both…the most liberating act of rage against the machine is a suicide bombing.

I wonder if this futility is reflective of the current state of liberal thought. There’s a depressive handwringing quality to much of what the left wing stands for right now. Syriana is built around the notion of a coolly effective conspiracy driving America’s Middle East policy, similar to the accusations leveled at the Bush presidency. As a result, change feels futile. The system cannot be stopped, because it is too multifaceted and too ingrained in the hearts and minds of men (all men, by the way) in power, all working toward the same goal. Why bother. The most you can aspire to is to be like Matt Damon’s character, sad, bereaved, and angrily criticizing from the sidelines, ideally in the most condescending way.

Matt Damon and Alexander Siddig have a pair of amazing exchanges in the film, where Matt Damon (in a strong performance, btw) comments bitterly on how backwards the emirate is in Siddig’s country, and Siddig fires back with gentle sarcasm, illustrating that (a) he already knows everything Damon is saying and (b) Damon’s own poisonous idealism is blinding him to aspects of the bigger picture. And the fact is, these exchanges are not rooted in conspiracy. They are about human weaknesses, like arrogance and greed, and considering these weaknesses tend to inhibit effective conspiracy building (see…any heist movie, ever), in these scenes Syriana puts the lie to itself. The conspiracy is merely dramatically interesting. When the characters spout off on the problems in the Middle East, and it becomes not a conspiracy, but instead a failure of personal accountability.

Liberalism needs the conspiracy to get the base churned up and raise the money, but what is sadly true is that recent liberalism is no more the victim of a right wing conspiracy than the Middle East is. Instead, liberalism is a victim of its own unwillingness to be accountable for its failure to engage in any honest policy debate over the last four years. Paraphrasing Lewis Black, American politics has become a choice between bad ideas, and no ideas.

I love Traffic, and I liked Syriana. The difference, I believe, is that Soderbergh likes leaving some messiness around the edges, whereas Gaghan grows so enamored of the cleverness of his structure and the elegance of his conspiracy, that he ignores the basic humanity of the characters and the ways in which our Middle Eastern policy is a function of that basic humanity. Interestingly, by allowing the story of the Pakistani teenagers to operate outside of the workings of the government and white men, he creates the most resonant tale of how human choices are rooted not only in the will to power, but also in the will to survive. Gaghan directs like Matt Damon’s character pontificates. He’s right, but he is still starving for a slice of humble pie and an eye for the bigger picture.

And considering Gaghan's gotten both Katie Holmes and Anne Hathaway to sex it up in what amounted to direct to video sex thrillers, he may be missing his true talents.

Next Time: On Deadly Ground

The Comedy of Fear

2005-11-25T15:19:00.000-08:00

Jesus is Magic (2005; s. Sarah Silverman) . Comedy is violence. At least, that was my take-home message from Stranger in a Strange Land. In that novel, the hero raised on Mars doesn't understand what is funny until he sees what is cruel. And that lesson is written all over Jesus is Magic. Language drops like a bomb. You can actually feel the tension coil around you with every punchline, because you know whatever you're about to laugh at will be very funny, and very shaming all at once. Even knowing the cruelty is coming, you still feel ambushed, and exposed. I actually apologized to my friends before the movie started about the types of things I expected to be laughing at. And I was glad I did.

In the middle of all the bits about race and dead and raped grandmothers, Silverman does a small bit about the relationships between jokes and fear, and how she edited a punchline because she was afraid of offending audience members in the front because she felt threatened by them. It's a special moment in the movie, especially for someone as arch and sarcastic as Silverman--nobody's going after her the way that we went after Andrew Dice Clay, in part because Dice Clay was a hack, and in part because Silverman goes so much farther and is so much someone we identify with that we can't go after her without going after ourselves. Andrew Dice Clay exposed a cliche about the dumb white guy, but cartooned him up to get away with it.

When Silverman discusses being intimidated by her own anxiety into changing the punchline, she tips her hand. It ain't just jokes--it's revelatory. Silverman dresses like us, talks like us, seduces us--she has an indelible wink in her delivery, but the reason we want to give her the benefit of the doubt is because we give ourselves the same benefit of the doubt with regards to the nastiness that lurks behind our eyes. And in being courageous enough to expose it, it gets exorcised, just a little. Because instead of being scary/psycho, it's funny.

Or, more accurately, in addition to being scary/psycho, it's funny.

Next Time: Crossroads (Compare and Contrast: Ralph Macchio vs. Britney Spears)

WWCD?

2005-11-16T14:50:00.000-08:00

Capote (2005; d. Bennett Miller; s. Phillip Seymour Hoffman; Catherine Keener). You have to talk about the performances first in Capote. This film, along with The 40-Year-Old Virgin will hopefully break Keener out of her bitch goddess ghetto. In both films, Keener jobs like Shawn Michaels (ask Frank who this is), gaining audience sympathies with the misfit men, not through unconditional positive regard for Capote and Carrell, but instead via her honest recognition of their liabilities in concert with brave and thoughtful exhibition of her own character's raw edges. Keener reminds me of that quote about Ginger Roberts did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. At least half the reason Hoffman and Carrell give such great performances is she lets these two actors crawl so far out on the limb, and remains a lighthouse for our continued interest in how things will turn out for them.

Still and all, it's Hoffman's show. Hoffman transforms for Capote, moreso than Flawless. I've always thought of Hoffman in part in terms of his physicality--his heft and his height (although I don't know if he's actually a tall man at all--could be more related to our usual stereotypes about actors). In Capote, he manages to look downright tiny, while still commanding our attention in ever scene through his seductive insinuation and preening narcissism. He is, in short, a star.

Capote has its mind on the classics; it's all about hubris and self-destruction. It's also one of the best movies about writing ever made. Capote's intricate, honest portraitures of the people in his life relies on two qualities: his immense empathy for them, and his scathing anger for the way in which they keep him at a distance. In destroying Perry Smith, Capote seeks to destroy that outsider part of himself; however, his disconnection and subsequent murder of that outsider destroys one of the fundamental qualities he needs to write.

The movie itself shares many of Capote's qualities. I winced my way through every scene, dying a little everytime Capote made another choice to kill himself by inches. What makes it worse is that the movie makes us aware that Capote knows what he's doing all the way down, and is suffering for it. At the same time, the film has such empathy for those choices, it's hard to turn our backs on him (as with Harper Lee--thanks Cath). How many times have we nodded along with the movie scenario where a character sacrifices his life for a greater cause. And how much has In Cold Blood changed the way we read and write?

Next Time: The Lil Bow Wow Ouevre

This Title Will Include No Puns on Sucking

2005-11-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

Jarhead (2005, d. Sam Mendes, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx). Jarhead is a document of the same kind of soldier in a new kind of war. The movie is infused with images from other war films (Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and most notably Full Metal Jacket), which has led to more than a few reviews that suggest that Jarhead is ripping off these films...espeically Full Metal Jacket.

Most reviews have made much of the fact that Jarhead features homages/ripoffs of these earlier films, with the exception that nothing actually happens in Jarhead...there are no battle scenes. Even the movie calls its shot, so to speak. As the Marines finally cross the border into Iraq and prepare for action, Sarsgaard watches the planes flying overhead. He comments on the fact that this is a new war, and that it is outrunning them. Meanwhile, the men are trapped in talking about war in its old form, and via the popular media experiences that guided them to it in the first place.

Movies, particularly the Vietnam movies (at least currently), have created our sense of what war is, and how much the new media access to war is tearing those myths down. In a sense, Jarhead poses a variation on the guiding question from High Fidelity--did love create pop music, or was it the other way around?

For Jarhead, the answer is both. Jarhead talks about how these men, particularly Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard's characters, are extremely ordinary men with no real prospects, who have come to war in search of personal meaning on this visceral level. They are looking for the mythic power of the movies in their lives, almost like a life and death version of the NBA. Watch the almost desperate look in their eyes as they celebrate the Ride of the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now.

The desperation in the Marines' eyes in that scene mirrors the later desperation we see in Gyllenhaal's eyes when watching a surprise porn film, only the second time, it's tempered with a new sense of reality and sadness because there is actual loss--of relationships, and the last remaining vestiges of fantasies about what the war would contribute to a sense of meaning and self. As the boredom sets in, as the realization that they may never see the action they seek, that they may never confront death and defeat it, that they may never be heroes, the men begin to fall apart.

That said, the movie itself is only very good, not great. It is limned with a certain artifice, much like this sentence. Except for Swofford's name, all the characters are more types than people, and I can't be bothered to look up their names on imdb. Also, as my friend Jon put it, the movie goes on for exactly five minutes too long. Finally, the film is art directed to within an inch of its life, which takes away some of the urgency of the movie. Still, I think Jarhead represents a shift in the war movie; as we are exposed to actual footage (well, "actual" edited footage) on CNN and Fox News, and documentaries like Gunner Palace, we too are coming to terms with a different kind of war movie, rooted with one foot in the mythologies of Band of Brothers and the Vietnam movies, and the other in the down and dirty disappointments of what it truly means to go to war--boredom, spiked with intermittent moments of sheer unfettered terror.

Kinda like life.

Next Time: Honey

"Is That Your Finger?"

2005-10-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-10-18T02:37:00.000-07:00

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.