My Week with Marilyn

My Week with Marilyn – Art 1/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 2/5

This movie has two kinds of people I just simply do not care about: fanboys obsessed with some barbiturate queen because she’s a star, and barbiturate queens who are stars. I can only marginally comprehend how much of a sea change Marilyn’s public persona was for a nation starving for curvy bleached bimbos, but the way Eddie Redmayne is entranced by her in the beginning of My Week with Marilyn sure explains a lot. I don’t think this movie is telling any tales out of school, despite choosing as its reference point for a day in the life of Marilyn a somewhat suspect book by Redmayne’s real life character, the now real dead Colin Clark. Clark’s book is an explosively uninteresting tome about how he once met and hung out with the great Marilyn Monroe. I guess a re-make of Cliffhanger didn’t seem doable so the producers chose this instead.

Now, at the risk of sounding like I’m going through the motions for iconoclasm at this point, I really don’t ‘get’ Marilyn, or her seemingly misplaced aura in an age full of Marilyns and Super Marilyns. She wasn’t an interesting actor, at least no more than Elvis was. Her attachment to the ‘method’ and her handlers and enablers that make up her entourage are a pathetic sight unto itself. She didn’t really ‘do’ anything but make boys swoon, which is made light of by Laurence Olivier (of course played by Kenneth Branagh, his/Gielgud’s filmic heir). Marilyn wasn’t even that spectacular looking: indistinguishable from any other starlet and a lot less fun than Jayne Mansfield (church of satan? orgies? nip slips? no … we want icons!). The somewhat plain-looking but mightily talented Michelle Williams is fighting no uphill battles to slip into her fuzzy slippers. The main attraction seems to be her vulnerability. As a guy it just seems kind of gross that our mentality in terms of finding mates shares properties with how bears hunt caribou – one trip over a log and we get excited. Everyone knows Marilyn’s painful and abusive upbringing, and how women like that have to cope daily as if they’re cursed for life. Williams’ sharp portrayal of that is the entirety of this film’s merit.

But so many other films have been done on Marilyn and exactly that past that I just don’t get what’s new or groundbreaking here, to warrant making another movie about it. That is to say, other than a lot of creative people just got bored and decided to pick up some “hey everyone, I stuffed Marilyn! Wooo!” book and made it into a movie. There really is nothing to be had here. Redmayne always looks like a kid strung out on some methamphetamine, and the Harry Potter girl serves as some sort of contrast to remind us that regular girls and real life just aren’t as fun as the few hours the muse Marilyn grants you. It’s a wonder Joe DiMaggio cried himself to sleep for decades.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655420/

Goon

Goon – Art 1/5 Ent 5/5 Worth 3/5

There are a number of routes to take in building an easily consumed sports film. You can make it a socially conscious story about a Cinderella hero who goes from a dreary realistic maudlin existence to triumphant hero seemingly overnight (thus carrying the audience with them). You can do a satire that clings to the endless possibility of puerile boys being boys embarrassing themselves for our amusement. Or you can make the film about the game outside of the arena. What makes Slap Shot such a brilliant film is that it redirects those routes into one. Knuckle pucks and cake eaters aside, people who are fans of both cinema and hockey have been left high and dry ever since the Hanson Brothers made their debut appearance. But of note is a correlation of hockey to American pop culture. Slap Shot was made when the NHL was having its first big boom in the ’70s, largely because of the grizzly pugilism in the era of the Broad Street Bullies. The calculation that the Canadian filmmakers of Goon make (trying to sell both in America and to Canadian audiences barely ever interested in their own films) is that hockey is once again on the rise in revenues and ratings in the US, and one of its biggest sells is the fighting.

A few hockey films have been made lately, including a horrible offering on the life of Maurice “The Rocket” Richard – a film so besotted with a legend that its sentiment and stilted dialog made the other big Canadian dud Passchendaele look like Lawrence of Arabia. So it goes without saying that Goon is taking a huge risk in trying to sell to what is still arguably a niche market. Therefore, it can be forgiven for being a formulaic prance down those aforementioned routes that worked so well for Slap Shot. The new element in the formula is the archetypal simple giant, played wonderfully by Good Minnesota Boy Seann William Scott, whose character would usually be secondary or tertiary (i.e., the Hansons). Putting him front and center gives us a curious but brief window into the sport that might make people self-conscious about roaring for the blood at games, before returning to the regularly scheduled epic epicry of knuckle sandwiches. In the course of his rise to stardom as an untalented brute capable of walloping all challengers, Scott’s friendly ogre happens upon the reigning champion of the enforcer role, a reviled veteran scrapper played by Liev Schreiber with a handlebar Hulk Hogan mustache. He admonishes his younger adversary about the dark side of the life … where worth is in blood, not talent.

This opens up a dialog that erupted last summer after the mostly self-inflicted deaths of Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak, three NHLers known more for their fighting ability than their goal scoring – a fact which by all accounts tends to contribute to the depression of many players, and especially lent to Rypien’s demise (though it was lower on the checklist than some other far more destructive issues). After these guys exited at stage right last summer, people began wondering whether the science of sports brain injury should worry the NHL and the hockey world in general, or whether the prevailing chivalric code of hockey should not be overridden by three incidental outliers. The resounding business response from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and others was predictable: the NHL buried its head in the sand and consulted the Discovery Institute to find some alternative theory, so long as fans kept buying tickets to a boxing match to see a hockey game break out.

Now, this ties in to the popularity of the game in relation to cinema. Despite the fact that any publicity is good publicity, I think Goon couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. The squeaky doorknob Jay Baruchel overcame the juvenile yuks and predictable climax to make an overall fun movie that represents and evangelizes the sport well enough, but in the context of last summer’s tragic losses, the public’s sensitivity might work against the movie in bringing in new fans who aren’t slobbering rabble. I think there is definitely now a glass ceiling on selling the sport on its jousting particulars, so long as there’s Mixed Martial Arts appreciating a dramatic rise of actual fighting and people dying from continually sustained blows to the head on skates. Placing all of the film’s chips on fighting with a finale that didn’t want to end (maybe the longest fight without a bench-clearing brawl in hockey history), and not granting the entire premise any connection to the complex fatalism of being a hockey fighter, Goon just might not age as well as the filmmakers wish it will. But I could be very wrong. It could be an instant boon to the sport as more rubes flock through the gates to see the splattering of blood. We are after all only a few dozen generations removed from the screaming mob at the Colosseum, and the more domesticated and nerf-padded our existence becomes, the more some reminder of our mortality will rise in stock.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1456635/

Coriolanus

Coriolanus – Art 3/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 4/5

A good Shakespeare picture one just cannot make these days, even if helmed by some of the finest Shakespearean actors like Kenneth Branagh or now Ralph Fiennes in this selection from one of my favorite subjects in the Bard’s First Folio, if not altogether one of my favorite of his tragedies. Coriolanus, like Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra, came to Shakespeare from Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, translated into English by Sir Thomas North. The wisdom of Shakespeare’s verse is competing with the Platonic philosophy of Plutarch for much of this play. The final scene in Fiennes’ movie has the imprimatur of a very ancient national principle all over it. With his body flung about like a slaughtered pig after his self-regarding perfidy sent him first to defect from Rome to her enemies the Volscians, winding up a nationless traitor after the entreaties of his family to not dishonor their name drove him back to Rome as the world’s first flip flopping Patrician with a summer home in Martha’s Vinyard. Finally he’s pork ribs for the birds on the ground.

That very classically idea of nation and honor is not completely alive by the time of Shakespeare, making Coriolanus quite anachronistic to those early audiences, and he wouldn’t be current til some centuries after. It’s no wonder then, that Coriolanus is deeply favored by fascists and T.S. Eliot. Even among the Greco-Roman people of antiquity, Coriolanus is identified as being misplaced from the rigidly tyrannical Roman Kingdom period, which was itself pre-Revolutionary, antediluvian to both those living in the Republic and those pretentiously enjoying ‘freedom’ in the early Imperial period. So Coriolanus is interestingly an anti-democratic ogre and antivillain both to the Roman people and the original readers of Plutarch and even to us ostensible democrats today. Caius Martius, later given the cognomen “Coriolanus” for his victory over the Volscian city Corioles, by comparing the rabble rousing plebeians to crows pecking at eagles has an explicit similarity to Burt Lancester’s Don Fabrizio harrumphing over the republican revolutionaries in Risorgimento Italy in The Leopard. “We were the Leopards, the Lions, those who’ll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas”. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Fiennes is a good actor, very good. He has the ability to subordinate everything in his typical nature to a creation native to the story. His central flaw, however, will always be the massive glaring hole in his resume: comedy. Now, of course there is no strong connection between comedy and a play like Coriolanus (unless you want to crack the occasion ‘anus’ joke), but comedic ability gives a serious performer better perspective with a humor test. With the audience as a sounding board, comedic actors know when they’re killing or not, whereas actors in tragedies have to rely on reviews or glances at the entranced faces in the front row. Humor makes a rounded actor more conscious of coming off silly or overly so, and establishes a fine boundary in the laugh test, which has no connection to the above humor test. It’s quite contrary actually, as you don’t want to overstep into the audience laughing *at* your trite performance.

Fiennes lack of comedic skills, in other words, can make his dramatic presence clumsy and his gravity unbalanced or overbearing. In short, he takes himself too goddamn seriously. He definitely does not strike gold with this performance, but that isn’t to say he fails completely. In comparison to other Shakespeare plays on film, Fiennes lacks distinction, and is grossly the inferior of another modern militarist Shakespeare performer in Ian McKellen’s wry take on Richard III. Though the overall execution is definitely worth a look if you’re interested in Shakespearean cinema, it being such comes with the obvious caveat that Shakespearean cinema is never truly exciting in any way, shape or form – even when you include urban combat influenced by the Bourne series and Black Hawk Down. Somebody going beast mode in a Renaissance play? Yeah, count me out, broseph. Jessica Chastain and Gerard Butler continue to proliferate their very welcome presence here, and Brian Cox and Vanessa Redgrave are always interesting. Worth a look, with a giant but.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1372686/

Bellflower

Bellflower – Art 2/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 3/5

Very few films actually inspire legitimate hatred, or rage in me. Bellflower made me feel the rage of Achilles, for finally producing the genre of Hipsterploitation: a conglomeration of the hipster-emo independent shoestring budget flick with the traditional experimental and/or exploitation film. Bellflower brought out the Eric Cartman in me, thinking of little else than a world without hippies, by any means necessary. Each sniveling character brings me nothing but bloodlust in this elaborate waltz of deadendery, which examines the twee climb to bliss of an off-beat relationship and its bizarre and tragic tumble. The technical deftness and originality in both the premise and execution from first-time director Evan Glodell are impressive, but the content, with its nonchalance-preceding-too-much-chalance, quite simply does not impress.

The story is about two layabout dingdongs who concentrate on building flame throwers, fixing up their car with Medusa emblazoned on it, preparing for the apocalypse and blowing shit up. That’s a highly amusing way to spend a weekend with Gary Busey, and such should be documented and released with the stylistic continuity of this film. But the filmmakers abilities should most definitely not be tied to some hackneyed love story between impulsive dipshits I want to see die at the beginning of a horror movie. The best part of the movie was when some Texas redneck spanks his girlfriend for no other reason than he’s the king of shit hill. It was so random, and brought into perspective that nothing wouldn’t be random in this movie.

Filmed for less than Kevin Smith paid for Clerks almost 2 decades ago (even in nominal terms), Bellflower does a great job of appearing fresh and innovative (the filmmaker specifically designed an ad hoc camera for the project using special lenses). But the tea leaves read better for Glodell’s future than the script does for our enjoyment here and now. That is to say that it’s something that feels wholly unfresh – something deeply immersed in the IFC channel propensity for abstract imitation of the style from European films. Worse yet, the low budget made the artistic flavor a little stale on account of the cut-rate, but enthusiastic actors. The message imparted here, as far as I can tell, is that you shouldn’t get involved with girls who tell you they’re bad news, and life is tragically romantic. Forgive me for saying so, because I’m sure thousands of others have said it by now too, but this movie just seems like a surreal episode of Portlandia filled with the explosive id gone amok. Although it felt like a big yawn despite trying flagrantly and failing gloriously to catch our attention, I look forward to future projects from the director, because this movie showcased some interesting abilities.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242599/

The Oscar Wins I Will Find Unsatisfactory

I’m not giving Oscar predictions. I don’t care so much about a stream of arguable and decent selections awarding somebody in an industry circle jerk. Good for them, whatever.

I am going to list the movies whose victory tonight will make me toss my cookies.

Best Picture
The Descendants – Unjustified fluff comparatively
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Too precious by half
The Help – Numbskulled low-brow sentiment couched in interesting history
Hugo – The above, but overly and boringly self-infatuated
Moneyball – A movie about nothing, starring two experts in ennui
War Horse – Offensive garbage

Best Director
Alexander Payne, The Descendants – He should just be happy to be there.
Martin Scorsese, Hugo – ‘Marty’ has all the vim and ingenuity of a Civil War re-enactor

Best Actor
George Clooney, The Descendants – Just because it’s his best doesn’t mean it’s the best
Brad Pitt, Moneyball – Yeah, right. Give it to the goofball pothead from True Romance

Best Actress
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs – Because it’s obvious how much she wants it.

Best Supporting Actor
Jonah Hill, Moneyball – Are you serious? Are you fucking serious?

Best Adapted Screenplay
George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Beau Willimon, The Ides of March – The most pretentious farce I’ve seen in years.
Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, Moneyball – It was interesting when it was a Michael Lewis piece, but movie? Yeesh
Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – I’d be okay with this one if the award was for Best Cabinet Shuffling

Pre-Dump Oscar Links / Pre-Oscar Link Dumps

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the Golden Collar Awards

Adam Sandler sets new record for Razzies

How to Win an Oscar

Top 10 Box Office Bombs

David Denby calls The Artist calculating and shallow

The Iron Lady and Her Legacy

Tags

meryl streep

The Iron Lady – Art 2/5 Ent 4/5 Worth 3/5

——————–

“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” – William James

“A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.” – Marcus Aurelius

——————–

My love for controversy is deep enough to have Motown songs written about it. Even more so when it’s a controversy that crosses the political world with the art … okay, I’m being charitable … the entertainment world. The latest offering from Phyllida Lloyd, the director of the highest grossing British film of all time, Mamma Mia!, is interestingly critiqued for being nothing to everyone. Undertaking the ambitious project of bringing to life a not only living, but recent and polarizing political figure in Margaret Thatcher (played brilliantly by Meryl Streep), The Iron Lady is at once reticent and non-judgmental while also placing all its chips on the supposed personal costs of her legacy. In completing this task, writer Abi Morgan manufactures non-historical and poorly-received-by-the-real-family rifts between Thatcher and those closest to her. If that weren’t enough, audiences and especially Conservative members of Parliament, current and former, have taken issue with the iconoclastic depiction of Thatcher’s dementia.

So I’m all over this like stink on shit. A rather insightful reduction of the film by Virginia Postrel sees an insidious ploy to spread the gospel of the ultimate opt-outer, Anna Quindlen, whose father once instructed her “If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.” The film absolutely does construct family problems to show a Thatcher who’d climb over just about anybody to reach the top of the ‘greasy pole’, including her family. Although the film does present this philosophy as its core theme, the content fails to evade the powerful construct of its form.

In shaping the narrative as a flighty dance through the present and history in the senile mind of a woman with one foot in the grave and the other still in a grocery store during the Blitz, the Quindlen doctrine is only presented in the paradigm of self-review. Anybody with such stark ambition as Thatcher would surely be their own worst critic in their own head, but rarely outside of their own head. Creative destruction of one’s own foibles must precede the creative destruction of a sclerotic state, odorous from the garbage left in the streets by overconfident unionized trash collectors.

So the objections of one group of this film’s critics take issue with elements that should assuage other critics, and vice versa. But while couching itself in a narrative that questions Thatcher’s legacy, in presenting the historical data to help us judge for ourselves, the film comes up rather short. Various episodes are shown throughout her life from rising above the expectations set for women, to her rise to Prime Minister, to the loss of friends to terrorism and betrayal, and the dismay of her neglected family. But through all of this, her legacy is shown to be a matter merely of being a woman who doesn’t take any shit, and always must be “doing” great things. That’s farcically inept for a message in any film, especially when dealing with the legacy of someone who’s had such an enormous impact on history.

Charles Moore’s brilliant piece in Vanity Fair explored Thatcher’s history, and despite my objections to films that cater to details, dates etc., I really rather think this film could have afforded to provide better data for our judgment of the woman than the undergirding thematic exploration of her singular determination. Many events are re-arranged by a matter of decades, glossed over, left unexplained, or just omitted altogether. In terms of context, we’re left utterly ignorant on almost every issue that would figure into her legacy, and yet we’re supposed to judge her on it.

To understand this movie, it’s almost like you have to “read the book first” to get the characters and motivations. That “book” being history. From the mid 19th Century through the late 20th, much of the Western world, and especially the Anglo world had seen an appreciation in state power as a response to safely manage the migration of laborers from landed estates in the country to the industrializing cities, where long-term stability was a luxury only of the patricians. The share of government spending as part of the overall economy had risen with rapid alacrity during the Great Depression and World War II, and thereafter the Keynesian, Bretton Woods post-war international system steadily teetered on the brink until it finally began ripping apart at the seams in the late ’70s. In the United States, the onset of stagflation befuddled the traditional economic thinking that inflation and unemployment had an inverse relationship. The anti-statist and monetarist philosophies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman pervaded in the wake of the confusion, when Friedman demonstrated how the conventional wisdom failed to account for what happens when the Phillips curve was pushed to the brink by a state whose intrusive politicians simultaneously handed out free money (driving up costs) and were beholden to corporations and unions who used the state to defeat rivals (driving down competition) for a sturdy kickback or campaign contribution.

Then came the fascist witch Madame Thatcher, and her zombie familiar Ronald Reagan, both of whom invited deep and true hatred from the traditional left for grabbing a hold on monetary and tax policy that shocked the system, attacking unions and regulations, releasing people in the wealthier brackets from burdensome marginal tax rates. Thereby inviting higher short-term painful unemployment for long-term robust economic growth that lasted more or less right up until the Great Recession. But what’s more interesting about Lady Thatcher’s legacy than that of Ray Gun’s is that she had to do all of this with the legacy of British history: from massacres in India, genocides in Ireland, denial of civil rights to those accused of popery, residual ancien regime conservatism and class warfare lasting *long* after the repeal of the feudalistic/anti-capitalistic Corn Laws … and she had to do all of that as a woman … in the political party that looked back with elegiac longing to the antediluvian simplicity of a Sir Walter Scott, when men were ‘honourable’ and the women were ‘property’.

So when a radical member of a terrorist organization went on a hunger strike, ultimately dying as the cost of his protest, the historical legacy that Thatcher inherited made her intransigence in the affair appear to have utter similarity to when Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell committed genocide against the Catholic Irish. But Bobby Sands, the man who died from that hunger strike, was no ordinary terrorist, and Margaret Thatcher was no Cromwell, nor a fascist, and the charges of Imperialism against her wear awfully thin in comparison to the rest of British history. Not saying much, I know, but nevertheless, that complexity is deserving of a little exploration when talking of one’s legacy, I think. Her life is still to this day in constant danger from Irish Republican Army terrorists because she refused to give in to his protest. Yet in The Iron Lady, we’re only shown two such terrorist attacks: one on her close friend and ally, and one on her. We aren’t shown the context, the lead-up, the consequence, the reasoning, the meaning. We’re shown that she’s a tough girl who lived through it, but not even so minor a detail as how she went about her business, going so far as to give a scheduled speech mere hours after surviving an IRA bomb attack.

If the film doesn’t seem to want to wade in to history in too fine of detail, it has a trance-like aversion to wade into politics in any way, shape or form. The bylines of Thatcher’s self-rendered mythos of conservatism, lady-like behavior and accomplishment are repeated, almost ad nauseum. But the substance of her political decisions are never given any rationalization, nor are there any demonstrations of their effects other than the odd positive Rocky montage.

We’re given no visual understanding of the writhing pain on the left of having to accommodate the arrival of the Thatcherite era (much like the Democrats in the US, by the mid ’80s, Labour had to move decidedly “Thatcherite” to catch up with their constituency). We’re given no insight into the Hegelian synthesis of the past 30 years (that holds true in America as well) where the left continually wins the culture wars (Thatcher once famously said ‘there is no such thing as society’), and the right continually wins the economic wars. Somebody on either side with any backbone has to carry the shame of the legacy that is anathema to tomorrow, and none more exemplified this burden in the Anglo world than Thatcher.

I have two pictures of Napoleon Bonaparte on my wall. One is Bonaparte at the Pont d’Arcole by Antoine-Jean Gros, the other is Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David. They serve as a Janus-face reminder of the transitory, impermanent nature of mankind. One is a representation of a man as he is smashing the retrograde recalcitrance of the enemies of liberty that surround France. The other is a representation of a man who made himself Caesar in an awkward two-step in the French Assembly. That I have an artistic homage to Bonie at all explains my love for contradictory and beguiling figures of history (I also have a bust of Caesar himself).

I don’t think much of the man whom Thomas Paine once called a charlatan. I think more of Austerlitz and Jena, the Civil Code, the permanence of the revolutionary “flood”, and his excellence in determination. But also the connected tragedy of a man who ultimately served more as an inspiration to other Latin dictators for a further 2 centuries, instead of superseding the liberty George Washington, the man in whom he initially saw as an ideological forebear. So it’s with the utmost natural ease that I think Lady Thatcher has left an extremely important and ultimately good legacy, in spite of it all. Her self-doubt, if it exists at all, even by mere muscle memory, is largely unwarranted compared to her peers at home and abroad.

Wrong or right on this issue to the next is academic (I doubt we’ll ever come around to her view on poll taxes that sank her leadership), but this film depicts a remarkable woman in unremarkable terms, and that sadly is what’ve come to expect from other lame biopics, regardless of how well they’re acted. Meryl Streep definitely outshines Josh Brolin’s George W. Bush, and if she wins awards, it’s on her merits and hers alone. Though the film unfolds in an interesting manner by depicting the ruminations on one’s legacy through the rigors of dementia, it focuses with zero inclination to explain that legacy, with near criminal disregard for what adds up to that legacy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1007029/

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Art 2/5 Ent 3/5 Worth 2/5

Enough guff has been made about the ‘emotionally manipulative’ and ‘opportunist’ novel about a kid coming to grips with the September 11^th attacks of the same title by Jonathan Safran Foer, that it shouldn’t be surprising criticism has echoed in reaction to the film as well. Split between the day of the attacks and a later adventure of a precocious and awkwardly written young boy (enough of these kids who talk like adults shit, you pedophilic assholes) who is seeking the owner of a key that was in his father’s broken vase. The only clue is the word “Black” written on the envelope holding the key. The boy sees this as the key to coming closer to his father who’d long inculcated a sense of exploration in his son. That’s a concept that deserves a golf clap or a harrumph for ingenuity and originality. Anything more expressly admiring would be decidedly gauche.

I think you can take a twitter account and mold a decent film narrative based on a few tweets, because film is usually, and should more often be loyal to itself and only rely on literature tangentially. The tremendous acting of young actor Thomas Horn, who was selected because of his appearance on Jeopardy!, mitigates a wider failure in concept. Foer’s concept is an interesting mish-mash of childhood egotism and hunger for knowledge suffering in the wake of a tragedy. We see that tragedy for a split second as the boy’s father (Tom Hanks) is leaping as one of the 9/11 “jumpers”, building blasting in collapse behind him. I really don’t want to call that bad taste, but honestly, that lone image is so cheap Chuck Norris could use it over again in a Mountain Dew commercial.

Riffing off of the great Muhammad Ali: while this movie inappropriately floats like a butterfly, it stings like a moth. I’ve seen a few movies in my time that actively seek to manipulate your emotions. Last year, Senna was SUPER sad. The Bridge to Terabithia was the most crushing film since Macauley Culkin died from a bee attack in My Girl. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tries play a sentimental power ballad to get the tissues out, but it overplays its hand early and kind of just asks you why you’re not crying yet through the rest of the movie. They should have Paulie Walnuts asking this repeatedly in the DVD audio commentary. That will make this movie more authentically New York.

For fiction less Lifetime’y about 9/11, the filmmaker must avoid the widely known facts and the focus on the profound sadness of the families. Translating real sadness to manufactured fiction is a non-starter. Flight 93 was an okay ode to the heroes who ostensibly saved the White House, but its script was a Wikipedia page, which is okay if you’re too lazy to read that page. EL&IC is fiction, but advertizes itself on the factual knowledge and experience of 9/11 that we already have (I imagine much of the negative reaction is that it’s not really about 9/11 but its reverberations - I can just imagine a restless audience wanting to see juicier explosions and the Saving Private Ryan/firemen theme songs). So its emotional ‘sale’ is manufactured from real events that don’t have to sell. That’s little more intelligent than the spate of country music songs whose lyrics were a long chorus of NINE ELEVEN, OHHHH, NINE EEEEEE-LEV-UN! The entire film would collapse if it weren’t for Thomas Horn’s ability to make you empathize with his eccentric way of coping.

Some of the supporting actors you expect to be good in this are indeed great: Jeffrey Wright as the original owner of the key that sets off the adventure, Viola Davis as his ex-wife not easily given to aiding the boy, and Max von Sydow as the elderly mute friend he makes from the next building over. Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks are in the movie, doing their things. Their actorly things. I guess. But they’re not in the movie that much, it’s mostly the kid, who just might have a bright future in the biz if he avoids 8-balls and hookers (at least before he’s 30, those things can be conducive towards success once fully grown).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477302/

Take Shelter

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies

Take Shelter – Art 4/5 Ent 4/5 Worth 6/5

We knew what we were in store for as soon as Michael Shannon was a normal, happy guy whose best friend tells him that he’s living a good life. Fortune would piss – all over his universe – until he hit his breaking point (of course, the movie opens with him dreaming of precisely the heavens pissing on him part). That much, and that much alone was predictable about this movie, because Shannon’s searing intensity exudes from a single look. His grizzled and weathered face tells the story of a gold panner whose business partner shot him in the belly and forced him to crawl from Nevada to San Francisco to get revenge. Anybody who’s seen Boardwalk Empire knows this guy, and knows how he’s on the cusp of taking over Hollywood. No more needs to be said about him, other than this film serves as an overarching metaphor for where he’s going: there’s a storm coming, and he’s going to go fucking batshit in a theater near you.

As a mid-western family man living a decent, organized and truthful life, the rippling cracks in the structured existence only ring louder as Shannon begins experiencing traumatic hallucinations of apocalyptic destruction that makes everyone around him nervous. Ultimately, his chicanery begins threatening the bond with his wife, played by white hot rising star Jessica Chastain, who had the most productive year: bouncing from one high profile production to the next (Terrence Malick’s perfect The Tree of Life, The Help, The Debt, Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus and next up is Al Pacino’s take on Oscar Wilde’s Salome). His love of family is not yet in doubt, but his family history of mental illness serves as context for his mental deterioration. Oddly, he only shares a trifle few symptoms as those his mother and other paranoid schizophrenics suffer, which sets his experience at odds with reason.

The buildup is exacting on each and every relationship he has, save for his daughter. We’re given every indication that we’re experiencing the same mental breakdown as Shannon’s character, but we’re also given hints that this is not a mere realist extrapolation of the psyche, and there’s some reality to his foresight. The ambiguity matters less than the symbolic disjunction with modernity. He never has nightmares where his daughter is threatening, and his fortification from the elements is in the end meant to protect her from Satanic meth heads and evil bats. There is a crossover of secular, atheistic narratives and also very 19^th Century post-millennialist feeling to this film’s narrative, where actions must be taken to defend from the tribulations of society, but at the same time it all exists on a continuum of irreligious scientific reduction.

Take Shelter is about as excellent a low-budget thoughtful movie as you can get. This is the second time relative newcomer and Arkansan Jeff Nichols has collaborated with Shannon, and it’s an artistic relationship that works well. I have to suspect that Shannon recommended his Boardwalk co-star Shea Whigham for the supporting part as his worried and slighted friend in this film, and I think the recommendation worked out brilliantly. The erosion of faculties and blending of reality with the apocalyptic dreamscape isn’t anything novel, but it’s done with an intelligent inquiry into the meaning of sanity and the strength of society when the chips are down. The ending could be better, but this is a damn good film nonetheless.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/

The Black Book

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Movie Reviews, Movies

The Black Book (Zwartboek) - Art 1/5 Ent 5/5 Worth 3/5

The Black Book is the long-swelling pet project of “you just don’t get it, he’s playing a joke on us” extraordinaire Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Showgirls, Starship Troopers) and his familiar writer Gerard Soeteman (who’d worked with him in the ’70s). The idea stewed through two decades, eventually settling on a story with a Jewish female lead who endures the worst excesses of both sides in the final stage of World War II as a German pocket remained in the Netherlands even as Berlin was falling. I dare say that the idea could have afforded to stew for a while longer. Voted by the Dutch people to be the greatest film from the Netherlands *ever*, that perhaps says more about the Dutch than this film. If it were an American production, it would be widely panned as a light-weight historical farce that occasionally dabbles in the sensationalistic. Of course, we’re talking about a Verhoeven picture here.

The aim of both writers was to present an old fashioned movie (there are references to Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo, while the musical score and narrative both unambiguously hearken back to ’30s-’50s Hollywood) about the Dutch Resistance, the Waffen SS’s state terror, the plight of Dutch Jews, and even the plight of collaborators (both typical and horizontal collaborators). How on earth could a Dutch person make a Dutch film where you sympathize with Dutch traitors and collaborators? Easy: design such a convoluted plot that takes not just a little bit from Europa Europa (which was based on a true yet extremely rare story of a Jew hiding in plain sight amongst his Nazi persecutors) and make as the object of our empathy a Jewish woman used by the Dutch Resistance to infiltrate SS headquarters, by seducing and singing her way into their hearts.

Yeah, nice try Mr. Verhoeven, but we’re not…. I mean, everyone but the Dutch people are not falling for it this time. They’ll fall for it because they’re probably eager to exorcise their historic demons while the rest of us hand out chocolate bars. The film isn’t all bad – most World War II pictures are at least moderately interesting because the sensitive material keeps artists on their toes while handling the most destructive, transformative and revolutionary war in human history. 50-75 million dead, there’s some stories to tell there. But again, the writing is pretty scattered, unbelievable, and trips over its own good ideas like holding all characters to rigidly non-judgmental moral reductions. That idea starts out good, as we see Nazis portrayed as normal humans (except for the principle villains and their henchmen), and we see some Dutch people represented poorly, but in the end the moral judgments may not break down along national lines, falling instead firmly within the traditional cliched distinctions of good and bad, self-gain and selfless.

Carice van Houten is the least of this film’s worries. As a matter of fact, I think she’s the central reason to see the film, and that’s not just because Verhoeven makes sure to show us every inch of Carice, and then dump a bucket of runny poop on her (again … it’s a Verhoeven picture, what do you expect?). Rather I think she does an excellent job developing a durable, self-motivated, strong-willed heroine with a sub-par script. I’ve already seen her work a far better script in Black Death, so I need no more convincing about her great potential. Halina Reijn is a lively and flirty supporting presence in the film, which makes one wonder … why? She shows only one scene of desperation, thinking about the reaction to her collaboration after the Nazis are gone, and one scene of rationalizing why she’s even collaborating in the first place: the Dutch are a Germanic people so why not, right? She’s the most improbable of many improbable characters. Christian Berkel, a German journeyman supporting actor, shows up yet again as some form of Nazi officer. You’d think he’d get tired of that.

The Black Book is worth a look, but it doesn’t measure up to Verhoeven’s subtle pranks and tongue-in-cheek steroid cyberpunk.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389557/

Fast Times at Falkland High – Sean Penn vs. Rule Britannia

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Movie Reviews, Movies

During his recent trip through South America in his capacity as ambassador at large for Haiti, Sean Penn has committed his advocacy and celebrity to the cause of returning the Falkland Islands (or the Malvinas Islands, their suggested English name) to their claimants in Argentina. The Islands have been disputed between the United Kingdom and Argentina for over 2 centuries, with Argentina invading the islands in 1982, leading to the Falklands War. The greatest point of contention is the deployment of Prince William to the Falklands, as well as one of the British Navy’s most advanced vessels. He inveighed against British control over the contested Islands because of their “colonial ideology”. It isn’t surprising that Penn, a chum of both rivals for perennial Social Libertarian of the Year Award Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, has sided with the people who have more melanin in their skin and a lower per capita GDP. What is surprising is that he’d throw down into a dispute that is at best a petty one over table scraps, and at worst little better than a pathetic nationalist drum beat in Argentina, quite contrary from any post-colonial liberation.

Now, I don’t mind artists, actors and so on throwing their weight behind causes. Penn may be departing radically from the office of Ambassador for Haiti, but it’s still admirable he’s volunteered his time in the capacity. I’m most certainly not the type to feel that art and politics are separate things. Aside from the ability to purchase one of his paintings because he gets his wallet greased by special interests, I may not see any connection between Rick Santorum and a Jackson Pollock painting (other than their similar connotations of frothy mixtures), but that doesn’t mean there isn’t art in the political game and politics reverberates through almost all art.

Sean Penn’s brilliant portrayal of Harvey Milk is a key confluence of the two worlds. His accolades for that performance are deserving for both the commendable portrait of the important gay rights pioneer assassinated in the 1970s, and his adept demonstration of method acting. That is a case where the world of art and politics have joined successfully. His current imbroglio is the other, much uglier side of the coin. His decision to take sides in the dispute between the United Kingdom and Argentina would have no occasion to be made if for any other reason than it’s the 30th anniversary of the Falkland War, a war which did not include Haiti, nor the United States for that matter (the British have always been prickly over our neutrality and weapons sales to the Argentine Junta). And furthermore, it seems transparently flip of him, going above and beyond even the rhetoric of the Argentine government, out of an almost pathological First World guilt where the conclusion is that Anglo-Saxons are wrong per se, just fill in the premises and add in the true history of Imperial abuses and crimes to butter the biscuit.

The Falkland Islands are inhabited by about as many people as a local High School. As Eddie Izzard once joked, the British Empire had to retain them in the period of de-colonization for “strategic sheep purposes” (the high quality wool harvest in the Falklands does have particular demand, and it’s practically their whole economy aside from tourism and fishing). So the British don’t necessarily NEED the Falklands. But then neither do the Argentinians. Their claim stems from a 2-century old loss of the isles to the Brits. 2 centuries ago, Argentina was populated by many people who were Spanish Colonialists themselves. The Military Junta that invaded the Falklands in 1982 did so for the reason typical to any authoritarian regime: to stir up patriotism at home, direct anxiety outward, and make the people fall in line. The population of the Falklands today are British citizens, and although Argentina has deposed the Junta and is somewhat more democratic, the mostly non-Hispanic Falklanders feel mostly fine remaining British, if distinct within ‘Britishness’.

Sean Penn has acknowledged this fact, with a caveat: “And he said that while he understood and respected the wish of people living in the Falklands Islands to remain British, they should also understand the need for Argentina and Britain to negotiate the sharing of the islands’ natural resources.” Okay, to bring us up to speed, Sean Penn wants the UN to broker an agreement where the resources that reside within the sovereignty of the United Kingdom should be shared with a neighbor because they speak Spanish. For consistency’s sake, I fully expect Sean Penn to push for Hugo Chavez to invade Aruba, and Fidel Castro to invade the Bahamas, or at least have the UN broker some deal where the resources of the Bahamas belong to the Cuban economy, and the strawberry daiquiris of Aruba belong to the Great Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. And as Tim Stanley writing in the Telegraph said, perhaps Sean should give his estate back to the Mexicans. In short, Sean Penn is advocating using international institutions to do what the Argentine Junta couldn’t, and impose its economic imperium over the Falkland Islands for its resources, in spite of the wishes of the inhabitants.

I don’t think Penn has no place to speak on the matter. I just think he deserves all of the heat and/or praise he’s getting for speaking on the matter with only his celebrity backing up his authority. If he wants to avoid controversy, he should have worded it more carefully. If he wanted to avoid charges of being ignorant, he should have read a goddamn book. Either way, he’s a rich sumbitch so what does he care what any of us think.

All-Time Favorite Movies

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Movie Reviews, Movies

These are my favorite movies. There isn’t much to address in a preamble past that, I’m just thinking of the 25 films to date that are my favorite, regardless of all else.

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8 1/2

Why I keep watching it: The older I get, the more I laugh at Marcello Mastroianni’s slowly crumbling egotism, the more I understand Fellini’s vexation with women, the more I get chills listening to Nino Rota’s soundtrack, the more I’m struck by the Jungian messages, and the more I’m taken by the images from the film’s dreamscape. There’s a reason this film inspired a generation of filmmakers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056801/

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Alien

Why I keep watching it: For the first decade I knew of Alien, it felt like the vegetables I had to eat to complement the full meal of the sequel (see below). Ever since I saw the Director’s Cut theatrical re-release in 2003, Alien has been lights out the most significantly haunting film in my imagination. The psychosexual sci-fi-realist penis monster was so incredibly ahead of its time that we still haven’t seen any sci-fi that comes close to this film’s comparatively adult themes when surrounded by the likes of yeti pilots and people in spandex uniforms.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/

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Aliens
Why I keep watching it: I’ve seen it 500+ times, so why stop now? I didn’t play Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers as a kid, I played Aliens vs. Predators. Jim Cameron is a douche’s douche of douchebaggery, but in the ’80s, he had it all right. Aliens is the ultimate thrill ride, it’s the original thrill ride. Films and video games consciously and unconsciously quote Aliens constantly. I measure all ‘action’ films with a yardstick created out of human bones by H.R. Giger, that’s the length of a Pulse Rifle, that has some Spanish swear words, with a bandolier of bullets stuck to it and acid dripping on it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/

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Amelie
Why I keep watching it: Is there any movie more lusciously sweet and heart warming in the history of film? Amelie could give you diabetes. It’s a rendering of the northern suburb of Montmartre into a timeless Paris that bohemians, fashionistas, history nuts and romantics the world round could easily fall in love with. Not to mention Audrey Tautou’s signature role that will follow her until the day she dies. There is nobody on earth who dislikes Amelie. Nobody worth talking to anyway.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211915/

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Amer
Why I keep watching it: This movie could be about a shoe factory on strike. It could be about a woman doing the laundry. Its content could be utterly void, and it would still be one of the most beautifully shot films ever made. But all the better, then, that it traces all the best elements of the slasher genre and represents them in full in a most idiosyncratic Latin horror. The only other film that I can think of that’s just beautiful to sit and watch and not even pay attention would be Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1426352/

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Andrei Rublev
Why I keep watching it: I am not a Christian, but the wisdom of Christian art is just as profound as any other, and the inclination to reach the sublime is in the essence of all people. Tarkovsky’s incomparable film about art and history is hard to square with my un-Abrahamic beliefs, until I let go of worldly reality and accept his voice for what it is. There are few films that come close to Rublev, in terms of visual and narrative beauty. It’s length is of no concern, as soon as you begin watching from the first apparently misplaced scene of the balloon, you are glued. Inclination to the sublime.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060107/

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Black Swan
Why I keep watching it: In relating filmmakers to beverages, Jodorowsky is moonshine, Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick are single malt neat scotch, and Cameron is a Mountain Dew. Well Darren Aronofsky, in my hardly humble opinion, is a whiskey and coke. He’s just sweet and plain enough to attract your more pedestrian audiences, and simultaneously cerebral enough to appeal to your higher senses. Black Swan is both immediately accessible and a visually compelling story about an extremely skinny Natalie Portman’s descent into madness, in the pursuit of perfection, to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. A graceful film about the downward swirl into darkness – what more could you ask for?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/

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Commando
Why I keep watching it: Because it’s difficult not to set some time aside every few years and lose your shit laughing at Arnold’s cheesy one-liners (“Let off some steam, Bennett”) in this Reagan-era paean to machismo and military violence ridden with latent but unassuming homosexuality. The villain looks like Freddie Mercury on steroids, for god’s sake. If you can’t laugh at Commando, there’s something seriously wrong with you. When I was a kid, the scene where he drives a steam roller into a gun store and starts stealing all that awesome weaponry was just the most amazing thing in the world.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088944/

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The Dreamers
Why I keep watching it: This is one of many on this list of favorites that increases in meaning the more I soak in the history behind it. The 1960s were obviously a pivotal decade from California to Paris to Prague to China. The clean break from the culture of the past and the carving through trial and error and ultimately the off-set unease of a new model for the future crisis of modernity is the point taken from this film, starring William Pitt and Evan Green, two of my favorite actors. Ensconced into a film about people who live film and only within its expansive rules, The Dreamers is in the end an anti-film, forsaking the thesis of so many other films that cherish their own heritage and place in society. It ends with chaos and with the realization that in the grand scheme of things, movies don’t matter like Molotov cocktails do. Oh, and Eva Green as the Venus de Milo in the doorway … Jesus Crimany.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309987/

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The Fountain
Why I keep watching it: There are few films that demonstrate similar ambition as The Fountain … which proceeds to explain love, death and the meaning of life through a literally eternal narrative. In the hands of a lesser talent, this would have been a neat niche selection on Netflix like The Cube or Dark City. Thankfully, Aronofsky has put into epic visualization a truly poetic, philosophical and pan-humanist mythological film that never gets too big for its britches. The first time I saw The Fountain in theaters, I swear I didn’t blink for the final half-hour. The second and third times I saw it, I barely moved for the duration I was so captivated. I hate to use the phrase, but this is most certainly a visual tour de force. Mind – blown.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/

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Full Metal Jacket
Why I keep watching it: Because R. Lee Ermey is the funniest mother fucker who’s ever lived. I love me some Comedy Central Roasts, and I think one of these days they’d be smart to put a Marine Corps drill instructor with at least half of Ermey’s wit up onto the dais. He supposedly won the job by filming himself throwing out various insult lines while having tennis balls thrown at him, which impressed the shit out of director Stanley Kubrick. And I’m not part of the crowd who turns the movie off as soon as they go to Vietnam. I think paradoxical counter-cultural statements and the romanticization of the hell that Vietnam became both make FMJ.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/

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Grizzly Man
Why I keep watching it: Grizzly Man is at once a real life story about my serene untrammeled mother country in Alaska, and the mentality of the type of person so extremely exhausted by civilization that they seek ways to escape from it. Timothy Treadwell, who done got eaten up by a bear, was your stereotypical Alaskan: he arrived for work, and stayed because of the freedom in the state of nature. Herzog’s reduction of Treadwell’s rambling rationalizations and illogical motivations serves as a fitting capstone to the consistent DNA in every Western, real or fiction, ever made.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427312/

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Why I keep watching it: If I’ve seen Aliens 500 times, I’ve seen Indiana Jones 3 at least 300 to 400 times. Most of the viewings came while trying to figure out how to beat a 20 year old PC adventure game made after the film, but they were still completely enjoyable marches through the iconic pre-war European and Middle Eastern settings. I saw this movie first, before Raiders and Temple of Doom, so this is my Indiana Jones. That Spielberg went back to the formula for the first one after so miserably failing in the second kind of erases the potential for my ever appreciating Raiders more. Indiana Jones created the history nerd in me, so whenever USA Network shows it during some marathon (fairly regularly), I sit and watch. I know the lines by heart.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/

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Judgment at Nuremberg
Why I keep watching it: I don’t think any silly religious parable or role model ever taught me the meaning of concepts like principle and honesty like this movie did with succinct simplicity in a little under a few hours. I think after watching this movie, I let fewer people slide after they’d done unforgivable things. That isn’t to say this movie is unnecessarily ‘judgmental’, but quite the contrary: it imparted the meaning of the law, and why a civilized society must have it. It imparted the meaning of morality, and why one must stick to the universal human codes of do no harm, and why cowardice in the face of evil is no excuse. Burt Lancester’s role wants you to pity him, he wants you to forgive him for his complicity in the horrors of the Holocaust, and all Spencer Tracy has for him is the brisk and thoughtful pwn4g3 that any representative of civilization ought to give him. A very interesting side note is the interplay between Marlene Dietrich’s character, and her real life story where she was reconciling her love for Germany with her real life treason against the Nazis that left many in Germany feeling betrayed.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055031/

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Kingdom of Heaven Director’s Cut
Why I keep watching it: Quite simply, it’s the perfect film for me. It’s an historical-irreligious picaresque epic set during the Crusades with sensual imagery and music that explores the nonsensical but persistent drive for the glory of busting nameless, faceless skulls wrapped around differing minds. Ridley Scott is capable of the most incredible cinema, and no more than a year later he could take a giant shit all over the screen and make you pay for it. But Kingdom of Heaven is maybe his magnum opus that will grow in appreciation as time goes on. Nobody I know has ever not been impressed with the far superior Director’s Cut. The Theatrical Release was decent, but the Director’s Cut restored essential scenes that injected stronger life into the story. I watch this one regularly.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320661/

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Lawrence of Arabia
Why I keep watching it: Because it’s so fucking awesome. When you say the title, people who’ve never seen it recognize its prestige. Its reputation precedes itself. The scenery, the atmosphere, the music, the acting of Peter O’Toole, the story’s sinewy post-colonial fatalism, the irreconcilability of a mover and shaker of mountains in the world of nitpicky bureaucrats and recalcitrant rubes. This is the stuff of legend. I can’t get past the scenes on Tattooine in Star Wars, where John Williams quotes the Lawrence score without turning those movies off and coming back home, to Arabia.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/

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The Libertine
Why I keep watching it: In ways more than one, it speaks directly to me. If you’ve ever sought a decidedly post-Christian, truly modern sense of purpose and meaning, The Libertine, set during Restoration England (of course I love it), gleefully toys with that desire. In one instance, it gives it to you in full: the creation of the excellent, the supreme, the sublime should be every person’s industrial habit and understanding of happiness. In the next instance, we’re subject to the whim of a scoundrel, played by Johnny Depp at his finest, as he nosedives into abject surrender to the common traditional man’s mores. It of course asks more questions than it answers, but that’s precisely why I love it so much. As Werner Herzog famously stated on the Colbert Report, if art didn’t need ambiguity the New York phone book would be the greatest piece of art ever made.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375920/

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Midnight in Paris
Why I keep watching it: To piss off the fans of Woody Allen, for one (old hands tend to dislike his latest picture), and because every time I see Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toulouse Lautrec, and Josephine Baker in the same movie, I’m very likely to love it. Concerning itself with the universal human desire to return to a “Golden Age”, Midnight in Paris is the easiest film to just turn on and enjoy while being a tourist through history. Woody Allen is a hard person for me to like, so it’s of no doubt that the least Woody film is the one I love the most of his.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1605783/

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The Ninth Gate
Why I keep watching it: Anybody who’s read Dante, Milton, Goethe or Bulgakov can attest to the fact that the Devil is the most intriguing character of fiction. His omnipresence in the horror genre is colored mostly by Catholic propaganda, so it’s a squandered legacy. Luckily, Roman Polanski sold his soul to the real Devil, so we have an insight into the mind of a pure sinner who’d bear witness to the Holocaust’s industrial murder consuming his entire family, his wife being murdered by Charles Manson and his own reputation being murdered by his pedophilia. It can be said then, that Polanski is perhaps more intimate with the Evening Star than any of us, and this movie sure as shit shows a haunting, unique vision of him. Plus there’s Johnny Depp playing a variety of Miltonian anti-hero himself.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142688/

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Predator
Why I keep watching it: How -the fuck- could you not LOVE Predator? It is the ultimate Arnie movie, it’s the ultimate action movie, it’s the ultimate guys’ movie. There shouldn’t even be a goddamn Spike Channel, it should just play Predator all damn day long. Three of its stars ran for Governor except the Indian who the people of Kentucky took to be far too right wing for their tastes. That’s how macho and extreme this movie is. There is no substitute for Predator. It’s fucking boss.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/

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The Prince of Egypt
Why I keep watching it: It so effortlessly grabs your attention. Even if it weren’t a short animation, The Prince of Egypt would be worth the enduring hours. Better yet, it’s a bombastic musical that you can just turn on and listen to like the radio. This is the type of movie that immediately makes your day better.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120794/

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The Thin Red Line
Why I keep watching it: Like a painting, every time I watch it, I discover something new. Some new meaning pops up, my perspective changes and its point of existential crisis becomes more gripping. An explanatory subtitle for this or any Malick film could go “From dust to dust”. In the thickly competitive field of World War II movies, this doesn’t please the Panzer nerds. It doesn’t please the super patriots. Like Emir Kusturica’s Underground, this is a War-Art film. The perfect War-Art film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120863/

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Top Secret!
Why I keep watching it: For the life of me, I can’t think of a single funnier movie. The Zucker/Abrahams team are the cheesiest of the cheese factory. This was everything great about the Naked Gun series before it started to become stale. I have this one permanently on my Playstation 3, because sometimes you just need a Nazi/East German soldier directing traffic for lorries speeding around in a circle.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088286/

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The Tree of Life
Why I keep watching it: It’s the most rapturous thing I’ve ever laid eyes upon. I’ve only seen it three times so far, but that’s only in the last year. As I  impulsively explained after the first viewing, I honestly think it’s the best film ever made, and the highest current potential the medium could achieve in terms of the technical ingenuity and craftsmanship an artist could deliver. This is the zone Tarkovsky was aiming for and dreaming about. The Tree of Life is a synthetic religious rhapsody, delivered with a camera and a projector. Its story is deceptively simple, yet its telling is as elegant as it is cryptic. The Tree of Life is, simply put, amazing.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/

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Trois Couleurs: Rouge
Why I keep watching it: It’s difficult to not be affected by this movie, more so than its predecessors. Apart from both being Republics obsessed with liberty and yada ya, France and America also share an amazing trait where some of their best stories are told by foreigners. Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy is only superficially an ode to France and French culture (the middle one is mostly about Polish culture), but it is still an incredible representation of it, and an even more significant contribution to it. Kieslowski is a master craftsman with the camera and byzantine symbolist with his writing, and I actually see many parallels between the third in the series –Rouge- and the very Old Testament themes in Judgment at Nuremberg, and especially Kieslowski’s previous work in Dekalog. Watching any Kieslowski movie is an incredible breath of fresh air, but this one is him at his best. Unfortunately it was his last.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111495/

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Honorable Mention: Out Cold

Aliens vs. Avatars

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies, worst movie ever made

Aliens vs. Avatars – Art -1/5 Ent X/5 Worth X/5

EDIT: This is not an Asylum picture apparently. Coulda fooled me (really, it’s not that difficult). Yes, this is a real movie. Yes, I am being extremely liberal with the term “real movie”. This Asylum flick shares many properties with Alien vs. Hunter. It was filmed probably in the same person’s back yard in Barstow or Bakersfield. It probably cost as much as a used car. It was a “versus” movie that wanted to avoid copyright infringement, so its concept was essentially nonsensical: what if X and Y fought … buuuut we’d get sued for showing that, so what if Xα and Yα fought? The “Avatar” here is a blue-faced chick (played by Harvard grad Cassie Fliegel with all the gusto of a drunk chick in Uptown trying to be funny in the back seat) who, opposite to the Jim Cameron picture, has a human avatar on earth to save the day by being cold-clocked by a date-rapist looking dude who belongs in some fight happening at a bar near you. And bizarre failures manifest such as inexplicable plot points like confusion of stock villains: it’s Aliens vs. Avatars, not Predators vs. Avatars, yet we have a Predator-like creature in a Halloween outfit.

Also like “AVH” (the endearing acronym stolen from the Alien vs. Predator sub-franchise for Asylum‘s own mockbuster purposes), “AVA” has struggling, untalented, horrific actors just thrilled to spend a week in a real film production -that they can actually tell their parents about this time- not setting tables and serving hors d’oeuvres as real life versions of the crew in Party Down. Needless to say, the direction, writing and even the editing are atrocious. Scene to scene could have better transitions done by my German Shepherd, with a little training seminar in Windows Movie Maker. Of course, as soon as I said “Asylum”, you probably expected all of that.

I recently watched Ed Wood, and these Asylum movies are close enough to being modern day Ed Woodery. Seemingly oblivious to any standards for professionalism and not self-conscious of its own failure at all, yet still fully capable of initating belly laughter on cue. Yet the Asylum movies are also kind of depressing. This is stuff where the hilarity is accentuated by intoxication, but the onset of deep depression occurs while the “actors” are attempting “dialogue”. It’s a short trip from failure to glory. This is to date the only film I’ve ever seen that has a credit for “Idea by ____”. If only ideas were worth their weight in gold …

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1854506/

Vampire’s Kiss

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Movie Reviews, Movies

Vampire’s Kiss – Art 1/5 Ent X/5 Worth X/5

This film is a true classic. This is where any ordinary actor’s career would die, and indeed one my favorite actresses, Jennifer Beals, suffered a fairly shitty career after this movie. But Nicolas Cage is no ordinary human being. No, Nic Cage has made a deal with Satan to prolong his career, against all odds, and sustain his lifeforce in spite of the fact that he’s done enough cocaine to kill an elephant. Whitney Houston should not be the one in the news right now, it should be Nicolas Cage, 24/7, after flying a helicopter into a turkey farm with enough TNT to destroy Norad. Nicolas Cage has made a deal with the Devil, so that’s probably happened 40 times over and we don’t even know about it. Whenever there’s some mysterious crash or accident, suspect Nic Cage.

Vampire’s Kiss is a stupid fucking movie. But good lord, is it hilarious. The concept started out pretty decent: a realistic take on the vampire genre, where some schmoozing business asshole/ladies man gets what’s coming to him from a vampy and beautiful Jennifer Beals, who sucks his blood, thus prompting Cage’s spiral downward into meandering stupidity as he can’t fully grasp the gravity of vampirism … but then we’re not even totally sure that actually happened or not, and he could just be like a kid faking illness on a sick day. He blends in and out of fantasy as he rapes and kills, the audience never fully knowing whether we’re witness to the real or imagination (a la American Psycho). This is semi-interesting stuff, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s Nicolas Cage ranting and raving like a meth head. Once the embarrassment of the Coppola family does his damage though, that’s pretty much the entire draw of the movie. Cage is a double edged sword, as he kills his movies but he also kills us laughing. It’s like inviting a coke head to your 5 year old’s birthday party. It’s something they won’t soon forget.

There really isn’t much else to say about this movie. It’s a spectacle alright.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098577/

El Norte

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Movie Reviews, Movies

El Norte – Art 4/5 Ent 5/5 Worth 6/5

El Norte is a case for why little-known and forgotten films should be dug up and given as wide an audience as possible. An outstanding epic film that is as quintessentially American as you can get, if you ask some here about it they’d either never heard of it or if they have, they think it’s subversive anti-american propaganda. Inspired by the literary genre of magical realism, where Latin Boom authors Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes built upon the bitingly ‘salt of the earth’ social realism of Stendhal a higher apparatus for the serene and surreal to sweep into the narrative as a literary device, El Norte was everything that you’d expect from a true American film classic … except for the fact it didn’t have Tom Cruise in it.

The film is segmented into three parts, first about a genocide against Indians in Guatemala, second about the brother and sister fleeing through Mexico into the United States, third about their life in “El Norte”. Some of the scenes are unforgettable: flagrant racism against indigenous people, eluding the border authorities with their helicopters and patrol vehicles, dealing with uppity white women teaching them how to use overly complex washing machines, and criminals taking advantage of simple people at their most vulnurable. The movie really does take a stab at destroying the audience emotionally. Starring Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez and David Villalpando in their only notable roles, the producers consciously avoided a big Hollywood budget because of the inevitability of changes to the heart and soul of the film, and the dilemma there is obvious. Compromise for the largest audience possible or hold firm to only reach connoisseurs like me. It is what it is, and I’m here to tell you: watch this movie.

What a humiliating tragedy that this film is still current 3 decades later. Tragic on account of the fact that it’s “current” in its depiction of the arduous passage undertaken by refugees, laborers and migrants to get to the shining City on a Hill (those who espouse such flowery Great Awakening sentiment typically only wish to shine our light on others but tell them to stay the fuck away from the Jesus Glitterdome). Tragic on account of the fact that mass murder is still occurring with mundane regularity in Central America. Tragic that the lessons we seem to have gleaned from the debate over the course of the latter parts of the 20th century are to build a big moat with crocodiles and electric fences. The situation on the southern border is pathetic in its transparent cowardice, or alternately pigheadedness.

In another testatment to the longstanding charge of nationalist conservatives in the US that the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) is an evil Communist/liberal government-funded bastion of homosexual Mexicans playing circus music, El Norte received a hefty portion of its funding from PBS. And one could only see why those obvious Maoists at PBS funded it: its controversial proposition that indigenous Central American illegal immigrants working in sweatshops and as day-laborers on the street corner are … *gasp* … human beings. I honestly think that if people watch this movie, it would open their hearts, change their minds, and effect decent policies that provide for dignified ways to accept the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. I personally don’t give a shit if half of them don’t want to become Murrican, send the money home and eventually return home themselves. A lot of the European migrant workers did that a century ago. Who gives a shit, honestly. Anybody who is completely for liberalizing international financial markets yet sticking to a rigidly frozen international (or at least regional) labor market has no concept of the term ‘liberty’, and has to answer to the charge of racism. I’m sorry, that’s all there is to it. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, and besides, it’d not only be good for us, it’d be fucking tremendous for us and even better for the countries south of the border. FLING THAT BASTARD OPEN.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085482/