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enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:50:00 +0000

You may have heard on the last episode that we were planning on moving from Blogspot to Wordpress. Well, yeah, we're definitely doing that. I'm working on it at this very moment so if you want to read more of my reviews and articles or listen to more episodes of the podcast, you can move to the Wordpress account.

You can find it by click here.

Thanks to the 10 or 12 of you that follow our little blog. We love you all...especially you, Barnaby.

Looper Movie Review

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[Looper
Written & Directed by Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt
MPAA: R - For Strong Violence, Language, Some Sexuality/Nudity, and Drug Content]

Time travel is always tricky to write about. There are so many factors to keep in check just to make sure it makes enough sense for people to follow, but you still don't want it to be too scientific with the fear of boring the audience to death with illogical scientific terms. Very few films manage that perfect balance of compelling entertainment and legitimate intelligence with the premise. Films like The Terminator 1 & 2, Back to the Future, Donnie Darko, and 12 Monkeys are the most notable examples of films that make it work that come to mind. But when it doesn't work, it could end up being disastrous (See: The Time Traveler's Wife, Southland Tales, The Butterfly Effect, etc).

Thankfully, Looper belongs in the former category of films that make it work, and it's perhaps one of the most compelling time-travel films of all time in terms of just how it ingeniously milks its central premise for all its worth. The film takes place in two different years in the future: 2044 and 2074. In 2074, time-travel has not only been invented, it has been completely outlawed. It's so forbidden that it's only used by criminal organizations to remove their targets from the time stream. They're tied up with a sack over their heads, and sent back 30 years from now where the highly advanced "tags" can't locate the bodies. Once they're zapped into the past, a Looper assassinates them and disposes of their body, thus erasing them from time.

The movie follows one of these Loopers named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), as he's living the high life as a successful assassin, but gets into serious trouble when it turns out that someone in the future is "closing loops"; a process that is done by taking the older self of a Looper, and sending him back in time so that the younger version ends up assassinating himself. Joe ends up letting his older self (Bruce Willis) get away by accident in one of these incidents, and...well...I can't give away anything else.

This is another one of those movies where it's best to go in as clean as possible so that the film's many surprises can, well, surprise you. But it must noted that you should all be seeing this movie anyway. Looper is everything a time travel film needs to be, but then it ends up becoming so much more as it progresses. It's intelligent, entertaining, incredibly original, and is still able to make sense within its own internal logic; which is pretty much all that's needed for a successful time-travel film. What you may not have been expecting, however, are some fantastically-written, sympathetic characters, a plethora of interesting twists, and a surprising amount of emotional resonance.

This emotional resonance would be nothing without the excellent performances to back them up. It's normally difficult for two actors to play the same person (and even more complicated when those actors actually have to interact with one another), but Joseph Gordon-Levitt totally embodies Bruce Willis's mannerisms perfectly. And not just that, but he makes Joe's arc from criminal to hero believable and sympathetic. Emily Blunt is also really good as a mother with a horrific secret that assists Joe, and while the advertising has been really coy about her role in the plot, I'm just gonna say without spoiling anything that she may very well be the most important character in the film.

But the real show-stealer in the cast is surprisingly Bruce Willis, who gives his best dramatic performance in years. His character is so interesting and actually really tragic that I honestly wanted the whole movie to follow him. In fact, one of my initial complaints walking out of the film was that not enough of the movie was focused on his character. Willis has a lot of heavy-lifting to do with a relatively small amount of screen-time in comparison to the rest of the cast, and his weary face represents the Older Joe's tragic story beautifully. Two people on my Twitter feed said that he should be nominated for an Oscar, and while I wouldn't go as far in hyperbole as that, I also wouldn't object to it either. He's fantastic in the role.

Of course, the writing is the stand-out of the piece. Writer/director Rian Johnson has a playfulness to his screenplays that is distinctly his. They're very good at subverting the expectations of the genre and flipping conventions on their head. In his debut film Brick, he took a traditional noir story, but made it entirely original and refreshing by setting it in a modern high school. In his follow-up The Brothers Bloom, he made a con-man story that let the audience in on the con only to subvert them and reveal cons within cons in a web of deceit.

Here, in Looper, he melds a variety of classic films from Terminator to 12 Monkeys and even The Shining in some regards, to create something that feels wholly original. And not only that, but the movie slyly subverts your expectations on each character's motivations in increasingly clever ways. To explain them further would veer off to spoiler territory, but I can assure you that you won't see them coming.

With all this praise being said, the movie isn't perfect. Like I said before, Willis is the most interesting character in the film, but it focuses mostly on Levitt and Blunt's romance when I felt like there was much more nuance and interesting things going on with Willis. It's not too big an issue, but I would've loved to see more of him.

Speaking of Blunt, though, our introduction to her character is a bit on the sudden side. We spend all of Act I following Levitt and his daily routine, then get caught up in a propulsive and thrilling sci-fi story in which he confronts his older self in the form of Willis. But then, Blunt's character is introduced very suddenly and she just all of a sudden becomes a major player in the events that unfold. Thankfully, when the movie gives her time to develop, the quick introduction is forgiven, but it still would've been better if she was introduced more naturally.

However, this does lead to my main problem with the film: Act II pales in comparison to the rest of the film. The first Act is propulsively paced, shows off an incredibly interesting futurisitic dystopia of sorts, and it still manages to fit in some moments of nice character introspection. Then, when Blunt's character is introduced, the movie slows to a halt, and we end up spending more time in an isolated farm in the middle of Kansas and less time in the more interesting future cityscapes.

While I commend the film for giving time for each of the characters to develop, I would've liked it to have been done without hindering the film's sense of flow. I hate being the snooty critic that suggests ways that the director could've improved his own work as if I know it better than him, but this problem definitely could've been avoided with, oh I dunno, more scenes with Bruce Willis...I'm sorry, I really liked Willis in this movie.

These flaws aren't enough to break the movie, however, and I still strongly recommend it. It's rare to get an intelligent sci-fi film these days, and even rarer to find one with an R-rating and an aim towards adults.

Final Verdict: Looper uses its brilliant time-travel premise to concoct incredible tension, thrilling action, an intelligent story, and memorable characters that you sympathize with. While it drags a bit in the middle, there's no denying the genius that lies in this film. Looper simply needs to be seen.

That is all. If you liked this article and would like to read more, you can do so by clicking the following links: CinEffect on BlogSpot, CinEffect on Tumblr, my own personal tumblr, and my Twitter account @CGRunyon where you can follow me for more reviews, articles, and other random thoughts about what I like. Also be sure to follow my two friends who help out CinEffect with their own reviews, articles, or podcast cohosting sessions: @TBBucs20 & @ThatGuyBrady.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go back in time and stop myself from eating that bean burrito that gave me serious problems in the bathroom. You'll know if I'm successful if the world doesn't end and Tuesday comes after Monday. Bye!

What Makes Spec-Ops: The Line So Revolutionary

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[Warning: The following analysis contains some mild spoilers. While you can still safely read this analysis without having played the game and still be surprised by its main twists and turns when you do decide to play it, there are still some things that I give away, most notably its message. So while it's not required that you play Spec-Ops: The Line before delving into this analysis, it's still recommended that you play through it first. Not just so you could read this post, but because it's an incredible, underrated game that should be experienced by anyone that thinks of the medium as an art form.]

2012 was a very interesting year for video games. Between fanboys complaining about Mass Effect 3's ending, games like The Secret World and Guild Wars 2 redefining the MMORPG, and tons of the usual independent works continuing to dominate Steam and XBLA/PSN and introduce stunning new visions, there's been a lot of incredibly fascinating stuff throughout this year to compensate for the boredom of waiting for the big games to come out, and the disappointment of many delays.

There was so much interesting things, in fact, that I found there to be three games that I felt really did incredibly revolutionary things to the medium. Two of them, you most definitely heard of. One is a mainstream blockbuster and the end of a beloved trilogy, the other an astoundingly experimental indie game that was formed from a mod. Both have received tons of acclaim. However, there is a third game that I feel hasn't gotten enough attention from the gaming populace, which is especially undeserving because it is most likely to go down as one of the defining games of the medium 20 years from now.

I've decided to spotlight these three games and describe how each one offers something revolutionary and ground-breaking within this budding medium, starting with one of the most profoundly underrated games of this generation so far: Spec-Ops: The Line.

"This is all your fault." ~Loading screen text

There's a clear, discernible reason why Spec-Ops didn't really catch with the general gaming public. At first glance, it looked like yet another military shooter in which numerous foreigners are murdered in all sorts of dehumanizing ways, where chest-high walls permeate the landscape like condoms in a crack-house, and with pretensions toward having a moral gray scale despite being insanely jingoistic. Been there, done that, Call of Battle, Dutyfield, derpy derpy doo.

And if that were the case, then that would mean that the game bombed almost deservedly, like Medal of Honor, Operation Flashpoint, and the rest of that ilk. It wasn't until I actually gave it a shot after numerous cries of "You gotta play this!" from friends and critics I trust that I realized that Spec-Ops: The Line wasn't anything like those games I listed above, at all. In fact, one could argue that it's a searing indictment of all those games.

But let's back up for a second and give some context. Spec-Ops: The Line is inspired by Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. This becomes especially apparent when you're introduced to the character Colonel John Konrad, a reference to Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness. Col. Konrad was supposed to evacuate all the remaining survivors of Dubai after a series of freak sandstorms hit the city and left it in a near-apocalyptic ruin. Instead, however, he and his entire squad (called the 33rd Battalion) ends up disappearing from the face of the earth for unexplained reasons. Dubai is considered a no-man's land at that point, and all communications to the area are barred by both a freak storm-wall and government interference.

Two weeks before the game begins, Konrad appears again when a looped radio signal begins to play. In it, he states that the evacuation has completely failed and the death toll was beyond high. Realizing that things could get from worse to worst if he and the 33rd don't return safely, the US military sends a three-man team consisting of John Lugo, Alphanso Adams, and Captain Martin Walker (the player) to bring them back home. However, anybody who's read Heart of Darkness or seen Apocalypse Now knows that something is bound to be wrong.

While many of the reviews I've seen of Spec-Ops: The Line have praised the narrative, just as many criticized the gameplay. I personally belong to the philosophy that a game with great narrative and mediocre-to-terrible gameplay is infinitely better than a game with great gameplay and mediocre-to-terrible narrative. See for example Silent Hill 2, Deadly Premonition, etc. However, while Spec-Ops's gameplay certainly doesn't have the same polish that games like Gears of War do, it should be noted that this is one of those games like Silent Hill 2 where the limitations of the gameplay are actually there to serve a purpose to the narrative and the atmosphere.

But before I truly delve into defending Spec-Ops's core gameplay, let me get to the main thing that Spec-Ops unanimously gets right, and one of the many things that genuinely "revolutionize" the medium. You see, many recent games have had a penchant for incorporating more player choice into the gaming experience by way of "moral choice systems" in which you can choose dialogue options which could have a deepening impact on the game world. The prime examples are the games of Bioware, and more specifically, Mass Effect. As much as I love that series to the death, there's no denying that there's a certain separation between the choices and the world. Essentially, you're making your decisions through a menu, and not through the actual mechanics.

What Spec-Ops does is something no other game has ever done before: It incorporates the mechanics into your choices. To give a spoiler-free example without context, there's a point in the game where you have to decide whether one man should live while the other should die and vice versa. If you don't decide, a group of snipers will take care of both of them for you. This decision isn't conveyed through a dialogue tree, but through the same mechanics of point and shoot that you normally execute throughout the video game.

But that's not the best part. The best part is that the developers have acknowledged the gray scale, knowing that picking either one or the other isn't the only way to approach the situation. Rather than shooting one of the two men, you could attempt to shoot the snipers on the sides and try to save both, or you could attempt to shoot the ropes which they're hanging from to allow them a chance to escape.

This is the other thing that separates Spec-Ops's vision of choice from other video games. While most games see things as Black and White, Good and Evil, Order and Chaos, Paragon and Renegade, Blue Lightning and Red Lightning, etc., Spec-Ops truly embraces the in between. It knows that there is no such thing as a right choice and a wrong choice, and acknowledges every single factor that can go into every situation. And best of all: The game doesn't judge you with Karma meters or anything of that sort. What's right and what's wrong all depends on your perception. And that line can easily blur and even change at the drop of a hat when new plot details reveal themselves in diabolical ways.

It's also interesting to note how Spec-Ops actually involves the player in the execution of these choices and dilemmas. With most games that involve player choice, the developers decide to go for a first-person "narrative" perspective, in which the player isn't just in control of the protagonist, but is the protagonist. Again, the Mass Effect games are a prime example of this, to the point that many people see the fact that Commander Shepard is a blank state as a criticism while refusing to acknowledge the player is even there in order to increase that "immersion". Spec-Ops, on the other hand, goes in an entirely different direction.

Unlike most games that incorporate character choice, Captain Walker is a fully defined character, and while the player is in control of his actions, they aren't in control of his thought-process, dialogue, back-story, etc. Yet we're still able to immerse ourselves into the narrative and the choices that both you and the character make. Why is that? Well, because the game actually acknowledges the player's existence and role in this story. They don't just say "Hey, Walker, come over here and do this thing," and are referring to the character while the player is supposed to see themselves in that character. Instead, the player is treated as both a separate entity from Walker, and an active participant in the story.

There are two ways that the game manages to execute this expertly. For one thing, there was something that really caught my attention when the game started. When the opening credits start to fade in and out of the screen, we see the roles of the technical directors of the game, the sound designers, the voice actors, the usual stuff. But then... something weird happens, and this is something I haven't seen a lot of write-ups on the game address. The game's opening credits end with "Special Guest: [Insert Player's Gamertag Here]". Why is that? Why is it important that the player be treated as a "special guest" to the action, rather than truly assuming the role of the "hero" of the game? And how is it still able to remain so immersive and engaging?

At first, I thought that the "Special Guest" credit was a cute little nod. It wasn't until further analysis that I realized that it is the key to understanding the player's role in the experience. All gamers want to "be" the hero, but what does the player represent in this story? Think about it, while we're in control of Walker's actions, we aren't in control of who he is or was as a person. While the character isn't a surrogate for us, we still impact his story. How?

What the player ends up taking the role of in Spec-Ops: The Line isn't the character. Rather, the player takes up the role of the character's consciousness. What we do isn't execute our own actions, rather we influence Walker's actions through our own play. We tell Walker what's right and what's wrong through our actions, and through those actions, he ends up changing as a character. What we do isn't taking control of Walker. What we do is influence Walker. And the most heartbreaking thing about this realization is that as the game progresses, our influence over his actions ends up becoming weaker and weaker as he spirals downward into the heart of darkness.

I could elaborate more, but critic Yahtzee Croshaw said it best in his review of the game so I might as well give a direct quote from him: "Are we really in control of Captain Walker or do we merely represent the last vestige of self-awareness in his increasingly damaged mind as he railroads us into committing atrocities, and our distrust and fear of him grows in parallel to that of the men in his command as he weakly tries to rationalize to both them and us until we feel as disconnected from him as the rest of reality and...*Sigh*. Do you remember when shooters were about killing demons from hell? Those were good days."

Okay, so now we know why exactly the player is meant to be disconnected from the character in some sort of way. But why is that so important? Why is it so important that we are disassociated from the main character of our game when the main thing that video game stories have over other mediums is immersion? Because this is that rare case where disconnectivity is actually part of what the developers are trying to convey.

This is the part where I defend the game's gameplay. The cover system is adequate at best but can get sticky in very hairy situations, the shooting isn't incredibly tight, and the aim assist isn't fully reliable. Why is that? Considering that Spec-Ops: The Line is the only game that really wants to make players feel the "horrors of war", with emphasis on the "horrors", wouldn't it be hypocritical to make a game that highlights how awful war is while also making it fun? It's meant to be uncomfortable because war is supposed to be uncomfortable. And a game highlighting how war could break a man down should make the player feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible.

But what's perhaps even more interesting is that the gameplay conventions utilized in Spec-Ops are incredibly dated. Not only are there exploding red barrels, machine gun turrets with infinite ammo, and some obvious spawn points, but the enemies wave the player in an almost suicidal fashion. To give a briefer description, everything feels a little too..."gamey".

Why? This is yet another aspect of the disassociation. Right off the bat, there's a heightened disconnect between the incredibly serious and realistic storyline of Spec-Ops and the arcadey gameplay that supplements it. Whereas games like Call of Duty and Battlefield have pretensions of having a serious storyline despite its gamey elements, Spec-Ops: The Line reveals the disconnect of storyline and gameplay through heightened juxtaposition.

Okay, that's one reason why disassociation is important, but it's not the main reason. In fact, this juxtaposition actually serves a larger purpose to the narrative. We're meant to feel this juxtaposition as part of the gradual realization that something about the world we're playing feels "off" in some way. Why is that? Well, I don't wanna give the main surprises away, but it's safe to say that there's something "off" about the world because there's something incredibly "off" about Walker. We see everything through his perspective, and slowly but surely we learn that Walker could be suffering from some sort of severe psychosis.

Alright, so we see everything through Walker's perspective, thus explaining the juxtaposition. So if this is all through his perspective, and the video gamey elements are meant to convey that his perspective is jacked up, does this mean that he's seeing all of these atrocities through the lens of a video game? And if so, what's the thematic purpose of that?

It is at this point that we realize that there is something darker lurking beneath the surface of Spec-Ops: The Line. We know that the game is highlighting the horrors of war by making the game uncomfortable. But why couldn't the game be uncomfortable just through content and realism? Why is the game making an effort to emphasize video game elements in order to create juxtaposition?

All of these questions are explained in one quote in the final moments of the game. I'm not going to give away the context of this quote or who says it because you should all be playing this vastly underappreciated game and discover its surprises for yourself. But without revealing how this happens and what happens after, it is in the final moments of the game that we realize what has driven Walker's psychosis and his decisions. A character tells him, "The truth is, you're here because you wanted to feel like something something you're not...a hero."

What's so incredible about this statement is not just the fact that it reveals what drives Walker's mental instability, because it isn't just directed at him. The other main reason why the player is disassociated from the protagonist is because this statement is also directed at you: The person behind the controller.

Think about that. The game is emphasizing the fact that it is a video game not just through the design and mechanics, but also through meta-commentary. It is at this point that Spec-Ops: The Line reveals itself not just as a game that is truly about the horrors of war; it also becomes a searing indictment not only on the exploitation of using the horrors of war as a means of entertainment, it's mainly an indictment of the players that exploit the horrors of war as a means of self-gratification, i.e. feeling like something they're not.

This is what Spec-Ops: The Line is truly about. It uses meta-commentary in order to force us to re-examine and re-evaluate the very genre we're playing: The shooter. And not just that, it also critiques the gaming populace in general. If you think about it, it isn't just shooters that are designed around the philosophy of empowering the player and making them feel like a hero; practically all video games are designed around this philosophy.

But what happens when these video game philosophies are forced to confront the true, horrifying reality of war? What if you really do have to consider the lives of all the people you're killing? What if simply just destroying every enemy in sight didn't lead to a positive outcome? What if it actually makes things worse? And what if, even though you knew what you were doing was absolutely wrong, you still did it anyway because that was the goal the game assigned to you? Do you not question what the game is making you do? At that point, being the hero is not enough. And yet we do it anyway. Over and over again as each installment of Call of Duty sells millions of copies. We are the ones to blame.

Again, without giving too much away, we learn that Walker's "main goal" was just a self-inflicted sham: A device that was merely used to justify all the awful, horrific things that Walker has performed throughout the game. Does this remind you of anything? Well it should: It's every military shooter ever. The player will murder every human enemy on the screen just because a.) it's just a video game, b.) the game told you to, and c.) to achieve the goal and become the "hero". The goal is just a scapegoat in which you could point to and say, "Well of course I shot all those civilians in the No Russian mission. The game wouldn't have progressed if I didn't." And the funniest, most ironic part of that particular example: It was entirely possible to not shoot anything in that segment of Modern Warfare 2.

It is in this regard that Spec-Ops: The Line reminded me of this year's The Cabin in the Woods, a film that also used meta-commentary in order to both comment on the horror genre and the demanding audience that requires formula storytelling in order to be pacified. This game operates in that same way, only much more subtlely and seriously. Spec-Ops sees the pursuit of virtual heroism through senseless violence as an ultimately pathetic means to a pathetic goal. Instead of allowing the player to ascend in their pursuit towards self-gratification, the game both physically and metaphorically makes the player descend lower and lower into heart of darkness, forced to confront the true nature of the shooter and what makes it so bleak. This is a game that not only looks at the faults of video games, but also at a dark truth about human nature--something very few video games are capable of doing

What Spec-Ops: The Line does is force you to truly rethink not just shooters, but the notion of heroism that pervades almost all of the video game medium. There's always the notion that the player has to feel empowered by defeating every enemy because they're the only ones that can do it, but when it's juxtaposed with something real, like a military shooter that attempts to be fun while also going through the tragedies of war, that philosophy starts to desensitize the player's soul. This isn't just a game about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; this is a game that instills Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder into the player.

And all the while, the most the player could do with Walker is influence his actions rather than truly control them and their outcome, and it isn't until the end of the game that you can choose to either free Walker of your influence, or keep on going because you still believe you have to achieve that goal.

Because after all...it's just a video game. Right?

Stay tuned for two more follow-ups to this post. Next time, I discuss the brilliance of Dear Esther.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nice long shower while softly sobbing to myself. This game got to me. Bye...

The Upstairs and Downstairs of The Cabin in the Woods

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 20:15:00 +0000

Cabin in the Woods is now out on Blu-Ray and DVD, meaning I finally have enough of a reason to splurge about it all over again without fear of spoiling people now that they all have a chance to see it. If you recall, I mentioned in my review that it was one of my favorite films of 2012, and it still is. However, due to the amount of secrets and surprises found in the film, I couldn't really explain "why" exactly it was so good without giving anything away. Well, now I can! Cue the maniacal laughter! This is my in-depth, insanely spoiler-filled analysis of Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods!

First, a refresher on the plot: Cabin in the Woods follows a group of five archetypal teenagers going, where else, to a cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway. And as these things usually go, a horde of redneck torture zombies starts to kill them off one by one. Does this premise by any chance sound familiar? Well it should: It's The Evil Dead all over again. But unlike all those kinds of movies, we have ourselves a twist.

Turns out, there's a secret laboratory under the cabin where a team of what appears to be technicians and scientists of all sorts are monitoring and sometimes even controlling all of the events that go on upstairs. That alone should be enough to surprise every audience expecting another run-of-the-mill horror movie, but that's only scratching the surface. There's way more going on underneath the surface. Literally.

It turns out, the biggest surprise in the film is actually the reasoning for the monitoring. The scientists are killing the teenagers off as part of a ritual-sacrifice to appease some sort of ancient, Lovecraftian demon-god. If they don't keep up with the sacrifices, the Ancient Ones will rise and bring death to the whole world. Okay! Now we're definitely getting somewhere! But there's just one thing missing: What is the movie about, on a thematic level? What is the point in telling this story? What is the meaning behind it?

There are plenty of theories and interpretations of Cabin in the Woods that I've read, most of which seem entirely plausible. I won't bother re-stating them because you should look them up and discover them for yourself (Or better yet, figure out your own interpretation! It's more fun!), but I honestly can't see how anyone can't see things from the perspective that I viewed the film in. If you remember my review, I called the movie a "commentary on the nature of cliches and formula storytelling themselves." To elaborate on that rather vague point, what I meant by that is this...

Let's go back a bit and look at the "ritual" that the scientists are forced to partake in. To give a more detailed explanation, the Ancient Ones are very specific with the blood they want and the order they want it given to them. This is where the character archetypes come into play: The Ancient Ones require the blood of an Athlete, an Intellect, a Fool, a Whore, and a Virgin. If you translate those roles into the language of horror films, you get: The Jock, the Nerd, the Comic-Relief, the Naughty Girl, and the Nice Girl.

Now this is where the movie gets interesting. One of the characters, the Comic-Relief, upon realizing that he's part of a ritual-sacrifice, asks something along the lines of "Why couldn't they just get a stone table and a fancy dagger? Why all of this? Why the Cabin? Why the deceit? Why us?" All these questions and more can be answered with this scene earlier in the film that makes the symbolism incredibly apparent.

When the Naughty Girl character begins to have sex with the Jock, one of the scientists watching (Bradley Whitford) pleads for a glimpse at her breasts. The security guard on the side asks why it's so important for the girl's breasts to be seen, to which the other scientist replies, "We're not the only ones watching." He implies the Elder God to the guard, and then says a line that should tip everyone off on the movie's meaning. "Gotta keep the customer satisfied."

Think about it. What's another word for a ritual? A ceremony? Nope. A tradition? You're getting warmer. A potato? Uh...are you stoned? Okay, stop right there. Here's the real answer: A "formula". Not just a sacrificial formula, but a storytelling formula.

Cabin in the Woods is about more than just deconstructing horror movie tropes. It's about finding out why we use those tropes and why we avoid originality not just in storytelling, but in our own culture. If everything taking place upstairs in the Cabin area is a representation of the movies, then that means that the scientists downstairs that control everything using a wide range of contrivances in order to maintain a specific formula are representative of the creators--or more specifically, the filmmakers.

And who are the creators trying to please? No, not an ancient Elder God, like the movie is saying on a surface level. Rather, they're trying to please us, the demanding audience. The creators see the audience as a destructive force that could obliterate their creation (a.k.a., the world upstairs). They think that the best way to pacify that audience is by playing it safe and adhering to a formula that the audience knows by heart and is familiar to them.

That alone is an incredible statement on the relationship between creator and audience. But, just like everything else in the movie, it gets crazier.

The film's finale has, at this point, become infamous for being one of the most completely bat-shit bonkers scenes put to film in recent memory. The Virgin and Comic-Relief characters end up discovering an elevator that leads to the "stable" of monsters and the facility underneath. They think they are saving their lives by putting an end to the facility and its stable of monsters by letting them loose and allowing them to wreak havoc on everything and anyone in the facility so they can escape. But here's the biggest twist of them all: They fail. By refusing to adhere to the ritual, they end up not just dooming their own lives, but causing the apocalypse. The Ancient Ones rise from their slumber and it's implied that everything is destroyed in their wake.

Knowing what each of these elements represent, all the pieces start to come together. When the movie ends up refusing to adhere to the formula by resisting the contrivances and stereotypes assigned to them, the audience attacks with a stronger emotional response. And in doing so, the movie isn't given a chance to "live".

So is Cabin in the Woods just a deconstruction of the horror genre? Or is it a scathing indictment on the amorphous masses that refuse for their media to push the envelope; instead requiring undemanding, unoriginal works of art in order to be satisfy their need for consumption over culture?

And if this theory still hasn't convinced you, keep in mind that the character in charge of the underground facility played by Sigourney Weaver is literally credited as "The Director".

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to blow on this very mysterious-looking conch shell. Bye!

CinEffect Podcast Episode 2 - The Master, VHS, and Spec-Ops: The Line

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Episode 2: The Master, V/H/S, and Spec-Ops: The Line

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Long hiatus aside, we finally come back to look at Paul Thomas Anderson's much hyped The Master and analyze it's many dense themes and concepts. Along the way, we also channel surf through the horror anthology V/H/S, debate the moral ambiguity of Spec-Ops: The Line, and take a brief look at the charming downloadable Steam title Tiny & Big, which features magical underwear. Also: Chris's weird story about a double feature gone horribly wrong.

TIMELINE:
(0:00) No Other Love by Jo Strafford - The Master OST
(0:49) Intro
(6:26) Tiny & Big: Grandpa's Leftovers
(10:19) Spec Ops: The Line
(26:51) V/H/S
(46:13) V/H/S Spoilers
(48:30) The Master
(1:27:07) Chris's Funny Story
(1:30:50) What We're Watching Next Week
(1:35:57) Links (Plus a possible URL change)
(1:38:43) Changing Partners by Helen Forrest - The Master OST

The Master Movie Review

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[The Master
Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hofman, and Amy Adams
MPAA: R - For Sexual Content, Graphic Nudity and Language]

Belief is one of the primary components that shape who we are as individuals. Belief extends to our knowledge, our political stances, and our views on the very nature of existence (a.k.a. religion). And all of these beliefs eventually lead us to create our ideals: The concepts we strive to achieve, the ideas we push ourselves to act upon. But ideals are very fragile things. When you can't reach them, for any reason, you realize that aspiring to a singular one is nigh impossible, and it can change our beliefs, and in turn, who we are as individuals.

And never before have I seen the struggle of belief and ideals as richly portrayed as I have in Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, The Master, a cinematic tour de force that challenges you in ways movies this day and age rarely do. Food for thought is too subordinate a phrase to describe this movie. This is a film so rich with compelling themes and enigmas that a single viewing isn't enough to take in all that the movie has to offer. Sadly, however, a single viewing is all I have time for, so this review will be a challenge. But hey, it's always nice to have a challenge, unless it involves sharks.

The Master follows a World War II navy veteran named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in his first role after going faux-psycho both in real life and the mock-doc I'm Still Here) who suffers from a psychosis so severe it's implied that it goes way beyond mere PTSD, and implying that it perhaps originated long before the war had even begun. Fueled by copious amounts of alchohol and a raging libido, Freddie is completely unable to assimilate into a post-war society as he gets into drunken fights with customers. When he ends up accidentally killing a man simply with his powerful moonshines (The secret ingredient of which is paint thinner), he takes refuge on a boat commandeered by a Lancaster Dodd.

Lancaster, referred to as "Master" by his followers, is the leader of a cult named The Cause, which claims to be able to bring its subjects happiness by using hypnotherapy to allow them to see into their "past lives", which can date trillions of years back. Dodd states that going back through your soul's timeline brings humans back to their "state of perfect". When he meets Freddie Quell, he's at first merely charmed by his childish attitude and his peculiar moonshine recipe, but soon the severely damaged vet starts to inspire him to write more and he ends up taking him under his wing. Quell becomes Lancaster's new protege, and a relationship that tests each of their beliefs ensues.

First and foremost, let me address something before I actually talk about the film's numerous merits: There's been plenty of pre-release hubbub surrounding the subject matter of the film. Namely, comparisons were drawn--before the film was out, no less--between the fictional cult the film depicts and the real cult of Scientology, leading many to believe that the film would be a searing indictment of the strange religion. Just to put this assumption to rest, I'll put it simply and briefly: The film is not about Scientology. Okay, it's fairly obvious that The Cause is inspired by Scientology, but the movie is not an exposé on it or anything. It's simply a character study, and a fantastic one at that.

I've already heard numerous people detract the film for its simplistic narrative. But that's kind of like knocking down The 400 Blows for having a simple narrative, because that's not what either movie is concerned with. What The Master is concerned with is how beliefs of different sorts end up eating away at these men's souls until their inner natures are revealed.

Unless you're either parodying religion or you're truly and sincerely faith-driven, it's always hard to make a film about any sort of religion and make it even-handed. And while The Master is far from even-handed, it still does something not a lot of movies do: It sees how this particular movement could appeal to its main character without resorting to mocking him, all while still observing the flaws that eventually tear him away from it.

Because of this, The Master ends up becoming more than just a movie about religion and becomes one about the very nature of faith and belief. How far will we go to protect what we believe in, even though we can see the cracks and imperfections that keep it from being a true ideal? Will we lie to ourselves in order to keep the illusion intact, or will we learn to move ahead and find a more concrete truth? There are a million ways to interpret The Master. I personally saw it as a film about your ideals, and the pain of realizing that they are just that: Ideals. Just because you do your best to reach them, doesn't mean you can ever achieve them. In fact, you most likely never will. And that realization can change the very foundation of what defines who you are.

However, it's been very interesting to read up on other people's viewings of the film. I've seen many critics interpret the film in wild yet surprisingly plausible ways. While the most popular belief is that it's a movie about religion and belief systems, some have said it's a metaphor for post-WWII American society, and I've seen quite a few who have called the film a closeted, homoerotic love story. All of these theories are entirely believable because The Master is just teeming with so many ideas. Ironically, by being about something extremely specific, it becomes a movie about everything.

But it is exactly this density and ambiguity that has made many viewers emotionally distant to the film, including Roger Ebert. And I can see that being a problem for many viewers who aren't willing to be challenged this much. An emotionally involving film requires it to have a theme or character to latch onto, but because the movie is so coy with what it is about and who these people were before the events of the film, and so desperate for you to figure out your own solution (Hell, there may not even be a real solution), it could alienate many viewers.

However, I personally found the film emotionally involving enough for two reasons. First, Paul Thomas Anderson's direction, as meticulous as it is, is so beautiful and even sympathetic to these damaged men, even though it doesn't reveal too much about them. Secondly, every single performance is sheer perfection.

While talking about Oscar-buzz at this time is a bit early (and a little annoying in some respects), there's no doubt in my mind that Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman will be the front-runners of the Academy's acting race. The most showy role, of course, is the insane, alchoholic Phoenix, whose performance is very much a transformation not just in terms of his voice and mannerisms, but also with his physicality.

Throughout the whole film, Phoenix's posture is hunched, his face crooked, and his speech perpetually slurred, to the point that it becomes less of a performance and more of a transformation. While it's definitely as, if not more showy than Daniel Day-Lewis's turn as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, it's different in this regard: In There Will Be Blood, as good as he was, you can kinda tell when Day-Lewis was clearly "acting", especially in the over-the-top ending; while in The Master, there's never a moment where Joaquin Phoenix isn't Freddie Quell.

Not only does he expertly execute the age-old technique of being able to convey hundreds of emotions just with subtle movements on his face, even his voice displays a pain and a derangement that feels one-of-a-kind. His performance is so vital to the film's success, I can't imagine what it would've been like without Phoenix. (Jeremy Renner was rumored to have the part of Freddie before Joaquin got it). It's a perfect performance that is showy in that traditional Oscar sense, but is also so painfully nuanced that Phoenix's smile ends up inciting unbelievable amounts of sheer terror in the viewer. It's that good.

So you'd imagine that Phillip Seymour Hoffman would have to up his game since he's opposite Freddie almost the entire time. Thankfully, it never really feels like Hoffman is ever straining with too much effort to equal Phoenix. His performance is actually incredibly different from Phoenix's. He's brazenly confident and charismatic enough to be believable as the leader of a cult, mysterious enough to give him a mythic stature, and he straddles that line between niceness and sternness that a leader like him must have to be plausible. Hoffman isn't even attempting to equal Phoenix. If anything, he's just naturally equal to him in talent.

The two play off each other excellently. Any time just the two of them are face-to-face, you're held witness to the best acting you'll see in all of 2012 so far. I've stated in my Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective that one of the director's favorite themes is father figures and the dynamics they have with their sons (Or daughters, in the case of Magnolia). And what better father-son dynamic for a Paul Thomas Anderson film than the relationship between Leader and Follower.

There's such an intensity between the two as they're pulled back and forth from sympathy to rivalry. Like most of the film, their relationship is just as ambiguous as it is incredibly well-drawn. Does Lancaster Dodd keep Freddie around because he truly admires his faith, does he simply just admire his insanity and primal nature, or is he just in love with the "idea" of an unflinching follower as Freddie proves himself to be the most gulligble, prime example of the term? Meanwhile, does Freddie truly believe in Lancaster's philosophy, does he just want to belong in a community that will always accept his insanity, or is he just in love with the "idea" of a leader who can guide him through life?

They're not the only heavy-hitters in the cast, however. Amy Adams is actually surprisingly excellent as Lancaster's wife Peggy, a role which is unlike anything else the actress has ever done. Here, she is anything but cute and quirky. In fact, she is so headstrong you can argue that she's the real driving force behind The Cause (One scene involving a handjob seems to imply so). Also, Laura Dern shows up as one of The Cause's main members, and her very few scenes are a nice reminder of why she's one of the best underrated actresses working today. Oh, and Jesse Plemons is in it as Lancaster's son! He...doesn't have much to do. But hey, he's Todd in Breaking Bad, so all you Heisenberg fans can point at the screen and go "Hey! It's that guy!" whenever he's on.

Of course, you can't talk about a P.T. Anderson film mentioning Anderson's direction. Each film of his has always felt like an "evolution" or "progression" from the previous film, and this time is no different. The Master evokes both the sparse, ambiguous, epic storytelling of There Will Be Blood and the audiovisual, character-centric filmmaking of Punch-Drunk Love. This results in what is Anderson's most mature picture out of all his filmography.

Much like There Will Be Blood, the film has an epic, sprawling feel to it despite the fact that it's entirely dialogue driven and takes place mostly indoors (Even more so than Blood). This is because Anderson puts a real emphasis on the rivalry/friendship between Dodd and Quell, giving it a gravitas that feels like it has just as much stakes as a Lord of the Rings battle.

This can also be attributed to his use of 65mm film, which has been given a lot of talk in the industry since it's the first film to use it since Kenneth Branagh's 1996 adaptation of Hamlet. For those of you who don't know, 65mm is a certain film-stock used mostly to convey epic scenes with large environments. The Master, interestingly enough, actually uses it for the exact opposite effect, as I've stated before the use of small spaces. It gives the close-ups an alarmingly unnerving quality, the wide-shots an astounding beauty (especially whenever the ocean is displayed), and allows Anderson to puncture in as many fine details as he wants (And this being an Anderson film, there are hundreds of small details to seek).

But as I've stated before, Anderson's approach is incredibly meticulous, which may be too cold and distant for many viewers. The point of the end isn't any sort of emotional catharsis, but rather a clue that urges the viewer to think harder about what they think the movie is truly about. And all those meticulous details do allow for all sorts of wild interpretations. Whereas my other best movie of the year contender, Beasts of the Southern Wild, was a full-on heart-movie fueled by emotion, The Master is a head-movie that requires patience and challenges your intellect. But in that way, it's still emotionally satisfying in its own unique manner.

Final Verdict: The Master is a challenge of a film, but one that still satisfies like all puzzles do. And even if you're not into solving it, there's no denying the artistry and craftsmanship in Anderson's direction, or power of the awe-inspiring performances from Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seyour Hoffman, and Amy Adams--three of the best performances you'll see all year. Not just one of the best films of the year, but a film that will most definitely be discussed and analyzed years and years from now.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make sand-babies...you'll get that reference once you've seen the film. Bye!

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective Part 5: There Will Be Blood

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:15:00 +0000

The Paul Thoms Anderson Retrospective concludes! Last time, I splurged about the stream-of-consciousness filmmaking techniques employed in Punch-Drunk Love. Now, we'll see Anderson, once again, going on a wildly different direction with his period-piece about oil tycoon Daniel Plainview: There Will Be Blood.

There will be spoilers in this There Will Be Blood analysis (heh), and I will go into some detail on the film's wild finale, so it's better suited if you've already seen the film (Which you should). If you haven't read the previous three installments of the retrospectives, you can do so by clicking these links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Also, a variety of clips will be employed, so be sure to have a good connection to see them all. And fair warning to the squeamish: There is some violence in one of the clips. It's off-screen, yet somehow remains brutal due to the sound-effects and the terrifying look on Daniel Day-Lewis's face.

With all that being said, let's drink some milkshakes as we dive right into There Will Be Blood.

"I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry...to have you here gives me a second breath. I can't keep doing this on my own with these...people."

Citizen Kane, widely believed to be the greatest movie of all time, and for good reason, was the story of a man who had only one goal on his mind: To get filthy, stinkin' rich. He did all that he could to get to the top, and when he finally got there, he realized the hollowness of the life of luxury.

There Will Be Blood is the story of that same type of man, only taken to its largest extreme. The film begins with a man named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) mining for chunks of silver on his own, only to injure his leg by slipping from a loose ladder piece. This does not stop him in the slightest from acquiring the silver, as he literally climbs and crawls his way back to his camp all while dragging his limp leg. A few years later, he strikes oil and discovers his entry into starting a business, but it comes at the cost of losing one of his men. Daniel, the devilish opportunist that he is, ends up stealing the now deceased man's infant son and brings him up as his own.

Years later, Daniel is now one of the leading oil tycoons in the business. He's appealing to businessmen because of his ambition and success, and appealing to the public because he always has his illegitimate son by his side as a sympathetic face. Not much later than that, a man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) comes up to Daniel with a proposition: There's a large plot of land with an ocean of oil underneath it. He sells that land to Daniel for a large sum of money, which brings Daniel to Sunday Ranch, where he meets Paul's twin brother Eli (Also Dano), an evangelical preacher who partakes in over-the-top ceremonies. When Daniel doesn't allow him to do a public blessing of the oil well, a bitter rivalry ensues between the two men that lasts almost a lifetime.

Both There Will Be Blood and Citizen Kane are portraits of the men behind capitalism, but Charles Foster Kane at the very least had his "Rosebud". He reached that tipping point where he finally discovered just how empty a life solely based on wealth is. There Will Be Blood ends similarly, in only one sense, to Citizen Kane: With Daniel Plainview hovering through his luxurious mansion almost like a spirit haunting the grounds. But unlike Kane, while he is, at this point of the movie, a drunk lunatic who has lost any sign of humanity, he still doesn't regret any of it. Daniel Plainview is a man so spiteful in his journey to wealth, that he has no problem giving up any semblance of humanity he has left.

Throughout this retrospective, I've been categorizing each of Anderson's films. Hard Eight is the "least-favorite", Boogie Nights is the "most entertaining", Magnolia is the "best" (Though that's arguable), and Punch-Drunk Love is my "favorite" (Or his most stylistically accomplished). There Will Be Blood, on the other hand, is very different from his other films. While almost all of Anderson's films feature progressive pacing that always moves forward with the help of sounds, visuals, performances, etc., There Will Be Blood is a more somber, slower-paced film.

Instead of constantly shifting perspectives from a wide variety of characters (Like in Boogie Nights and Magnolia) or using an omnipresent score (Punch-Drunk Love, also Magnolia), there are many scenes that just linger in the mood or atmosphere, letting each situation play out, and milking it (Or drilling it? Eh?) for all its suspense. If anything, it actually has the most in common with Anderson's first film Hard Eight, which was primarily a character study, done in a quiet, subdued fashion.

If I had to categorize There Will Be Blood, it's undoubtedly his most "mature" film. Anderson hardly lets any stylistic touches overpower or even supplement the narrative. Of course, there is the Jonny Greenwood score (Which we'll get more in-depth with later), but it's used subtly and as a means to express mood rather than outright emotion.

Almost everything about There Will Be Blood is contradictory. It's an American epic with a claustrophobic narrative. It's a brutal film with not a lot of violence (By movie standards, anyway). And most peculiarly of all: It's a character study filled with ambiguity. We're never given any insight on who Plainview was before the movie began and we rarely get a glimpse of his thought-process unless he speaks it out loud. All we could do is evaluate what's going on based on Plainview's actions on screen. That is our only indicator of who he is as a man, and even then, you can not really trust a single thing he says or does.

Now, a character study like this simply could not work unless you have the performance to back it up. Luckily for Anderson, we have Daniel Day-Lewis, who is without a doubt our generation's most intense method-actor in the business. Daniel Plainview may very well be the most fascinating character Anderson has ever written and portrayed. While he lacks the intimacy that brings us so close to Punch-Drunk Love's Barry Egan or Hard Eight's Sydney, Plainview more than makes up for that in terms of his mysterious allure and shocking business ethics.

As well-directed as There Will Be Blood is, it would be nothing without Daniel Day-Lewis. He lends the film a gravitas that you'd normally expect from Orson Welles himself. But Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't allow him go off his reins either. Daniel Day-Lewis remains controlled and subdued throughout most of the film, thus giving him that ambiguity needed to give Plainview his almost mythical quality.

Granted, things do, in fact, go off the rails in the infamous final twenty minutes of the film, in which all of the acting becomes ridiculously over-the-top, and the movie ends in a grisly murder. Because of this, many people consider it a sort of "perfect film EXCEPT for the ending". There are just as many people who believe that the ending even ruins the entire movie. As for my take, I personally find that the movie builds up to this insane conclusion, but I can see why some people would have gripes with it.

But before we get knee-deep on the sticky ending (Lots of bad oil puns, today; apologies), we have to analyze what makes There Will Be Blood an evolution for Paul Thomas Anderson. Namely, there's the audiovisual filmmaking element and the long-takes, two techniques that Anderson likes to employ constantly. Anderson's use of long-takes in Boogie Nights was very stylish and showy, but he learned to use it to more subtle effect with each consecutive film. His audiovisual filmmaking reached its apex when he crafted the wildly subjective Punch-Drunk Love. Now, for There Will Be Blood, he's more restrained with his audiovisual technique.

Like I said earlier, rather than delving into Plainview's mindset, Anderson is more concerned with the events that happen around Plainview and objective reactions to said events. Whereas Punch-Drunk Love was an intimately subjective and abstract experience, There Will Be Blood is a concrete one. Yet, much like the rest of the conflicting qualities of this film, the film is still able to obtain a tinge of surrealism while still being so objective.

This is thanks to the Jonny Greenwood score, which--as I stated earlier--is able to create an uneasy, dread-laden atmosphere whenever it's played. Much like the rest of Anderson's filmography, music is essential in conveying emotion. Except while Punch-Drunk Love used it for the sake of subjectivity, There Will Be Blood uses music to instill mood. But if you think about it, music is the only means for this movie to convey emotion in such a cold story about an almost(?) heartless man. And even then, the score is sparse and simplistic, relying mostly on moody hums and wailing violins to give the impression that something just isn't right.

The best example of Jonny Greenwood's score and Anderson's audiovisual techique is in the oil derrick scene...

First, there's the brief moments in which we hear what Plainview's adopted son H.W. hears when he's defeaned by the blast. We've seen this deafening effect before (Most notably in Roman Polanski's The Pianist). We've also seen this melding of audio and visual before in Anderson's previous work, with the firecrackers from Boogie Nights, the musical segment of Magnolia, and the entirety of Punch-Drunk Love. While There Will Be Blood doesn't use that much here, he still employs it at the most effective moments.

Then we hear the score kick in, starting with just some simple drum beats that get increasingly chaotic as we learn that things have gone from bad to worse. The oil derrick scene can be seen as the main omen that everything will end badly for Daniel Plainview, as fire literally belches from the ground like hell has broken loose. And the score conveys this chaos all too well.

What's more interesting to discuss, however, is how the two main themes that Anderson uses are played up in There Will Be Blood. All of his films except for Punch-Drunk Love feature interesting takes on the father-son relationship. There Will Be Blood takes that relationship, and twists it to its darkest and strangest depths. It's obvious that Plainview uses his adopted son as a prop when the film is just starting, but there are signs that perhaps he truly does love and care about him. And yet, thanks to the brilliancy of the writing and Daniel Day-Lewis's performance, there's still some ambiguity on whether that love was genuine.

Take, for example, this infamous scene in which Plainview screams out to a full congregation his deep regret of abandoning his son...

It feels completely and utterly genuine, does it not? Well, there are many who have interpreted this scene as yet another opportunistic business move for Plainview's oiling. Before this scene, he was given the offer that a pipeline could be built on the Sunday Ranch land so long as he converted to Christ the Almighty. In the conversion process, he was forced to admit to the abandoning of his child in front of an entire audience. Was Plainview being totally genuine in his regret? Was his "conversion" a ruse? There's enough evidence, which includes the nuance of Daniel Day-Lewis's performance, to suggest that that's a very probable "Yes".

Depending on your interpretation, the father-son relationship in There Will Be Blood is either the coldest out of Anderson's filmography, or the most tragic. Because whether or not you believe he truly did love H.W. in some way, their relationship still ends on this sickly note...

The most heartbreaking thing about this particular father-son relationship is that no matter your interpretation, there's no denying that this is one of the few scenes in which you can tell without a shadow of a doubt that Daniel Plainview means what he says. And the reason why you can tell is actually because of the over-the-top acting, believe it or not. It's as if he's overcompensating for all his deceit and his grinning on the outside, and he's finally letting all of his emotions out when he screams "bastard from a basket" at his only "son".

Interestingly enough, as his son is leaving, we are shown a flashback of H.W. playing around with his father as a young boy. This shot has always tantalized me. Was it shown as a reference to indicate that all of that love and compassion back then was a lie and he never meant it? Or, perhaps even more sad, that it was truly genuine, and it was only shown to display to the audience the hideous transformation that wealth has brought to Plainview's soul? Whatever the answer is, it's a very ugly depiction of human nature responding to wealth.

Now, there's another theme that I wanna discuss in this film. This theme isn't a "regular" theme in Anderson's movies. In fact, it was never brought up in any of his previous work: The fallacy of religion. The reason why I felt like it would be interesting to analyze this theme in There Will Be Blood is because Anderson's upcoming film, The Master, deals very heavily with religion, but of a different sort (While I obviously haven't seen the movie yet, it's been well-documented that The Master is a fictionalized telling of the founding of Scientology).

One of the main taglines of There Will Be Blood actually incorporates the title. It begins with "When faith meets ambition," and then ends with the title, "There Will Be Blood." Obviously, this refers to the final scene in which Daniel finally confronts Eli Sunday in the private bowling alley in Daniel's mansion. In fact, it applies to pretty much the entirety of their feud and the inevitability of the outcome.

In general, whenever religion conflicts or fuses with business (or politics if you wanna get into some real screwy territory), it almost always leads to disastrous results. But there's something more to Eli and Daniel's rivalry. If you think about it, while they're both opposites, they're opposites running parallel to each other. Much like how Daniel ended up bringing up his own false son and lead him through a life centered all around lies, Eli brings up an entire crowd with his own false gospels and phony exorcisms.

But it's also interesting to compare how both Eli and Daniel deal with situations regarding their "brothers". Daniel, in an earlier sub-plot, starts to become close to a figure who claims to be his long-lost brother from a different mother (Sidebar: He literally uses the phrase "I'm your brother from another mother"). Turns out, as these things typically do, that the man actually isn't his brother and is just some sort of creep who either just wants his money, has some weird obsession with Plainview, or most likely both. Meanwhile, Eli also has a brother: Paul, who we only see in one scene as the man who convinces Daniel to buy the Sunday Ranch (And as Roger Ebert noted, the plot could be even shiftier than initially noted since we never see Paul or Eli in the same room, but that theory is unlikely).

In the final scene of the film, Daniel actually tells Eli, "You're not the chosen brother, Eli. It was Paul who was chosen. You see, he found me and told me about your land. You're just a fool." He then follows that up by saying "It was Paul who told me about you. He's the prophet. He's the smart one." Yet another contradiction this film embodies: Daniel and Eli are both equals and opposites all at once. Both use lies and deceit to gain success, but through vastly different means. And whereas Daniel was the "smart brother", Eli is the lesser.

Two polar opposites, but made from the same clay and for the same purpose. But there's perhaps a more interesting difference: Whereas Daniel voices aloud his contempt for the rest of the human population, Eli is a liar on a spiritual level. In many if not all cases, that's much worse. Their rivalry ends with Daniel, arguably the lesser of two evils, beating Eli to death with a bowling pin. Warning, the following clip contains some brutal off-screen violence.

What Anderson suggests with the rivalry of these two forces is that for all their differences, capitalism and organized religion have more in common than you'd think. You can argue that what he's implying is that capitalism is in itself practiced almost like a religion, or perhaps even more cynically, that maybe organized religion is no better than capitalism.

But, as fradulent as Eli was, he still "represented" something powerful. That thing he represents is the "belief in the existence of God".

There's a third theme that I need to discuss, and while this theme isn't as intensely personal as the father-son relationship, or as socially dense as the capitalism/religion dichotomy, it's perhaps the most omnipresent theme because it defines Daniel Plainview's entire arc. It's the second theme I discussed throughout this retrospective that Anderson likes to call back to repeatedly: Alienation and loneliness.

There Will Be Blood is primarly about Daniel Plainview's descent into madness coinciding with his rise in wealth. However, it's more than just that, actually. Daniel Plainview's journey is also a descent into the far recesses of alienation from society. Slowly and surely, Plainview ends up losing many of his colleagues either to death or to disagreement ("I'm gonna come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm gonna cut your throat.") one by one. Then, it gets to the point where Plainview ends up abandoning his own family just to make it to the top; as signified by the abandoning of H.W. after he's deafened, and by the murdering of his fake brother. (Fake or not, he was still one of the few people who Plainview confided in).

He's given a chance of redemption when he decides to have his son back, but this chance is squandered when he ends up alienating himself from society (Signified by how he holes himself up in his mansion) and then alienating himself from his adopted son a second time ("Bastard from a basket!"). Then, just when you think he couldn't sink any lower, Daniel literally descends to the lowest level of his house (His private bowling alley), which is where he ends up murdering Eli. It is at that point that, despite Eli's own falsehoods, Daniel's murdering of Eli suggests that he has literally alienated himself from God, or whatever higher presence there is assuring him that he'll end up burning in hell.

There is so much more I could discuss when it comes to There Will Be Blood because it is about so many things. It's easy to see why many consider There Will Be Blood Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece. It's purely original filmmaking in its grandest, most assured form. There is nothing else like it, and there probably won't be anything else like it. Not only that, but there's also never going to be a filmmaking like Paul Thomas Anderson. His melding of grand scope and intimate drama melded with his audiovisual techniques and one-of-a-kind style make him one of the truest forms of the word auteur in modern cinema.

And with that, the Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective is complete.

Oh, but while the Retrospective may be over, the experience isn't. Stay tuned for my review of Paul Thomas Anderson's upcoming film The Master sometime next week.

See ya next time! Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to wait for The Master! Just...one...more...day...

Fun PTA Trivia:

In Hard Eight, Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) mentions Sydney's (Phillip Baker Hall's) friends, named Floyd Gondolli and Jimmy Gator. In Boogie Nights, Phllip Baker Hall plays a character named Floyd Gondolli, while in Magnolia, he plays a game-show host named Jimmy Gator.
Many of the main characters in Boogie Nights are based on or take inspiration from real people in the porn industry. Including William H. Macy's character (Yikes).
I live in the San Fernando Valley, and it felt kinda cool that many of the characters in Boogie Nights reference many locations and street names that I am actually familiar with (Like Reseda Blvd., Lindley Ave., Sherman Way, etc.). However, the most notable mention came when the college kid in the limo of Jack Horner's car said he was from CSUN. CSUN is the University that I'm currently enrolled in.
Paul Thoms Anderson's main inspiration for the writing of Magnolia's script was actually the music of Aimee Mann, which ends up featuring heavily in the film.
One of the books Stanley Spector reads in Magnolia is Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, which is a real book written by Ricky Jay, who also narrates and stars in the film.
In the bar that William H. Macy goes to to flirt with the bartender in Magnolia, there's a chalkboard with two teams written on it: "The Frogs" and "The Clouds". Both frogs and clouds feature prominently in the film.
Also in the background of the bar: Someone playing the video game Frogger.
In the "Seduce and Destroy" infomercials in Magnolia, there's a number displayed on the bottom: 877-TAME-HER. There was a point when you could actually call that number, and you'd get an actual recording from Tom Cruise saying he'll help you "get the sauce you wanted". The number doesn't work anymore, sadly.
Paul Thomas Anderson actually offered the role of Frank TJ Mackey to Tom Cruise by visiting the set of Eyes Wide Shut to offer it. I can only assume that Tom Cruise wasn't the only person he intended to meet.
Punch-Drunk Love was partially inspired by a TIME magazine article that talked about a real man who used the Healthy Choice pudding scam for frequent flyer miles.
When Barry (Adam Sandler) punches the office wall and he rests his bloodied hand on the harmonium, you can see the cuts on his knuckles spell out the word "LOVE".
Paul Dano wasn't originally supposed to play Eli Sunday on There Will Be Blood. He was only meant to play Paul Sunday, while Eli was given to another actor. He ended up replacing the actor, and the script was changed so that Paul and Eli were identical twins.
The set for There Will Be Blood was right by the filming location for No Country For Old Men. While testing pyrotechnic effects for the big oil derrick scene, the billowing smoke intruded on a shot that the Coen Brothers were shooting for No Country, causing them to delay their shoot for a day. Both films ended up being the front-runners during that year's Academy Awards.
According to one of the producers of There Will Be Blood, the movie wouldn't have been made at all if Daniel Day-Lewis declined the role. Thankfully Daniel was actually a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson's previous film Punch-Drunk Love, and accepted.
Many of the characters in There Will Be Blood were loosely based on real historical figures. The movie itself is a very, very loose adaptation (If you can call it that) of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!
The bowling alley in There Will Be Blood was originally intended to be painted almost entirely white, giving it a Kubrickian look similar to A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was reverted back to its original color after it was decided on that the bowling alley was to be given away after filming.

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective Part 4: Punch-Drunk Love

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:45:00 +0000

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective continues! Last time, we looked at the interlinking narratives that connected in Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson's biggest, most ambitious film. Today, though, we'll see him scale back to make the quirky, surrealist "rom-com" (If you can call it that) Punch-Drunk Love.

As usual, there will be spoilers in this analysis. Nothing major, like in the Magnolia and Boogie Nights pieces, but it's still recommended that you see the film first. So if you haven't seen it yet, you can easily do so because it's the only Paul Thoms Anderson movie that's on Netflix Instant Watch, as of this writing. If you haven't read the previous three installments of the retrospectives, you can do so by clicking these links for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Also, much like the last installment, I'm going to be employing several clips as examples for the filmmaking techniques that Anderson uses throughout the film, so make sure your connection is good enough to be buffering plenty of videos. Plus, some of the clips contain some strong language, so if that's not your thing, you've been warned.

With all that being said, let's buy some pudding and take a closer look at Punch-Drunk Love.

"I'm a nice man. I mind my own business. So you tell me 'that's that' before I beat the hell from you. I have so much strength in me you have no idea. I have a love in my life. It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine. I would say 'that's that', Mattress Man. "

Last time, I went on a brief tangent on the difference between the "favorite" and the "best". I went on to say that I thought Magnolia was Paul Thomas Anderson's "best" movie, but it wasn't my personal "favorite". Well, prepare for a shock, you guys, because Punch-Drunk Love, easily his smallest and strangest film, is my favorite film that he's made. If that wasn't surprising enough, I'd also like to point out that it's also one of my favorite movies of all time. It's the kind of movie that I watch and after every viewing I always feel exhilirated beyond belief.

Punch-Drunk Love is the story of a man named Barry Egan (Adam Sandler). Barry is a complete mess of emotions. He's alone, he's the owner of a novelty toilet plunger company, he's prone to spasms of blind rage, he's unbearably shy around women, and he will sometimes cry at random moments without knowing why. All of this can be traced back to his seven sisters, who have emotionally abused and teased him throughout his entire life. All he longs for is an intimate relationship with someone he can trust, who can see past the damage that his sisters wrought on him.

This somebody comes in the form of Lena (Emily Watson), a blonde, almost ethereally kind soul who became infatuated with him just by looking at a picture of him. She wants to learn more about him, while he's still too shy to even consider going on a date with her. Eventually, he sees that she's someone who can have that intimate, trusting relationship with him that he's always wanted. The only thing getting in his way from being with her forever is a sinister phone-sex company attempting to scam him of his money, thinking he's a rich business man.

I hate doing this, but I feel like I need to make something absolutely clear. Almost all of the film's detractors dismiss Punch-Drunk Love as a messy ball of quirkiness that is empty of any meaning. I'm usually not the kind of guy who does this, but anyone who thinks of it as that is wrong. Yes, they all have a right to their opinion, but I also have a right to believe that their opinion is formed by a misconception.

When you think of a movie about quirky characters doing quirky things, you think of those indie comedies like Juno or Little Miss Sunshine, comedies in which the characters' quirks are something to laugh at. While those films aren't terrible, they don't use the quirkiness to show insights into human nature, instead using them to create farcical situations and characters that stand out. Like or dislike those films, any character introspection there is in those films doesn't come from the quirks, and instead comes from other factors depending on your opinion of the film (Many people believe those films have zero insight, but that's an entirely different argument that I'm not the most well-versed in).

If you think about it, many of Adam Sandler's other films belong in the definition of a quirky comedy. Sure, they may not have anything in common with Juno, but they fit the definition of quirk: A peculiar behavioral habit.

In order to understand Punch-Drunk Love, we have to understand the character-type of all of Adam Sandler's Happy Madison pictures (And yes, I consider myself an expert in his films because I saw almost all of them as a 12 year old). All of Sandler's films are about man-children who either a.) learn to overcome their childishness and mature, or b.) stay the same while everyone else learns something from their immaturity. They all use quirks to create humor, but they don't really offer much insight.

But if you look closely and overanalyze these characters, for all their niceness and naivete, his characters hide a hostility towards society. You see this in Happy Gilmore, where he can be the nicest guy in the world, yet when someone or something gets him to snap, he yells and swears and goes on a spree of rage. You also see this in The Wedding Singer, in which he's normally soft-spoken and wishes to brighten people's weddings with songs, only to end up as a drunk who wishes people's marriages a terrible ending when his own fiance abandons him. If you think about it, his characters can be downright insane, and his movies never seem to acknowledge that fact.

This is where Paul Thomas Anderson comes in. Roger Ebert said it best in his review of the film when he quoted filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. He wrote in the review, "The way to criticize a movie, Godard famously said, is to make another movie. In that sense Punch-Drunk Love is film criticism." Paul Thomas Anderson himself admitted to being a fan of Sandler's films. However, when you see what he does with the Adam Sandler character when he gets to work with him, you realize that as much as he seems to like those films, he knows that something is missing in them.

This is why Punch-Drunk Love is so brilliant. He takes the quirks often associated in those kinds of films, and peels them back to reveal them for what they truly are: The product of severe neurosis. There is humor in the film, but it's very dark and all of it is undercut with a deep sense of sadness and discomfort. Barry Egan is a deeply disturbed individual, who freaks out at the slightest tease against him. At any single moment, he could very well snap. So to anyone who thinks that the movie is just quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness, perhaps the reason why you didn't find it charming or enjoyable is because it's not meant to be. Rather, it exposes those mannerisms in a different, more realistic and honest light, showing that there's nothing really "adorable" about someone with those qualities and revealing the sadness that lurks in them.

There are many deeply uncomfortable scenes, and many of them are thanks in large part to Adam Sandler's performance. It may not sound like much when I say that this is the best performance of Adam Sandler's career, but I also think that this is one of the most subtly nuanced comedic (if you can call it that) performances ever put to film. Take a look at this scene in which he goes to his sisters' party.

Notice the way he contemplates leaving the second he hears them gossipping about how they used to call him "gayboy". Or how about the way he acts completely surprised, scared even, when another one of his sisters pops up from behind him. Or that moment just before he starts kicking the glass, where he looks like he's so desperately holding in his deeply pent-up emotions.

Sandler embodies this character entirely. He's always on edge, but never obviously so. He's a deeply sad individual to watch, yet at the same time, there's something always endearing about him too. As depressing as he is, we want to see him pull through because he means well and he always tries to be nice even when society won't allow him to. His performance is something to behold, and shows that no matter how many Jack and Jills he makes, he is a legitimate actor who does have major talent in him.

But Sandler isn't the only one who completely embodies Barry Egan. Paul Thomas Anderson films this picture in a way that is so in sync with Barry's state of mind that it reaches levels both uncomfortable and sublime. You remember when I mentioned that Anderson always experiments in some way with audiovisual filmmaking in his work? The firecrackers from Boogie Nights? The musical number in Magnolia? I brought up the fact that he kept evolving on this technique until finally perfecting it. Well, Punch-Drunk Love is where he finally gets it down. The thing that truly makes Punch-Drunk Love such a bold film is its audiovisual style.

You see, Punch-Drunk Love is one of the greatest examples of idiosyncratic, stream-of-consciousness filmmaking ever made. Now before you bring up films like The Weather Man or The Informant!, which contain stream-of-consciousness dialogue, there's a difference between writing it and filming it. This is one of the only movies I could think of where every single element has been optimized in the service of bringing the viewer into the exact mindset of the protagonist. Not just the acting or the writing, but the soundtrack, the cinematography, the sound design, the production design, the costume design, even the lighting, literally everything has been pain-stakingly crafted to put you into the mind of the neurotic Barry Egan.

For example, here are the first 10 minutes of the film...

There's something incredibly odd about the very first shot of the film; mainly the set-design. Notice the odd placement of Barry's desk. It's just set in the corner of what looks to be a cheap garage, like a boat lost at sea. Right from the first frame of the film, we know for a fact that Barry Egan is alone in the world. Then, Barry opens the door and goes outside. When he does, everything is deathly quiet for a few moments as the camera glides towards the street. It's almost entirely silent until an ungodly loud crash is heard when a car literally flips in front of him. Directly after that, a mysterious van parks outside his lot and drops off a harmonium before leaving without even saying a word.

I interpret this as a sort of deus ex machina, strangely placed in the beginning of the film instead of the end, like most movies. The reason why I believe this is that Paul Thomas Anderson stated in an interview with Charlie Rose that the film is about "finding your music", or learning to become in tune with the rest of the world. The harmonium is an apt metaphor for that. We'll discuss the theme of "finding your music" a little later...

After that, Barry doesn't pick up the harmonium and discovers that a car is parking at the lot outside his factory. This is when he meets Lena, who mentions later on in the film that she only parked her car there to be able to meet Barry after seeing his picture. They have an awkward exchange before she leaves, but there's something else that's odd about the scene. The camera lens, strangely enough, hasn't been modified for sunlight. An intense lens-flare (Not one of those fake CG'd ones you see in JJ Abrams movies, a legit lens-flare) almost engulfs the frame. It's almost as if he's being scrutinized by the light, closely as it threatens to blind him. This is very reminiscent of his emotional fear of connecting with other people after his sisters have constantly berated him as a child, explaining why he prefers to be alone, or in darkness, in the context of the metaphor.

Finally, he picks up the harmonium and tries playing it. It brings him a sense of wonder and joy as he fiddles around with it, as evidenced by the Jon Brion score settling in. This coincides with Anderson's statement that it's about "finding your music". The second he finds the harmonium is the first time the music literally comes in. The score, at first, is pleasant and simple. Then, his assisstant (Luis Guzman, a frequent player in Anderson's films) enters the garage. When he meets up with Barry, a strange, eerie sound effect interrupts the otherwise pleasant song in the background. It sounds almost like a ghost wailing, like it's some threatening, otherworldly presence that instills fear into Barry. Funny how this sound pops up when he starts talking to someone after finding the harmonium. It's like an audio indicator of his fear for socializing.

Another prime example of the audiovisual filmmaking is the use of colors. Just take a look at this screenshot...

What kind of grocery store do you know that stacks all their products in a color-coded order? It's most likely a visual metaphor for his mental state, which is disharmonized and stores every thought, emotion, and memory into compartments in order to function in society. However, he's unable to truly empathize or connect with society because of his compartmentalization of his feelings.

Now, take a look at these various screenshots...

Notice the significance of the colors red, white, and blue. No, they have nothing to do with the American flag (Though you could interpret it as some sort of comment about the American Dream, if you're so inclined). However--and believe me guys, because this symbolism isn't hard to figure out--, the colors do tend to be in tune with his emotional states and needs.

Barry, throughout the entire film, wears a blue suit all the time. Blue, of course, is a color most associated with deep depression. Then, of course, there's white. Not just when it comes to the color of the walls of almost every building surrounding him, but also when you notice the lens flares overtaking the shots every now and then. White seems to be this malevolent force that is threatening to engulf Barry. This could easily be seen as either the harassment of his seven sisters or of society. Take your pick; any of them are right. Then, there's red, the color that you always see Lena wearing, the only person that brings him happiness.

This three-color dichotomy can be best expressed in this shot...

Which transitions to this shot...

Barry, still drenched in sadness, sees a sign of happiness in his horizon. Rather than running away from it, he decides to chase after it, thus pitting him in direct conflict with the abstract and concrete forces that oppress him.

So even the use of color is an important factor in the immersion of Barry's mental state. However, the greatest example of the audiovisual stream-of-consciousness filmmaking in Punch-Drunk Love is actually in any of the scenes in which Barry is working. While I couldn't find a clip of this as an example, I did find a track from the soundtrack that plays during one of these scenes...

Imagine this track playing during an otherwise traditional scene in which Barry is switching around from clients to callers. Of course, it creates a nervousness that matches Barry's, but so what? Many movies do that. What's so different here? Well, reader, unlike most scores, this one, much like the lens flares, threatens to overtake the scene. Sometimes, it makes certain dialogues inaudible.

Not only that, but the score itself sounds incredibly manic, abstract, and offbeat. It's like the audio equivalent of a Picasso painting: Everything looks messy and all-over-the-map, but you can tell that that messiness has a point. Then, there's the sound-design, in which the forklifts and telephones in the background are strangely amplified. All of these noises combined create a deeply nervous anxiety that feels antsy and tense whenever they're played.

And what's interesting to note is that this motif actually changes and evolves as the film progresses and Barry learns to free himself from his mental cage. Compare the scene I described and the audio track I played with this scene in which Barry argues with the Mattress Man, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. (Warning: This clip contains the strongest language out of all of them)...

Now, the audio is still nervous and antsy, but something's different about it. It isn't as out-of-tempo or disjointed as it was previously. Rather, it feels more focused this time around, more on-beat. This coincides with, of course, the mental state of Barry at the moment. While he's still intense as he's arguing with Hoffman, he's learned to channel his emotions and stand up against his enemy. Remember that statement Paul Thomas Anderson said in that Charlie Rose interview when he said the film was about "finding your music"? Never has the metaphor been more apt.

All of these elements of lighting, set-design, color, and sound all converge to make one of the most formally daring audiovisual experiences in all of film. The only other films I could think of that employ this filmmaking style just as wonderfully is the stream-of-consciousness narratives of Federico Fellini's vividly personal 8 1/2 and Terrence Malick's magnum opus The Tree of Life. But even then, those films employ those surreal, abstract techniques into a surrealist, abstract narrative. And with the exception of the deus ex machina intro, Punch-Drunk Love isn't really all too abstract or surreal in the narrative department, which is actually very simple and grounded in reality.

Because of this, I think that Punch-Drunk Love's stream-of-consciousness filmmaking transcends being just a "style", and more of a "lens". We see everything through Barry's eyes and subconscious in all its messy, unadultered glory. And because of that, it's one of the most profoundly intimate character studies I've ever experienced. A deeply moving, sympathetic portrait of a man who learns to find his music. It's a film that fills me with a deep sense of joy and a renewed appreciation for it with each subsequent viewing. The "best" Anderson film? You can argue for yourself which that is. But for me, this is his most accomplished, and my very favorite of his widely varied filmography. So, here we go...

Punch-Drunk Love may have won the Best Director award at Cannes, but it wasn't a big box-office success, unsurprisingly, raking in just over $24 million for a film with a $25 million budget. Plus, while the film had many supporters, most critics were more interested with Anderson's heavier material than they were this Adam Sandler vehicle. But boy did he deliver, with what most people consider to be his masterpiece. Next time, we'll get crazy with Daniel Day-Lewis in my analysis of Paul-Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood.

See ya next time! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to drink a milkshake. Bye!

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective Part 3: Magnolia

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 03:05:00 +0000

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective continues! Last time, we took a look at the film that put Paul Thomas Anderson on the map: the ambitious, epicly scoped Boogie Nights. Today, however, we see Anderson pushing the limits of ambition AND scope in his follow-up piece, 1999's Magnolia.

If you hadn't read the previous two installments of the Retrospective, I suggest clicking these links for Part 1 and Part 2. Plus, it must be made absolutely clear that it's impossible to discuss Magnolia without getting into serious detail on the character arcs and the insane finale. So be warned: There are major, MAJOR spoilers.

Also, unlike most of my retrospectives, instead of just showing a bunch of pictures from the movie, I'm going to be employing clips from the film. So make sure your internet connection is good enough to buffer some YouTube videos, if you want the full experience. Not required, but definitely a plus!

With that being said, it's time to analyze the web of coincidences that is Magnolia.

"It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just 'something that happened.' This cannot be 'one of those things'... This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance. Ohh. These strange things happen all the time."

People, critics especially, like to argue on whether there's a difference between the "favorite" and the "best". I normally belong in the balanced category: I usually pick a favorite movie of mine because I think it is the best. But there are, of course, exceptions to this rule that I've created for myself, and the filmography of Paul Thomas Anderson is so wildly varied and each film feels so different from the last one that I can't just say which Anderson film is the "best".

That being said, I think Magnolia is Paul Thomas Anderson's "best" movie. However, it's not my "favorite" Paul Thomas Anderson movie (We'll get more on that one later in the retrospective). I feel like I have to categorize each Anderson film in its own section. Hard Eight is his "worst" movie (Well, "worst" is too harsh because it's still good; "least-favorite" could work too), while Boogie Nights is his most "fun, entertaining" movie. You get the idea.

But I feel like Magnolia is his "best" movie (so far; there's still a chance for The Master to take that prize). The reason being that this is the film in which Anderson employs all of his signature techniques and themes into one operatic magnum opus. It's his biggest film, it's his most ambitious film, it's populated with some of his most well-written characters, and it's his most vivacious. It is also his most mysterious, and the one that seems to be his most metaphorical, especially in regards to its crazy, practically improbable finale. But we'll get to that later...

A usual plot synopsis of Magnolia is impossible considering the berth of characters and storylines that are built into the film. So here's a more simplified version: A group of seemingly unrelated lives (Tom Cruise, John C. Reilly, Phillip Baker Hall, Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Jason Robards, Melora Walters, Jeremy Blackman, and many more) coincide with one another during one, single 24-hour period in Los Angeles.

If you think about it, many other films have done the "intertwined lives" plot (Crash, Traffic, Pulp Fiction, the majority of Alejandro González Iñárritu's work) but none have done it the way Paul Thomas Anderson does it in Magnolia. Whereas most of these types of movies are structured by telling all of one story, then all of another, and repeating the process until the bigger picture is revealed, Magnolia is the exact opposite because it always exists in the big picture. It switches from story to story relentlessly, frequently, and sporadically in no particular order or pattern.

There is really no clear-cut protagonist in Magnolia. When that happens in movies, it usually means that it's hard for an emotional connection to be made since there's no emotional "center" to latch onto. But that's not the case in Magnolia. There is an emotional center because the connective tissue that ties these stories together is more than superficial. While there are many different storylines, almost all of them tell the same kind of story with the same themes in mind. I'll get more in-depth on this aspect later when we get to the theme discussion.

Like every Paul Thomas Anderson film, the performances are fantastic. All of them. Not only does it feature one of Tom Cruise's most memorable roles as sexual deviant Frank TJ Mackey, but I personally think that it features the greatest John C. Reilly performance ever. Most mainstream audiences see Reilly as "that guy from Step Brothers", and many of them are unfortunately unaware that he's so much more than that, especially as a dramatic actor. And of all the countless roles he's done, his performance as Officer Jim Kurring is beautifully executed. He's shy without being juvenile, soft-spoken without being a total wimp, and heart-breakingly sad without being overly depressing to watch. He's so breathtakingly sympathetic and wonderful to watch, and he displays the character's inner demons without having to be brooding or depressed. I honestly couldn't think of another person to play him. It's the best display of John C. Reilly's gifts as an actor, and he turns what could've been a borderline depressing character into something warm and wonderful to watch.

Also on display is Paul Thomas Anderson's love of the long-takes. Here, they're less playful than they were in Boogie Nights, but they're able to create a certain anxiety to the film. Take, for example, the scene in which Stanley Spector, boy-genius extraordinaire, is being whisked away into the television studio to prepare for a game-show.

The second he enters the studio, the camera circles around him and continues to follow him as he's being led by an assistant and his father. The camera circles again in the hallway as his father separates from his son to go to the green room where all the parents of the contestants are watching. The camera careens and swerves ever so slightly, but just enough to feel dizzying as it moves through the turns of the hallways. The camera circles again to follow another assisstant simply moving from one room to the next. As its following her, she moves to another room and you can see Stanley and the other assisstant walking through the hall at the end of the first one. The camera follows them into the elevator, and waits inside with them as Stanley asks about the TV station's meteorology department. The elevator opens and the camera follows them out to the next hallway. Another assisstant of some sort passes by them and the camera decides to follow her, circling again to face her back. The shot finally cuts.

Traditionally shot, this would've just been a normal scene in which characters go from point A to point B. Shot in one take while switching perspectives and gliding along the hallways, however, it ends up evoking the chaotic nature of the TV station. It also speaks directly to the theme of connections as it seamlessly switches perspectives in order to go from one character to the next. Aside from that, however, most of the long-takes in Magnolia aren't as showy as they were in Boogie Nights, instead being used for dialogue sequences as characters speak almost the entirety of a monologue in a single take.

The other technique returning from Boogie Nights, the one that continually evolves all throughout Anderson's work, is the audiovisual filmmaking. In my Boogie Nights piece, I talked in length about the use of the firecrackers in the drug-dealer scene to create tension, while only briefly mentioning the use of the soundtrack in the film. In Magnolia, however, the music is essential.

Magnolia is a walloping three hours, but it never ever feels that long. If anything the first two hours go by so smoothly they feel like the first hour of most movies, while it's only the final hour that seems to slow things down. The incredibly propulsive pacing is thanks in large part to Jon Brion's score. Throughout the first two hours of the film, especially while the game show is rolling, the score is constant. It almost feels like the movie's heartbeat. A single track will continue on even when a scene ends and moves on, acting almost like a sort of connective tissue that ties everything together.

Then, the final hour comes along and it's mostly absent of music, with the exception of a montage set to Aimee Mann's Wise Up. We've seen this type of scene before. Where the movie cuts between all the characters going through their own troubles while being set to a sad song with appropriately fitting lyrics. But much like what Anderson did with the firecrackers in Boogie Nights, in this scene, he takes something that is usually only audio in nature, and melds it with the visual to create something both unique and affecting. Rather than just having the montage being set to the song Wise Up, instead all of the characters sing along, further establishing their ethereal connection.

The characters become so connected, that a lot of people still consider the main theme of the film to be that of coincidence and chance. I don't see that to be the case. Coincidence is just a mechanic used to connect these different stories. But the stories are also being connected by the film's true theme. I said I'd get back to this point, so here it is...

While there are numerous storylines to keep track of in Magnolia, they involve you emotionally because they're all variations of the same theme. Hell, they're all almost the same story. The story of children being abused by their parents. Of that pain and hurt persisting over generations. And of a simple act of kindness being able to change everything. Yup, it's that theme again. As was also demonstrated in Hard Eight and Boogie Nights, fathers and father-figures make-up the central-relationships in the film. But in Magnolia, they aren't just a primary relationship, they're also the catalyst for all the heavy drama in the film.

Melora Walters's Claudia Gator was sexually-assaulted by her father Jimmy Gator played by Phillip Baker Hall, who comes to tell his now crack-addicted daughter that he's dying of cancer only to be shunned by her. Jimmy is also the host of the game-show that Stanley Spector is participating in. Stanley, himself, is only in the game show because his father wants the winnings, and he will act openly hostile to Stanley if he screws up even a little bit. This relationship is a parallel to William H. Macy's Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, who won the show when he was a boy, is now grown up with all the money taken away by his father, and is now broke with no job. Speaking of the game-show, it's produced by Earl Partridge, who, much like the show's host Jimmy, is also dying of cancer and has also done something heinous to his child. In his case, he abandoned his son and wife who suffered from the same disease. His son grew up to be the expert womanizer Frank TJ Mackey played by Tom Cruise, while his trophy wife played by Julianne Moore is addicted to her husband's pills after realizing that she might actually love him.

All of these characters have been affected by their fathers/their children, or in the case of Mrs. Partridge, the father-figure (Though you can make the assumption that she had daddy-issues too). It's not only what ends up defining them and shaping who they have or will become, it's also what connects them all in the intertwining structure, and gives the film that emotional center.

Plus, it's worth noting that Anderson's second-favorite theme--that of loneliness and alienation--are in play, actually as a result of the father-figures theme. For example, there are only two genuinely good characters in the film: Nurse Phil (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly). While Phil doesn't seem to have any demons, he does feel the need to help Earl Partridge confront his own demons by helping him find his son Frank. Does he feel the need to make sure his patients never die alone? Does this suggest at some personal demons in which he was unable to fulfill another dying patient's wish?

And what of Jim? Jim seems to want to help out Claudia and make sure she isn't alone, but it also seems to be in service of his own lonesomeness. Whenever we do see him in private, he stays at home only to pray by himself, and when he's in his car, he basically just talks to an imaginary person on the passenger seat. He actually feels like a distant cousin to Barry Egan, the protagonist of Anderson's next film Punch-Drunk Love (Which we'll discuss in the next installment). He's sad because he's alone, he's alone because he's awkward, he's awkward because he's shy, he's shy because he has too muh kindness in his heart.

In a way, this is the Paul Thomas Anderson-iest film that Paul Thomas Anderson has ever made. All of the themes are on display, and it's all executed in his most operatic and epically scoped style imaginable. And what's more, he decides to tie everything together with an incredible, surreal, awe-inducing finale that also counts as one of the greatest uses of the deus ex machina ever conceived.

As each of the characters are dealing with their own personal crises, one single unifying event brings them all either to salvation or at the very least a second chance at things. This is the scene where all of a sudden, frogs literally rain from the sky, and the storm ends up affecting each character in different ways. Jimmy Gator, as he's about to commit suicide, is instead knocked unconscious by a frog that falls through a sun-light, Claudia ends up reuniting with her mother, Donnie is saved by Officer Kurring who gives him a second chance to return the money he stole, and Earl Partridge is able to wake up for one last breath to see that his son has found him. The only character that isn't perplexed by the frog-storm is Stanley Spector, who sits alone in his oasis of books in the school library while he looks out the window and simply says, "This is happening. This is something that happens."

Most everyone debated the ending when it came out, arguing whether it was too out of place, or if there's any sort of hidden meaning behind it, even though it's very obvious considering the references to Exodus 8:2 in the Bible in which God unleashes a plague of frogs on the populace of Egypt. But never mind the Biblical connections, even though they are beautifully implied. What's important is that these characters were given their second chance, and the means in which they are given that chance elevate their situations into that further realm of destiny and fate that the film cleverly disguises as coincidence and chance.

Magnolia is very much a masterpiece. A divisive masterpiece to be sure, and not nearly as accessible as Boogie Nights was, but it's so fierce in its evocation of emotions and the way that each scene strives to give you a certain feel whether it be through camerawork or sound. It's a master-class with all the best sorts of elements: inventive filmmaking, even better writing, and a perfect ensemble cast. And that's why Magnolia is, in my eyes, the "best" film that Paul Thomas Anderson has made.

So you'd think that Anderson couldn't top himself on this one. With such an ambitious, mammoth-sized production, you'd think that he wouldn't be able to do something else like it. And indeed, Paul Thomas Anderson seemed to believe that too. So he decided to go in the opposite direction and try something entirely new. Something you wouldn't expect the director of Boogie Nights and Magnolia to do. Something like, oh I dunno, a surrealist romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler.

Next time, we'll discuss the gorgeously bizarre Punch-Drunk Love, and see whether the tricky shift in style pays off.

See ya next time! Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to--No! NO! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective Part 2: Boogie Nights

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 19:45:00 +0000

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective continues! Last time, we took a look at Anderson's debut feature, Hard Eight (or Sydney, in some circles). Today, however, we're going to examine the film that put Paul Thomas Anderson on the map: the landmark Boogie Nights.

If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. Also keep in mind that while I managed to keep away from spoilers for my Hard Eight discussion, I will most definitely be spoiling a lot of the best scenes in Boogie Nights. You've been warned.

With that being said, it's time to get hard for Paul Thomas Anderson's look at the porn-industry of the '70s, Boogie Nights.

"This is the film they're going to remember me by."

Like I said in the last entry of this retrospective, Hard Eight was very good, but it wasn't great. And while it definitely displayed Paul Thomas Anderson's potential, it was only a small fraction of what he had in store for audiences. It wasn't until a year later in 1997, when Boogie Nights debuted, that Paul Thomas Anderson really broke out. Good as Hard Eight was, it's a test-run in comparison to Boogie Nights.

Boogie Nights is the epic, two-and-a-half hour rags-to-riches-to-rags-again story of Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), a teenager in 1977 working as a waiter in a San Fernando Valley night-club with big dreams of becoming a star. He is also gifted with something special: An incredibly large penis. At the nightclub, an acclaimed pornography director named Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) sees the "talent" hidden in Eddie, and knows that it is something worth sharing with the world. ``I got a feeling,'' he tells him, ``that behind those jeans is something wonderful just waiting to get out.''

After Eddie is kicked out of the house by his protective mother, he decides to run off and join Jack Horner and become an actor in his films, where he meets a colorful cast of characters ranging from the red-headed hottie Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), the wannabe songwriter/magician Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), the creepy superfan Scotty (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the stereo-aficianado Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), sad-sack cameraman Little Bill (William H. Macy) whose wife is always being nailed by someone each week, Rollergirl (Heather Graham) who never takes off her skates, and much more.

Almost overnight, Eddie and his massive endowment become a huge success in the adult film world. Changing his name to Dirk Diggler, his dreams of becoming a big, bright, shining star are a reality. Then, everything goes downhill in the turn of the 80s, when their producer is thrown in prison, a cocaine addiction threatens to consume Eddie/Dirk's ego, and the invention of videotape is forever transforming the porn industry for what Jack Horner believes to be the worst rather than the better.

There are a number of things that make Boogie Nights great. It has great drama, funny comedy, fantastic performances, incredible dialogue, and stylish direction. Yet at the same time, it's really hard to pinpoint what it is that makes everything come together. On paper, this kind of story should be a mess. Too many characters, questionable subject matter that is almost impossible to take seriously, a curious melding of drama, comedy, romance, bloody violence, crime-thriller, and even a little bit of horror, and what is (quite honestly) a rather standard story of nobody-to-somebody success.

If I can pinpoint the exact reason why everything comes together in Boogie Nights so well, it would have to be this: Everything in this movie just feels alive. Each set is filled with details, each character has its own nuances (Even the smallest roles), and the way the camera moves and the soundtrack plays gives the movie its own sense of life and vitality. There's no other movie like it, except arguably Anderson's next film Magnolia (Which we'll get to next time).

So let's get to the real meat of this series of articles: What makes this distinctly a Paul Thomas Anderson film. A number of things, starting with the Steadicam.

As I mentioned before, Paul Thomas Anderson has always been a fan of long, steadicam shots, and while there were hints of that in Hard Eight, it wasn't until Boogie Nights that he really started to fall in love with the mechanic. There are tons of long-takes in Boogie Nights, each of them gliding through large crowds of people thanks to the Steadicam. Each one is a thing to behold. And as I mentioned in the last entry, they each have their own purpose.

Take the infamous opening, three-minute shot, for instance. We open with the title (Depicted as a neon sign on a building) as The Emotions' Best of My Love jams in the background, and the camera slowly and smoothly glides from the night-time streets of Sherman Way to the inside of the night-club where Eddie works. That shot alone, coupled with the music, is more effective at setting up the location and time-period than a simple title card could've. And what's more, Anderson uses the shot to introduce the audience to almost every major character by just waltzing in on their individual conversations, without having to break things up with their own individual introduction.

The most effective use of the long-take in this film, however, is (I told you there would be spoilers) the scene in which William H. Macy's Little Bill snaps. The shot begins with Bill entering the party looking for his wife. After wading through the crowds asking random people where she is, he hears loud grunts of satisfaction coming from a nearby room. He walks over to the noise and opens the door to find, sure enough, his wife having sex with another man. The camera doesn't even show what's inside the room; just the composure of William H. Macy speaks volumes more. The shot still following him, Bill then exits the house to where his car is, and pulls a gun out of a compartment. Casually, he loads it with bullets, his calmness and the fact that we're seeing it unfold in real-time enhancing the tension. He walks into the room, and shoots both his wife and her lover dead. The take finally cuts when we see the party's reaction to the gunshots.

The use of the long-take in this sequence isn't flashy, by any stretch. But it's all the better for it. Something about its cold simplicity just meshes well with the creepy casualness that Little Bill goes into exacting his revenge. By holding the shot, and following the act through every step of the way until we finally realize what's actually going on, there's a real sense of discomfort and tension that we wouldn't get in a traditionally shot and cut scene. It's a stroke of suspense-genius.

While the long tracking shots are impressive all throughout Boogie Nights, what not enough people bring up is that Boogie Nights is the film in which we're introduced to yet another favorite technique of Anderson's: Audiovisual filmmaking. It should be obvious to anybody that watches movies that specific sounds can evoke certain emotions in a film. But the way that Anderson melds sound and image is so intrinsic, it's become something of a staple. It's hard to describe just what exactly I mean by this term, so let me just give a couple examples.

While the memorable soundtrack and music certainly help, it's the finer details that really make this technique stand out. Take for instance, the scene that switches between Dirk Diggler having to resort to prostitution to get money and Jack Horner resorting to amateur shooting on videotape to make his porn. Throughout this scene, a strange, creepy, pulsating sound keeps playing as the situations for the two men grow worse and worse.

The best example of this audiovisual technique in Boogie Nights is most definitely the scene in which Dirk, Reed, and Todd Parker go to sell some fake-cocaine to scam a dealer for money. As they enter the house, a Chinese man is randomly lighting firecrackers. The scene is already tense enough because we know that their scam could be figured out at any moment, and the dealer in question starts to act very strange and unusual towards the three. But adding to the intensity of the scene is the intrusive "BANG!" of the firecrackers. An element as simple as a periodic "BANG!" every 30 seconds or so adds so much to the scene. It almost becomes unbearably uncomfortable.

Later on in Anderson's career, the audiovisual technique will be evolved and eventually perfected. But another thing that constantly evolves in his films are the themes that connect them all.

As I always like to do in these Retrospectives, it's time to see how Boogie Nights contributes to the themes that Paul Thomas Anderson uses in almost every film. Last time, in the Hard Eight discussion, I mentioned that all but one of his films have something to do with father-figures, and the rocky relationship that they have with their sons. This is most definitely at play here in Boogie Nights, with the character Jack Horner stepping into the father role. While he treats sex with a detached eye and a business mindset, it's still worth noting that his porn empire feels almost like a family.

In fact, you can argue that all of Anderson's films have more to do with dysfunctional families than dysfunctional father-figures. Especially in the case of Boogie Nights this is true. In fact, one of the oddest relationships in the film is the one between Dirk and Amber Waves, who works with him in porn-scenes but at the same time views him as a son, while he sees her as a mother-figure. Despite that, I always felt that Anderson put the most emphasis on the father in his films (Most memorably in There Will Be Blood).

However, there's more to this than just Jack Horner acting like a father to Eddie and the rest of the Horner Productions crew. Right? Well, maybe not. That is, unless, there is a second theme that you can find in all of Anderson's work that coincides directly with this one. Oh, wait...there is. And that theme, my friends, is the all too relatable theme of alienation/loneliness.

If you think about it, the greatest fear that every major character in a Paul Thomas Anderson film has is dying either alone or unrecognized (Which is just another dimension of "alone). Sydney of Hard Eight wanted to atone for his sins by having a chance at raising a son of his own, Daniel Plainview of There Will Be Blood wanted to build an empire, Frank Mackey of Magnolia felt the need to "tame" women, Barry Egan of Punch-Drunk Love just wanted someone who understood him, and almost all of the characters in Boogie Nights are tragically missing or striving for something in their lives.

Eddie's dream has always been to be a star, but when he finally has the chance to become one, he ends up having to create parental-figures in the form of Jack Horner and Amber Waves in order to not feel alone. Amber Waves herself is having difficulties being able to visit her real son due to the efforts of her ex-husband. Jack Horner is so obsessed with turning pornography into something artistic, so that he could be recognized in some way.

If you think about it, the fact that all of the characters in Boogie Nights are, in some way, a family is the only thing keeping them all from being emotional wrecks, even when they have reached the peak of fame and fortune. And sure enough, when they start to disband to further their own individual goals as the film progresses, they end up going through their own personal hells.

While Boogie Nights is immensely fun and entertaining, its treatment of all the various characters in the film is also sensitive and empathetic. In Paul Thomas Anderson fashion, everything is given its own nuance and much care has been put into the crafting of these individuals and the telling of their stories.

Boogie Nights was certainly ambitious and epic in scale, but could Anderson top himself on both those departments? Well, with the clout to have final cut on all of his projects, a whole slew of popular actors eager to work with him, and a script that nears three hours in length, that was what he intended to do, no matter what doubts there were that he couldn't do it.

Next time, we look at the massively scaled, multi-layered Magnolia and see that for all the ideas and style on display in Boogie Nights, it could still be considered just the beginning.

See ya next time! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to jump off this building and commit suicide. And I sure hope nothing breaks my fall...

The Paul Thomas Anderson Retrospective Part 1: Hard Eight

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 02:45:00 +0000

In just a few weeks, the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film, The Master, is going to finally hit theaters after many years of waiting since There Will Be Blood in 2007, his last movie. While The Master may be under the radar for most audiences, it's one of the most highly anticipated movies amongst cinephiles, for good reason. Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best and most important directors of our time, and any new film of his is a sure-fire event.

So much of an event, that I've decided that my second Director Retrospective will focus on him. Starting today, we'll look back at Paul Thomas Anderson's career and see his interesting evolution and maturation as a director and a screenwriter, starting with his first feature Hard Eight, and ending with my official review of The Master starring Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Like my Christopher Nolan retrospective, I'll be looking at the themes and stylistic quirks that connect each film, and see how he grows and "learns" with each subsequent film.

Also worth noting: This review contains zero spoilers! Hooray!

With all that being said, let's begin with his debut: Hard Eight.

"You think, what, you can walk through this life without being punished?"

If you'd seen Hard Eight when it came out in 1996, maybe you'd like it, maybe you wouldn't, but you most likely wouldn't suspect that director Paul Thomas Anderson would become one of the biggest auteurs in the industry. This is a very quintessential "first film" from a growing auteur. You can tell that he has a voice, and all the pieces for a great film are there, but it just doesn't really leave much of an impact when it's all over.

However, it's still interesting to discuss this film when comparing it with the rest of Anderson's filmography, because you can see just about all of his techniques, motifs, and thematic callbacks starting with this film. They aren't really fully developed, but it's fascinating to see where it all started. It's like looking at a famous person you admire and going back through history to see what he or she was like as a child.

Hard Eight begins with a man named John (John C. Reilly) down on the dumps because he lost a bunch of money gambling in Las Vegas. He was attempting to win some money himself at the casinos in order to pay for his mother's funeral, but he's come out unlucky. As he's slouching against the walls of a nearby diner, an old man named Sydney (Phillip Baker Hall) goes to him and puts him back up on his feet by teaching him a way to abuse the perks of rate-cards and netting thousands of dollars at the casinos. John, of course, barely questions why Sydney is being so helpful towards him thanks to the success this trick has brought him.

Sydney continues to help and in a way raise John for two years until an incident in Reno happens, in which John is embroiled in a violent dispute that ends with him holding a man hostage. And on top of that, a mysterious figure named Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) knows something about Sydney's dark past and threatens to reveal it to John.

Hard Eight is, on a technical level, a flawless movie. All of the acting is fantastic, the script is incredibly tight, the dialogue is precise, and it ends on a wonderfully ambiguous note. But there's something about the movie that feels very distant and cold. That could've been the point, but I'm not sure if it was the best fit for this story.

But whatever. I'm not here to review the movie. What I am here to do is see how this film truly does represent the "birth" of Paul Thomas Anderson's "voice", and how it even connects to his later films. And if you look closely, you'll find many of his signature elements at play in this film.

Anderson has always been a fan of long-takes, whether it's the opening scenes of Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love, or as he twists and turns through the hallways of the TV station in Magnolia. But unlike most directors, Anderson never uses long-takes for mere gimmickry or showing off. In fact, most times you don't even notice that the take was continuous until the jarring cut at the end.

Hard Eight opens with a long-take as Sydney stands in front of the diner and slowly walks up to John. There's actually a purpose to this take, like most of Anderson's long-takes. We can see just at the edge of the screen that Sydney has been watching John for a while before he walks up to him. This very subtly hints at the fact that he knows something about John, and gives there relationship a certain tension and uneasiness. And as the camera follows him, the fact that we are with Sydney throughout the whole scene and almost see it through his eyes (We never see his face until it cuts to them talking in the diner) gives it a chilling quality I can not really put into words, but it certainly adds to the tension.

Then there's Phillip Baker Hall's brilliant performance. Paul Thomas Anderson has a knack for getting the most out of his actors. Each and eery film of his has at least one awards-worthy performance. Hell, he can even get Adam Sandler to create one of the most nuanced and subtle comedic performances ever put to film (Which we'll get to much later in this retrospective). With just about each and every actor he works with, he creates a memorable character that puts their talents to their maximum effect.

In the case of Phillip Baker Hall's Sydney, he creates a character that has to show very clear demons that haunt him to this day, while still keeping a calm and collected composure throughout the entire film: A combination that's easier said than done. If there's one genuinely great element in Hard Eight, however, it's the way that Hall actually conveys this effortlessly.

Not only does he pull off the combo, he actually breaks the rule of actors using their face to convey emotions by keeping it deadly still almost the entire time. The nuances come in through very subtle inflections in his voice. We truly get a feeling that Sydney does care about John, and that he wants to atone for some great sin that he's done in the past, but there are hints of something darker lurking within him, and you can see it eating away at him in the way he seems to be so overly nice to John, and then in those moments where he tries his damnedest to maintain his professionalism when John's embroiled in a "hostage situation". The performance is just masterful.

Of course, Anderson's writing also helps. There's something about Paul Thomas Anderson's dialogue that evokes Tarantino while also being the absolute opposite of the talkative writer/director. It has that same Tarantino-ish "flair", in that the dialogue just sounds very cool and stylized, but it doesn't have that same meandering quality that Tarantino's scripts usually have. Instead, Anderson's dialogue is usually stripped down to its bare essentials. His characters speak how they feel, they don't waste much time with meaningless small-talk or pleasantries, and go straight to the point. As a result, every single piece of dialogue feels important either on a plot level or on a character level, and Paul Thomas Anderson just gets better at it as he develops throughout his filmography.

Now, as for the big reveal on what Sydney's "haunted past" is, I don't really wanna spoil it since this is certainly the most underseen of Anderson's work, but I will say that any Anderson fan should seek this film out because it is a rather raw, bare summation of the main theme that connects all of Anderson's work together.

Back in my Nolan retrospective, one thing I liked to do was find certain thematic callbacks and character-types that Nolan liked to use in every film of his. And almost every auteur in the industry has that one "thing" that connects their work. Nolan was obsessed with the relationships between order and chaos, subjectivity and objectivity, logic and emotional interference, you get the idea. And then there's guys like Terrence Malick, David Cronenberg, and Darren Aronofsky, who seem to focus solely on different variations of one single theme in every movie (Malick: Man's relationship to nature/the universe; Cronenberg: Relationship between the psyche and the body; Aronofsky: The nature of obsesssion and perfection as something unattainable).

With Paul Thomas Anderson, all but one of his films deal with a very interesting theme: Fathers and sons. Whether it be biological fathers, or father-surrogates, paternity is something you will find in every Paul Thomas Anderson film (except for Punch-Drunk Love, but we'll get to what makes that film an interesting case much later).

It's very interesting to see this dynamic play out in Hard Eight, because it's very clear from the start that Sydney is a sure-fire father-figure for John. But there's also the added mystery of the "why". Why is Sydney so drawn to John? What does he see in him? What makes him feel a duty to take care of him?

Without spoiling anything, it does say something rather interesting about the nature of father-son relationships. That perhaps men just connect with son-figures on a purely instinctual level. Sydney didn't have to help John out, especially considering getting even remotely close to him elevates his chances of John discovering the terrible truth of what he did. But he does it anyway. To find redemption? To atone? Out of guilt? Such is the plight of Sydney: No matter how much he genuinely loves John, it will lead to his downfall somewhere down the road. And yet, in the meantime, he will continue to take care of John anyway. Because that's what fathers do.

Hard Eight isn't a great movie, but it's a very damn good one, and an appropriately impressive debut for Paul Thomas Anderson. But, like I said before, it's only the beginning for Anderson. Much like Christopher Nolan, it wasn't until his follow-up that he announced himself as the real deal. Next time, we will tackle the epic comedy Boogie Nights, and see Anderson evolve as a filmmaker with each subsequent movie.

See ya next time! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to change my name to Jack Hardy. I'LL SHOW MY MOM THAT I CAN BE SOMEBAHDAY!

American Horror Story: Asylum Is Gonna Be Awesome

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:15:00 +0000

American Horror Story is awesome. It's also silly, stupid, ridiculous, lurid, cheesy, and a whole slew of adjectives that are popping in my head at random. But I fucking love it.

There's really no show like American Horror Story, love it or hate it. Never have I seen a show go so over-the-top in just about every aspect in such a gleefully absurd and enjoyable fashion. Is it the greatest show on television now? Far from it (Any answer that isn't Breaking Bad or Louie is downright wrong), but it's certainly one of if not the most enjoyable.

Not only did American Horror Story really push it in how much combinations of graphic violence and sex you can cram onto a network program (True Blood doesn't count in this regard since it's HBO), it also pushed the limits of the amounts of insane plot twists you can cram onto a single season of television. I dunno if it's okay to spoil things for this article, but just in case you're interested, here's a spoiler warning for Season 1...

*Ahem*

Every single major character except for Jessica Lange pretty much dies by the end of the show. And not only that, they're all now ghosts in the creepy house haunting the next groups of move-ins for reasons that I simply can not explain for fear of being too confusing and convoluted.

You'd think that they couldn't top something as batshit as that for Season 2. Thankfully, however, the creators have seemingly acknowledged that act as well and have done something I don't think I've seen another show do in recent memory: Start from scratch for Season 2.

Season 2 (Dubbed American Horror Story: Asylum) has an entirely new setting, storyline, and cast (With the exception of the returning Jessica Lange, which is a wise choice considering she was one of the best things about the show). Instead of the cliche haunted house, we have the slightly more original setting of a creepy mental asylum run by a suspicious staff that is run by a fittingly creepy nun (Jessica Lange).

Sounds like enough crazy to fill an entire season, but if that still isn't enough, check out the insanely creepy and inventive imagery from these teasers...

Yeah, it looks pretty insane.

But is that STILL not enough for you? How about the fact that this season will have Nazis, Serial Killers, Aliens, and Mutants. If that's not a fucking insane combination, than nothing is.

And if that STILL. ISN'T. ENOUGH...how about the promise of seeing Maroon 5's Adam Levine getting gruesomely killed?

American Horror Story: Asylum premiers this October, and I'm crazy excited.

Cosmopolis Movie Review

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[Cosmopolis
Written & Directed by David Cronenberg
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, and Sarah Gordon
MPAA: R - For Some Strong Sexual Content Including Graphic Nudity, Violence, and Language]

I can't recommend David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis to that many people. That isn't to say that it's bad. It's not "great" by any means, but it's far from bad. In fact, it's an incredibly provocative effort from Cronenberg, the director of classics like The Fly and Videodrome, and it's certainly an improvement over his last dud, A Dangerous Method. And while my initial viewing experience was very mixed, it's grown on me the more and more I've thought of it. The problem, of course, is that the sort of audience that would appreciate this film is very, very small, thus making it very hard to review.

The film is based on a Don Delillo novel of the same name, which I haven't read, but I have heard that this is a very close adaptation of the novel, to the point that it could alienate many viewers unfamiliar with the source material. It certainly alienated me numerous times, but not enough to make me appreciate it less.

Cosmopolis follows a single day in the life of Eric Parker (Robert Pattinson), a 28-year-old billionaire, who decides to ride across Manhattan just for a haircut. That's the simplified version of the plot, pretty much. Doesn't sound like much, huh? More than half of the film takes place within his high-tech limo, and along the way there, he's interrupted by traffic from all sorts of different sources such as a Presidential visit, an anti-capitalist protest, and the funeral of a famous musician. During traffic, he has different conversations with his many advisors, employees, friends, lovers, and other random people about the nature of wealth. And all along the way, he rapidly starts to lose more and more of his wealth as the car ride goes on.

Still doesn't sound like much? How about the addition of David Cronenberg's precise direction, which transforms this simple journey from point A to point B into a surreal descent into a one-percenter's personal nightmare? And what about when you add in the great performances from Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Juliette Binoche, and others in a large, admirable cast? Now we're talking.

It's best to think of Cosmopolis as a film that doesn't take place in the real world. Everything about Cosmopolis is just slightly bent towards the deep-end, just enough to make you feel uneasy. Not a whole lot, but more in a Lynchian sense where it feels almost like some sinister force is trying to trick you into believing this is all real while settling in on a creepy uncanny-valley of surrealism. The characters aren't so much real people as they are personifications of abstract concepts and ideas that range from political, to philosophical, to socioeconomic. Shorter version: It takes place in the personal hell of its protagonist.

Cronenberg's direction could be seen as a bit too cold for people to really connect with. He makes sure that every character speaks in almost robotic tones, talking about dense, abstract concepts such as free-market consumerism or other things that sound almost made up as if they're talking in their own secret code. Plus, this is the kind of dialogue-driven movie in which the dialogue takes complete center-stage. There aren't many scenes in which music is accompanied with the talking, the characters speak emotionlessly, and what with much of the movie taking place in confined spaces, there isn't a whole lot of variety in the visuals or the camera movement. Many scenes are literally just two different angles simply observing a conversation about these abstract concepts of finance & wealth and how they are connected with human nature.

Therefore, I completely understand why many people would outright hate this movie, or at least be bored to tears by it. In fact, there were many moments in the film where my interest started to wane a bit. However, I do think that that coldness is the whole point of Cosmopolis. Each of these characters have been imbued with such wealth that they've lost their own souls and have literally ceased to be human in this film's universe.

Because of this, there was never a moment where the movie lost me on a thematic level, even though the pacing was inconsistent. It's a subtly eerie film, save for three or four very overblown moments involving rats, pastry assassins (really), and a character pointing a gun at his own hand. I'll admit that I was expecting the film to be much crazier, considering Cronenberg's pedigree and the fact that the trailer made it look like his older gore-centric films like Videodrome and eXistenZ. But even though it's more talky then I thought, it still has its moments of Cronenbergian weirdness.

Of course, I also need to point out that the dialogue is also the main problem with the film. I normally don't mind a dialogue driven movie, so long as the dialogue is interesting. Here, the dialogue is certainly "intelligent". There's no denying that. But that doesn't make it entertaining. I get the reason why the characters talk in such emotionless tones, I covered that reason already. But that doesn't make the movie any more watchable. Not only is the speaking style robotic, the dialogue is so dense and impenetrable that for those who either a.) aren't already well-versed in Wall Street-speak or b.) are uninitiated to the original source material, a lot of the scenes will come across as sheer nonsense.

Seeing how as I belonged in both of those categories, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. This is one of those movies that's easier to admire than to actually enjoy or embrace viewing. All the pieces are there: Smart script, good actors, assured direction, creepy vibe, strong source material, interesting thematic substance. The only problem is that it doesn't find a way to make it entirely watchable. There are individual scenes that are pretty much at the level of greatness, but they're few and far between lots of scenes of, as Ebert perfectly put it, "Enigmatic people who speak in morose epigrams about vague universal principles they show no sign of understanding."

The one thing that made the long-stretches of dialogue watchable enough to make it to the end was the performances. Robert Pattinson gives the best performance of his career. That may not sound like much considering his career, but it is quite good. Other actors fare well in brief bits, such as Juliette Binoche as an assisstant, and Mathieu Amalric as a "pastry assassin" (again: really), but the best out of all of them is Paul Giamatti, who is chilling and intense in the one scene he is in at the film's finale. His exchange with Pattinson is one of the most unnerving and intense one-to-one conversations I've seen in recent memory.

However, there's a problem that many of the actors exhibit: It's clear they have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Don't get me wrong, Robert Pattinson is quite good. He's chillingly mechanical (in a good way) and finds good use of his suaveness this time around in comparison to the insufferable Twilight franchise. But it's still pretty apparent that he's definitely completely lost when he discusses concepts of capitalism and wealth in detail. The dialogue itself already feels like it was ripped out of a college-level philosophy textbook, but try as Pattinson does, he only partially succeeds at getting us invested in what he's talking about.

The main reason to see the movie, of course, is David Cronenberg. He has such control over this film that it's really hard to despise. Even though the pacing is certainly inconsistent in how it careens from philosophical debates to scenes of graphic sex, hardcore violence, and surreal visuals, Cronenberg's direction always remains assured. It's not like it's paced like that by mistake. He makes sure to hold each scene long enough while saving the weird stuff for just the right moment for a jolt of energy. The only reason that the pacing is problematic is script issues rather than actual pacing issues.

All in all, I'm not sure whether I go down as positive or just indifferent on the film. There's enough here to admire and enjoy from the style to the performances, but it's bogged down by the overly abstract dialogue and inconsistent pacing. Plus, I can't imagine a single mainstream viewer not totally lost watching this movie at all. If you're a fan of David Cronenberg, the Don DeLillo novel, or anything in the experimental spectrum of moviegoing, go see this. But if you're not a fan of either of those things, and you think you'll also have a problem understanding the dense dialogue like I did, then avoid it at all costs.

Final Verdict: Cosmopolis is compelling, chilling, and intelligent. It's also frustratingly boring at certain moments, too abstract and dense in its dialogue, and incredibly cold, making it resistant to really connecting with the audience. That may be the point, and it's a point I admire, but that doesn't make it any less problematic. Thankfully, Cronenberg's fantastic direction and the talented cast make up for its pacing and dialogue issues enough to lean me towards the positive side, though I have a feeling that it won't be enough for most other viewers.

That is all.

If you liked this article and would like to read more, you can do so by clicking the following links: CinEffect on BlogSpot, CinEffect on Tumblr, my own personal tumblr, and my Twitter account @CGRunyon where you can follow me for more reviews, articles, and other random thoughts about what I like. Also be sure to follow my two friends who help out with CinEffect with their own reviews or podcast cohosting sessions: @TBBucs20 & @ThatGuyBrady.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to protest death to Videodrome. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!!

Paranorman Movie Review

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[Paranorman
Directed by Chris Butler and Sam Fell
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick, and Casey Affleck
MPAA: PG - For Scary Action and Images, Thematic Elements, Some Rude Humor, and Language]

For the two or three of you in the room wondering why I'm not reviewing The Expendables 2 (Which was not good in the slightest bit, by the way) let me just sit down to tell you all that I don't get paid for writing all of these reviews, articles, lists, etc. Therefore, all I really do is take up my time writing, because I love writing about movies (and occasionally games, of course). Because of this, I don't really see the point in just wasting my time complaining about a movie that I hated when I could, instead, direct you all to the movie that you should be seeing instead. That movie is Paranorman, which is not only one of the best movies of 2012, but also the best animated film of the year.

Paranorman is the story of the titular Norman (Voice of Kodi Smit-McPhee, who you may remember from the adaptation of The Road and Let Me In, the American remake of Let The Right One In), a misunderstood outcast who is obsessed with horror movies and has the special gift of talking to the dead. His whole New England neighborhood considers him to be the equivalent of the village-freak, and his increasingly frequent freak-outs get in the way of their tourist celebration of the anniversary of a witch-hunt that took place in their town 300 years ago. However, Norman ends up being their only hope when an ancient curse causes a horde of zombies to rise from their graves, leading to him transforming from the town's embarrassment to their hero.

The synopsis above may not sound that original, but believe me when I say that you don't want to be spoiled. Paranorman, believe it or not, would be the most clever horror/comedy script of the year if not for Cabin in the Woods. But much like Cabin, it's got some great surprises that I honestly didn't see coming, especially surprising considering that this was an animated family adventure. Just when you think you have a grasp of what is going on, a new curveball is thrown in that changes the proceedings, allowing for a satisfying experience that is just as smart as it is charming.

The other surprising thing about Paranorman is that, for a film that is gonna mostly be viewed by children, it treats both the comedy and the horror genre with equal respect. The sight-gags, slapstick, and overall humor is charmingly clever stuff that anyone from any age-group can appreciate; but the film doesn't skimp on horror. Paranorman is rated PG not just because of its frightening imagery and instances of lite zombie gore, but also because it deals with very mature and morbid themes that any fan of horror could appreciate.

The melding of family-friendly humor and horror sensibilties may seem like an unfitting combination, but directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell masterfully meld the tones into its own identity. But the main reason why the combination works is that each of the characters, even the random civilians in the background, are very well-defined and written. Norman is very sympathetic and likeable from the first frame, and he's surrounded by a colorful supporting cast with distinct personalities and quirks that are incredibly amusing to watch, without going overboard in the quirk department.

The movie is very funny, not just in terms of the slapstick, but also because it doesn't treat its audience like morons. It's got some adult humor in a few instances that parents will appreciate, but best of all are the slight nods and references to classic horror (specifically zombie-centered) films that kids can still laugh at and appreciate, even if the reason as to why they're funny flies over their heads. Plus, the humor is smart in how almost all of it comes from the character's personalities rather than being forced out of them just to keep the kids from being bored.

The great voice-acting attributes to this too. Not only is Kodi Smit-McPhee able to sell Norman's outcast nature very well, but he's surrounded by tons of other great, recognizable stars that I honestly had no idea were even in the movie until the end credits came on. Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin) has fun playin against type as the school bully, Anna Kendrick takes a character that could be annoying (the bitchy older sister) and gives it her own nuance and charm, Casey Affleck is hilarious as the thick-headed jock, and John Goodman as Norman's crazy uncle is...well, he's John Freaking Goodman, of course he's awesome.

The absolutely incredible animation is another thing worthy of note, too. Stop-motion is one of those animation forms that we all seem to love, but isn't attempted enough because of how much work must be put into it. Paranorman sets a new standard in stop-motion. Not only is the animation fluid and the visual design imaginative, but the facial expressions on each of the character models are some of the best you'll ever see in the medium. The amount of work and care that must've been put into making this particular film was probably staggering, and it pays off so, so well.

This is also that rare family film that truly has substance, both on the levels of social satire and thematically. Not only is Paranorman a cautionary tale about the dangers of bullying (Only in the most morbid sense), but this very common thread is given more nuance and originality with the addition of some wry social commentary in the form of the strange residents of Norman's town. I'd elaborate more...except I'd rather not spoil another one of the surprises that the film has in store.

Paranorman is another one of those hard-to-review movies because of the fear of spoiling people who haven't seen it yet. As I've mentioned before, there are a surprising amount of twists and turns that the plot goes through, and to give them away to any of you would be a disservice to how wonderfully crafted the writing is.

However, if I can reveal one thing, it's that it all leads up to a climax that is honestly one of the most moving scenes I've seen all year. I'm serious, while the themes that Paranorman touches on have been done before, they're told in an original way, and it's done with a heart and care that's rare in animated films these days. Rather than just ending in a slam-bang action sequence like every other animated movie has to these days, the climax of Paranorman is an emotional one that is done quietly and sensitively, focusing on two characters having a deeply moving exchange that lead to very few dry eyes in the audience.

Forgive me if this review is a little short compared to my usual length, but I'd hate to spoil some of the surprise that this film has to offer. All I can tell you is that you can't miss out on Paranorman. It's a smart family film that any age-group can appreciate, and one of the best you'll see all year. If you have kids, see it (That is, if they're old enough for the material, but they should be fine if they'd seen any of the Harry Potter movies). If you're a horror fan, see it. If you're a proponent of stop-motion animation, for the love of god, see it. Just make sure that you don't miss out on it.

Final Verdict: The smart script and great characters are all that are required to recommend Paranorman. But when you also factor in the gorgeous animation, resonant themes, wonderful humor, and beautifully moving ending to the mix, it's also one of the best movies you'll see this year, and certainly the best one on the animated spectrum.

Side-Bar: I saw the movie in 3D. The 3D didn't hurt or enhance the movie much. Part of me wants to tell you to stay away from the 3D version because of the gloomy color pallette, but there are definitely some instances where it stands out, especially when it's used to make the enhanced effects on the clay models that much more eye-popping. Plus, I can't really fault anything that gives the makers of this movie more rightfully earned cash.

That is all.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to gather my boomstick and lawn-mower. Only the greatest zombie-slaying weapons of all time for me, thank you very much...

Detention Movie Review

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[Detention
Written & Directed by Joseph Kahn
Starring: Josh Hutcherson, Shanley Caswell, and Dane Cook
MPAA: R - For Bloody Violence, Crude and Sexual Content, Nudity, Language, Some Teen Drinking and Drug Use]

There's a reason why non-formula storytelling structure is hardly attempted. Keeping it to a formula means you don't run the risk of alienating the viewer and it makes sure that your story is, at the very least, coherent. And while many of the greatest films are great because while they adhere to a formula the writing is so good that it transcends that formula, many other great movies break the formula and provide for an original experience.

While I like to bring up 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Tree of Life constantly on my reviews, a better example in this case would have to be Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche New York. Synecdoche New York is the kind of movie that purposefully creates a new way of telling its story in the form of a large theater in which a play-director creates a full re-enactment of his own life, to the point that life itself is engulfed in his mammoth magnum opus and starts colliding with his art. This new storytelling method could alienate viewers who aren't open to its original approach, but I personally cry foul at the film's detractors because as hard-to-grasp as it is on a structural level, it was so emotionally complex and thematically beautiful that I was able to go along for the crazy ride, leading to an emotional and tragic climax that lead to my lips quivering in total sadness.

Why do I bring this up? Because I started to notice that while unconventional storytelling structure is rarely tried, in the few moments when it is tried it usually leads to actually very good films, sometimes even masterpieces; probably because the types of people who do bring up these unconventional methods dreamed them up because they were smart people to begin with. Meanwhile the few moments when it doesn't work are actually surprisingly very rare, because most untalented people just stick to trite like the Total Recall remake (Seriously, this may sound kinda dickish, but thank god it's bombing at the box-office).

Detention, however, is that rarity. It has such a wholly original storytelling method that I've never seen before in a movie, let alone thought was even possible, and brings it to us at its most unadultered form. It is also a total mess. A confounding, genre-bending, dizzyingly fast-paced smorgasboard of ideas that never really comes together. Despite that fact, it's actually not as terrible as it could've been, and there is a lot to admire here; but it still doesn't change the fact that this is essentially Cabin in the Woods without the tight screenplay and thematic focus.

Detention is essentially the basic set-up of The Breakfast Club crossed with the stylistic tendencies of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World crossed with the self-referential brand of horror/comedy from Scream with a dash of Cabin in the Woods's meta-text.

The basic hook is that a group of different high-schoolers' lives intersect and finally converge when they're forced into Saturday detention together. Except whereas The Breakfast Club's characters were all embodiments of different high school stereotypes, all of the characters in Detention are embodiments of different teen-movie characters and personalities.

One guy (Josh Hutcherson) is a cool, tough but still misunderstood and bullied outcast going through a love-triangle with a cheerleader (Spencer Locke) who may or may not be going through a Freaky Friday style body-switching movie and an outcast girl (Shanley Caswell) who is going through a Scream 2 style self-referential slasher film. Meanwhile, there are characters that are directly lifted off of Heathers, Back to the Future, Donnie Darko, and even Spider-Man (but by way of Seth Brundle, in this movie). Each of these movies are distilled into their own different subplots which all come together and essentially morph into a single narrative that tasks the kids with saving the world.

If this all sounds like a complete and utter mess, here's a hint: It totally is. It isn't really so much a story than it is a whole set of stories you've seen before in various different teen movies but threaded together into a sort of cinematic vomit: Everything is chewed up and digested together, but it comes out looking like an ugly, unrecognizable mess in which all of those digested elements are all smothered in the director's own indulgence, or in the case of this tortured analogy, bodily fluids.

Because the movie is just a mash-up of completely different genres and tones, there's absolutely zero focus. That may be the point, but that doesn't make it any better as a film. There's no rulebook on how a film should work and different things work for different films, but one thing that every good film has is a focus of some sort, whether it's of an idea, a character's mindset, an emotion, or even just the overall tone. Detention, meanwhile, like most mash-ups, doesn't have something for the viewer to cling to, and as a result, everything fails to resonate. It's too busy referencing things and tries way, way, way too hard at being clever just for cleverness's sake to actually make light of its own main thematic conceit (Which we'll get to in a bit).

Of course, it doesn't help that the pacing is like a 7-year-old boy jacked up on pop-rocks, cartoons, and his own ADD. One review from The Hollywood Reporter said of the pace that it "dares anyone above 25 to keep up". Well I'm 18, and even I couldn't keep up with this movie. Just when you think you have a grasp of what the movie could be about, or what one character could possibly represent, it jumps to a new scene that introduces a new idea that doesn't mesh with everything we've seen prior to it.

It's impossible to get a good sense of what's going on. Even in the similarly stylized and paced Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, we could still keep up because the plot was relatively simple, allowing the viewer to just revel in the rapid-fire sight gags and visual flair, while at the same time appreciate a surprisingly thoughtful study at relationships that had heart, emotion, and most importantly, a soul. In Detention, because there's so much going on at once, we're never able to take a breath and make sense of the way it melds together its myriad of genres, and as a result, it's also impossible to just watch it as a brainless exercise and just go along for the ride, because when a new element is introduced, instead of going with it, you'll just be thinking "What just happened? When was that established?"

Despite all these very major flaws, however, it's not as terrible as a film like this could've been. While the movie definitely lost me by the time Act III rolled in, there was never a moment where I was bored. I wouldn't say I was entertained, either, but through every minute of the movie I was always fascinated to see what crazy, weird direction it would go next.

Most of this has to do with the young cast's appeal, who is able to deliver the whiplash dialogue with charisma and charm, with a special mention going to Shanley Caswell as Riley, the girl in the Scream knock-off, who comes across as the one character who actually has character and a real personality. She and the rest of the cast deliver each line as if they understand what the hell is going on, which is important when you're in a movie that makes less sense than Eraserhead and Donnie Darko combined.

There are only two bad apples in the cast, and ironically, they're both the only recognizable stars. First is Josh Hutcherson, who you may remember as the bland love-interest in this year's The Hunger Games adaptation. Here, he's equally bland as both a character and a love-interest, especially when compared next to the rest of the cast. But he at least fares better than Dane Cook as the principal of the school, who, in Dane Cook fashion, is completely unfunny in absolutely every single scene he's in. Other than those two, the rest of the cast does a very admirable job bringing the hard-to-understand material to life.

Plus, the movie is very slickly made. The director and co-writer is Joseph Kahn, a commercial/music video director who is very respected in the movie-blog/critic community thanks to his very opinionated twitter account, despite the fact that he's made only one movie, which is the kinda intentionally bad yet hilariously ridiculous action flick Torque. While Detention is noticeably low-budget, it still looks just as glossy as any studio film save for the horrendous CG. While this isn't surprising considering Kahn mainly works in the music-video department, he at the very least keep the whole film from looking cheap...most of the time.

And as unfocused as the movie is, it strangely has its own strange identity. I honestly can't really explain how it does that other than the fact that there's really nothing else like this movie. One of my mantras has always been that flawed ambition almost always beats out serviceably-made pap, and this certainly fits the bill of flawed ambition, even though its certainly more flawed than most of the ambitious movies released this year. So while I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, it's worth a go if you want to see something that's like nothing else on the market.

But the main reason why I can commend what the movie is trying to do is that it does have some substance. Much like how Cabin in the Woods used its blending of genres to comment on the process of storytelling, Detention slyly creates a bizarro version of our own world in which each character is literally defined by the pop culture surrounding them, hence how each character represents a different movie/movie archetype. This creates a surprisingly thoughtful message about how pop-culture can be used as a tool to not only shape a generation, but also taint it, dumb it down, or even destroy it.

Of course, this thematic conceit is lost in the kerfuffle of ideas and pacing issues, but it's something to think about nonetheless.

Final Verdict: Overall, Detention is a fascinating failure of a movie. It doesn't quite work as a whole, but there are elements that do, and I can't help but admire a movie that's this original and unlike anything else. The movie is confidently directed with a talented cast of young actors making the material more fun then it should be, plus it does have its own original and surprisingly thoughtful commentary on pop culture. But for all its myriad ideas, it's unfortunately let down by its own self-indulgence, overly obscure references, annoying too-cool-for-film-school attitude towards conventional story structure, and complete disregard for the viewer's ability to keep up with it all. Only recommended if you're interested enough to see something different, flaws and all.

That is all.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to envision what teen-movie I'd represent. I'd pick Donnie Darko, but someone's already stolen that one.

Margaret: The Masterpiece Mourned By No One

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 22:45:00 +0000

"Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s spríngs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for."
~Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall: To A Young Child

The following is a review/analysis of the Extended 3-hour cut of Margaret. I still haven't seen the original theatrical cut, which is half an hour shorter, but upon reading some articles that explain the differences between the two, I concur that the Extended Cut is the definitive version of the film. I'm well aware that writer/director Kenneth Lonergan doesn't consider it so, since there was a much-longer Director's Cut that was 3 hours and 30 minutes if I remember correctly. But that was never released. The only versions you, the reader, are able to watch are the Theatrical and the Extended, and in my opinion, the Extended Cut is the definitive version. Just don't take my word for it 100% because I still haven't seen the Theatrical cut, but from my understanding, the Extended Cut has more dialogue and more scenes that truly express the psychological turmoil of its main character, so it is the definitive version in my book.

With all of that out of the way, let me tell you why a.) you've never heard of Margaret and b.) you need to rectify that.

Why You've Never Heard of Margaret

In 2003, writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, who is also a playwright and has only one other film on his resume, started work on an epic titled Margaret. He got a ton of recognizable actors to star in it as supporting roles (Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, etc.) and a rising young actress by the name of Anna Paquin (Who won an Oscar as an 11-year old for her supporting role in Jane Campion's The Piano) to play the lead role.

The film started its shoot in 2006 and was scheduled to release in 2007. However, there was a problem: It was over 3 hours long. That didn't necessarily mean it was too long or too boring, but it did make the movie a hard sell. Fox Searchlight, the film's distributors, said that they wouldn't release the film unless it was 150 minutes or under. Legend Martin Scorsese, who had a chance of seeing the original cut and found it to be a masterpiece, decided he would help in creating a two and a half hour cut. The cut was finished with help from Thelma Schoonmaker, but it ended up not seeing the light of day.

The film's producer disapproved of the cut, sparking a lawsuit, which eventually lead to two more lawsuits which I am not sure of the nature of. To say that the movie was in development hell was an understatement. Despite being shot at 2006, it didn't reach theaters until 2011, when Fox Searchlight finally gave in and released Scorsese's 150 minute cut. But, while the film finally got a release, it came at a price. It ended up releasing at the most minimum of Academy requirements: It was in theaters for one week only, and it was only in very few cities in America.

Margaret quietly died in the theaters. Many critics and film bloggers started a Twitter campaign called #TeamMargaret that eventually helped the film play in a few more theaters for a few more days, and gave it a cult following. But even in the realm of cult followings, Margaret's audience is still incredibly small and doesn't grow that much.

Why You Should See Margaret

Why did I tell you this story? Because I'm about to say some things that may sound like flat-out hyperbole, but you have to understand my reason for doing so. My reason for giving this film such high regard doesn't just come from the fact that this is a truly remarkable film, it also comes from the fact that not many people have seen it. Granted, there are tons of movies I see that not many people have seen, but this one has gone through such a long process to finally reach the public, that I couldn't help but feel like making sure that the long process was worth it if it meant it found more of an audience.

So yeah. In short, Margaret is, in fact, a masterpiece. A largely misunderstood masterpiece, at that. It has only a 70% at Rotten Tomatoes and a 6/10 user rating on iMDB. I usually do not care for Rotten Tomatoes ratings, let alone the opinions of the largely idiotic users on iMDB, but it really struck me how much of the negativity stemmed from a complete misunderstanding of the material. And to top it all off: Not many people defended it to these people. And the main reason for that is that this is a hard movie to talk about. It's hard to express what it is that makes it good because what it's best at is something hard to articulate.

It also doesn't help that the plot doesn't look all too appealing at first glance. Margaret is the story of a teenage girl named Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) living in New York City. Her simple life is irrevocably shattered when she witnesses a bus accident that claims the life of an innocent woman who was just out to get groceries. And worst of all: She is partially responsible for it. Throughout the rest of the film, she seeks justice of some sort, any sort, that could get the bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) tried or arrested or fired, while also dealing with her own inner turmoil ad grief.

So yeah, it sounds like a pretty whatever plot. And you can argue that it is a whatever plot. But the plot is not what this film is about. You see, different movies are good at different things. Just because 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Tree of Life don't follow conventional storytelling methods, doesn't make them any less of masterpieces because their strength is in mood and expressing abstract ideas through symbolic (and gorgeous) imagery.

And Margaret's strength rests in something that is just as remarkable as expressing abstractities through imagery: It simply expresses abstractities. It doesn't really do it through imagery, or mood, or storytelling that highlights ideas over plot. It's just simply able to express the inexpressible.

After a lot of wrestling with this film, I've finally found the single word that best describes Margaret: Raw. This is a film that expresses everything it wants to convey in its ugliest, rawest form possible. Now, a lot of movies have been called "raw", such as Winter's Bone or Frozen River or Chop Shop, but critics like calling those films "raw" because of their grittiness and the way that they show a different side of American life that moviegoers aren't used to viewing.

Margaret is raw in a different sense. It isn't necessarily gritty in the same way that 25th Hour is gritty, and nothing about it is overly showy or theatrical. It is raw, however, in the way it takes you into its characters' psyches. But many movies have done that, right? You may remember my love for films Martha Marcy May Marlene and Black Swan, which really took you into the damaged psyches of their respective main female characters in a way that makes you truly feel like you're in their shoes. But Margaret does it differently. While those films used style to carry you into the psyche of a damaged woman, Margaret is more authentic.

I really can't describe how it does it, because Kenneth Lonergan accomplishes this in numerous ways: The dialogue, the sound design, the facial expressions, the performances in general, the tone, tons of little details that fill the screen that you might not even notice, etc. As you can see, it's hard to critique and let alone review this movie by saying what it is it does right because what it does right is show each character in a brilliantly nuanced, sympathetic light that is accomplished through all sorts of directions. So I'm able to do something different...

The scene that really personifies Margaret, for me, is the bus accident scene. Everything about this scene perfectly captures what it is that makes Margaret so remarkable, so what I'm about to do is describe it in every detail that I possibly can.

The Accident Scene

Lisa is looking for an authentic cowboy hat in preparation for a horseback riding trip with her father (Played, coincidentally, by the film's writer/director Kenneth Lonergan), who is divorced from her mother (Played by his real-life wife J. Smith Cameron). She can't seem to find one anywhere in all the trendy hat shops she visits, and is about ready to give up. Eventually, she sees a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) with one on. She waves at him as he leaves, trying to ask him where he got the hat. The bus driver can't hear her, and just keeps waving back and trying to understand what she's saying.

While he's distractd by Lisa's waving, he fails to see the red light and the pedestrian (Allison Janney) that was crossing in his way. When he turns to look back at the road, he slams the breaks as hard as he can, but of course, it is too late. The woman is trampled under the bus, each tire breaking her bones until the whole bus has literally gone over her. She lies on the street covered in her own blood, still barely breathing. One of her legs is still under the bus, completely cut clean off her body. The other leg is bent all the way back, acting almost as a cushion from the gravel and concrete below her.

Lisa screams in terror, the bus driver is catatonic in shock, a crowd of New Yorkians slowly realize that they have all witnessed a tragedy. Lisa is the first to go the woman, embracing her in her arms trying to see if she's still alive. Unlike most accident scenes, however, this one is kind of surreal. While the tone is definitely consistent, the scene has elements that are surreal, darkly humorous, grotesque, and heart-wrenching. You know, less like a movie and more like real life.

The victim of the crash starts asking her "What happened? Am I dead?" in a tone of voice that at first starts out as mildly annoyed rather than truly dying, only to escalate in intensity the more she realizes what has happened. When Lisa tells her what happened, her first response is literally "You gotta be kidding me. A bus?!"

A man tries tending to her wounds, but has blood spewed all over his suit like mustard from a squirt bottle. An ambulance is on its way, but the pain and the realization that she's probably not going to make it starts to overwhelm the victim. She tells Lisa not to let go of her, to keep holding her in her arms.

Finally, this leads to the most heartbreaking interlude between the victim's life and death. She says, "I can't see anything...are my eyes open or closed?" Lisa regrettably has to tell her. Her voice cracks as she tells her, "They're open." A look of horror befalls the victim's face. "Wh...What do you mean?"

She starts asking for someone to call her daughter. Lisa begs for her daughter's name and number so she can call her, but she keeps repeating the name "Lisa". Lisa keeps trying to tell her that that's her name, asking if that's the name of her daughter too and what her number is. She never gives it to her.

The two men who were tending to her wounds tell Lisa, "She's gone. There's nothing we can do." Lisa refuses to believe them, holding the dead woman in her arms, telling her the ambulance is on the way, begging for her daughter's number. But the woman's body goes limp, her eyes stare blankly into the sky, and she doesn't give her daughter's name. Lisa screams at the realization that she's gone, knowing that there was some part of this woman's death that was all her fault. The film fades to black before moving onto the next scene.

This scene is one of the most powerful I've seen in recent memory. There's not a single moment that has been manipulated, not a single moment where the actors' reactions don't resonate, and it's not afraid to be as ugly as possible. It's just a raw, human moment that feels less like a grand emotional set-piece and more like a slice of life that has been cut with tragedy. It's a completely perfect, emotionally transcendent scene.

This is what the whole movie does so well. It brings you so close to these characters' psyches through the details. All of their words, actions, and reactions matter. Lisa acts the way she does and says the things that she says because it reveals something about her character. A part of her feels responsible. This guilt will eat away at her until she finds someone else to shift the blame, or a way to put things right and prevent something like this from ever happening. And if you look closely, every single detail in the film reveals a truth about either the characters, the situations, etc.

This leads to the second word the best describes Margaret: Nuanced.

Nothing's Ever Simple

There is a scene in the Extended Cut (but not in the Theatrical) that perfectly encapsulates Lisa's tormented psyche after the accident. She's sitting in a restaurant, talking to her boyfriend. As they're having a long conversation unbroken by zero cuts, you can hear what the other people in the restaurant are talking about. A pair of elderly woman talk about an ugly dog just as Lisa's boyfriend is saying that things might not work out for them. The conversations intercut one another, creating a disharmony. Why are we being forced to listen to these old ladies talk about an ugly dog, when our main character is going through an emotional crisis?

Because as Lisa's perspective changes after the accident, so does the film. Before, life for Lisa just revolved around Lisa. Now, the cracks are letting the ugly truth slip in, empathy takes its toll, and not only does Lisa see the others living around her in her life, she sees life for what it is: Trivial. A woman has just died because of her, and all the world offers for her is the old ladies talking about the ugly dog.

This is the emotional hell that Lisa lives through in this sprawling journey. Her realization not only that nothing lasts forever, but life will go on in spite of this. She tries to fight this by setting things right, going back to that innocent state she was in before where nothing is wrong. She starts to search for someone to shift the blame towards, leading to a lawsuit that could get the bus driver fired, hoping that justice of any kind could get rid of the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, unaware of the tragedy that it will never go away because it's just another part of growing up.

Lisa Cohen is a deeply flawed character. She can be petty, annoying, and downright irresponsible sometimes. Because of this, I've heard many of the film's detractors say that they couldn't sympathize with her because they found her petty, annoying, and irresponsible. But a flawed character is not the same as a bad one.

What Lonergan does in his creation of Lisa is perfectly capture the teenage woman in all its messy, human glory. Considering I've lived around teenage girls for five or six years thanks to high school and my own younger sisters, Lonergan nails this perfectly. Not just because of all the qualities I mentioned above, but also because in spite of those flaws, she's still sympathetic. We understand the wave of conflicting emotions she's going through because, well, all of us experience that at some point in our transitioning years from teenage to adulthood, and I honestly don't get how anyone could not sympathize with that.

The other reason why Lisa works so brilliantly as a character is because of Anna Paquin.

When I saw the Extended Cut at the LACMA, it opened with Lonergan introducing the film, thanking various critics for pushing the movie's profile, and a strong amount of what I at first thought of to be total hyperbole towards Anna Paquin's performance. He described Paquin as the best actor he's ever worked with, and said that she gave one of the best performances he's ever seen, not just in a movie he worked in, but of all time. It was definitely a little hard to swallow considering this was coming from the man that directed her and he was probably just overly enthusiastic of his protege.

Now that I've seen the film however, I can totally see where he's coming from. Anna Paquin gives a performance that must be seen to be believed. The writing is just one half of what makes Lisa Cohen such a fully realized character. Paquin gives Lisa her own voice, and isn't afraid to really show the passion Lisa feels in her sense of justice. It's never showy, but there are moments where Lisa gets into huge verbal arguments that are a thing to behold. The arguments feel real, not just because of the superb writing, but because there is such intensity in the performances, each argument feels like a small war.

Paquin is also pretty much perfect in the film's quietest moments, able to do what all the greatest actors and actresses are able to do: Convey numerous emotions using only simple facial expressions. Everything about her performance is completely, utterly powerful, and it also helps that she's surrounded by an amazingly strong supporting cast.

Mark Ruffalo, in what few scenes he's in, plays the bus driver with an amazing amount of restraint and sensitivity, never for a single second telling the audience that he's a bad guy. Matt Damon is as likable and charming as he's always been, but adds another layer of doubt and fragility in a few scenes. And Matthew Broderick, also in a very small role, owns one of the most amusing scenes in the whole film.

But the real players in the supporting ensemble are the actors you probably haven't seen too often. Kieran Culkin (Who you may remember as Wallace Wells from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) is disturbingly charming in his one big scene, in a scene that I wouldn't want to spoil but depends on his pitch-perfect comedic timing and inflections. Jean Reno is strangely hilarious, in such a unique and offbeat way without overly relying on quirkiness. And the strongest out of all of them is easily J. Smith Cameron, who plays Lisa's mother, and gives one of the best movie moms I've ever seen since Mary McDonnell in Donnie Darko: Strong and supporting, while still being responsible and assertive. She's not afraid to stand up to her daughter and deal with her flaws, but she also has a hard time handling her own flaws as well, such as the fear of losing her children, who could move in with their separated father if they wanted to.

Each of these characters all have one thing in common: They're all fully defined. There's a big reason why this movie is so long despite the fact that the plot isn't very complicated: It allows each character room to breathe is a real individual, and show every single nuance you could possibly ask for.

The Full Spectrum Of Emotion

Margaret is also really, really funny. I saw the extended cut in a theater and there were some scenes where everyone, including myself, was laughing pretty hysterically. That may sound weird considering the way I just described that horrifying and powerful accident scene, but this is another remarkable feat of the movie: It keeps a consistent tone, despite careening from humor to tragedy.

This is because Margaret is a human story, evoking the complexities of real life. And in real life, we don't always wallow in grief. Sometimes, to escape that grief, we go to humor. We have a nice dinner date with friends. And the humor doesn't just come from characters just joking to escape the tragedy. Some of the humor just comes from the characters, period. Especially in the character of Ramon (Jean Reno), the boyfriend of Lisa's mother. Everything from his mannerisms to his reactions are ridiculous and humorous, but they never take you out of the film. He's still a real, defined character, despite his quirks.

What Margaret does is look at the human experience and finds the full spectrum of emotions. Much like how Lisa that the world around her is made up of more than just herself and learns to empathize, the film takes a look at every single character and situation and tries to see the most real outcome of their mixture. Lonergan isn't afraid of keeping to one singular tone or genre just for the sake of consistency, rather he goes with what is closest to real life.

Because of this, many people found the film to be a mess, whether it be tonally, structurally, or otherwise. It's weird, because while the film does capture all these different emotions and goes through all these different characters, I never found it to be a mess, structurally or tonally. It still keeps its own specific tone: Authenticity. The humor is never sardonic, the drama is never manipulative, the relationships never feel unnatural, etc.

Meanwhile, though the film does go all over the place, it still has its protagonist, Lisa, to provide for an emotional center that reacts to each situation in a real, believable way. Plus, all the characters are so fully realized and what they're each going through feels so thematically interconnected that it still retains a sense of focus.

So many things go on at once in Margaret, but everything feels like it's there for a reason. The third word that best describes the film is "Novelistic", something I've seen a lot of critics use. Much like a novel, there are scenes that are useless on a plot level, but have their own meaning that contributes either to the thematics, the characters, the mood, making the world just feel alive, etc.

And like all good novels, you feel like you were just transported on a long, epic journey, even if the scale was decidedly small.

Final Thoughts

There's so much more I can say about Margaret, but this article has gone long enough as it is, and it would end up being twice as long if I mentioned every single good thing about it. The point is this: You simply need to see it some time. It's a long time commitment, sure, but one that is definitely worth it. Do not let this film get ignored, because it deserves its praises as an unsung masterpiece.

In 20 years, maybe this will become mandatory viewing at film schools, and hopefully its reputation will be building over time. It's thankfully still building up right now thanks to all the critics that have supported it, and hopefully you readers who haven't seen it yet will follow suit.

Blatant Cross-Promotion in 3...2...: Margaret is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD. The Blu-Ray comes with the Extended Cut, which is only available in DVD form, while the Theatrical Cut is in HD. You can most likely get it through Amazon or Best Buy.

That is all.

See ya next time.

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective Part 6: The Dark Knight Trilogy

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:15:00 +0000

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective continues! Last time, we delved into the many dream-layers of Inception to see how it provides insight into the director's mind itself. Today, in the final installment of the Christopher Nolan Retrospective, we take a look the trilogy that made Nolan an icon to thousands of movie fans: His Dark Knight Trilogy.

As always, I'm going to mention that there will be major spoilers in this discussion, except for The Dark Knight Rises since I know that not everybody has had a chance to see it yet. I will definitely be going into some plot details in The Dark Knight Rises that aren't necessarily spoilers, but I know that plenty of people have been trying to know as little about the film as possible so that they can have a clean experience with it, so be advised on that regard. If you haven't seen the other two movies (But seriously, who hasn't?) they're available wherever DVDs are sold or rentable.

With that being said, let's glide across Gothan to analyze Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy...

"Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos."

Christopher Nolan landed his gig as the director of Batman Begins after his independent film Memento took Sundance by storm and his first studio picture Insomnia showed the potential he had with a bigger budget and more expensive actors. Nolan was always very talented when it came to gritty noir with unique twists sprung into them (The non-linear narrative of Following, the reverse chronology of Memento, the moral ambiguity of Insomnia), so Nolan was definitely an inspired choice when it came to who should revive the Batman franchise. However, nobody could've expected the vision that Nolan would bring to one of the definitive superheroes of all time.

What Nolan did with the Batman mythos was something that was never before done in the superhero genre: He took the comic book trappings of the genre, threw them out, and grounded the film in a level of reality that was never before seen in a film like this. Batman Begins was less concerned with the style, the gadgets, and the mood; and instead, an emphasis was put on Bruce Wayne. What drove Bruce Wayne to becoming the Batman? What motivates him to putting an end to villainry?

Say what you will about the previous Batman films directed by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, but none of them have had the same insight into the character of Batman that Nolan's films do. Bruce Wayne actually acts like an actual human being, and Nolan achieves the impossible by making his transformation into a caped crusader that dresses up as a bat as believable as humanly possible.

However, while Batman Begins was the most realistic and gritty superhero to ever be realized at the time, it was still pretty stylized. The city of Gotham still had a Gothic, Burton-esque feel to it. It wasn't until The Dark Knight, however, that the style became completely unartificial and the entire movie was grounded in realism. There's really nothing about The Dark Knight that screams fantasy. Even some of the technology, like Lucius Fox's cellphone sonar machine, at the very least fits the universe. The Dark Knight is the perfect marriage of comic book techniques and realism, and the balance is eloquently achieved.

Throughout this whole retrospective, I've noted the connections that each Nolan film has, and one of the most consistent thematic callbacks in his work is that each and every one of his films (And I mean every single one) contains the same basic character type for every protagonist: The specialist who holds professionalism as the highest virtue, but is brought to his downfall by emotional interference. This particular trait that connects all of Nolan's films makes it easy to see why he was so interested in showing the true side of Batman: He fits that trait to a tee, almost even embodies it.

Like all superheroes who keep their identities secret, Bruce Wayne relies on a specific order in order to keep balance with his life. He acts out of a true sense of justice, but never out of personal vengeance. When things do become personal, however, that's when problems arise for him. This includes the moments before he becomes the Batman when he is intent on exacting revenge on the man that killed his parents, then in the sequel when the Joker and Two-Face attempt to hurt the people he personally cares about, and then finally in The Dark Knight Rises where Bane brings Gotham to the dark ages just to see Batman squirm as he's unable to save it.

That doesn't just apply to Batman, however. There are tons of characters who end up being corrupted by emotional guilt. The one that comes to mind the most is Harvey Dent, who is literally brought into the realm of chaos when he loses the love of his life. In the Nolan universe, emotional guilt is a powerful force that can corrupt even the cleanest of souls, and the Batman films epitomize these sorts of characters.

The other thing worth noting about this trilogy is that each of the films get progressively more apocalyptic with each subsequent film. In Batman Begins, Gotham is already down in the dumps, but Batman is able to salvage it and put a damper on organized crime by the end. In The Dark Knight, the Joker almost makes things worse by attempting to bring innocent civilians down to his level of insanity. The Dark Knight Rises puts a cap on this by having a villain that actually succeeds at what the Joker failed to do, and truly bringing all of Gotham down into a state of apocalyptic despair.

It's almost like the more things end up getting better for Gotham, they're all brought down worse than before. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, as they say. This creates a true sense of menace that is unlike any other superhero franchise. There's a reason why people are more interested in the villains of the Batman mythology than Batman himself. They're genuinely terrifying, and Nolan truly emphasizes this fact.

They're not just comic book villains, attempting to take over the world. While their plans may be on a smaller scale than most comic book villains, they're actually scarier because of how specific they are. The villains are here to test the endurance of the human soul rather than achieve some sort of global domination, and that ironically makes them the most menacing villains in superhero movie history: They don't just do menacing things; they reveal menacing things about ourselves. That is the true apocalyptic nightmare.

The other primary themes that I've been looking at throughout this retrospective were two that can be found in almost all of his work: The relationship between order and chaos, and the untrustworthiness of subjective perception and how it shapes objective reality. Last time, I discussed how Inception epitomized the latter theme. The Dark Knight trilogy, however, epitomizes the former. The Dark Knight trilogy is less about the conflict between good and evil, due to its moral ambiguity. Rather, it's more concerned with the conflict between order and chaos. At first, it shouldn't be hard to grasp. The good guy represents order, the bad guy represents chaos, case closed, right? Well it's more complicated than that.

An agent of chaos requires order. Conversely, an paradigm of order must get his hands dirty every once in a while. The ambiguity on what constitutes which really blurs throughout this series. Each villain in the series from Scarecrow to Joker to Bane has chaos on their mind, but there's more to them than that. In trying to stoop all of Gotham City down into their realm of chaos, then it wouldn't be chaos, would it? Chaos doesn't just refer to confusion and destruction. Chaos refers to a disruption in order, something that doesn't fit in the ordinary realm of things.

However, if chaos was all that there ever was, would it even fit under the category of chaos? What the villains of the Batman series are attempting to do is to create a new order through chaos. By creating chaos on a mass scale, and sustaining it by bringing it out of the hearts of even the most innocent civilians, the chaos will become so plentiful that it will crystalize into a new order.

Even then, we see Gotham in the brink of consistent chaos throughout the first movie, and then in the third film, Bane succeeds in plunging all of Gotham into his vision of chaos. Does that chaos become order when it takes over? Is Batman the instrument of order that Gotham needs to be saved, or is he now the chaos that balances it all out? In the Batman films, it's never as simple as "one is this and the other is that".

The purest form of this theme is in the second film, The Dark Knight. We have a clear instrument of order (Batman), a pure harbinger of chaos (Joker), and in between the two of them is Harvey Dent, who begins as a white knight of order but descends into chaos when he realizes what sacrifices order must bring. His corruption not only ties into the character archetype that Nolan is obsessed with using, Harvey Dent's arc is a perfect summation of the trilogy's theme of order and chaos.

And that arc is perfectly summarized by the image of Harvey Dent's lucky coin. Before, it's double-sided to have both heads, allowing him to achieve a state of order. After the incident that kills the love of his life, though, that symbol of order is literally corrupted when one of the heads is burnt, creating an image of chance or, more appropriately, chaos. All humans have the capacity for terrible things within them, but when you give yourselves over to chaos, and begin to perceive it as the new order, that capacity reaches its true potential.

So what truly defines order and chaos? Is it the capacity to commit atrocities? Is it the lengths one would go for justice? Or does it tie into the second theme found in Nolan's filmography: That subjective perception can change objective reality, or even who you are as an individual? Much like the theme of Inception, Nolan suggests that a simple idea can change your state of mind. That idea can be anything, including chaos or order. And depending on your perception, order can mean chaos and vice versa. The line between order and chaos is defined by our perceptions, our state of minds, and our ideals. Nothing is ever black or white, hell, the alternate title for our hero is The Dark Knight, which would normally sound menacing.

Such is the plight of the Batman. He exists for justice, but whether he executes it through the means of chaos or order is left up for debate. Especially in the end of the second film leading to the beginning of the third, everyone is convinced he's the villain because of his lie about the true nature of Harvey Dent. He has to employ some chaos just so he can keep the order sustained. He's the shadow that fights for light. An agent of darkness that sees the truth. He's the hero that the world deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

And you know what? The same can apply to Christopher Nolan as well. He reveals truths by shrouding them in mystery. He makes us truly think about the plights of his characters so that we can also think critically about the ones that conflict in ourselves. He takes us through existential and physical hells so that we can see the light more clearly. And his Dark Knight trilogy is the perfect summation of what makes his films so special (Even the third film, which I wasn't too crazy for). They're all both intelligent and filled with spectacle. They thrill us, but at the same time, they allow us to think about the darkness within ourselves. Christopher Nolan is a director that, no matter your opinion of him, can not be replicated. He's truly one of a kind, and his varied filmography shows that in spades.

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See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to ride off into the night. I may be the critic that the internet deserves, but I'm not the one that it needs right now. Bye!

The Dark Knight Rises Movie Review

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000

[The Dark Knight Rises
Written & Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Hardy
MPAA: PG-13 - For Intense Sequences of Violence and Action, Some Sensuality, And Language]

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[The following review is free of major spoilers, but I still discuss a few plot-points and details that can be considered spoilers to some, so if you still want to know absolutely nothing about the film then I'd still suggest not reading this review until after viewing the film.]

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[Also, this review was written before hearing of the news of the tragic Colorado shooting at a midnight screening in Century Theaters. The review is left unedited, but still worth noting that certain things have changed for some people's viewing habits because of the horrific incident. Please keep in mind that it shouldn't stop anyone from seeing the film. My thoughts go to the families and friends of the victims, and anyone else who was affected by the incident.]

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The Dark Knight Rises is critic-proof. No matter what I say in this review, you're all gonna see it anyway and for good reason. It's the most anticipated blockbuster of the year, the end to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, and, hey, anything with Christopher Nolan's name attached to it in general is something to get excited for.

However, it's also worth noting that it's almost impossible to watch, let alone review The Dark Knight Rises without comparing it to The Dark Knight. And because of this, anybody who ends up detracting from it has been given a beating by internet commenters across the web for not judging it fairly.

So when I tell you that The Dark Knight Rises is good but flawed and not totally great, there will be some who claim that this is because either a.) my opinion is based solely on disappointment because of hype levels, or b.) my opinion is based solely on disappointment because it wasn't The Dark Knight. So let me just give you this disclaimer: I think The Dark Knight Rises is the weakest of the three films and the weakest Christopher Nolan film in general. Not because I was expecting it to be the greatest movie ever (Even though I was undeniably excited or it), and not because I was expecting it to be the same movie as The Dark Knight.

But of course, you don't want to hear about all the flaws, because for every thing that the film does wrong, it also does a ton of things right. Because while this is definitely, in my opinion, the weakest film in the series, it still delivers on its promise of a satisfying conclusion. It's big, epic, exciting, impeccably directed in terms of visuals and action, Hans Zimmer's score is absolutely incredible as usual, and all the actors bring their A-game. Hell, everyone brings their A-game here. You can tell that everyone set out to make a film that could top even the juggernaut that is The Dark Knight. However, intentions and effort are not merely enough.

I may as well start with the negatives just so I could end on a positive note. While there are plenty of flaws that I could name, the main one that I could think of that really holds this whole film back is the pacing. For a movie that is 2 hours and 45 minutes long, it feels very rushed. Of all the franchises that absolutely needed the final installment to be split into two parts, it wasn't god damn Breaking Dawn, it's The Dark Knight Rises. You can attribute that to the surfeit of ideas and ambition that Nolan has with his material, but you can also attribute this to a second major flaw in the film.

There's way too many supporting characters in the film. Oh, they're all great characters, perfectly cast and acted, and colorfully written to boot. But they end up taking away focus from the film. For a Batman movie, The Dark Knight himself doesn't get much screentime. Throughout the first half of the film, we see plenty of Bruce Wayne and only two sequences with him as Batman. But after a showdown with Bane in a sewer, without giving too much away, Batman and even Bruce Wayne almost disappear entirely from the film, with the focus shifting to the other characters having to deal with apocalyptic despair once Bane starts executing his master plan. Because the movie isn't really sure what the real focus is, it's hard to really get into the emotional arcs this time around since there isn't really an emotional centerpoint, and scenes that should've been moving felt a little empty to me.

Then there's our villain: Bane (Tom Hardy). I appreciate what both Nolan and Hardy are trying to do with their take on Bane, and it's definitely something I haven't seen before, but I had hard time feeling menace from him for some reason. I can't really pinpoint as to why. Tom Hardy is excellent, like the rest of the cast, and there are many moments of pure menace that he provides. However, he isn't really engaging, for some reason. Perhaps it's a general lack of charisma, or the fact that they're trying to combine a posh, classy speaking style with a brutish, muscular physical presence and the two elements don't really fit together properly. His motives are rather unclear, but hey, ambiguity is a good thing when it comes to villains. Either way, this is the least engaging villain in the series.

Speaking of things that don't fit together properly, it's interesting to note the tone of the film. What makes Nolan's Batman universe such an incredible feat is that it's the only time gritty realism was applied and it totally fits. Nolan keeps this ultra serious, gritty tone in the sequel of course, except this time it doesn't quite fit because this is easily the most over-the-top film in the series. I hate to play the compare game because, as is my motto, I should judge a film based on its own merits rather than on the merits of others. However, I'm still allowed to use other films as reference points on how certain things work in other cases. And in the previous two Batman films, the ultra-serious tone and gritty realism fit with the dark thematic material and Nolan's wise use of not using too much action sequences and more tension and suspense than anything else. But in this installment, while it gets as far as the dark subject matter, there's no suspense because 100 of its 165 minute run-time is made up entirely of action, some of it edging into ludicrous territory, and it still retains that serious tone.

This contributes to what I think is the main reason why I find this to be Nolan's weakest film: It's more interested in spectacle than intelligence. All of Nolan's films are thoughtful pieces of art that truly give pause to the viewer and allow them to truly think about things such as the nature of order and chaos, good and evil, dream and reality, illusion and truth, memory and facts, etc. Oh sure, there's still spectacle in a lot of his movies, but that aspect isn't given the emphasis. Here, however, spectacle is the main focus of the film while subtext is minimal. And while the spectacle is epic, because it lacks Nolan's usual brains, it leaves something to be desired.

I wouldn't call it a style over substance film, though. In fact, the film has plenty of substance. It's just not "subtext". This is still a much smarter, more ambitious, and more thoughtful superhero film than The Avengers will ever be. The way it plays with many of the fears and issues pervading today's society such as class warfare, civil unrest, and other such talking points is very effective. And while it's definitely the furthest thing from subtle this time around--with characters breaking the golden rule of "show don't tell" left and right and having speeches doing more of the talking than character actions--there's still no denying how provocatively Nolan explores these issues. As flawed as it is, I've always believed that flawed ambition is preferable to perfectly executed pap any day.

As mentioned earlier, all of the performances are fantastic, but special mention must be given to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who not only gets some of the most screentime in the film, but finally proves after showing potential in Inception that he can be a leading action hero with no problem. He's intense, while still keeping a calm, reserved, professional quality to him. And don't even get me started on Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, who is easily one of if not the best supporting characters in the whole series.

Speaking of characters, Christopher Nolan is a master at deception and tricking the audience through seemingly complicated yet simple means. And The Dark Knight Rises is abound with character twists, especially in the final moments, that are definitely very interesting and unexpected.

While it is disappointing that Nolan decided to focus more on the spectacle than the actual intelligence, there's no denying that said spectacle is epic. The sense of scope that is achieved here is something to behold, with an entire city in ruins and hundreds of people in an all-out war. The only thing disappointing about the action are the anti-climactic fisticuffs between Batman and Bane, but even then, there's so much going on and it's so masterfully edited that it's never too big a problem.

All in all, this is the conclusion that it was hyped up to be. The final showdown is just as exciting and epic as you imagined it to be, there's still some intelligence even if it's left on the side this time, and it ties up all the loose ends nicely. It could've been better, there are many crippling flaws, but it still works for the most part. There are some plot-holes that I could mention, but that's just nit-picking you don't want or need to hear. For what it's worth, this is a satisfying conclusion...somewhat.

Final Verdict: Rushed pacing, structural issues, a poor choice of villain, a confused tone, and not enough emphasis on substance keep The Dark Knight Rises from perfection, but it's still a can't-miss roller-coaster epic with grade-A performances across the board and an ambitious story that really provokes on a visceral level. It may not be The Dark Knight, but it will do the job.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to let you look away so that I disappear when you look back at me. Bye!

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective Part 5: Inception

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 22:15:00 +0000

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective continues! Last time, we examined how The Prestige was the key to understanding the films of Christopher Nolan. Today, we're skipping The Dark Knight to look at what many consider to be Christopher Nolan's magnum opus: Inception.

As always, I'm going to point out that the Batman films are being saved for a special Batman trilogy installment at the end of the retrospective; which, coincidentally, is going to be the next one. This will coincide with my review of The Dark Knight Rises, so that we get to look at the ways the three films work together as a trilogy. Another thing to point out is that there will be major spoilers in the following discussion, so if you haven't seen Inception (Which isn't really likely) then you can rent it anywhere discs can be rented, or even buy it anywhere on DVD or blu-ray.

If you would like to read the other installments of this retrospective, click on the following links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

With that being said, let's dive right into the many different dream layers of Inception...

"Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange."

All throughout this retrospective, I've kept hinting at a film that I considered to be the best of Nolan's filmography and my favorite of his work. Well, prepare for your minds to be blown because I'm talking about it right now. Inception is my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. A lot of people will probably agree with me, and a lot will probably disagree as well; but regardless of what you think of the film it's impossible not to admit that this is Nolan's most ambitious, audacious, and imaginative film he's ever conjured up.

In the last installment, I kept bringing up how The Prestige was the Nolan Rosetta Stone, a.k.a. the key to understanding all of Christopher Nolan's films; because it contained every single theme and character type that Nolan was obsessed with and had them in an almost meta display on how he constructs his films. Well, if The Prestige is the key to understanding the films of Christopher Nolan, then I'm going to argue that Inception is the key to understanding Christopher Nolan himself.

Inception follows a man named Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who specializes in subconscious extraction. He uses special devices that allow people to share dreams and uses them to sneak into a target's mind, steal their secrets, and gain a profit from it. The only thing he longs for is the home he's been exiled from and the family he left behind there, because of a crime he didn't commit. When a lucrative Chinese entrepeneur named Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires him for a job that he would reward with a lifting of his sentence, Cobb accepts right away only to discover that the job in question is more challenging than he expected. What Saito wants isn't an extraction, but an inception. Rather than stealing an idea, he wants him to plant an idea into someone's mind.

Inception--pardon the (intentional) pun--works on so many levels. It works as an action film, it works as thought-provoking sci-fi, it works as a character study, hell I even belong in the minority of critics who think that it also works as a tragic romance. The film shouldn't have worked. There are so many different moving parts and ideas all fighting for space that it's almost overwhelming, but Nolan pulls it off beautifully thanks to incredibly sharp writing and masterful editing (Seriously, the editing isn't credited enough or this film).

As an action film, Inception is an incredible spectacle to behold. Christopher Nolan isn't usually the best at action scenes. They're normally decent at best, because you could at the very least tell what is going on in all of them and there are actual stakes involved. Here, however, not only are they comprehensibly shot and edited, and not only are the stakes there; you witness some of the coolest things you've never seen in an action film until then. The hallway fight scene alone, as brief as it is, is one of the most incredible, original, exciting, and imaginative set-pieces I've seen in an action film ever.

As a sci-fi film, Inception is rife with so many ideas it's almost too much to handle. The film sets up the rules of the world in a way that is expository without being boring. Is it a lot of heavy-handed exposition? Yes. In fact, some people have cited the fact that you spend an hour learning about the rules of dream-sharing and getting accustomed to the vocabulary (kicks, totems, architects, etc). I never had a problem with it, though. For one thing, it never felt like an hour (at least for me it didn't). For another thing, the way everything is explained is so visually rich and imaginative that I didn't mind re-watching these scenes in the slightest.

I've heard detractors of the film claim that the film has no imagination; that for a film about dreams, it doesn't take full advantage of the crazyness that dreams can provide, opting more for a realistic look with only slight tinges of surrealism. This is a semi-legitimate complaint, only it falls apart when you learn this one crucial fact about the film: The reason why the dreams don't really resemble one's usual surrealistic dreams is because everything in the film is literalized. I'll get more into this later, but for now, the simplified version: Every single idea and theme in the film is literalized into a recognizable, physical form. The other parts of people's subconscious take the form of random civilians, the place where secrets are stored is literally a safe, and the only way to wake up from the dream is to take your life from it (i.e. kill yourself).

It also makes sense that the dreams have only subtle hints of surrealism since the entire film is about deception. To be fair, almost all of Nolan's films have characters that deceive one another. But what makes Inception different in this regard is that instead of the main characters (and the audience) being deceived, it is the main characters that do the deceiving when they trick oher people into thinking that dreams are reality. The only time the protagonists are deceived is when they themselves can't tell the difference between dream and reality (Which ties into one of the two primary Nolan themes that we'll discuss later).

I've also heard some of the film's detractors say that the film "isn't as smart as it thinks it is" simply because it isn't confusing. They're right in that it isn't confusing, they're absolutely wrong in saying that it isn't smart. The film is complicated, yes, but it doesn't mean that it isn't confusing. If anything, the fact that it isn't confusing is a testament to how strong the world-building is and how well-written it is. Even though there's tons of exposition thrown at the viewer, there's never a point where Nolan treats the audience like an imbecile. He expects you to follow along, and rather than holding back bits of information to rope you along in mystery like he does in his other films, he gives you all the pieces and expects you to follow everyone along...only to subvert you again in the end.

However, what not many people seem to appreciate (at least not as much as I do) is how well Inception works as a character study. While it's definitely not quite up to Wild Strawberries levels, I still found myself oddly moved by the tragic story of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) and the fact that his guilt literally interferes with his work.

I mentioned in both my Insomnia and Prestige pieces the specific character type that Nolan likes to use in all of his flms: Each of his main characters from Batman to Leonard Shelby are specialists who hold professionalism and strict order as their highest virtues, but experience their downfall when emotional interference comes into play. The simplified version: The conflict between logic vs. emotion; head vs. heart.

To paraphrase a quote Bob Chipman's review of the film: In Inception, that isn't just a character type; that's part of the plot. Because everything in the film is literalized, Cobb's emotional crisis takes on a physical (at least, in the dream world) state in the form of Mal's shade. Whenever Cobb is trying to get a job done, parts of his subconscious start leaking into his subject's and begin to interfere with his work. To put it more bluntly: In a film where everything is literalized Cobb's emotional guilt doesn't just internally interfere with his work, his emotional guilt literally interferes with his work.

It's because of this that I think that it's Nolan's most emotionally satisfying film next to Memento. It's not subtle, sure, but it fits the universe, the final catharsis Cobb has with Mal feels satisfying, and the performances from both DiCaprio and Cotillard are excellent.

It's also because of this that I think Inception offers some insight into how Christopher Nolan's mind works. Think about it, why do all of these films have the exact same character type for their protagonists? Lazy writing? Well, that would be a viable criticism if all of the characters weren't so different in the more specific details and scenarios.

There's always been the phrase "write what you know". In fact, this phrase is referenced in Inception, when Ariadne (Ellen Page) constructs a large bridge in the dreamspace, only it turns out to be based on a bridge that she crosses all the time that exists in the real world. Cobb then says that she isn't supposed to do that. You're only allowed to create new things, and you can't derive things from memory because it's the easiest way to lose your distinction between reality and fantasy.

Now, imagine Cobb saying that exact same sentence, about only being allowed to construct original ideas rather than copying them from real life, but this time imagine Cobb saying it to a writer. Now you may start to see the connection. Constructing elaborate dream worlds? Relying solely on professionalism to get the job done? Emotional interference ruining that work? Sticking with what you know making the creator lose themselves in their work? If this isn't a glimpse into the way Christopher Nolan's meticulously structured mind works, I don't know what is.

There are two primary themes in Nolan's work that I've kept mentioning throughout these retrospectives. The first one is the relationship between order and chaos, which isn't really the thematic focus of the film, even though you can argue that Cobb's conflicting professionalism and emotional guilt could qualify in that category. It's the second theme, though, that is truly at the center of Inception: The idea that objective reality can be shaped by subjective perception.

Much like everything else in the film, this theme is literalized. It's more than just a thematic element that is driving the film; it's also the definition of the film's title. The whole film centers around the premise that you can plant a simple idea into someone's subconscious, and it would change them as individuals and, in turn, the person's perception of objective reality. This doesn't just apply to the heist at the center of the film. It also refers to the plight of Mal, who started to believe that reality was just a dream because of Cobb's mistake of planting a simple idea in her head.

And depending on your take on the infamous final shot of the film, this could also apply to Cobb himself. Much like Memento's Leonard Shelby, he could've very well just lied to himself about what reality truly was just to attain happiness and purpose in his life.

I know that the mere act of discussing the ambiguity of the final shot has become something of a cliche. There are countless arguments all throughout the internet, and I personally don't choose a single side in the "Did the top topple over?" debate. Nolan made it ambiguous for a reason: Because there is no right answer. In the Nolan universe, where subjectivity can shape objectivity, the simple cutaway from the spinning top is the ultimate summation of one of Nolan's primary themes. There is no right answer solely because objective reality is whatever the individual chooses it to be. It can be anything. There's either no right answer at all, or everything is the right answer.

Throughout his films, Nolan has made many of his main characters endure the struggle of figuring out what the true objective reality was. It is with the final shot of Inception that he finally gives that conflict over to you, the audience. All his characters have chosen. Leonard Shelby lied to himself to achieve purpose, Alfred Borden gave up his life for the sake of mere illusions, and Mal believed that killing herself was just another way of waking up. Learning from all these characters' mistakes, it's now your turn to choose the objective reality. Because something as simple as a photo, or a spinning top, or a magic trick can change who you are. But unlike the movies, in real life we get to decide whether the top spins or falls.

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Inception went on to be a massive pop culture phenomenon, while also raking in a Best Picture nomination at the 2010 Academy Awards (Despite no Best Director nom for Nolan himself). After achieving an impossible feat with making his most complicated script one of his most comprehensible, Christopher Nolan went on to perform a more difficult task: Closing out his Batman trilogy.

Tune in next time for both my review of The Dark Knight Rises and the final installment of the Christopher Nolan Retrospective in which I tackle the entire Batman trilogy.

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See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go look for Harvey...

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective Part 4: The Prestige

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:30:00 +0000

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective continues! Last time, we analyzed what made Insomnia so very different from the rest of the Nolan filmography. Today, however, we skip Batman Begins (Saving it for a later installment) and move straight on to the exact opposite of Insomnia in what many people argue to be the Nolan-iest film in the Nolan catalogue: The Prestige.

As always, I'm going to point out that I'm skipping the Batman movies and saving them for a special Dark Knight Trilogy installment to close this series off with, which will coincide with my The Dark Knight Rises review; and I'm also going to warn you that this will contain some major spoilers. So if you haven't seen The Prestige yet, I'm sad to report that it's not on Netflix Instant, but you could still rent the disc wherever discs are available.

If you would like to read the other installments of this retrospective, click on the following links for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

With that being said, let's dive right into The Prestige...

"Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."

I mentioned in the last installment that The Prestige is the only Nolan film that I've somehow skipped. I don't wanna get to into it, but let's just say that when this film came out in 2006 (I was only 11), it came out at around the same time as another film about magicians called The Illusionist and silly little me decided to watch that one instead. Because of that, when I finally got into movies two years later and started going through Nolan's work, I never got around to seeing that particular one because of my shame for skipping it for a much inferior film.

Well, I finally saw it, and while it may not be my favorite film of Christopher Nolan's, I do think it's one of his best and definitely belongs in his top three. The other two I'd consider are Memento and another film which we'll discuss in a later installment.

The Prestige follows two magicians named Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) in the late 1800s, when electricity was still not fully implemented into society and the art of magic tricks was just as much of an art as the art of the theater. The two were very passionate colleagues together, acting as assistants for another magician, hoping to one day to make it to the big leagues themselves. That is, until a grave accident happens in one of their tricks, causing the death of Angier's love.

When Angier discovers that perhaps her death could've been caused by Borden not using the proper rope knot, the two are flung into a rivalry that lasts for years as they each keep upending each other for their audiences and the secrets behind their tricks.

The Prestige engages the audience right from the gate. The opening perfectly establishes the eerie mood with a haunting image of hundreds of top hats lying alone outdoors, and then cutting to the infamous monologue from Michael Caine in which he explains the three steps of a proper magic trick: The Pledge, in which something ordinary is introduced; the Turn, in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary; and finally the Prestige, in which all the twists and turns enrapture the audience. He then says that the nature of surprising an audience comes from the way we generally want to be surprised. The best magicians play on that truth. They make you just curious enough to wonder "how did it all work out", without ever giving you the chance to ever figure it out.

In case the analogy isn't clear enough, the magic tricks in the film aren't the only ones being performed. The film is the magic trick.

I've heard many people describe The Prestige as Christopher Nolan's rosetta stone; if you understand The Prestige, you begin to notice all of the things that connect his work and begin to understand his storytelling method. Now that I've finally seen it, I can't agree more. The Prestige has just about every established Nolan theme in the book, it has the exact Nolan character type that I mentioned in my Insomnia analysis to a tee, and it is still able to surprise and even shock you, just as every Nolan film is able to do.

But before we get into the big themes, which I generally like to save for the end, let's look at what's actually on screen...

It's interesting to note that there aren't really many movies that are about magicians. Oh sure, there are plenty of movies that have magicians in them, but it's rare to see one that really delves into the world of magicians the way The Prestige does (Keep in mind that I don't even remember anything about The Illusionist at all).

In The Prestige, magic feels less like a side-show act and more like it's own underground society. Each magician longs to know the other's secrets, some of them even devoting their whole lives to playing an act just to subvert all the other magicians.

Making a film that revolves entirely on magic tricks is kind of difficult to actually achieve. Part of what makes magic tricks so enthralling is that they're being performed right in front of your very eyes, and you yourself are the judge of how the magician was able to do it. But that doesn't usually translate well in film, where you can always tell whether something is a special effect and that it isn't true magic you're watching.

The odd thing about The Prestige is that it still maintains the sense of wonder you get from watching a good magic trick while still breaking the first rule of magicians pervasively: A magician never tells his secrets.

Part of what's so interesting about the way The Prestige plays out is how we see the ways magic tricks are performed and the secrets behind them. This makes the magic tricks interesting in the first place, because you are always inherently curious on how they actually do it in the first place and seeing the ways they're executed step by step taps into that natural curiosity. But then you get to a trick where you can't possibly imagine how Borden or Angier pulled it off, and that curiosity is tapped again. Because the characters are just as interested as learning the secrets behind the magicians, the audience wants to know how the hell they do it too.

Of course, the rivalry between the two is the strongest aspect of The Prestige. It's the best kind of cat and mouse game, set against the incredibly imaginative backdrop of magicians. Each one keeps on upending the other using everything at their disposal: From disguises, to turning their own assistants against them, and even by using their own magic tricks off stage. Everything keeps escalating to more and more ridiculous and over the top levels, but the gothic mood and the performances ground things just enough or you to accept the film's logic and rules.

Speaking of the performances, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are perhaps the biggest reason why the rivalry between Angier and Borden works so well. Both actors are very good at displaying a certain intensity to them. I mean, no matter how many crappy X-Men movies we get, Hugh Jackman plays the Wolverine so well we still watch them anyway just for him. And Christian Bale is so talented we still turn up to watch him in anything even though it's been proven that he may just be completely crazy in real life.

In The Prestige, they each up that intensity they're so good at harnessing, but they make it even more intense by, ironically, restraining themselves. There are times where it's almost like a battle of manners. They're not simply just going at each other with guns and chasing one another through the streets whenever they see one another. It's more about wits and sabotage, less about making sure the other is dead and more focused on damaging one's reputation so the other would live an empty life. And the way each scenario gets deadlier and deadlier makes the suspense almost unbearable. We all know it's going to end in death, considering the opening scene in which Angier is killed during his greatest trick, and just waiting for it to finally reach that point fills each scene with tons of menace and dread.

While the film mostly shows things from Angier's perspective, neither he nor Borden are the heroes. In fact, there aren't really any heroes in this story. Borden may be the more secretive one of the two, but by the end of the film, we question whether Angier may have taken things too far and become unsure of who to really root for.

Christian Bale arguably has the more difficult role, considering he lives an entirely secretive life. Plus when it's revealed what the true nature of Borden's relationship with his assistant Fallon is, we realize just how deceptive and secretive even Bale was with his performance. But Hugh Jackman's transformation from a wronged man who wants revenge to a complete monster who is comfortable with taking away every ounce of Borden's life, is equally impressive. Both of them each have their own rights and wrongs, and the way they equal out is a testament to bot their performances and their writing.

It's also worth noting the way Christopher Nolan diabolically lays out twist after twist with almost no effort. Just when we think we have a handle on how everything works, much like Memento, new bits of information reveal themselves and make you question even the beginning of the film, giving old scenes new meaning and making sure the audience can't trust either Angier or Borden. Plenty of Nolan's films are worthy of watching multiple times to get the full picture, and The Prestige is without a doubt one of his most deceptive films.

So it's interesting to see how Nolan is able to imbue the artificial magic with an actual sense of wonder and escalate the rivalry between Angier and Borden to greater and greater lengths of tension and menace. But how is The Prestige Nolan's Rosetta Stone? What makes it the key to understanding Nolan's work?

Let's look back at all the things that I've brought up as recurring elements in Nolan's filmography. We have the two main themes: The relationship between order and chaos, and the idea that subjectivity can shape objective reality. Then we have the sub-theme: the inner struggle between logic and emotion (a.k.a. "head" vs. "heart"). And finally, the sub-theme leads to a specific character trait that is found in all of his films: the professionalist character whose downfall is brought up by emotional interference.

The order/chaos dichotomy is obvious from the get-go. Magicians rely solely on order in order to keep their secrets from being unveiled and in order to pull off the trick effortlessly without giving away the workings behind it. And of course, when the two magicians start to make it personal, they slowly descend into chaos until neither of them can tell the difference between the trick and what is actually going on.

This of course, ties directly into the character types. Both main characters are professionalists who hold order as their highest virtue and are led to their downfalls through emotional interference. This is also seen in Batman, Leonard Shelby, Dom Cobb, and every single Christopher Nolan protagonist he's ever created.

But most interestingly of all is the way he brings back the theme of subjective reality shaping objective reality. Much like how Leonard couldn't tell the difference between memory and truth, or how Cobb couldn't distinguish between dream and reality, the main characters double-crossed so constantly that they and the audience start to wonder if any of what they just saw actually happened or whether the whole thing was one big magic trick.

And it's not just the trick-or-no-trick confusion that constitutes this theme. When it's revealed that Fallon and Borden are, in fact, the same person, they literally are the same person. There's never a moment where Borden ends or Fallon begins. They are the same entity, split. They've become so used to switching places, and pretty much playing one big trick on everyone they've ever known for their entire lives that they've lost sight of what their true reality is. If their whole life is a magic trick, that magic trick defines their objective reality.

But that's not all. This theme is brought up again when Angier harnesses the power of Tesla's cloning machine. When he uses it, a copy of himself is created and teleported to another area of the room. He uses it to create the single greatest illusion ever seen in the magician landscape. However, he uses it so many times in his act and in practice that a fear starts to grow in him. When he comes out of the trick, will he be the original or the copy? Is he the man that stepped into the machine, or the prestige who steps out on the other end to shock the audience?

Despite how different each character is, they both end up having the same conflict in their subjective view of reality: The double. What defines them? The real them? Or the trick? The doppleganger? The clone?

In devoting their life to the art, they end up destroying each other. The only one with a chance of redemption is Borden/Fallon, who is now rid of his twin and can now live with his daughter. But even then, there are darker undercurrents and things merely hinted at. Is Borden in a fitting psychological state to keep this redemption? And what exactly happened to all those clones of Angier? We saw him shoot one of them the first time he tested the machine on himself. But did he do the same for the rest? Could he still be out there?

Not only is each and every single one of the typical Nolan elements and themes present in the film, the way the film shows the relationship between the magic tricks and the audience is very much like the relationship between Nolan's films and his audience. Both Borden and Angier are the audience and the filmmaker, and the way they each wish to desperately learn each other's secrets is very much like how the audience wishes to piece togeter the mystery. Not just the mystery of The Prestige, but for Memento, Following, and Nolan's films in general.

It's not as overtly meta-textual as something like Cabin in the Woods, but the connections are there. We all want to seek the mystery, yet we still allow ourselves to be subversed by the magician. It's like Christopher Nolan is just dangling the secret behind the effectiveness all of his films like a carrot, only to subverse us again and still get away with it.

The Prestige could've been about anything other than magic. It could've been about rival painters trying to copy each other techniques, or maybe rival architects who create deadlier and deadlier designs for their buildings just to one-up each other. Or, perhaps if Nolan wanted to be obvious, it could've been rival storytellers (or even filmmakers) creating exceedingly more imaginative stories just to spite on another, until they suddenly lose themselves in their own work.

But the magic trick analogy was a perfect fit. Much like a magician, the filmmaker uses expert timing and manipulation in order to achieve a desired effect from the audience. Part of it is just an act, part of it is genuine emotion and heart, the other part pure deception. The anatomy of a magic trick is very much like the anatomy of a good thriller. You look for the secret, but you'll never find it. Because like all good magic tricks, you want to be...fooled.

After The Prestige, Christopher Nolan went on to take over popular culture with the record-breaking sensation that was and is The Dark Knight. Because of the insane success that it brought both financially and critically, Christopher Nolan was then given the influence to do whatever the hell he wanted with as big of a budget as he could imagine. What happens when an auteur such as Nolan is given an unlimited supply of budget and time to create a film for a script that he spent ten years writing? Find out in the next installment in which I analyze Inception.

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That is all. If you liked this article and would like to read more, you can do so by clicking the following links: CinEffect on BlogSpot, CinEffect on Tumblr, my own personal tumblr, and my Twitter account @CGRunyon where you can follow me for more reviews, articles, and other random thoughts about what I like. Also be sure to follow my two friends who help out with CinEffect with their own reviews or podcast cohosting sessions: @TBBucs20 & @ThatGuyBrady.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to just spin this top. And there's nothing that will cut me mid senten--

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective Part 3: Insomnia

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:45:00 +0000

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective continues! Last time, we examined the film that put Christopher Nolan on the map: Memento. Today, we look at his anticipated follow-up Insomnia and see how this one out of all of them seems to differ the most from the rest of Nolan's filmography.

Just as before, I have to mention that I will be skipping the Batman films for now and save them for a Dark Knight trilogy special (Which will include The Dark Knight Rises) at the end of the retrospective. Also worthy of note, this article will feature major spoilers of the film being discussed. Thankfully, Insomnia is on Netflix Watch Instantly at this very moment so if you'd like to catch up with this marathon, you can watch along.

And if you're just tuning in, you can read Part 1 on Following and Part 2 on Memento.

With that being said, it's time to see Christopher Nolan's first foray into Hollywood filmmaking...

"You and I share a secret. We know how easy it is to kill someone. That ultimate taboo. It doesn't exist outside our own minds."

It's difficult to compare Insomnia to the rest of Christopher Nolan's filmography because of how different it is. This is the least Nolan-y of his films, is what I'm getting at, here. The most obviuos difference this time is, of course, the fact that Christopher Nolan didn't write this one. He's written every single movie of his from Following to Memento to Batman Begins to Inception and so forth...except for Insomnia, which was written by Hillary Seitz who unfortunately went on to write the preposterous action-thriller Eagle Eye. On top of all that, Insomnia is a remake of a Norwegian film of the same name that starred Stellan Skarsgaard. I'm not going to get into how this film compares to the original film because a.) this is an article about Nolan's filmography, not a review, and b.) I haven't even seen the original film so I'm not one to judge.

But those are just the obvious differences. There are a few more that make this one stand out from the rest of Nolan's work. One thing that I've noticed in all of his work is that no matter how long his films are, from an hour and ten minutes (Following) to two and a half hours (Inception), it never feels long because of his propulsive pacing. His films, no matter how dialogue or action-heavy they are, always feel like they're moving forward. Nothing about them meanders, every scene has a point and builds off one another. That's why so many people love to revisit The Dark Knight even though it is such a long film. As long as it is, there's never a moment where you're not engaged and there's never a scene that doesn't feel important to the big picture.

Insomnia is quite different in that its pacing is more of the slow-paced, meandering quality. That's not an insult or a compliment, because that slow pace actually fits the material. If anything, the first half of the film feels like a mixture of the small-town murder plot of Twin Peaks crossed with the cold atmosphere of Fargo sprinkled with a bit of the quiet intensity of No Country For Old Men (Which is odd considering this came out quite a few years before No Country).

Christopher Nolan isn't normally associated with low-key, atmosphere-driven movies, but Insomnia fits exactly into those categories. This is his most quiet, mood-driven film, that relies just as much on the unique midnight-sun setting as it does on its powerhouse cast.

Insomnia follows a police detective named Will Dormer (Al Pacino) who is sent to the town of Nightmute (Stray-observation: Is that not the most awesome name for a town ever?), a place where the sun doesn't set for months, to investigate on the murder of a teenage girl named Kay. Dormer has a lot on his mind after an Internal Affairs investigation back at home that could ruin him, and his partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) says that he must go through with giving out a testimony on Dormer's past cases.

While chasing the murder suspect in a wilderness swept with fog, Al Pacino accidentally shoots and kills his own partner, unable to see him because of the thickness of the fog. Knowing that as much of an accident as it was it will still look like he did it to get rid of Eckhart's testimony, he lies and says that it was the killer who shot back. The investigation of the murderer continues further, but soon guilt starts to consume Dormer. And the merciless, unsetting sun doesn't help things, as Dormer can't even find solace in darkness or sleep.

The sense of place that Nolan achieves for the town of Nightmute is one of the biggest strengths in Insomnia. This is the first film in which Nolan starts to evolve in terms of imagery. Following and Memento were both very effective films, but none of them are very appealing on a visual standpoint. Here, because the atmosphere is so prevalent, the imagery is incredibly effective at creating an eerie mood that gives the film a psychological tension that manages to be low-key without being boring that absorbs the viewer. Because this is Nolan's first time directing a film he didn't write, you can see him trying to put his stamp on the film, and he does this through visuals and mood in an effective manner.

It's worth noting how quiet the film is. Like I said, this is a mood-based film, and Nolan's most restrained picture of his entire career. He lets each of the scenes play out naturally, sometimes with absolutely no background music, letting the actors and the visuals do the heavy lifting. You really feel a great sense of place for Nightmute, and Nolan effectively brings across how strange and alien the town is to Dormer. The consistently shining sun is just one of the many otherworldy touches brought to the film. There's one scene that takes place in the evening in the middle of a street, but because of the unending daylight, it looks less like a sleeping town and more like an abandoned ghost town that could rival Silent Hill if it was given a few monsters.

Speaking of monsters, the most effective part about Insomnia is the performances. Sometimes, when novice filmmakers are given big-name actors at their disposal, they tend to not direct them because they're either not good at controlling their egos or they would revere them so much that they wouldn't direct them at all, thinking they already know what to do. Nolan exhibits fantastic control in the dialogue scenes. Like I mentioned before, he lets each of these scenes play out naturally, but at the same time each actor still feels restrained and never over dramatizes each scene.

Al Pacino doesn't usually have many good performances in his recent career, but this is probably one of his best of that tier if not the best. His weary face communicates so much, while his line delivery has pain etched around his voice. Here is a man who is surrounded on all sides by guilt, and he is in a place that is forcing him to face it so strongly that not even the sun will set so he could hide in the darkness.

Robin Williams is especially good in one of his most unsettling dramatic performances next to One Hour Photo. He too shows so much pain through just his face and voice, except he plays the polar opposite of Al Pacino. Whereas Dormer can't seem to live with his guilt, Williams's Walter Finch is a man who holds his guilt as something not to be ashamed of. And when the two interact, it's like watching water and oil co-mingle together and it's highly fascinating.

Now, one thing I've always liked doing in these articles is finding the themes that link all of Nolan's work. I found two themes that can be found in just about every Nolan film: The relationship between order and chaos (Following, The Dark Knight), and the subconscious shaping objective reality (Memento, Inception). None of these themes are especially prevalent in Insomnia, however, seeing as it wasn't written by Christopher Nolan at all. If anything, the main theme is a pretty common one about how all your past misdeeds will always come back to haunt you and what goes around always comes around. There are hints of Nolan-isms such as the quote I put up in which Walter Finch says that death and the act of murder "doesn't exist outside our own minds", but they're left to the side for the more prevalent theme that you can't escape your past crimes.

So what was it that attracted Nolan to the material? I mean, of course being able to work with Al Pacino and Robin Williams in a bigger-budget studio film must've been part of it, but what about it made Christopher Nolan want to make this movie in the artistic sense?

It is at this point, we get to what could be considered a third theme that can be found in all of Nolan's work, but I consider it to be less of a "theme" and more of a certain "character type" or a "character trait". This little "sub-theme", I guess you can call it, is the relationship between reason and logic vs. emotion.

This could be considered a variation of the "order vs. chaos" thing, except there's kind of a difference between that and "logic vs. emotion". For one thing, order and chaos have to do with the world around us and who we are in an external context (See Following). "Logic vs. emotion" meanwhile, has to do with who we are as individuals. In short, "Logic and emotion" are basically the "order and chaos" of our own minds.

Okay, so there is still a connection to that theme, but you get what sets these two things apart, see?

In all of Christopher Nolan's films (And I mean all of them), the main characters hold professionalism as their highest virtue, but they are ultimately brought down or damaged by emotional interference. In Following, Bill had to detach himself from the people he followed so as not to complicate things, but when he does it ruins him. In Memento, Leonard relied solely on facts and objective evidence, but when he lets his desire for purpose and vengeance get in the way, he ends up creating himself an unsolveable puzzle so he could live in blissful ignorance of his true actions for the rest of his life. It's because of this that you realize why Hollywood saw Nolan as the perfect fit to handle Batman: Because Batman himself fits that character type. He's an emotionally damaged man who must rely on detaching himself from his own emotions by creating an altar ego to pent up his frustrations in order to achieve his goals.

In Insomnia that's Detective Dormer in a nutshell. Just take a look at the scene in which he confesses to planting a blood sample on someone's shirt in order to have a man arrested. It wasn't by the book, it shouldn't have been personal, and he knew it was wrong, but he had to do it. He thought it was the right thing, he thought that following his heart would get the man deservedly arrested. But it ends up becoming his death knell. Now, he constantly has guilt on his mind, and it's led to an even worse crime in lying about the accidental death of his partner, which leads to when he ultimately cooperates with Finch.

It is because of this that critics of Nolan's work like to say that his films are emotionally cold. And while I have to strongly disagree with those critics (I found Memento to have some powerful moments, and I'll tell you about another movie that I think is Nolan's best later in this marathon), perhaps that coldness is supposed to be the point. It's there to show how these characters' minds work, and thusly make us closer to them.

Insomnia isn't really a "great" movie by any means. Hilary Swank's character isn't given much to do, and it ends in a shoot-out scene that feels very obligatory, like the studio forced it on the writer. But it's an incredibly effective, subtle thriller with tense moments and fantastic performances.

So while Insomnia can be considered one of Nolan's lesser films (despite how good it is), it's still an important part of his filmography. Not only did he show that he could sustain his talents as a director without needing his own script, but it also showed that he could work on a studio film with an A-list cast without having to conform to the pressures of the studio...most of the time.

You can almost say that Insomnia's dreary mood and powerhouse performances mixed with Memento's imaginative storytelling helped Nolan get his gig as the helmer for Batman Begins. But we'll save that discussion for our special Dark Knight Trilogy round-up. Of course, I can say that Batman Begins was Christopher Nolan's biggest financial success at that time and put him on the map for mainstream audiences, but what happens when he follows that up with a more personal project: A period-piece about warring magicians.

Tune in next time for my analysis of Christopher Nolan's The Prestige. And prepare for the biggest shock of all: I still haven't seen The Prestige yet, and it's the only Nolan film that I've forgotten to check out. Until now. An exciting discussion awaits!

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to confront my greatest fear...no, it's not bats. It's mailmen. Bye!

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective Part 2: Memento

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective continues! Last time, we delved into the twisty potential in Nolan's debut feature Following and how it contains the themes that would eventually become benchmarks in all his work. Now, we move on to one of Nolan's most lauded films, said by many to be his masterpiece, Memento.

Before we begin, a few notes: Again, I'm going to be skipping the Batman movies for now and I'll be saving them for a special Dark Knight Trilogy special at the end of this retrospective that also ties into The Dark Knight Rises, so we'll get to those much later.

Secondly, I did my best to avoid spoilers in my analysis of Following but it's pretty much impossible to really delve into the themes and structure of Memento without getting into incredibly major spoilers. So if you, for some reason, haven't seen Memento yet and you're just delving into this marathon, do yourself a favor and see it before reading this.

With that being said, let's dive right into The Christopher Nolan Retrospective Part 2: Memento.

"I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. Do I believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?"

Following may have been the movie that introduced the world to Christopher Nolan's talent, but Memento was the one that showed the world that he wasn't just another clever screenwriter. He was the real deal. With Memento he quickly became one of the most buzzed about new talents in the biz, landing him a project with Al Pacino in the lead (More on that in the next installment). Memento wasn't just one of the most original movies of the 2000s, and it wasn't just another twist-ending thriller (Which was becoming the big "it" movie after the success of The Sixth Sense); Memento was also a tragedy that bordered ever so closely on Shakespearean levels.

Memento follows the story of a man named Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) who is under the worst sort of predicament. His wife has been raped and murdered by a lowlife criminal known only as John G., and he is intent on tracking John G. down and getting the revenge he deserves for ruining his life. But that's not the worst of it. When he attempted to save his wife as she was being raped, he was delivered a brutal blow in the head that caused serious brain damage. Because of this, he now has short term memory loss and can no longer create new memories. That isn't going to stop him from finding the guy though, but it will definitely complicate things further on his pursuit for vengeance.

Given the daunting task of telling a movie with a character with short term memory loss, Christopher Nolan ended up devising a brilliantly original structuring method to give audiences the confusion and paranoia of short term memory loss: Reverse chronology. Reverse chronology isn't totally new, in fact I'm pretty sure it was used in a few movies before Memento, but few have employed it in such a stylish and intelligent manner. The film was, of course, told backwards as each scene in the thickening murder plot goes further and further back, revealing more and more details that change the course of the film. And these scenes are intercut with yet another plot-line that is told in black and white (Not unlike the timeline method he previously used in Following). The scenes in color begin at the technical "end" of the chronology, while the black and white scenes begin in, well, the technical "beginning" of the chronology.

Thanks to the smart melding of reverse and normal chronology, Nolan is able to make each scene still build off the other, as we slowly start to realize that at some point the two plotlines are going to meet the closer they get to each other. The suspense is still there, and each scene still feels like it leads into something important, even though we already "technically" know the end result. Like I said in my Following article, Nolan always has a good reason for each time he uses untraditional structuring, and he never wants to be confusing for the sake of confusion. He generally wants te audience to follow along.

But the main reason why the semi-reverse chronology works so well is because it fits the material. Also like I said in the Following article, Nolan isn't merely using non-linear structure just for the sake of being clever, and this is doubly true for Memento. Usually, when you watch a non-linear movie a part of you feels sort of left out because of the state of confusion that the non-linear structure generally brings; like you're being left out of the club and the movie is keeping secrets from you. And Memento is mostly no different except for the fact that the main character is just as much out of the loop as the viewer is. Because of his short term memory loss, Leonard Shelby is just as confused as the audience is, creating an emotional through-line that is able to make us want to make sense of the mystery as much as Leonard does.

However, the same is true, perhaps even more so, vice versa. It isn't just that Leonard is just as confused as the audience, giving us a way to connect with the structure. It's also there to make the audience as confused as Leonard. In a traditionally structured film, there would probably be no way to really put viewers in the mindset of a man with short term memory loss because it's not like the audience suffers the same condition. It's practically impossible, something that not even the best actors can probably pull off. But with the non-linear structuring, when we see Leonard wake up in a strange woman's house, we're just as confused as he is on how he got to that point and what he's doing there, and we're just as invested in figuring out the why as he is.

So having to act out that confusion and paranoia would be impossible to convey in a traditionally structured movie, but how does Guy Pearce manage with the non-linear structure? The answer: Tremendously. Guy Pearce doesn't play up his condition too much and as a result gives an incredibly subtle performance that makes Leonard a real character rather than a spaz who can't remember anything. He's calm and collected in just about every scene he's in, especially with his stream-of-consciousness narration that describes everything in the most matter-of-fact way humanly possible. For example, re-watch the movie (It's on Netflix Instant, you know) and listen to Pearce's delivery of the line "Oh, looks like I'm chasing this guy. No wait, he's chasing me."

I've heard a few people complain that having such a cool, confident character doesn't fit with the short term memory loss plot point. Roger Ebert himself, thought it was a plot hole that a guy with short term memory loss who is supposed to have his last memory be the sight of his dead wife can be able to remember his own condition. And indeed, Ebert does bring up a fair point. However, I was never taken out of the movie from this because of how well Pearce establishes this character. He plays Leonard as cool and confident because that's the only kind of guy who would be able to even carry out a quest for revenge while still retaining short term memory loss. Does it stretch the realms of plausibility? Yes it does, but Guy Pearce embodies the character so well and Christopher Nolan approaches the material with such skill that you buy into it in the first frame.

Revisiting the film, I was struck by the amount of small details and nuances that Nolan and Pearce bring to Leonard that makes him feel fully realized and his condition as real as humanly possible. My favorite of these tiny touches is when Leonard is walking into the motel he's staying at and he slams into the door, unaware he was supposed to pull it rather than push it. Small details like that go a long way with subsequent viewings, and the best of these in Pearce's performance is his face. As calm and collected as Leonard is, Pearce delivers these brief moments that show pain and vulnerability with the most subtle movements in his face. The way his eyes move, the way his lip would kind of twitch or tremble or something when his memory seems to "reset". Hell, just his blank stare is able to convey the confusion and almost cluelessness of his character to incredible effect.

Last time, I brought up how each Christopher Nolan movie seems to center around one of two themes that he seems to be obsessed with. With Following, it was the realtionship between order and chaos (Something that will be brought up again in the Batman Trilogy discussion). With Memento, we get something that Nolan is perhaps even more obsessed with: The idea of a subjective reality. There were hints of this in Following, but this theme becomes the center point of Memento and a lot of Nolan's later work.

Think of it like this: How can we ever know if there is even such a thing as an objective reality? We all see everything through the lens of our own mind, so how can we know for certain what the objective truth is? Can there even really be facts, because of this? Can the mind be trusted? This idea gets into deeper territory when you start to add this complication to the mix: If reality is something that can be shaped through subjectivity, then can we end up shaping our own realities with just a single "false" idea? If that is the case, is that idea even really false to begin with? After all, as long as it's real to you, it's real, period. Do our actions still have meaning in such a world?

Memento is entirely about the idea that your mind can shape your reality. Because Leonard can't keep all his memories, he externalizes them in order to preserve them with the usage of photos, notes, and permanent tattoos that all detail the facts about his pursuit for the killer. Leonard said himself earlier in the movie that memory is an unreliable thing, and the only thing you can count on is the objective reality: The facts, the evidence, the notes, etc. But what happens when he externalizes his memories, and those become his facts. What happens when the subjective reality becomes the objective reality? What happens when instead of memories being supported by the facts, objective reality is shaped by memory?

This is especially prevalent in the subplot involving Sammy Jenkins (The great Stephen Tobolowsky), who had a similar condition to Leonards, only it seemed to exist on a mental state rather than a physical state. Leonard tested him to see whether Sammy could still learn things through instinct and conditioning rather than memory by using a test to see whether he'd stop picking up a shocked object through said instinct. This brings us to the idea that someone can be conditioned to learn something, but can a man be conditioned to, say, become someone else?

This leads us to the final twist, in which we learn that Leonard has already found and killed the man responsible for his wife's rape an entire year ago. On top of that, she never even died when she was raped by the mysterious criminal. She did, however, die by Leonard's own hand when it is revealed that the man known as Sammy Jenkins was actually a con man who was given features from Leonard's own life. Sammy wasn't the one that tragically killed his own wife with an insulin overdose, rather it was Leonard who overdosed his own wife and conditioned himself to place it under a different man's name.

There is no mystery to solve, no John G. to find; just the fleeting satisfaction of revenge, an unsolveable puzzle that could give his life meaning. And after all, what does it matter to him? He has no reason to live now that he can't create new memories and his last memory was the seemingly dead body of his wife. All he really has to live for is avenging his wife, and finally obtain a brief moment of "peace" even if it inevitably will be taken away. It doesn't matter to him what the objective reality is. It doesn't matter that his wife actually survived, that he actually killed her, that he already caught the real perpetrator, because that stuff can never be real to him anymore. The only thing real to him now is the pursuit of vengeance.

It is because of this that I personally think that Leonard is an incredibly tragic character. Forced to repeat the same cycle of revenge forever, creating his own unsolveable puzzle just so he could give him a purpose for the rest of his life, who knows how long he will continue this endless loop blissfully ignorant of the objective truth? Leonard Shelby isn't just a tragic hero because he will forever be stuck in this loop, he's a tragic hero because he is an embodiment of something that all of us have done and will continue to do in our lives: Lie to ourselves just so we can be happy.

Memento is one of Christopher Nolan's masterpieces and in my opinion his second best film (We'll get into my personal favorite much later). It is much more than just an incredibly clever thriller, like Following was (Even though there were small moments of insight in that film, which I discussed). This is also a deeply human, if somewhat emotionally cold story about what we do to give meaning to our lives, the lengths we will go to achieve that sense of purpose, and that sometmes, purpose is nothing more than an outright lie.

It's easy to see how many of the biggest names in Hollywood suddenly found a great interest in Christopher Nolan after Memento. But what happens when Christopher Nolan is given a task that is perhaps just as if not more difficult than making a movie about a man with short term memory loss: Directing a movie that is a remake of another foreign film, stars big name actors, and takes away something that makes Nolan's films special: His writing. Next time, we'll talk about Insomnia, directed by, but not written by Christopher Nolan.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta cover these damn windows. The light...it never ends!

The Amazing Spider-Man Movie Review

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[The Amazing Spider-Man

Directed by Marc Webb
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans
MPAA: PG-13 - For Sequences of Action and Violence]

--

Reviewing a remake is a thankless task because you simply shouldn't review it based on the merits of the original source material and just stick with the actual merits of the new film itself. However, it's impossible to do that with The Amazing Spider-Man simple because "too soon" isn't enough of an exaggeration for just how unnecessary this reboot was. Yeah, I know that this is supposed to be a reboot and not a remake, but there really is no way to separate your feelings towards this film with your feelings towards Sam Raimi's 2002 version of Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire.

So I might as well get this much out of the way: The original Spider-Man movies from Sam Raimi are a huge part of my childhood. The first film came out when I was in the second grade, it was the first PG-13 movie I had ever seen, the first superhero movie I'd ever seen (Though I'd seen the cartoon enough to be familiar with the material), and it blew my fucking seven-year-old mind. The second movie ended up being better than the first to my nine-year-old amazement, while the third movie was...yeah, you know.

So when I heard that a reboot was coming along, the first thought in my head was "why?". Well, it was to make money obviously, but they could've easily just gone ahead with a fourth Spider-Man film without Raimi, or Tobey, etc. Why reboot it?

Another thing that critics shouldn't do is talk about the production of the film in question, but of course, this being The Amazing Spider-Man, there are just too many behind-the-scenes misfire stories to simply just ignore. The main thing I can discuss without boring you all to tears is that Sony doesn't wanna give away their Spider-Man franchise rights to Disney/Marvel, mostly because it's one of their most lucrative franchises, well, ever. And one of the reasons why their franchise is so successful is because of Raimi, Maguire, and yes, Kirsten Dunst too. So a Spider-Man 4 without any of those factors would make the general moviegoing public angry, but a reboot will give them an excuse for starting things over with a new cast and director up for the taking.

That's it. The main reason why we're getting a new Spider-Man reboot so soon is because Sony didn't want to share their toys with another company. Really. The main reason why we have a new Spider-Man movie is because Sony needed an excuse for a new Spider-Man movie. In case you haven't figured it out yet, this movie is just dull, pointless, and completely and utterly hollow.

You all know the story so you might as well sing it along to the tune of the TV show's theme song: Peter Parker is a high school outcast living with his aunt and uncle who ends up getting bit by a radioactive spider that gives him superhuman abilities. He can walk on walls, ~~spin webs~~, has increased strength and agility, and can sense danger with his signature spidey-sense. Look out, here comes your friendly neighborhood derpy derpy doo.

But this version has the nugget of an interesting twist to the story! Rather than just shrug off the death of his parents, in this reboot Peter starts to unravel clues that something about his parents' deaths might not have been an accident. It then turns out that his father had something to do with cross-species genetics, which of course leads him into crossing the species barrier by having a run-in with the radioactive spider.

It's an interesting twist, it gives the movie something to surprise audiences who are already familiar with the original films with, and...then doesn't do anything with it. Huh...

The main problem with The Amazing Spider-Man is that the script just sucks on the most basic levels. Characters are inconsistent, plot threads are left unfinished and dangling in the air, and the tone is all over the map. You can tell that the filmmakers were going for a darker, grittier, less cheesy tone than the original Raimi films, except because Spider-Man is inherently cheesy, there are still some moments of awful humor and cheese that get in the way of it. And even then, the serious tone doesn't fit either.

The original films' slightly cheesy tone worked because it was aware of how silly the material was, but then undercut that with moments of genuine drama that worked. That was because the guys behind those films had respect for what the material was. Because they understood that the material needed to be cheesy at moments, they were able to let the viewer buy into the film's world and therefore buy into the dramatic moments. Here, however, that doesn't apply. The dark tone feels less "gritty and serious" and more "angsty and mopey". Meanwhile, the moments that are actually cheesy feel grating and facepalm-inducing.

But that's not the biggest problem. Usually good performances are enough to sell an uneven tone. Thankfully the performances aren't bad at all. Emma Stone is charming as Gwen Stacey, Rhys Ifans does nice work here as Curt Connors, Sally Field isn't given much to do as Aunt May but she's fine in what little she's in. The one that really shines is Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, who really feels authoritive and caring in the best possible way. And the icing on top? He gets more screentime than the original Uncle Ben.

Of course, that doesn't stop the main problem in the casting: Andrew Garfield. Now before you start throwing your tomatoes at me, let me just point out that I really like Andrew Garfield. He gave one of my favorite performances of 2010 for The Social Network, he's got serious talent and acting chops, and I like seeing him get the mainstream attention he deserves. Also, he isn't bad as Peter Parker. He is bad, however, as Spider-Man. A lot of people say that that was the big problem with Tobey Maguire's rendition of the character, but I think it's doubly true in Garfield's case. At least when Maguire donned the costume, he didn't act like a jackass. Garfield is effectively awkward and sympathetic when he's under the Parker persona, but when he puts on the suit, it's like he's a completely different character. The thing that makes Spider-Man so appealing is that he's an everyman. When you take away that aspect and he starts to feel more like a cartoon than anything else, you lose that everyman quality and you cease to root for him.

This can be credited more towards bad screenwriting than Garfield himself, but he shouldn't be totally excused either. Because while the writing is bad, Garfield could've at least acted his way around that haul by making the two personas act consistent even when the dialogue suggests otherwise. But as Spider-Man, he just acts and sounds like a douchebag, a smart-ass, and just overall annoying.

Because of this, Peter Parker feels less like a character and more like a cipher. He talks and acts in the specific way that the screenplay demands him to talk and act, but not in ways that are consistent to his previously established character or arc. He's just a blank-slate, he's nothing, and try as Andrew Garfield does to make him likeable and charming and sympathetic and nuanced, he's just poorly written and Garfield doesn't use his previously established talents enough to mask that fact.

The other thing about the acting that doesn't work is that Garfield and Stone have a lack of chemistry in their scenes together. This was appalling to me since it turns out they're actually together in real life and this was directed by the man behind (500) Days of Summer which is a romantic comedy with incredible chemistry between the leads. Here, it doesn't feel passionate, natural, or even believably awkward. It just isn't there, it's completely and utterly hollow. There's really no way for me to describe what it was that made it feel hollow since something like romantic chemistry is made up of unidentifiable factors, but they just didn't exactly fit for some reason.

Then, of course, we have the villain. Like I said, Rhys Ifans does a good job as Curt Connors. It's just such a shame because the Lizard just doesn't work as a villain. As hard as Ifans tries to inject some personality into Connors, we can't really sympathize with him because his sole "flaw" is that he has one arm. That's it. There's really nothing else about him as a character that is made clear to make us sympathize when he ultimately becomes a monster. And then, when he makes the jump to being evil, it's made unclear how exactly it happens because he's a generally good guy in the earlier scenes. Yet for some reason, transforming into a giant lizard-man turns him into a fascist dictator-like figure who wants everyone to be lizard-men because...because lizard-men are just better than humans? And even if that is the case, why suddenly turn evil at the drop of a hat when Connors has been previously established as a generally good guy? Because, well, the screenplay demands it. His transition is just entirely unnatural, and isn't explained to any good effect.

But back to the screenplay, I can go on and on about how many basic script problems there are in the film, but the most glaringly obvious ones of all are that two of the three main plot threads of the film, the ones that define Spidey's motivations. First is the "fresh" take: Parker trying to discover the origins of his parents. And indeed, it starts out with him trying to discover what really happens with his parents. Hell, the film has been marketed as "The Untold Story" of Spider-Man, so you'd expect them to actually tell the god damn untold story. But they don't, stupidly enough. In fact, all of that stuff is instead replaced with a lame post-credits sequence that promises more answers IN THE SEQUUEEELLL. So all that stuff that is promised is left ambiguous. Except unlike Prometheus, which was a good movie that left a lot of things hanging in the air and ambiguous, it doesn't raise thought-provoking questions or leave the audience giddy with anticipation for the sequel. It's just unsatisfying on the most basic level.

Secondly, it's no spoiler that Uncle Ben is killed in act one. With great power comes great responsiderpyderpydoo, we're all on the same page here. However, instead of having Peter exact quick vengeance on the man that killed Uncle Ben, in this version we see Peter fail to catch the perpetrator the first time and spend the rest of the movie going from criminal to criminal looking for him. There's nothing wrong with going with this kind of structure so long as it's interesting. Except it ends up feeling more like unnecessary padding in an already unnecessary movie.

And worst of all: There's no payoff to this plot thread. The guy is never caught, but that's okay because we can at least have a scene in which Peter learns that revenge is not the answer and it's time to move on...except that doesn't happen either. They just abandon this plotline without giving it any lip service because apparently the giant lizard-man is more important. It's because of this that every scene feels pointless. They don't build up to anything, they just feel like a random assortment of stuff. It's barely a story, it's just stuff. This is just lazy, lazy screenwriting that makes me cringe at the fact that paid professionals wrote this crap.

Now, this wouldn't be a superhero blockbuster without some action, and the action is...there, I guess. The action sequences aren't terrible, but they aren't particularly thrilling either. The CGI is decent, certainly a step above the dated CG of the original trilogy, but since we don't feel stakes, it doesn't give the viewer the same satisfying thrill of something like The Avengers. It is worth noting, however, that they try to pull a Spider-Man 2 by throwing in a moment where the citizens of New York help Spidey defeat the bad guy, except this time around it ends up being one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in a superhero movie since the dance sequence in Spider-Man 3. Yeah, it's that bad.

I've heard a lot of defenders of this movie talk about how this one is better because it's closer to the comics. Firstly, I can't attest to that since I myself haven't read the comics and only barely remember the animated television series, so I'm not the best judge on whether this one is more accurate to the source material. Except I don't care. I don't care because it shouldn't matter whether it's "closer to the source material". What matters is whether it's a good movie, and saying that it's good for no other reason than "it's closer to the books" is just as short-sighted as people who think that something automatically sucks because it isn't merely a retread of the original source material. Making a good movie should come first, appeasing the fanbase should come second.

All in all, the biggest complaint I can give to The Amazing Spider-Man is that it just doesn't have a soul. Yeah, I know we all like to crap on Spider-Man 3 for being ridiculously lame, cheesy, and bloated; but there was an earnestness to that film that showed that Raimi was desperately trying to make the material work in spite of the fact that the studios forced him to put Venom in it. They were actually trying in Spider-Man 3 is what I'm trying to say, and there's a cynical sense that nobody involved in The Amazing Spider-Man cared about the material this time around.

The Amazing Spider-Man is just a mess for all the worst possible reasons: Not because the creators didn't know what to do with the material, even though that is part of it; not because there was no talent involved in it, because there are some talented people involved in it; but because this is a movie that looks and feels like it was manufactured by soulless accountants that are desperately trying to take your money. And in some cases, that is the worst offense. I wouldn't say this is the worst superhero movie ever made (We all know that crown proudly belongs to either Batman & Robin or Fantastic Four), but I'll be damned if this isn't one of the laziest and most cynically made.

Final Verdict: Some good performances and decent action can't mask the fact that The Amazing Spider-Man is an astoundingly poorly written film. The pacing is dull, the characters are inconsistent, the romance between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacey is lackluster, the movie doesn't know which story it wants to tell, the villain is laughably bad, and the way it haphazardly throws away important plot threads is appallingly bad. A boring, nearly worthless movie with no reason to exist other than to cash in the general public's love of a much better movie.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, here's a picture of a side-by-side comparison between Spider-Man and Stupid Sexy Flanders. Bye!

The Christopher Nolan Retrospective Part 1 - Following

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:00:00 +0000

The Dark Knight Rises is coming in just about two weeks, and like everyone else on the internet, I'm getting more excited the closer it gets. Like it or not, Christopher Nolan's Batman films are one of the defining pictures of the superhero genre and having their grand finale is kind of a big deal. It's especially a big deal for Christopher Nolan himself, who has become one of the most influential and important filmmakers of our generation. The way he's able to get mainstream audiences into seeing some very dark, mature, and intellectual material in an age of whiz-bang pacing and fireworks is a testament to his propulsive pacing and imaginative storytelling.

Christopher Nolan pretty much has every director's dream trajectory: He started out with two very small independent films, got noticed, slowly got bigger and bigger actors and projects, built his reputation, and before you know it BAM, he's become one of the most lucrative auteurs in the business. It's fascinating to see such an evolution from his small thrillers to his epic blockbusters, and it's especially interesting to see all the themes that connect all of his work.

So interesting, in fact, that I've decided look back at that trajectory from the very beginning and go film by film viewing the evolution of Christopher Nolan. Starting today is my Christopher Nolan retrospective, where we analyze that evolution and see how his stamp starts to form over the course of his career, starting from his first indie films all the way up to my review of The Dark Knight Rises when it releases.

But do take note that I won't be doing the Batman films until after The Dark Knight Rises, mainly because it will be more interesting to compare those two films with the conclusion that they ultimately build up to. However, expect me to talk about the rest of your favorites, including Memento, The Prestige, Inception, etc.

Without further ado, our marathon starts with Nolan's debut, the black-and-white noir thriller Following.

"It was supposed to just be completely random. And when it stopped being random, that's when it started to go wrong."

Following is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum of Christopher Nolan's blockbusters. It's shot in black and white, has a relatively small scope, relies mostly on dialogue, and is so confusingly non-linear that it makes Memento looks as straightforward as...well, The Dark Knight I guess.

It's also one of his most different films when compared to the rest of his filmography. While it's told in a very original non-linear structure, it's mostly a standard noir story about a guy who's in over his head as he's embroiled in various levels of crime. Because of this, Nolan doesn't just rely on the structure to keep things fresh, he also relies on mood. Nolan isn't the most atmosphere-driven director, but there's a palpable sense of menace that hangs over Following like a deep fog.

Set in the UK, Following follows a man named Bill (Played by Jeremy Theobald) who becomes obsessed with following random people. Not quite stalking them, but he's fascinated by where they go, who they meet, what interests them, who they are, what makes them as individuals. At first, it's done to gather material for potential novels in his career as a failing writer, but soon he starts doing it as a hobby. It is at this point, that he creates rules, one of which he breaks by the time the film is just getting started: Never follow the same person twice.

Soon, he becomes acquainted with a man named Cobb (Played by Alex Haw, and HEY doesn't that name sound familiar?) who has his own little obsession: Breaking into other people's homes, taking and misplacing random stuff, and as a result disrupting their private lives just for a moment. Like Bill with his following people, Cobb has his own rules about breaking in, and just like before, Bill breaks one of the most important rules.

The movie is told in a non-linear structure that I like to call a "Triangle Narrative". There are three separate "timelines" that take place throughout the film, each one goes in order but the way they intercut between each other causes confusion. We have the Part 1, which shows Bill as he's first being suckered into Cobb's schemes; then Part 2, in which Bill has pretty much become Cobb and is starting to get involved with a mysterious blonde woman; then part 3, in which a beaten up Bill is starting to do some shady things. Each one goes in order, but they cut between each other. For example, we'll see part of Part 1 before it cuts to a scene from Part 2, without even having completely finished Part 1, and so on.

As confusing as the structure is, we're still able to follow it. Christopher Nolan is an incredibly smart director in the way he entrusts the audience to follow along. He never treats the viewer like an idiot who won't get it, even in a movie like Inception that is filled with expository dialogue. Nolan uses some very smart visual cues to distinguish which "timeline" we're viewing. Much like how Memento used colors to distinguish between the two converging timelines, Following uses something a little more subtle in the way of the protagonist's appearance. In Part 1, Bill has long hair and a beard. In Part 2, we see him more clean-cut and shaven. And in Part 3, his face is covered in bruises and scratches.

The best part about Nolan's use of non-linear narratives is that he always has a good reason for doing it. Most people just like to do it to look cool and intelligent without having to do anything genuinely clever, but Nolan always find a way to make it fit the story. In this case, he uses it in a way that makes us genuinely interested in Bill's various transformations. We want to see how he gets from point A to point B to point C and Nolan constantly delivers by slowly feeding in information bit by bit with each passing of each timeline. This allows the audience to be an active participant in the story, as you are piecing the mystery together just as much as Bill is.

Nolan is smart about involving the audience and having us do as much of the heavy work as his characters. He doesn't want to merely just pull the rug from under us. He's not trying to be confusing just for the sake of being confusing. He wants the audience to feel something, to think about something, to learn something about the characters and the situations they're in. He genuinely wants you to follow along, and his movies are like tests to see if you're worthy enough to reach the bottom of the rabbit hole.

So Following shows signs of Christopher Nolan's knack for audience involvement, but what about the themes? One of the most interesting things about auteurs is that there are usually very specific themes that they like to callback to throughout their work. Malick is obsessed with nature; Cronenberg is obsessed with the relationship between the psyche and the body; Aronofsky is obsessed with...well, the nature of obsession itself; what about Nolan?

To me, I've always noticed two major themes that are constantly in his filmography. The first theme that Nolan constantly portrays is how subjectivity can shape our realities. Could our subconscious shape what's real to us? Is there even such thing as an objective reality? Can we trust our minds? Could our illusion of what we think is real shape who we are, or even change us? This theme isn't really in Followingmuch but there are traces of it there in the different transformations of Bill. When Bill starts seeing things in a new light, through following people and following Cobb, he starts to change as an individual until it shapes who he is. But we'll get into more detail on this theme in the upcoming discussions for Memento and Inception.

The second theme that seems to permeate Nolan's filmography is the relationship between order and chaos. This is what Following is mainly about. The whole film's theme can be summed up in this quote that's in the prologue of the film: "It was supposed to just be completely random. And when it stopped being random, that's when it started to go wrong." Do we live in a society of order? Do we live in a constant sea of chaos? And depending on which interpretation floats your boat, what would happen if a dash of the opposite one was injected into your life. In Following, there is a specific order to the way Bill approaches his followings. He sets up rules, doesn't attempt to make it creepy (even though it totally, totally is), and tries to do everything in a set pattern. When he steps off that pattern, and starts to inject a little chaos in the proceedings, things go very wrong for him.

Soon, his entire life is chaos. People aren't who they say they are, he's double-crossed, and then triple-crossed, and finally he realizes that all of that chaos that followed him, was all part of the plan of another (a.k.a. Order). What was chaos for him, was order for the man that deceived him. The universe works in mysterious ways, and sometimes the line between order and chaos is simply relative.

Following is not a perfect movie by any means. It's noticeably low budget in a bad way. Some of the acting is flat when it comes to more dramatic scenes, there are some fight sequences that are very poorly choreographed, and thinking about the ultimate "plan" that is revealed about the end shows a few plot holes. But the tight screenplay, the crazy structuring, and the devilishly clever twist at the end are so engrossing that they are more than enough to make up for those flaws.

Compared to the rest of Nolan's career, this has the smallest scope out of all of them. It's only an hour and ten minutes long and rushes by rather quickly, even though it definitely sticks with you long after its over. I will say it's probably his most confusing film. That's not a good or bad thing, just an observation. Part of what makes movies like Memento and Inception so well-crafted is that in spite of all the different levels it's play in, you can still understand them. Following is much harder to understand, not just because of the structure but also because of the way character motivations change in a blink and how their plans align with so many different moving parts and unquantifiable factors coming into play.

While I didn't totally understand it, I was still able to get the gist of it, and I was still able to be absorbed by it's grainy mood, twisty narrative, and deeper subtext. Following is a damn good debut feature, but it's one that only hints at the potential within Christopher Nolan.

Next time, we will look at what happens when that potential is totally fulfilled with his next movie: The 2000 classic Memento.

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That is all. If you liked this article and would like to read more, you can do so by following my blog and my Tumblr, as well as following me on the Twitter-machine @CGRunyon to hear more of my general ramblings on film, video games, and other such things. By following me, you not only get an endless stream of updates on what's going on with my articles, you get to stroke my massive ego in the process. Do at your own risk.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta find a pen. Gotta find a pen, gotta find a pen, pen, pen, pen, pen...

Brave Movie Revew

enigmaddc@aol.com (Enigma) — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 20:15:00 +0000

[Brave
Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman
Starring: Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, and Billy Connolly
MPAA: PG - For Some Scary Action and Rude Humor]

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The trouble with being Pixar as that everyone expects everything you make to be some sort of mind-altering masterpiece of epic proportions. And while Pixar is one of the few artists in the film industry that's deserving of that expectation, it's still rather unfair. Because of this, unless you're some sort of God-like being who poops chocolate and cures world hunger with your rich excrement, the second you make a film that is "very good' but not "OH MY GOD AMAZING", the very people that have revered you for so long can turn on your in an instant. And while people like to consider the Cars franchise as just some sort of side-thing that Pixar does for Disney in order to sell lots of toys, people expect anything that isn't related to that particular portion of Pixar's pedigree to be as incredibly funny as Monster's Inc., as heart-breakingly moving as Up, and as beautifully poignant as WALL-E.

So if I said that Pixar's latest movie, Brave is a very good family film with a simple but very well-executed story, there will be a certain group of people who will be disappointed that it "didn't make anybody cry like the end of Toy Story 3" or something equally ridiculous. I normally dislike talking about other people's reactions to a movie (After all, this is supposed to be MY review), but it must be said: If you're going to judge a movie, judge it on its own merits and its own flaws. Don't base your judgement on the merits of previous movies. By that logic, John Carpenter's They Live sucks because it wasn't as good as Halloween or The Thing. That doesn't make They Live bad at all; in fact, They Live is really damn good. It's just that They Live wasn't going for the same thing that The Thing was going for...

So yeah, proceeding to the actual review: Brave is Pixar's first foray into many different things: The fantasy genre, the Disney Princess pedigree, and it also counts as the first film of there's to have a female protagonist. It follows the story of Merida (Voice of Kelly Macdonald) growing up as the princess of an ancient Scottish Kingdom. Now tell me if this sounds familiar: She's a princess, but she doesn't necessarily want to be a princess if you get what I mean. Rather than being interested in dresses and manners, she's more into archery, exploring, and adventuring in her free time. Of course her mother, the Queen (Voice of Emma Thompson), would rather she be into dresses and manners, so she calls out for the princes of the other kingdoms to vie for her hand in marriage to bring Merida closer to her position. As it turns out, it only further isolates her, causing her to lash out and run away so she can find a way to "change her fate" so she can be free from the domineering presence of her mother.

Will Merida ever find a way to reconcile with her mother? Will she ever learn to realize that it was she that was actually there for her all along? And most importantly, will she discover that the greatest strength one can have is not a sword but a family?

If this sounds overly trite, familiar, and predictable, I forgive you for dismissing the film upfront. But when I say that the film is still pretty darn impressive despite these familiar elements, it should serve as a testament to how talented the Pixar team really is. While it definitely feels less like pure Pixar, and more like Pixar's take on a Disney film, the magic is still there and nothing about it feels cynical, or overly nostalgic. It's just a simple story, but about as well-told as it can possibly be.

Of course, I can't seem to explain why it is that makes it stand above other recent films that tried to ape the Disney formula. It's one of those things where I honestly feel comfortable just saying "Well, that's just how Pixar does it". If I could come up with one reason, however, it's that it feels kind of like a personal story. When you're dealing with the domineering mother vs. the misunderstood daughter trope, it's so overdone that there's absolutely no way for it to register to anyone except the kinds of kids who are whining about their own domineering mothers. But there's something genuine about the mother-daughter relationship in Brave. The "dialogue" between them (Those of you who've seen the film will get why I put "dialogue" in quotations) is very well-done and all the more honest because of the way it conveys the relationship visually rather than just with words.

Another factor that shows that Pixar actually gets the Disney formula rather than just cynically rips it off, is that it understands a fundamental lesson that most people refuse to learn from Disney: His movies were sometimes completely, utterly terrifying. While I wouldn't call Brave terrifying the same way I'd discuss how traumatized I was by Pinocchio, there are some moments that are surprisingly suspenseful, exciting, and thrilling. While it isn't done too much to overwhelm the largely family-oriented audience, the sense of danger is there enough to keep the stakes in check.

If there's a major flaw with the film, it's the humor. Okay, let me rephrase that: If there's a major flaw with the film, it's the placement of the humor. Pixar is without a doubt unmatched when it comes to animated slapstick, and Brave is definitely really funny when it needs to be. However, there were a few moments where the humor was intrusive and forced, even if it was still acknowledge-ably funny. Going into further details on these scenes would lead to spoilers (Pleasant surprise: The trailers and marketing didn't reveal a big plot-twist near the beginning of the movie), but let's just say that there's a visual joke involving cleavage in one scene (Don't worry it's handled as tastefully as it possibly could) and immediately after that we cut back to a chase scene with serious stakes. It's not that it isn't "funny", because it is, it's just placed in the wrong moments from time to time and leads to a sometimes schizophrenic tone.

The other flaw that comes to mind is that while the relationship between Merida and her mother is handled nicely, the side character aren't given much to do. I get that it isn't particularly "their story", but there was potential in some of the other characters to be fleshed out and more nuanced. Particularly in the character of Merida's father a.k.a. the King (Voice of Billy Connolly), who (given circumstances that I can not spoil) goes through a lot of hefty moments, but isn't given enough screen time for it to register.

Thankfully, the movie ends on a very strong note. Pixar is one of the few makers of family film that seems to understand that characters are just as important as visual dazzle, and the action climax at the end is secondary to the emotional climax spurred by the mother-daughter relationship. While it didn't move me to tears like Up or Toy Story 3 did, it definitely left me and a theater full of kids and adults alike very dusty. Because while we definitely see the ending coming, and it is filled with all those familiar elements, Pixar just has this "magic" to them that seems to do the trick every time.

Final Verdict: Brave is a flawed but remarkable film. Their visuals are stronger than ever, and the character relationships are handled to a tee. Despite a few gripes with tone consistency and some underdeveloped characters, there's no denying Pixar's talent still in full display on the picture. Not a masterpiece, but it's likely going to be the best animated film of this year and pretty much the only sure-fire good movie that's out this weekend.

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That is all. If you liked this review and would like to read more, you can do so by reading more from this blog as well as following me on the Twitter-machine @CGRunyon to hear more of my general ramblings on film, video games, and other such things. By following me, you not only get an endless stream of updates on what's going on with my articles, you get to stroke my massive ego in the process. Do at your own risk.

See ya next time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to practice my archery. It's in everything, these days! Bye!