Minding Movies*

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

2012-01-28T22:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a preposterous film, badly structured, frequently melodramatic and obnoxious, but with a beautiful theme at its heart and two wonderful performances. What do you do? It's based on a book I love, despite all the parts that don't work, and is an equally mixed bag. Because I am so much like its main character, I found myself correcting it in thousands of tiny, tiny ways. Well, okay, maybe not that tiny. And maybe not thousands of ways.

Anyway.

The novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was set in the months after the spectacular destruction of downtown New York, and it was about a family: Thomas Schell Sr. (Max von Sydow, who played chess with death in The Seventh Seal), rendered mute by the horrific firebombing of Dresden and his marriage in tatters; Thomas Schell Jr. (Tom Hanks, in a thankless role), the son his father was not brave enough to raise, and the one who falls to his death from the North Tower; Oskar Schell (the incredibly talented Thomas Horn), the protagonist, who hears his father's desperate last phone calls from Windows on the World; his grandmother, who pities him; and his mother (Sandra Bullock, who has the hardest role in the movie), who loves him, and who has far greater control than she seems.

The film removes all the details about Dresden, most of the ending, all the development with Oskar's grandma, the other old man who Oskar befriends, and most of his encounters and segues. It concerns itself with Oskar's obsessive search for the lock that fits the key that was in the vase that was in his father's closet that came with an envelope marked Black that was auctioned off along with the vase because...aw, never mind. The point is, there is a blank that needs to be filled in, a key without a lock, and Oskar wanders around New York looking for it, visiting hundreds of Blacks, consumed by grief, anxiety, confusion, hate, fear, rumination, and paranoia. (For starters.) His detailed, alienated, imaginative, and obnoxious narration drives the film, and disturbs us, even without so many of the mannerisms that were in the book.

He unveils one of the film's crucial themes, one that was unfairly put aside for lots of crying and supposedly uplifting passages about one child's journey changing many, etc. He is the mathematician responding to violence. He is vivid, precise, obsessive, trapped in his head. Blanks are horrors to him; they need to be filled. Empty, they make his mind race and consume, desperately trying to fill the gap with noise and details and musings. What about inventions? What about elephants or lie counters or the extinguishing of the sun? However, he isn't a very good analyst. He is coming to grips with things that he can't just prove from his axioms and conceptions; the boundaries he set for himself break down with serious emotions and personalities and people.

This blank fills him with dread. He has a wonderful soliloquy where he shouts everything that makes him scared. The death of his father becomes a hole that his mind jumbles up and returns to, again and again, taking apart every last detail and implication, trying to pin it down, failing every time, so that he can come back once more. This call happened here, and the gaps were here, and I was here when it happened, and I know because I calculated it. If it doesn't make sense, if it can't be observed or fully understood, it is rejected.

He cannot juggle infinities, but his grandfather can, and in a way von Sydow is a mirror version of Oskar, only from a different time, with far more experience, different functions impaired, and who has finally started learning how to deal with those mysteries: evil, love, people, chaos. At 82, with literally hundreds of films to his credit, Max has a role that is easy yet difficult: conveying everything Oskar is feeling, but without dialogue. He succeeds quite marvelously, and when they're exploring together it's a magical fable and a painful case study rolled into one.

Those are the two destroyed generations, which come together and search together, and the one in between, seeing what was messed up behind them and what is collapsing before them, decides to steer them through the maze and make it bearable. This is the other big theme: of observing, of steering what you see to what ends you can hope for with what little means you have, and of being completely remade in the process. This is the point of Thomas Jr.'s Recon Expeditions with his son, staged infinities that force a reaction: social contact, searches, discoveries, and risks. It is also what leads to the film's final revelation, when two witnesses come together and trace the same journey.

Having seen this, I don't think it was properly delivered. I came to these conclusions because I've read the book over and over again for two years, and been in Oskar's frame of mind so often he seems like a twisted reflection of me. I am, like Oskar and Thomas Sr., an analyst and observer, and so maybe I am putting a bit too much emphasis on this strand of the story, but this film is structured poorly. These two themes, the mathematician's response to violence and the witness's action in the sea of stories around him, would have made an original, moving, and disorienting film. The film in its current form has far too many scenes of screaming, crashing, and crying, interspersed with unwieldy dialogues and monologues.

I'm not as concerned with all the nasty talk about plausibility. This film has sort of a magical myth about it: the hurt wanderer, mind always racing, searching for a sensible resolution, along with all the others in the city, guided by the wake of the tragedy and the small acts of his fellow watchers. If there were more hints towards the final revelation (which, interestingly enough, has nothing to do with what lock the key fits), the "explanation" for all the fairy tales wouldn't seem as hasty and botched a surprise as it does. Moreover, the original ending is far more powerful, and far less of a cop out, as the film's ending, which makes the critical error of believing Oskar's myth fills in that hole. It doesn't.

Also, while we need to be immersed in Oskar's head we also need very exacting control over what we hear and see - just enough for us to suspect what he is not suspecting. (How did they know my name? How did they know my mom? Did they know I was coming?) There are only two scenes where Oskar needed to break down: once telling his story and playing those dreaded messages to his grandfather (all the way through, instead of playing the last one while discovering the lock) and with his mother, going through his scrapbook of the journey, of all the things that happened to him. That's it. Removing the entire story of the eldest Schell was a little unfair as well; adding in more details beside a throwaway message at a bar would flesh out Oskar's relatives better.

And instead of that long, wandering epilogue, I still see the end of the film as Thomas Horn, reading the final paragraphs of the book. A child quieted by the hole he pretended to fill, no longer extremely loud, but still incredibly close.

Finally, I found the pictures of the falling body.
Was it Dad?
Maybe.
Whoever it was, it was somebody.
I ripped the pages out of the book.
I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first was last.
When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky.
And if I'd had more pictures, he would've flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of.
Dad would've left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plane would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston.
He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor.
He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop.
Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked home backward as he read the New York Times from right to left.
He would've spit coffee into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor.
He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward.
Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day.
He would've walked backward to my room, whistling "I Am the Walrus" backward.
He would've gotten into bed with me.
We would've looked at the stars on the ceiling, which would've pulled back the light from our eyes.
I'd have said "Nothing" backward.
He'd have said "Yeah, buddy?" backward.
I'd have said "Dad?" backward, which would have sounded the same as "Dad forward.
He would've told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from "I love you" to "Once upon a time..."
We would have been safe.
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

A's Talk

2012-01-26T11:45:00.000-08:00

Zero!

As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.
Malcolm X

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
David Mitchell

So, it's 1882. The diocese of Barcelona has 10,800 square meters of land that it wants to build a church on, and so the following year it approaches a man named Antoni Gaudi for the task. Gaudi is one of the most prominent architects in Spain, and he becomes obsessed with telling the stories of God and the symbolism of the liturgy through the geometries and hierarchies of nature. He calls it the Sagrada Familia, and it will consume the rest of his life.

His design is considered one of the most unique and most pioneering examples of bioengineering: design that borrows from nature. Gaudi doesn't think in lines and squares but in branching pillars, hyperboloid skylights, sinuous surfaces. When he made the models - keep in mind this was nineteenth century Spain - it was an achievement incredibly ahead of its time.

It was so ahead of his time, in fact, that no one could figure out how to build it. Gaudi died in 1926 and was buried in the cathedral's crypt, his life work barely one-third finished after 44 abortive years of construction. Franco took over, the blueprints were vandalized, and it all seemed like a colossal waste of time.

But a funny thing happened. Construction didn't stop. The architects didn't stop building; indeed, they had to come up with new technology to keep building it at all. Wars came and went, the city moved on, train lines were built underneath it, shaking its foundations, but it kept rising. It seemed to be plucked out of another age, throwing up towers here, statues there, five hundred and sixty feet above the rooftops, always surrounded by cranes, builders, tourists, worshippers, and architects. And in 2012, 130 years after the foundation was laid, the Sagrada Familia is still not finished.

So it's 1194, and the cathedral of Chartres has burned to the ground. This is, to put it mildly, a big deal. In those days, when you burned a cathedral down, you burned down the central site of pilgrimage and trade, the site where everybody gathered and haggled. Moreover, this particular cathedral held the Santa Camisa, the sacred tunic of Mary, which came to the church's doors in 876, and if you were Catholic, like just about everybody in 12th century France, you took Mary very, very seriously.

So about 300 people, of every class and type, gathered on the ruins and started building. No government commissioned it. They just wanted their church back. And in 1260, they finished construction and dedicated it to the King. Today Chartres is one of the best-preserved Gothic cathedrals in the world, UNESCO has certified it a World Heritage Site, and it boasts one of the most famous labyrinths in France.

This is going to be a talk about Weltschauung, which is a German word for worldview or philosophy. It's the story that shapes my personality, and the way I view the world. It's not a trite outline. It's a big, sprawling mess, packed with analogies, memories, and allusions to movies, Scripture, literature, personal relationships, and so on, but I think these two churches are a good place to start. We all, I think, are Sagrada Familias: tremendous works in progress, constantly being refined, built by many, never quite done. We are also, I believe, building a Chartres: a giant thing for someone and for some purpose, but no one can agree on what to build.

There's going to be some religion here. That's not too big a surprise. After all, I'm not Whiffer the perpetual agnostic. I'm A, the ghostwriter and stenographer. But instead of getting into that relationship, let's proceed to a fairly important question: if we all are works in progress, built by many, never finished, who is building us, and how are they doing it?

I

Latching on - to life. With the imagination. Like a creeper around the bars of a gate. (Pause.) Giving it no rest - the imagination, I mean - clinging, clinging, with my imagination, to the lives of others - all the time...You've no idea of how my imagination functions. I work my way in. In! I get to see this man's house - or that man's, I live in it, I feel I belong there.
Luigi Pirandello, "The Man With the Flower in His Mouth"

"Never is too long a word even for me," Treebeard said. "Not while your kingdoms last, you mean; but they will have to last long indeed to seem long to Ents."
J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King"

Do you know what it feels like to be invisible? To be constantly wandering? To sit there, nobody looking at you, emanating antisocial rays keeping people from focusing their eyes on the spot where your body is? I spent the majority of ninth grade being invisible. It was a normal act to do in a school of thousands, getting poorer and getting bigger. This wasn't entirely their fault. I was, and still am, a perfectionist, and responded to mistakes by wondering where I went wrong, taking a careful look at everything, and refusing to take part. I had screwed up. Clearly I was better off looking at it, figuring out how it worked, and leaving the actual execution to people with more skill. In groups, I was the one lagging behind, immersed in technical work, trying to figure everything out.

Signs of this started popping up. I read a lot, from comic books to Shakespeare. I gained the habit of knowing a lot but being constantly afraid to say it, and masking my knowledge in a veil of feigned, bemused confusion. The eclectic sources took their toll too. I spent long periods of time immersed in big black books nobody (including me) could understand, like the Holy Bible or Finnegans Wake, and consequently found myself unloading long, complex, analogy-stuffed monologues on anyone who asked. I followed Science Magazine on Twitter. I started ghostwriting this blog. Awkward became my favorite word. I developed a love affair with the sidekick, the grip, the straight man, and loads of old, obscure movies.

It wasn't that bad, I told myself, and to a large degree it wasn't. I gained the ability to look, quickly and carefully, and obsess over what was before me until I knew more about it than almost anyone else in the room. (It's not that hard. Just stop thinking about yourself for eight minutes, look around, and draw conclusions.) Fear lead me to act even when I wasn't onstage. I did my homework on time. That was who I was, those were what defined me. I saw what was around me, and while I thought about it a lot I became numb to interacting in it. It was definitely better than getting too involved, and then painfully crushed, as I had seen so many people do so many times.

But I couldn't accept that a grip or a straight man is nothing without the rest of the team. Unhitched from the group, I was a loner, and speaking from experience it's not nearly as cool or romantic as it sounds. I was a drop in an ocean, floating through a maze of currents, knowing exactly how I was pushed around, but completely incapable of changing the slightest thing. I am who I am, I can't change that, and you know, it's not so bad.

In a way, it's no wonder that Play Time became my favorite film.

You get a really good view, up in the air.

II

You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you..
Matthew 5:4

I don't even know what that means! Nobody knows what it means. It's provocative. It gets the people going.
Kanye West and Jay-Z, "Watch the Throne"

I thought I knew. I thought I had all the data, knew all the angles.

Once again, my knowledge was humiliated.

This time, though, my normal approach didn't quite work.

Perhaps a visual explanation would be more effective.

Usually it's not like this. Usually it's a person or an event. But the force that drives them is a but more alien. He can't be ignored, can't even be understood, only approximated and attacked. I go to Catholic school, and I sense this, at Mass. No matter how assured, how sonorous and certain their rituals, they seem to be dancing around mysteries they can only slap a word on and trust in. For He is there, knowing the offer you can't refuse.

He makes a statement so sudden, so shocking, it's all you can do to comprehend that He said it. Unlike the monolith, He gives light, and yet the very nature of that light keeps you from truly seeing it. He forces a thought, which is His, but so obliquely constructed, so forcefully laid, that it seems like an act of inception.

He is uncertainty, he is control.

The object is to be seemingly abandoned by Him and yet still obey.

III

You pushed me into this, God, and I let you do it. You were too much for me. Jeremiah 20:7

I've made you a watchman...
Ezekiel 3:17

So construction begins. No longer a drop in the ocean but a gear in the machine. As they say, I'm in the Zone. This is where the work is. This is where all the ugly standards are hammered in and formed. Dave Bowman was remade, and that's certainly an aspect of it, but what goes on is more than remaking a person. It's also integrating into a group, remaking that group, and pushing them in the right direction. Nothing stops at the self-help. Just like evil, good tends to spread in unpredictable, frightening directions.

Example. In the August of 2010, I traveled with seven other students to Los Angeles, working for a group called CSM (Center for Student Ministries). That was a frightening time. We did a lot of crazy things to ourselves and to the city, from asking Salvadorian beggars if they needed help to serving breakfast for hundreds of strangers at 5:00 in the morning. We attacked each other, slept in thoroughly decrepit walls covered in graffiti, and spent the entire time in 97-degree heat. I was hurt, I was unprepared, and people approached and asked what was wrong with me.

It was also one of the best weeks of my life.

People say that God is a force that cannot be observed, since those who do his work only believe another force is toying with them, and the mere belief (some would say the mere delusion) compels them to act in ways that are misguided at best and manipulative and evil at worst. Often it is true. But I disagree. There is no way that the A of July could have done the acts of the A of August.

The man on that street was me, but he wasn't me. He was me in his personality, his worried and muttered musings, his quiet observations, his mind trapped in perpetual motion. But he was not me in his deeds, his friends who were building him up and he returning the favor, his use of what he had and what was given to him. He was the fallen steel refined and placed. He fell, he was bumped, he rose, he fell. The transitions were through thunderous moments of humiliation. And though it comes in many manifestations and forms, our cathedrals are built through thousands of these cycles of time, growing larger, building each other up, pulling each other down, all for the mad dream of an intelligence outside our vision.

IV

Just because I'm losing doesn't mean I'm lost.
Coldplay, "Lost?"

JOKER: They're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are...It's the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and look where that got you.
Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, "The Dark Knight"

Full disclosure. There was a method to this madness, and it was developed two years ago by a man named Emiliano Salinas. His father was the corrupt president of Mexico, and he sought to break from that tradition by speaking out on how Mexico could recover from its plague of violence and victimization. His plan, the four levels of response to violence, is what gave my scattered ideas a backbone, and I might as well spell it out for all the people who phased out and don't have any idea what I'm talking about.

The first level of response, and the least effective, is denial and apathy. This is the surface, the starting point, and where we all are, to some degree, by putting, as they say, me first. The second level is fear. This is the level of parables, when all is stripped bare, and even though it's a terrible thing to have fear is good. At least you're feeling something. The third level is action. This is the Law. This is the hammering, the sweat, the ugly stuff. This is also where I was tempted to stop. But if I did, I would be setting you up for a huge meltdown when you had to confront that same strain of violence that put you at square one in the first place. In the vast majority of cases, it happens regardless. This fourth step is freefall, and it's not a response to violence but a surrender to it. And just as there are people stuck in fear, apathy, or action without control, there are people stuck in freefall.

When this happens to me, and I realize it, I do one of four things we usually do in freefall. The first is to cling to your wrongness and go down with gusto. So I do, further and further, angry at life, until I declare allegiance to the Nazis or something ridiculous. Second, I completely break down, twitch, and cry, thinking of nothing but black doom. This is very rare now, but happens occasionally when the accumulation of frustrations and futilities hit critical mass. I still recall the moment when I had an enormous emotional breakdown because I didn't know how to load a dishwasher. It was the dumbest thing in the world. Third, I can give up, step back, and analyze, leaving the work to more talented people. This is what (along with all the others, but more quickly) brings me back to Square One. The fourth thing almost never happens, because it works. It's Salinas' fourth level.

The fourth level is nonviolent action, or as I would put it, control. This is what happens when God stops hammering at you and everyone surrounding you and tells you to love your enemies instead of hate them. This is what happens when your Law becomes a very different creature entirely, your Heart. This is what is fulfilled in the end of your life, after the last cycle of time. This happens when, as they say, they put you in the oven, and you win.

It is that last sentence that I think is most important. Once you've been put to construction, you're not going to have a smooth ride all the way. You're going to face violence, from within and without. For the longest time, I didn't get it. I thought we were on one big tread where we tried to be "good," and succumbed to our elemental nature, which was the desire to consume. But the glory still remains, and still works, and still wins. You could say, looking at this cycle, that we are perpetually falling: woken up and shifted again and again by God, blasted with his glory. You could also say, looking at this cycle, that we are perpetually rising: being redeemed, slowly and softly, until we leave in control. Both are true, since it is a loop, where every part is the beginning, the middle, and the end.

However, let me be clear. Loops suck. You're stuck on the same thing, over and over again, with minor variations. The great thing about this step is that it can break the loop. I do not believe it lasts forever. It may consume our entire lives, and it may still be an incredible thing to go through, but it is not forever. I started this mess at a point, when it was condensed to two stories: a church in 19th century Spain and a church in 12th century France. I'm going to bring this mess to a point with one more.

Zero?

In one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.
Romans 11:32

It is all consecutive and interrelated.
James Joyce

Last year I started writing a novella. It was terrible, a mess of 10,000 words that came together in about a month, and which I poked at for months afterwards before giving up a year later and destroying it, but it got me started on this whole idea of cycles of time. And when I first thought about it, Salinas wasn't in the picture at all. I was thinking of the Penrose Stair, which is always ascending and yet never really going anywhere. The novella reflects that. The hero is a bitter, broken wanderer, who falls in love with an old flame, and gets involved with his newfound friends, who are building a mirror maze in Los Angeles, as a place for inner-city kids to blow off steam and recover. But his mentor betrays him, kills his girlfriend, and dies. His faith shattered, he goes back to his old life, until someone shows pity on him and the whole cycle of involvement and humiliation starts over again.

It was going to be great. I had the whole thing figured out - a story that was understanding, involving, vividly imaginative, and heartbreakingly sad. The song that ends it is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and it's called, very appropriately for the scene, "Hand Covers Bruise, Reprise." I remember writing that and realizing that the main character is me. He's where I see myself in 14 years. And why not? I mean, the plan is good grades, good college, then good luck. Those four words, I thought, were me. Hand Covers Bruise, Reprise. Just the record of all the people and ideas who have passed through me, helped me, and then hurt me once more.

I showed it to my sister, who I'll call M. I love people like this. They're the intelligence gatherers in my life. Anyway, she looked at me, and speaking like a true veteran reader of fantasy novels, she said, "Happy endings are better."

And she's right.

The final page had the builder of the maze, his dream accomplished, walk right by the protagonist and disappear into the dark. Our hero, invisible, abandoned, and crushed, walks away.

But since that moment, it's always gone like this: the collector of intelligence, ripped down by the violence he couldn't conquer, is stopped by the maze's architect, and they walk away together, into the rain, into the dark, into something. I don't know what. But while the story stops there, it's not the end.

The song you're hearing right now is the new song. "Hand Covers Bruise, Reprise" still ends the story. We still fade out into dissonant crackling. But it's not the destruction of his soul. It's the destruction of his loop. Because he found someone and something to lean on, things are different. The song that plays after the end, as the end credits roll, is also four words long. And if you asked me to sum this whole mess up, and bring it down to a point, I would play that song and tell you its name.

Complication With Optimistic Outcome.

Throne of Blood

2012-01-25T19:30:00.000-08:00

It's hard for us to believe this now, but 60 years ago, Kurosawa was the cheap, mainstream one. With Ozu still a hidden treasure, the fight was between Mizoguchi, with his elegant scroll shots, cinematography, and three Golden Lions from Venice in a row, and Kurosawa, whose films were filled with loud fight scenes, preposterous overacting, and melodramatic dialogue. You can imagine. It was only later, after Ran, after the honorary Oscar, after America ripped him off, that his place in arthouse cinemas achieved the monumental status it has today.

So looking back on Throne of Blood, his take on Macbeth, it's easy to see how he was ridiculed. This is, quite frankly, not his best work. Ikiru, while a bit long, was a wonderfully moving story, Yojimbo was a fun, cynical jolt, Rashomon justly remains famous, and even Seven Samurai, definitely too long at its three and a half hours, was gripping and accessible. This film was painful whenever anybody spoke.

Much of this, I grant, is because of the veil that exists between us and the screen. When Batman and the Joker deliver Shakespearean dialogue, we understand, because it's in our vernacular, our life. When Toshiro Mifune delivers it in a samurai costume, in a Japanese period drama from the 1950s, we wince. We don't understand.

But even knowing that, the sheer depth of the hammy acting and writing is enough to sink a film by the director whose fight scenes in 1954 can outdo most fight scenes shot in 2011. This is the only time when an actress can steal the entire movie by just sitting, keeping her body and face still, and whispering.

Like many parts of Hugo, this film is best when nobody's talking, and especially when the ear-splitting music isn't playing. Theatricality does have things going for it in terms of staging, imagery, and broad themes. Sometimes characters simply speaking the themes of the movie can be very powerful, far more so than veiled hints and symbolism.

But here, when the dialogue is so overdone, the best parts come with no noise but the hissing of the mist and the quiet cries of the doomed. Kurosawa is a master at shooting images of unease: landscapes and figures almost invisible in fog, dripping forests marching on the castle, rooms splashed with dried and faded blood, showers of arrows flying into walls and armor. (Fun fact: the arrows and horses and armies were real.)

The best scene, in fact, is when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (sorry, I always think of them by their Shakespearean counterparts) murder Duncan. The entire scene, from the debate between the two through the stabbing of the king to the smearing of the guards with sleeping potion and blood, takes place in dead silence. Not a word. I saw this with 30 teenagers who mocked every shot in the film, but here they fell into silence, and were awed. For all the barriers, all the overacting, all the dated wipes, there are moments when this film works.

Mission: Impossible III

2012-01-21T23:36:00.001-08:00

The next time someone challenges me to name a great third installment of a series, and they are insane and think The Return of the King sucked, I will name this film. They will be skeptical at first, but then I will show it and they will understand. You would think that by the third installment of a series, the filmmakers would be faltering. Not at all. Oh, there are still needless plot twists and ridiculous bursts of frenetic action, but those have become hallmarks. The films still have engaging action sequences, and a reasonably good story to propel us to the next one. If we're talking action movies the way we talk musicals and horror movies, these ones will be near the top of the pack.

Every film follows the same trajectory: Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt produces, finds a fairly respected and talented director, and several writers come up with the plot. It usually involves a crazy international criminal the IMF needs to take down, and a struggle to clear their names, steal something they want, and defeat the bad guys, whoever they may be. Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and several guest stars get on board, ILM works in their best explosions, the composer parrots Lalo Schifrin, and the film is released, making enormous amounts of money. Is this wearing out? Of course it is. There are only so many rogues in the world. But it works.

In this case, the director is J.J. Abrams, who had done TV shows and little jobs here and there, and who starts ramping up the camera shake and shifting loyalties. This film (episode) goes for a more personal level: Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is going after the Rabbit's Foot, which has no purpose except to be kicked around and eagerly sought by the entire cast, but also for Julia (Michelle Monaghan), Ethan's wife. Trying to beat him to it is Ethan (duh) and his team (Rhames, Pegg, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, and Maggie Q). They move from continent to continent, each match with the enemy growing larger, until...well, then it gets complicated.

Abrams, being an overthinker, worked in several levels of deception and jolts to keep us moving, worried, and off-balanced. With a script like that, Hoffman, Cruise, and Monaghan have crucial roles, and it works. All three are put in roles they know how to do well, and play off each other beautifully. Lawrence Fishburne nails his dialogue so that we suspect multiple things about him, all of which are compatible. The remaining supporting characters are given the sole assignment of being capable, bitingly funny, and speaking a unique action-movie speak that mixes thin character development, cynical anger, and technical gibberish we pretend to understand.

At this point, I would bemoan how monotonous mainstream films get - expository dialogue, explosion, scared dialogue, explosion, witty dialogue, explosion, etc. - but at leasts it tells the old story well, for a while. The first three minutes are great, and there are at least three fun fight scenes after that. The best takes place on a bridge, where a crucial phone call is suddenly, and quite spectacularly, interrupted. Call me easily awed, call me sophomoric, call me crazy. You'd be partly right. It is frequently awkward, frequently blurry, and yet here we are all excited.

It is towards the end, though, where things break down just a little bit. There's a red herring that was unnecessary except to jolt us around, and some deeply improbable contortions involving a makeshift defibrillator, a phone call to Virginia, lip-reading, and Lawrence Fishburne. You don't want to know how they're connected. Relationships are fragile things in this picture, and when death threatens them it seems almost like a requirement.

But it's no wonder that they made a fourth, and by all appearances are getting ready for a fifth.

Ethan's just too much fun.

Joyful Noise

2012-01-16T17:27:00.000-08:00

I learn from the end credits that Todd Graff dedicated the film to his mother, who was in the choir from 1968-1977. It made me partly elated and partly sad. His film was panned critically and certainly contains a lot of false, grating, badly written scenes, but also has roots in that time in the choir, and if he had brought more of that back-pew view to the film it would have been a greater success.

That said, this film has some great talent in its rank. Dolly Parton, Keke Palmer, Kirk Franklin, and Queen Latifah can all hold their own on stage, and gospel music is a robust, energetic art form for them to work in. The music is solidly performed and arranged all the way through, faltering only two or three times (and usually it's with song choice or what gets put on the screen.) They have their moments of bravado and emotion as well. Even though the lines are cringeworthy ("I'd call you stubborn but that would be an insult to mules") the delivery is effective, and when they're singing it usually works.

Except, of course, when it doesn't work, and when it doesn't work it really doesn't work. I was surprised to learn this was Graff's third film after some thirty-odd years in the business; the script and filmmaking felt like a man who was still learning. He has all the development down for Vi Rose (Latifah) and her family, but lacks subtlety: the characters spit out what he's written in his outline. Some scenes are pretty magnificent, and some are flat out corny or failures. It feels incomplete: details repeat themselves too often, ridiculous events occur, and many characters are so thinly written they could be made of cheap plastic.

So what? you may ask, and rightly so. Musicals do not require good acting or good storyline, just as action movies don't. They only need enough to string the numbers together. The music does serve that purpose for a good deal of the time: as compensation for those threads of the story that weren't fleshed out or properly executed. But a lot of it depends on the story, and is frequently undermined by it. Dolly Parton's beautiful "To the Moon and Back" is shattered by an awkward reappearance by Kris Kristofferson that is, shall we say, sloppily handled.

That's a shame, because there is good material here. The film follows a struggling choir in Georgia trying to win the national Joyful Noise championships. At the center is the complicated, broken family of Vi Rose, her absent military husband (Jesse L. Martin), her daughter Olivia (Keke), and her Asperger's-suffering son (Dexter Darden). The family is at the center, a cocktail of faith, insecurity, abandonment, and loves both personal, religious, and musical. They become changed by the choir, and by Randy (Jeremy Jordan), the grandson of Gigi (Dolly Parton). Subplots follow, which I won't get into, because they're mostly terrible.

They're complicated, and are trying to hold on to a faith that they are constantly surrounded by but cannot cope with. The struggle (which I think the film did not emphasize enough) was between the nature of religion, which holds God as the primary glory, and the nature of competition, which holds up whoever can take the most stress and come out alive. When the competition came out, strutted around, and sang about being humble, I just couldn't believe it. False religiosity is frequently the source of tension; consider Parton's talk of being "too good a Christian."

I also wanted to see more rehearsal. Too often it seemed that the final product was plucked from the sky, and it wasn't. The script seemed to inserting only what it thought necessary (see, they rehearse!) and skimming over a good deal. The piano jam was fun, but not quite enough. Maybe if they had gone for this particular style of shooting, maybe if the script was polished, maybe if more characters were fleshed out, maybe if Vi Rose was changed instead of revealed, and then quickly reconciled...

Anyway.

The greatest thing this movie did was remind me it's time to see a documentary about gospel singers.

Double Indemnity

2012-01-13T20:24:00.000-08:00

Double Indemnity had me a little worried at first with its setup. Performances seemed stilted, subplots seemed unnecessary, the score seemed a little too cheesy, the dialogue a bit hard to understand. About 40 minutes in I sighed and said, "Here comes the good part, I suppose," and was reasonably interested. At the fifty-seven minute mark I got to the murder and admitted okay, Wilder's got me on this one. By the eighty-minute mark I was starting to understand why all the awkward exposition was needed. By the end I was elated, briefly deflated, then bitterly entertained.

This is a film that tells us everything with its opening lines: "I did it for the money and I did it for the woman. I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman." What can I say? It's a film noir. The hero always gets bested in the end. In this case, our hero is played by Fred MacMurray, and he's an insurance salesman who gets more than he asked for with the wife of an elderly man who wants to get accident insurance for her husband. Without him knowing. He starts obsessing about her anklet and before you know it they're plotting to have him killed.

It's one of the notable points of 1940s cinema. People don't notice it as much as they do Casablanca or The Red Shoes but it's not something to ignore. Directed by Billy Wilder, who was just starting his good streak, it works very simply, with only two stories that quickly merge into one, but rallies itself to a stirring series of scenes where the noose is drawn around the criminals, tighter and tighter, coming to a bloody end. Cinephiles will find much to love: the classic Hollywood Miklos Rozsa score, the theatrical staging of the sets, the wise-cracking narration and quintessential noir lighting, and a story that brings up ever more harrowing twists of the screw.

The three actors at the center of the story are key here. Barbara Stanwyck has the juiciest role, and her acting was so good the director should have cut out some of her lines, as she already is showing us what they tell. Edward G. Robinson is the brave supporting actor, who manages (unlike whoever plays the victim's daughter) to act up a storm without blowing it. He has the really fun speeches, and is always getting a cigar lit for him.

It is MacMurray that I worried about, especially in the beginning. He seemed to be snapping out the words, as if trying to hurry things along, and it didn't serve him well whenever he declared his love. He seemed unusually composed for much of his narration as well. But as the plot shifted to material that suited him better (the details) he had a better presence onscreen, and even made us believe that he cared, at the end, seeing a way to escape and then realizing he cared too much.

In conclusion, I'd simply like to point out the second-best moment in the film is a prolonged shot in which the lovers try to turn on their car. And the best, of course, better even than the finale or all the close shaves, is how Fred MacMurray gets to say "I love you too" to Edward G. Robinson.

Films for 2012

2012-01-11T21:35:00.000-08:00

The Hunger Games
It's one of my favorite books of all time, told in an immediate, effective style, and the movie makes me excited. The best parts will be in the actual arena, from what I can see, as the special effects are largely unconvincing. Chemistry between the actors, careful editing and shooting, and a really well-written script are essential. It's at the tail end of the early year Dead Zone and I hope it overcomes the enormous challenge of adapting a work like that into film. I worry especially about the scenes in the Capitol.
The Avengers
I actually think this is going to be terrible but Marvel has been building hype for four years now and with all the exposition out of the way I hope it'll be better than all the truly awful films that had to set it up. The real hurdle here will be the quality of the villains. It'll take a lot more than a lot of explosions and panicked police officers to convince me they are menacing enough to warrant an entire team of superheroes. From the mumbo-jumbo surrounding Thor that underlines most of the expository material, I don't have high hopes.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Yeah, it technically came out in 2011, but only in limited release, and I opted for MI4 over it when I was in New York, so over here in California it'll count as a 2012 release. This is also based on one of my favorite books, but it has a very high chance of overdoing all the drama packed into the pages and become a sappy manipulative mess. With lines like "I miss his voice telling me everything was going to be okay," I hope it succeeds. Dream: the ending sequence, set to "The Scientist."
Chronicle
This could be the next Cloverfield, and it's clearly trying to be, with a cast of annoying adolescent boys, handheld camerawork, and a mysterious ability (although it's pretty clearly revealed). I don't know. You have to pay careful attention to the smaller releases. Stars like to languish there before making it into the big time, and while I don't think it's that likely in Chronicle, you never know. It all depends on quality. Best thing going for it: the quite brilliant poster.
Prometheus
This could be really good or really mediocre as well. Everyone's comparing it to Alien, but the real talking point will ultimately be the 3D and the monster. It's a different kind of threat, and takes place outside as well as inside. It is an Alien story in a post-Avatar world. I worry about how it will translate. Ridley made a tremendously effective horror film in 1979. The expectations of the audience may derail its execution in 2012. On the other hand, there isn't a problem with the effects.
Cloud Atlas
This is the third film this year adapting a book I love and I'm really worried. The more I hear about it, the stranger it becomes. It's a big risk right now: a three hour movie, financed by groups around the world, and with all the actors playing multiple roles, sometimes changing gender (Lana Wachowski, how will you keep people from laughing?) But it has the scale and bravado that is so difficult to find today, and with the Wachowskis and Twyker at the helm, and David Mitchell's enormously ambitious story getting the treatment, I can't wait, even if they fail.
The Dark Knight Rises
Maybe you know of this one. It needs a good conclusion, and better choreography. Oh, and if Joseph Gordon-Levitt donned the Batman mask and cape, I would be very very happy.
Gravity
Alfonso Cuaron made the best Harry Potter, and I've sampled the unbelievable things he's done with Emmanuel Lubezki, so this will be completely mind-blowing. I plan to track down an IMAX 3D theater and see it, knowing nothing besides the names (Clooney, Bullock, Alfonso, Chivo) and Framestore's recruitment ad, which...well, just read it:

Framestore is about to embark on one of its greatest challenges yet. Gravity is the next Avatar in terms of ambition. There are many innovative and visually stunning aims for this project.

The entire film will be made here at Framestore. In effect the film, as Avatar was, is 60% CG feature animation with the balance being hybrid CG and live action elements.
Starring ~~Robert Downey Junior~~ [George Clooney], the film is a contemporary survival thriller that follows a ~~woman~~ [Sandra Bullock] as she attempts to make her way back to earth after a satellite crash sets off a chain reaction of further crashes. Because it's set in space, most shots require every element to float in zero-gravity.

But then factor in that this is a stylish Cuarón flick, directed with his trademark languid feel, and you begin to realise the full scale of our challenge. Cuarón's long and fluid style (the opening shot alone is slated to last at least 20 minutes) leaves no cut points to hide behind. In short, this is a hybrid of a fully animated, photo-real feature film with a blockbusting visual effects movie.
Fortunately, having worked with Alfonso before on Harry Potter and Children of Men, we know one another extremely well. Now we are looking for the best talent in the world to help us realise this massive and beautiful film. Over the next few weeks we are interviewing and looking at reels of those in-house who want to join in as well as making trips to the US, Canada and Australia.

This is CG feature animation meets real world on a large and beautiful scale.

Film(s) of the Year

2011-12-31T12:51:00.000-08:00

The films I saw this year, from least to greatest:

Atlas Shrugged: Part One. This was, I think, one of the few films released this year that was almost universally hated. Why not? Hours of stodgy platitudes of conversations that never leave the editorial page, animated suspense over the tensile strength of steel, painfully wooden acting and production values, and an ideology that essentially denies grace and glorifies selfishness add up to a pretty shocking mess. Worst of all, it's only one-third of what will be a horribly prolonged trilogy that hopefully will never be finished. The DVD recall due to ideological errors in the description are the icing on the cake of shame.
Footloose. I went into the theater all excited. I thought that being the only person in the theater would be fun beyond belief. I would dance to the musical numbers, no one would care, and it would be a great time. Well, this movie proved me wrong. It was awful. Actually awful. The family confrontation between Ariel and her parents was so hideous I was sinking in my seat. It's rare that I have a movie that's so bad I don't think of improvements but just sit there, in horrified awe, and despair about the future. This was it.
Captain America: The First Avenger. Now I will admit that hey, this film can have a sense of fun. But the subtitle clearly explains everything that's wrong with it. I'm not always against cartoon villains and preposterous adventures. That's what comic books are all about. But as superheroes go, Captain America is pretty mediocre, and the setup for the Avengers renders much of the film a mess of clunky exposition (Hail Hydra!), stock characters (token Asian, token Black, etc.), and plot holes (they did what?). And while I can accept a lot of crazy things, I still don't understand how Captain America could crash the plane and make a tearful farewell but not turn it around.
Gnomeo and Juliet. "NO!" all the people who loved this movie are screaming. (Admit it. This includes you.) "How can you NOT like this movie? It's garden gnomes! And Shakespeare!" Sorry. Even if a bad movie is so bad it's funny, it's still bad. I think it should have stayed on a middle school stage, to be performed by and for them. My profound apologies.
Unknown. The only competent thing in this picture is the camerawork and editing, which does a very effective job of those POV shots and fight scenes. The only memorable thing in this picture is Bruno Ganz, as an ex-Stasi policeman who has an admirable control over the tone of the film whenever he's onscreen. Everything else, from Liam Neeson's amnesia to the "plot twist" that favors surprise over suspense, is unoriginal, unbelievable, and in places cringeworthy. My readers may wonder why I didn't review it, and it's simple: this was all I needed to say.
Colombiana. This is the part of the list where I get to all the mediocre films that could have been far better. Colombiana is not that bad, but only has one good action sequence and just about everything else is pretty derivative, telling stories we've all heard a few thousand times before in every bad action movie ever made. It just got overshadowed by all the really original stuff out there. Forgettable.
The Adjustment Bureau. That said, this one defined forgettable. In fact, while I remember it starred Emily Blunt and Matt Damon, and involved the conflict between free will and predestination, and was based on the story by Phillip K. Dick, I can't remember anything else about it. I almost didn't remember to put it on the list. I saw it on an airplane flight to Maine, and it was so not involving I actually chose the in-flight magazine over it. Not that it was bad. When I was paying attention, it was okay. But it slips away like sand.
X-Men: First Class. This movie was actually okay until the last 40 minutes, where (like so many movies) it just threw everything out the window. It was nice to see the origin stories develop, and quite entertaining to see the chemistry between the oddballs and mutants; indeed, I think the X-Men are the most fun of all the superheroes. But the tragedy of the schism didn't work. It just didn't. All the elements were there, but Kevin Bacon was terrible, each person's role wasn't fully emphasized from beginning to end, and it dragged on far too long. Pity. I liked McAvoy and Lawrence.
Cars 2. This may have been the closest thing to a bad movie Pixar has ever gotten. It's not bad, but it's not good either. I guess the whole espionage plot, complete with the menacing speeches, wore thin after a while. It looks great, but there isn't much feeling beneath. Which is funny: if this was from DreamWorks, it would be a good step forward. But we've come to expect so much from Pixar that simple entertainment like this one just underwhelms. What moral to draw? If it didn't work the first time, don't do it again.
Kung Fu Panda 2. This film was not special but quite energetic and quite fun. The original was better, but with most sequels it usually is, and if you just want an entertaining time it will meet your expectations. This panda is DreamWorks' most viable success, and with its other champion Shrek worn out to death, it will likely stay that way until the franchise sputters to a halt. Michelle Yeoh and Angelina Jolie shine.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams. This film has footage that every TV network would kill for: exclusive (and considering the state of the place, likely the only) footage of the cave where the first paintings were made, virtually unchanged since their beginnings 32,000 years ago. This has some of the best use of 3D I've ever seen, and was the first film this year to inspire my awe. Unfortunately, as any film that mostly consists of slow pans over prehistoric cave walls would feel, it's very slow, and at 80 minutes feels about 30 minutes too long. The postscript is Herzog at his best though.
Contagion. The only reason this film got placed so far down the list was because of the mob of films that clamored for recognition. Steven Soderbergh directed an efficient, effective film about a pandemic that spreads exponentially around the world, moving through a series of characters, locations, facts, lies, and discoveries. Each piece of the puzzle is necessary, and while some are more effective than others, all are touched by the disease. Above all else, it's realistic, and a disease that spreads through mere touch provides quite a good scare indeed.
Midnight in Paris. Incredibly, I have never seen a Woody Allen film, and this one was a pleasant surprise, having gone in with expectations of a snobbish, cynical New Yorker I wouldn't be able to identify with. How wrong I was. Despite its abrupt end, this is a lively ride through history, art, and myth, taking us back to long nights wandering around Paris in the height of its Jazz Age. Owen Wilson nails the earnest idealist, and just like a good Henry James novel there are a host of crazy players revolving around him, from Pablo Picasso to Gertrude Stein.
Moneyball. For all its oversimplification and archetypes formed from characters, this film finally injects a breath of fresh fire into the sports genre, mixing its statistical plot with the old convention of the down-and-out baseball team that really wants to win, against all the odds. The improbabilities are all the more staggering because they are true. Not about Billy Beane or the Oakland A's (a lot of stuff is left out) but an idea, and what it meant for the poorest team in baseball. The three great endings, one after the other, seal the deal.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two. It says a lot for this series' quality when half a movie can break world records and be considered one of the best films of the year. Even though it's missing its ominous first act, this film ends everything just as we hoped it would: with a spectacular set piece that brings every story, one by one, to its close. It is no longer a movie, but a rite of pilgrimage, and with a great story to match. How's that for magic?
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Brad Bird's film is that rare thing: the preposterous action film that takes itself completely seriously, that holds nothing back, and yet instead of collapsing into animated silliness is always suspenseful, involving, and beautifully grand. Tom Cruise is great as always, the scenes in Dubai and the final fight in a car park are astounding, and while the rest of the film looks mediocre by comparison Jeremy Renner gave one of my favorite performances of the year. The only reason it's not No. 1 is because of the next three films.
Hugo. I'm astonished it's this high on the list. In a way, I'm astonished it's not higher. Martin Scorsese has made a movie for the sharp, interested child in all of us, and adapted Brian Selznick's book into a beautiful construction of a film, with effects that mirror the book's sweeping illustrations pretty perfectly. When they're not talking, it's a silent movie come to glorious clockwork life, and when it's over, you'll truly understand what I meant.
Source Code only falters once, with about a minute and a half of needless explanatory footage. Otherwise, it's just about perfect. This overlooked thriller, from the dog days of March and April, follows Jake Gyllenhaal through seven cycles of eight minutes before the destruction of a train. Michelle Monaghan is Christina, who is trapped on that train, again and again, and Vera Farmiga is Goodwin, trapped in the lab, sending Jake in again and again. It's groundbreaking science fiction and one rollicking ride.
Super 8. This, along with parts of Source Code and Hugo, was the only film I saw in a whirl of dizzy joy. Here's what I'm talking about: an energetic, competent story, with believable child actors, and a writer-director who has everything just right. It's not quite the immortal masterpiece, considering the monster looks dated even today, but it has a confident grasp of almost everything Hollywood cannot do anymore. There's a real love behind this camera, a distinct personality. With so many terrible films this year, maybe that was enough.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

2011-12-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

The day before going to see this movie I saw Police Story 3, a fun movie if you suspend your disbelief and call all the cliches "conventions." Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the American version of that movie. In either case, if you could pause the film and think about it for two minutes, all would be lost, because you would realize that for the third or fourth time, our hero is breaking into a really secure area to clear his name and stop a demented criminal with the help of his team, and is once more traveling through a bunch of exotic locations, nice cars, improvised disguises, and last-second saves. But you can't, and so you are hypnotized, because it's just as good the third or fourth time around.

This film is living proof that a good action director gets a start in animation. Not true for all cases, but definitely for this one. After The Incredibles, it's no wonder Brad Bird got it right so quickly. He has an instinctive feel for the big set pieces people thrill to - enormous cataclysms, environments that have the devilish cunning of a theme park ride, plans that juggle four or five factors at once, all ticking towards zero. I am tired of saying that while it's not great art, it's great entertainment, so I won't. In terms of making and staging good action, this film is both.

I will grant that these guys aren't quite as skilled as the Hong Kong guys, or as crazy. But they're still talented, no matter what people say about fast cuts disguising incompetence. As in vogue right now, they do their own stunts. Not stupid enough to do it without CG or wires, but there you are. And you gotta give them credit: these stunts are exceedingly dangerous but quite fun on the screen, at times almost a lark.

Well, not always. In fact, very rarely. Part of the magic of this film is that no matter how preposterous it is, it takes itself completely seriously, and never becomes silly when it doesn't want to. It's always involving, always suspenseful, always propulsive. Some of the scenes are better than others, but none are unnecessary. The most extraordinary takes place on and in the Burj Khalifa, in the face of an approaching dust storm, and manages the always hard feat of maintaining a very high level of tension without seeming like banging over the head. Tom Cruise's timing is impeccable in that scene, as is Simon Pegg's comic Benji.

But the best part of the film isn't the action but Jeremy Renner, as analyst Brandt. He is the sidekick, the helper, the foil, but most importantly he is our guide, our (considerably smarter) Watson. Before he breaks out skills we didn't know he had (or did we?), he gains our empathy because we can see ourselves in his place, dragged along for the ride. Then his true capabilities and his true past come out, we are moved and impressed, and by Mumbai he is as indispensable as Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in Inception.

Let's get this straight: this film will not be fondly remembered as the event of 2011; tentpole blockbusters will overshadow it by next spring, and films with greater depth and scope will tower higher. And there's a more than slightly annoying twist at the end. But as they say, it's great fun.

The Dark Knight Rises (Prologue)

2011-12-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

I got the chance to catch the first six minutes at an exclusive IMAX screening of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, of which I'll say more tomorrow (along with my look back at 2011, both cinematic and personal). For now, let me just say that this film has the potential to be excellent or hideous, i.e. just like I thought before I saw the prologue, so you're not missing much.

Unless, of course, you want to see a plane get devoured by a bigger plane. In that case, go right to one of these theaters and see it. More details: the big plane belongs to Bane (Tom Hardy), the evil terrorist leader who wears a mask that makes his voice very hard to understand. Upon being captured by the CIA, he kidnaps a scientist, for reasons I don't know and hopefully will not know until next summer.

You could make some very reasonable arguments, but personally I think he kidnapped the guy to show off. I mean, you could just knock him out while he's walking home, but destroying his plane with your plane and hauling him into the sky is so much cooler. Plus, you get to kill some meddlesome government agents.

Already I see problems developing. On the one hand, the plane heist is pretty awe-inspiring. This is a big, confident work by a brilliant director who has all the resources he could possibly want and has already made two excellent movies. The brief sneak peeks from the set show absolutely incredible effects. In IMAX, it'll be amazing.

On the other hand, you'd have to be pretty dumb to bring two hooded guys you don't know without bothering to check their identities or at least ask some useful questions. I fear for when Batman and Bane are in the same scene. We'll need subtitles, hopefully misleading and humorous. Also: while the action choreography is getting better, will it overwhelm the story? Will Bane and Catwoman really be that menacing? How could you ever follow an act like The Dark Knight?

We'll have to wait and see.

2011

2011-12-29T16:35:00.000-08:00

You can't really describe 2011 in 4 words, or one sentence, or 140 characters. 2011 will be remembered for moments.

2011 was me walking through the hallways of the old high school, tiles and rooms ninety years old, alone, reading poetry, talking to whoever I ran into, be it one of the five Academy English teachers I had that year, the Drama Club, or the dependable regular who taught Spanish.

2011 was those long Block Twos in Biology, 86 minutes of the poor teacher reading off of endless sheets of notes that weren't his, the students correcting him instead of the other way around, the decaying chemistry lab and the old desks wearing us down. It was the stares across the room, the constant annoyance of frenemies, the glimpses of that one girl - maybe this year will be the year?

2011 was water running down my neck and shirt, distracting me from the pastor praying over my baptism. 2011 put me at a desk, with a brand new copy of The Message Remix in front of me, and turning to page one. 2011 was doubt, 2011 was joy.

2011 was the three hour banquet at Maine, parents married 20 years, the orders and food dragging on interminably, matriarchs and patriarchs trying to soothe but wishing they had a vacation from this vacation. 2011 was my sad, detached stare into the distance, considering the permutations.

2011 was enthusiasm. 2011 was me running into the rain and the enormous Alameda Theater, the best movie theater in the world, to see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and laugh at the jokes only me, Woody Allen, and about fifty other people understood. 2011 was the summer pilgrimage to Harry Potter, and the fade to white that lit up everybody there.

2011 was the first day of cross country. 2011 was four 1200 meter bridge loops and a two mile jog there and back. 2011 was the exhausted realization that you were running on empty, but it didn't matter, because you were 400 meters away and someone was gaining on you. 2011 was the worried looks of people realizing you had joined the team nine weeks into their twelve week season, and placement was everything.

2011 was online. 2011 was in the hallway, on the iTouch, on Twitter. 2011 was Piers Morgan saying that Obama would end Iraq, and he did, that he would get Bin Laden, and he did, that he would get Gaddafi, and he did. 2011 was Science Magazine, blessed be their name, announcing a drug that reduced HIV transmission by 96%. 2011 was passing 15,000 views. 2011 was when Elizabeth Taylor and Sidney Lumet breathed their last.

2011, at the end of it all, was the look on his face, and her face, and her face, and his face, when I gave them my voice. 2011 was the year when I entered in the middle, and vowed to stay to the end. Which, of course, is really only the beginning.

Police Story 3

2011-12-29T15:32:00.001-08:00

This film convinced me that the movies are just as stylized an art form as the ballet, the opera, or the play. They all have a series of conventions and standards that we derisively call "cliches" but are actually vital to making the film a film, rather than a transcription of a book or a painting. You could certainly trash this film, calling its every element corny, and you'd be right, but that doesn't mean it's not fun. You can't be cynical forever.

Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh make the movie worth watching. They star in a plot we've all seen a million times: the couple infiltrating the criminals, seeking to bring their despicable kingpins down. Of course, Mae (Maggie Cheung) is threatened, Yeoh and Chan argue a lot, numerous explosions and fistfights occur, and there are numerous conflicts between their true loyalties and their cover. But no matter how hackneyed, how terrible the zoom in as the officer says, "We need a super cop," they make it compulsively watchable.

They bring a theatrical comedy to the screen. The film relies on a colorful string of stereotypes (HK vs. Mainland), allusions (several clear Buster Keaton homages and nods to the coming turnover to China), and old-fashioned overacting (Jackie Chan meeting his fake family, the romantic fight between Yeoh and Cheung) to propel through its story, otherwise defined as "all the filler between the fighting."

Speaking of which, they can fight. When the story gets in the way it can be painful, and you can see the seduction of fire start to take over the choreography (most of the central fight scene consists of explosions.) But make no mistake - they aren't overwhelmed by the effects. They are the effects. This was made in some of the last good days for Jackie Chan, when he hadn't mellowed out and wasn't too old and was with a group of people he knew were good.

Now if this was made anywhere else, this movie would have been quickly panned and dismissed within minutes. All the ingredients are there: an overworked storyline, a third installment, a lot of action interrupted by stereotypes and overacting, and nonstop explosions to fit the third act. But because it was made with some of the best people in the business, it's quite a ride. Jackie, Michelle, and Maggie have just enough charisma to make it through the plot, however tired it is. We *know* it is derivative, yet can't help but smile.

Normally any film that consisted of nonstop action for the last 20 minutes would be terrible. Not here. In fact, those are the strongest parts of the entire picture. It consists of an insane chase across Kuala Lumpur that involves several trucks, several cars, a helicopter, a motorcycle, a ladder, and a moving train. They are really doing it, and update the classic fight on a train with a helicopter crashed on the roof, approaching barriers, guns drawn, and everyone's lives (quite literally) at stake.

What more can I say? It's all gloriously up there, on that screen.

Note: The film features some gut-wrenching outtakes that make it clear just how much danger everybody was in. If for no other reason, I recommend seeing this movie just for those credits.

In the meadow, we can pan a snowman.

2011-12-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the holidays (and Roger Ebert's collection of his favorites) I've offered some of my favorite scathing sentences from 2011. Let's get going.
Every element of this story has been done a billion times. Better. We don't need a mishmash, done worse.
- MI2

But most of all, I was disappointed by the ending. This is one of the greatest weaknesses of films right now: they reach the third act, the explosions start, the score turns the volume up, and Bob's your uncle.
- X-Men: First Class
This film is too serious and too melodramatic to function as a musical, and too preposterous to be taken on its own terms as a drama.
- Footloose
I couldn't help thinking back to that seventh grade play. It really is on that level. The script, the songs, are the sort of thing a group of middle schoolers would pound out in hurried Times New Roman on the school computers, and then cobble together a production from.
- Gnomeo and Juliet
Like a block of cardboard with delusions of grandeur.
- The Andromeda Strain
I think it was Jason Reitman who said that good movies made him despair, because their greatness intimidated him, but bad movies inspired his creativity, because they made him think over what he could improve on. I also think Jason Reitman (if it indeed was him) would have a very good time thinking about the missed opportunities of Sherlock Holmes. This is an intriguing concept, but it misfires. The result is a bad picture, but not the abhorrent badness that causes critics like myself to rant about the gathering dark age of cinema today. The bad that makes you think, a la Reitman or Holmes, what could be improved.
- Sherlock Holmes
By cramming all the material into one paragraph the effect would be gone. Billie August's film most emphatically does not understand this.
- Les Miserables
My verdict shall be brief, my retribution swift.
- Open Season 2

On the basis of the auteur theory, I would usually give this movie a pass. Yes, it contains its implausibilities, but surely because Zhang Yimou is an important director it must have redeeming value. Well, no.
- House of Flying Daggers

Bride and Prejudice

2011-12-23T17:01:00.000-08:00

If you winced while reading that title you should not see this movie.

If you smiled immediately after wincing and yelled, "That's terrible!" in a thoroughly entertained voice, keep reading.

If you know anything about Bollywood, you may be thrilled and a bit put off, as this isn't serious Bollywood, nor is it seriously India - more of a Bollywood India, glorious, lush, theme park real, yet still more real than, say, Kim or The Temple of Doom.

If you want to know about the cast and plot I apologize. Darcy (Martin Henderson), a hotel magnate, is scouting for locations in India with Balraj (Naveen Andrews) when he falls in love (eventually) with Lalita (Aishwahya Rai Bahchan), sister of Jaya, Maya, and Lakhi, and daughter of anxious matchmaker Manorama (Nadira Bahar). Desperate for grandchildren, she tries to marry off her daughters, and further complications ensue from there.

If you like musicals, you're in luck, because this one has a doozy that starts in the first five minutes and never lets up until halfway through the credits. In particular, if you like big choreographed dance numbers, you're going to get all you want and then some. If you like wit in the words there's a great song entitled "No Life Without Wife," which is far more entertaining than the title even begins to suggest. If you like beautiful girls, pointed lyrics, big dance scenes, and musicals, come in.

If you're a Jane Austen purist you will walk out of this film after about ninety seconds. (Frankly, if you're a Jane Austen purist, you would have stopped at the back of the DVD, with an exclamation mark at the end of every sentence.) If you're simply a Jane Austen admirer you may be pleasantly surprised. This film does a merry job of twisting the 19th century story to a 21st century world.

On the other hand, if you are a 21st century cynic about romantic comedies (and after seeing New Years' Eve, why not?), you may not have the most splendid time here. You will certainly need to bear quite a few cliches from the golden age of Hollywood musicals, right down to the staging and cinematography. If you don't mind lovers kissing in front of the setting sun as choirs sing and the orchestra swells, well, what are you waiting for?

If you like domestic intrigue there's plenty, although I'm afraid you'd be better off with the book, which doesn't have all the dancing, singing, cliches, etc. If you like comedy there are two hilarious scenes, even if the plot never really leaves the formula. If you're a bit quirky you'll probably love it, as it's "overlooked," as critics like to say. If you're a kid you'll have a great time, even if some of the references fly over your head (and well they should, considering). If you're me, you'll be reasonably entertained, even with all the travesties, formulas, and cliches.

If you just want some good strange company for two hours, stop reading, unleash your spouse hunter, and track this guy down.

Mission: Impossible II

2011-12-21T14:31:00.000-08:00

The second word is the key. It's about impossible, not possible. John Woo's film is all about feel. All about rotating cameras, and pyrotechnics, and slow motion explosions, Hans' Zimmer's energetic score, sparks, winces, blows. Yes, there is a story, cobbled together from older, better thrillers, but the shiny new face is what they bring to the table. It's easily mocked (I thought I was seeing a serious version of Get Smart), but it is, after all, impossible. Tom Cruise is once more Ethan Hunt, and Thandie Newton is Nyah, the Ingrid Bergman figure.

I do not say this lightly. She is told by the man she loves to seduce Sean, the villain she used to love, and retrieve a dangerous biological weapon that both men are after. After scenes at the horse races and the Impenetrable Compound, she inevitably finds herself in terrible danger, and ~~Cary Grant~~ Tom Cruise has to save her.

But wait! There's more!

Conflict is now delineated through a great many gunfights, chases, heists, and explosions. Plainly impossible things occur. There is an odd couple: Billy, the Scotch-Irish guy, and Luther, the annoyed black guy. The Scientist is of course killed off in the first scene. The spies use fairly ridiculous costume changes and contortions (literally.) As is required, Nyah plays hard to get, she embarks in an obligatory duel, and Hunt has the chance to kill Sean but of course doesn't, in a third act consisting entirely of a spectacular chase across the outskirts of Sydney.

In a film this ridiculous, you need actors with a sense of effortless charm. The only actor who consistently maintains that presence was Anthony Hopkins, and he was onscreen for all of four minutes. This makes all the filler between the fights painful, endless, and pointlessly confusing. Guys, the obligatory scene where the hero wakes up after a one-night stand with his girl is not sexy. Not after we've seen a three-minute kiss. Every element of this story has been done a billion times. Better. We don't need a mishmash, done worse.

For example, how does the MacGuffin, called Chimera, spread? Is it from blood to blood, and if so, why do they expect all Sydney to catch it from Nyah? Is it through the air, and if so, why isn't Tom dead? What is it with the masks? Are you just trying to jerk us around? And what is the CEO, John C. McCloy, doing there, exactly?

But just as you can have a great music and a terrible plot, this film has great action and a terrible story. It doesn't save the film, but God, what pyrotechnics! I don't mean the terrible first moments on a plane or the climb in Utah, however famous it is. I don't even mean the start of the heist. I'm talking about the gunfight in the corporation's Australian HQ, a shower of bullets and sparks, and the motorcycle getaway that involves an untold number of cars, trucks, guns, punches, and explosions. That's where Woo's forte really is, and that's where he delivers.

Sean's death scene was still a dirty trick though.

It's Christmas!

2011-12-13T19:24:00.000-08:00

Whiffer's asleep so I decided I'd compose this brief message myself. The end of the year is upon us, and I'd like to give an uncertain glimpse into the future for 2012 (and the end of 2011, of course). I'm going to New York City, so I'll probably come back with reviews of The Muppets, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and hopefully my thoughts on the first minutes of The Dark Knight Rises. I won't be doing any Christmas special, as those are overrated, but there will be a summing up of the year's releases (the 18 and counting I got to see, anyway), ranking them from least to greatest. Nothing's final yet, but it is coming.

Y finalmente, I will be live blogging the Oscars again, so come here on February 26th for my thoughts on the action. I hopefully won't be as much of a sycophant as I was last year, but if the Muppets get the job I likely will be. 2012 will likely be a much more diverse year than 2011, with me possibly creating rather than criticizing. If all goes well, you'll hear more about that a later time.

Meanwhile, all I can say is get ready for Kees van Dijkhuizen's tribute to Steven Spielberg and Joel Walden's tribute to Martin Scorsese, coming out on December 30th and 23rd, respectively. I can't wait.

Best,
A

Last Train Home

2011-12-10T09:22:00.001-08:00

Every year in China, to celebrate the New Year, more than 130 million workers return to their families. This is the world's largest human migration. Last Train Home, an extraordinary documentary directed, edited, and partly shot by Lixin Fan, follows one family through three of these journeys, as their new working lives tear them apart. This is one of those films that brings people to another place for 90 minutes, and makes them feel they have been living there for years.

These people are just one drop in an ocean, but the film pays close attention even as it demonstrates how small they really are. It sits back and watches, to such a successful degree that I wondered how the three camera operators even got to film it. (The saddest moment, in fact, comes when they notice the camera.) The Zhangs go through the strangest, saddest twists and turns, and while the ending is very nicely placed, we know they are still living, still working, and still moving. Its realism is what makes it sad, but not depressing.

They go about their business in a nation much like ours one hundred and fifty years before. China has all the driving power of a rapidly developing nation: luxurious cities that could host the Olympics, then tremendous urban wastelands, choked with smog, that manufacture and produce in enormous volume, then the towns, spread out in the countryside, still beautiful, still poor, crisscrossed with a railway system that seems to groan under the sheer weight of everyone moving down it. Things are unfinished, sprawling. People live in concrete rooms and cramped bunk beds, yet find a way to smile, so they don't cry.

It hit home. My ghostwriter and I know virtually nothing of China, which is already a fading memory our grandparents rarely talk about (and for good reason - they lived through World War II as four or five year old children.) I examined the film as I would a stranger, admiring the respect it treated its subjects, but was repeatedly knocked down, again and again, by moments of sudden familiarity. When Suqin berated the son about dropping from third to fifth in his class several years of frenzied report card checking came rushing back. When the grandmother said bitter melon cured pimples, and sweetness would follow bitterness, we all laughed and knew that was a lie.

Three years.

The economy booms. The economy crashes. The Olympics play. The New Year comes again, and again, and again. Boats, trains, buses travel from Guangzhou to Chongqing to Sichuan and return. Sewing machines hum, corn and rice grow, people push, haul, bicker. The Zhangs slowly and steadily sink, and so do we.

This pain comes from understanding. Consider the parents, Changqua and Suqin, and their children, Qin and Yang. They both left the grandmother to take care of them when Qin was one year old. They, like 130 million of their fellows, work to produce everything the West demands: jeans with 40 inch waistlines ("Westerners are tall and fat"), piles of shirts and cloth, technology galore. They don't want their children to work for hours on end, in this job. Over and over, "don't end up like us." The only way they think this can happen, however, is by getting an education, by studying harder.

Qin. "Do you think this is amusing?" they ask her, even though she's anything but amused. When we first see her she's about fifteen or sixteen, feeding pigs, burning incense to her dead grandfather, talking about how many of her friends have dropped out of high school, knowing they can find a job in a factory. Sure enough, the following year, that's where she is, worrying about the supervisor, getting a Barbie-style hairdo. There is a spirited debate over a four-letter word that involves quite a bit of madness. By the end of the film, she works at a nightclub, serving drinks.

Her parents hint at her: your brother wants you to come back, your mother dreamed you came back, think it over."I don't care," she says over and over again. Her parents frustrate her. They left when she was one, they only come once a year. How could they possibly care about her? The daughter, as only an 18-year old girl in a changing world would say it: I don't really have a plan. The father: See you next year. The son, staring in silence: where will he be in another three years? The mother: How did I lose her?

Across it all, the train, linking states, crossing mountains, bridging divides, carrying everyone home.

Little Shop of Horrors

2011-12-03T18:03:00.001-08:00

The first step to understanding this movie is the sets. Yes, they are clearly sets. But I liked the sets because they were sets. Effects aren't any fun unless they look like effects, and this film wants to be good company. These sets are silly. They are contrived. They are of the stage. Normally films as absurd as this one are a vehicle for critics' cynicism, but this one should not be. Frank Oz made one of the great so-bad-it's-good films, the one that (along with Rocky Horror) all cult films must bow down to, featuring several great comedians in their younger days. My school's performing it. I can't wait.

The plot can be best summarized as a cast list. Audrey (Ellen Greene), bimbo caricature of the leading lady. Seymour (Rick Moranis), nerdy schlemiel. Mushnik (Vincent Gardenia), store caretaker. Orin (Steve Martin), cuckold and sadist, soon to be prey. Masochist (Bill Murray), who only appears for three minutes and has no influence on the story but steals the show. Crystal, Ronette, and Chiffon (Tichina Arnold, Michelle Weeks, Tisha Campbell), trio and chorus. Lastly, Audrey II (Levi Stubbs), carnivorous Mephistopheles of plants, and a mean green mother from outer space who keeps growing and growing.

It is a comedy, a bad movie, and a good movie, all on a great many levels. Its humor mainly consists of an escalating chain of characters, oddments, and musical numbers that feed off of each other to create the plot, which is *only* about a monster who tries to take over the world, in the same sense that David Copperfield is *only* about David Copperfield. Its fun comes through the cast, and the characterization, which is what spawns all the laughs, right down to the Four Tops who show up a tad belatedly in a spectacular closing number.

This is the flip side of the musical, distorted by broad, crazy satire. It still has all the conventions - the stage, the love triangle, the "I want" number, the set pieces, the two act format, the love scenes - but are distorted to such a degree it becomes either devastatingly hilarious, or so painfully awkward it's not watchable. Not entirely a good thing, since there are sequences that are really hideous (whenever Audrey and Seymour are talking to each other), but I'd rather have something really great pockmarked with failure than something that's just okay.

By that standard, Little Shop of Horrors succeeds. There are scenes in this movie that have become classic, driven by some of the best comedians of the age at the top of their game. Bill Murray and John Candy share preposterously overacted appearances that would flop if they faltered for even a second of the three minutes they spent on screen. They don't. Rick Moranis is delightful. But of course, the only sketch we'll remember is the one about Orin. The entrance of Steve Martin (which has over 2 million views on YouTube) doesn't just stop at mocking the stereotypical 1960s rebel but goes to that rare achievement, the creation of a new comedic character everyone will be remembering years later. Perhaps you know of this sketch. It involves the removal of a black leather jacket. I can't imagine how fun it will be live.

But of course, I haven't mentioned the best one, which got them nominated for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song. (With good reason too: this is the only special effect that is halfway believable). "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space" stars the Four Tops in a deliciously messed up number that eventually results in the destruction of the set, complete with a plant that gets the only swear words in the film and more charisma than the humans. With those effects, I really can't imagine how fun (or crazy) it will be live. With those lyrics, you have to be more than a little bit crazy to like it.

All right, all right. That sentence was technically unnecessary. If you weren't a little bit crazy, you would have turned this movie off ages ago.

P.S. Now that I know the musical, I think the film's ending is a total cop out.

Hugo

2011-11-25T20:24:00.001-08:00

This is my 500th post, and I'm glad I picked a great film to celebrate it. This film will likely be regarded awkwardly in critical circles, as movies like Kundun and After Hours will, because it is completely different from anything and everything Martin Scorsese (and Sacha Baron Cohen) have made before. It is a strange, delicate, brilliant creature, in love with its material, filled with eerily talented actors and (for once) images that explain the words, not the other way around. Some may find it a bit long, or the look too CGI-ish and the 3D annoying, or the slapstick cheap humor, but I think it has achieved that difficult thing, the children's film for adults.

It was based upon the book by Brian Selznick, which was as wondrous a book as the film, a beautiful assembly of old fonts, machinery, and pencil illustrations, which Selznick drew himself. It takes place in the mythical Paris of the 1920s (James Joyce and Salvador Dali make cameo appearances), in a train station where the veteran station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) terrorizes the underworld, affairs burgeon and stop, trains arrive, and although the clockwinder has died of drink, the clocks still run, as if a deus ex machina keeps their gears tight, winded, unified.

This ghost is Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), whose father died in a museum fire and whose uncle was the unfortunate clockwinder, and who is building an old, abandoned automaton his father (Jude Law) gave to him before his death. His fate collides with Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), whose key fits the lock in the robot's back, and her godfather (Ben Kingsley), the old penniless man who maintains a nearby toy shop. This gives Scorsese the chance to give us a whole tutorial of silent film history, glorious in its homages to Lloyd and Keaton (and Melies, of course), and a series of deus ex machinas where everything fits together.

Hugo is an observer, and a dextrous toolmaker, and the film's soul is with him. He clambers amidst a maze of parts, gears, wrenches, spanners, hands, glass, spokes, levers, cards, tricks, toys, clicking heels. He sees all the details of life playing out, as Martin would in Little Italy. He fixes. Isabelle, without knowing it, turns him into a fixer of men as well. The two of them, without realizing it, save an enormous amount of history that would have been lost forever. They are honest without being corny vehicles of the writer, and realistic without being cynical. Asa and Chloe get it just right.

I must now talk about the effects. Selznick practically storyboarded and edited the film for them, but the crew manages to put in a few tricks of their own. The first few minutes before the titles, including an astonishing long take, will almost certainly be remembered for a good while. We've all seen great VFX before, and this one doesn't have anything groundbreaking, but uses what it does have really, really effectively. The 3D works really well on the sets and gears, but is equally effective as a way of making staging coherent. In a funny way, by theatrically placing everything on a stage, it's a flashback to the tableaus of the 1910s.

Then there's the devotion to film. This was made by one of the Film Foundation's guiding lights, and its love and attention paid towards the material really pops out. All the details are carefully thought out, and there are nods and updates to all the silent greats, from The General to Safety Last to a sneaky updating of the very first film ever made, which uses 3D to play upon the idea of audiences ducking from the screen to avoid the train onscreen from hitting them. When the big ending scene plays, it is a clarion call for searching. Families could have a very good time touring silent movies after this one. Like the book, the pauses for words are a little strange after so much beauty without them, but they're always necessary.

To sum up: The production design is great, the effects are great, the direction, cast, story, editing, and cinematography is great, the backstory is great in its own way as well. I really can't say anything bad. And after Footloose, Captain America, Colombiana, Atlas Shrugged, Gnomeo and Juliet, Cars 2, and X-Men, that's a refreshing thing to be able to do in 2011. Here's to another five hundred.

Note: There's a lot of fun trivia in this film. The character Rene Tabard is stolen from Zero for Conduct, James Joyce makes a cameo, and the automaton was real, and actually drew the drawing in real time.

X-Men: First Class

2011-11-24T10:56:00.001-08:00

The Greek drama is not dead.

I became convinced of this through X-Men: First Class, especially during the last 40 minutes. Granted, it's supposed to be contrived and artificial, but the stride for realism post-Nolan ruins it. Such a format can work; in fact, it's frequently why Nolan's films worked. But it sure doesn't here.

This film is a prequel, revealing how the stage was set for the first three movies in the series. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is the one who recruits and trains them, and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) is his right-hand man (for a while.) Their villain is the crazed Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who can absorb and channel kinetic energy and who wants (of course) to destroy the world. How dull it is to be a villain who wants to destroy the world. Almost impossible to distinguish you from the next idiot who tries.

Xavier and Lensherr assemble (in the film's best scenes) a team of mutants who must prove their worth. I will not go into detail into each character, as this would take up too much space, but I will note that the black guy dies first, which is just a shame. They are, for all their abilities, just teenagers; they make up their codenames on a drunken lark. Mistakes happen. Stuff gets destroyed. Questions rise: does a mutant show off their mutation at the risk of discrimination, or stay in the closet, normal, repressed, and safe? This wording is not accidental; someone even says, "You didn't ask, I didn't tell."

These scenes, especially in the second act, were so great they made me want to meet these mutants and go out for lunch with them. You rarely hear about a mutant's life: the day-to-day training, the relationships and rivalries, the pressure of secrecy, the difficulties of war. Don't get me wrong. X-Men: The Sitcom would be a really bad idea. But I miss character development, and the great thing about origin stories is how they develop our emotions, and color the characters in a new light.

Props to the movie as well for its protagonists. McAvoy holds his own very well as the knowing, capable young protagonist, Rose Byrne is a great straight woman amid all the screwballs, and Jennifer Lawrence creates a younger, more sympathetic Mystique. Its editors (whose names unfortunately escape me) and DPs are not lazy. It doesn't fall back on over-the-shoulder singles and quick cuts so easily. Until the shooting starts, it understands how to block a scene, how to make the space coherent, and how to build tension simply by putting the camera in the right place.

However, Kevin Bacon is not that good a villain. I rarely criticize performances in a movie since my sympathies are with the actors, but it's true. He can do his thing, but not really effectively. (Granted, with some of those lines, how could he?) His luring people over to the dark side just doesn't seem believable, even with an admirably thought out backstory behind it all. Similarly, his accomplices just seem like cookie-cutter standouts from a James Bond movie on acid.

But most of all, I was disappointed by the ending. This is one of the greatest weaknesses of films right now: they reach the third act, the explosions start, the score turns the volume up, and Bob's your uncle. The most agonizing thing is that the writers had a really great concept, but it wasn't told correctly. There were too many twists and turns, too many melodramatic moments that fell flat, too many false injuries to Professor X, too many characters simply unused.

Too many characters simply unused. The third act turns the Cuban Missile Crisis into a big Super Bowl of heroes and villains, with the pitiful humans (and many of the mutants) just staring, awkwardly, until they are needed. Like a Greek drama, where two characters will converse and the others stand stonily silent until their turn, so the characters of this film stand, until called, like stick figures and archetypes. They feel like blocks of symbols.

Yes, this is how The Dark Knight ended, but there was a good reason for it and it didn't go on for such a long time. This one is simply unbearable. By the last shot, I was ready to throw something at the screen. If the orchestra was quiet, everyone was doing something, even when the focus was on others, and if all the action was about 20 minutes shorter, this could have been heartbreaking.

NOTE: There's a really great end credits sequence, which mirrors much of the production design in its homage to 1960s science fiction. I couldn't fit it in the review, but I had to mention it.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-11-19T16:16:00.001-08:00

Captain America: The First Avenger is one of the best bad movies I have ever seen, and if you cannot conceive of a good bad movie then you should run, not walk, in the other direction from it. This film contains some of the worst dialogue, effects, and plots I've ever experienced, but once it gets underway I realized, hey, this is a real movie, and it's not afraid to be silly, not afraid to be clever, not afraid to be cliched. It feels like a diminished version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with its story we've all heard a bazillion times and its energetic rush into cliches, and serves as a perfect poster boy for the genre of B movies emerging today.

Although it discards (to its credit) the annoying scene where the hero wakes up from a one night stand with a girl we'll never meet again, this film dutifully includes all the ingredients for a B movie, even with its enormous budget. There's an underdog Skywalker (Chris Evans), a girlfriend/author's mouthpiece/honorary boy (Hayley Atwell), a sidekick, a tough fart of a military guy (Tommy Lee Jones), a Nazi villain (it's always the Nazis) seeking (of course) world domination, and the unit of men which contains, by movie law, an Irish guy, a black guy, a British guy, a French guy, and an Asian guy whose name might as well be Private Token.

It takes place during World War Two, and has a beautiful comic book look to match. (I could go on about how filmmakers have used WW2 as an easy vehicle for unambiguous conflict, but I'd rather not.) Yes, there are those stretches of mystical bombast that every superhero movie must have, but for the most part confines itself to the old story of freedom vs. tyranny, even with a little bit of cynicism slipped in. In a weird way, I was glad. Even when it followed the formulae like a seventh grader writing a robot essay, it had a heart.

Steve Rogers (Evans) is Captain America, who is transformed through methods I won't bother explaining, and who becomes a PR guy for Liberty Bonds. But when he goes into battle against the crazed Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), he proves himself to be a little bit more. This Red Skull has a found a mysterious source of energy that is supposed to make him all powerful, take over the world, etc. How dull it is to be a comic book villain. All you do is make big speeches and look ghastly. Rogers storms his bases with his team, Agent Carter (Atwell) watching with unease, until a certain incident with a plane occurs, leaving him to be discovered in the ice, seventy years later, alive.

Of course none of this is believable, which is the point, but there are moments where it gets downright annoying, like whenever the Red Skull gets onscreen. The supporting characters are mostly stale as well, as is most of the story, while it is a nice touch to mix in Howard Stark as well as hints of Thor. There is even a surprisingly well choreographed action scene, which throws realism out the window and yet makes the placement of everyone and everything perfectly clear, even if it is spoiled by a terribly fake death scene. (In fact, parts of this film are surprisingly well staged, when they're not edited beyond reason.)

But ultimately what makes this film fail is the subtitle. The connection to the Avengers is not necessarily an automatic failure, but it certainly isn't executed as anything but. The plot holes are so gaping, so awkward, that it doesn't even work when it's playing. And while the film had me for a few ambiguous moments, it lost me a couple moments later. I don't think it was edited quite right. I also think the final struggle should have continued all the way to the ice, and kept us in the dark from then on.

Perhaps my expectations were too high there. But then again, considering I enjoyed this film even a little bit, perhaps my expectations were too low.

A.I.

2011-11-06T21:09:00.000-08:00

Steven Spielberg likes light. He likes it streaming in, forming big blocks, silhouetting characters. He likes children. He likes big emotions. He likes the inner child in all of us. He likes smart blocking, smart editing, smart cinematography. He likes actors who can hit just the right note. He likes just telling a good story, regardless of technical or structural gimmicks and pyrotechnics (although those aren't bad to pull off, once in a while.)

Now here is a film constructed like an Isaac Asimov story, perhaps "The Bicentennial Man." Stanley Kubrick called it Pinocchio: the android who wants to become a real boy, wandering through horrors to achieve it. Critics wondered if the ending was a tad sentimental, a tad too optimistic. Spielberg, pigeonholed as emotional manipulator, didn't write it. Kubrick did. Coming through this film is the closest thing to happy Kubrick would have made since 1968. But he died in 1999. Spielberg took over, and he did it with great emotion, with great actors, with great imagination, and an ending that....well, let's get back to the actors, and the story.

In the distant future, when global warming has drowned cities (but not, alas, destroyed the Twin Towers), robots known as Mechas are manufactured in mass production.David (Haley Joel Osment) is unique: he can love, imprinted with a desire for his foster mother, Monica. But he doesn't fit in, little currents of distrust and misunderstanding snap to the surface, and they leave him in a crazy world of ruined robots, sleazy nightclubs, and a ghastly prejudice against his kind. Joe (Jude Law), a robotic prostitute, helps him out, and they set out to find a way to become real, organic, and accepted.

They do so in a world that is quite frankly a mess. The film employs great and imaginative special effects, especially after the first hour (yes, the whole first hour; the film moves rather slowly.) The CGI still holds up fine ten years later (no small feat), the cars recall Tron, and there is a sequence involving a rising moon that is more than it seems, and quite an awe-inspiring set piece. The journey to the end of the world, with the ruined Manhattan skyline towering above the rising waters, is still a wonder to behold.

The most crucial thing about the film is the performance by Haley Joel Osment, who has the unenviable task of striding the shaky line between bio and logos that still manages to do more than chill us. We are chilled, definitely, by the long, understated scenes in the house, with the loyal teddy bear, a worrying father, and a son who means well but proceeds from false assumptions. It is only midway through that the impact sinks in. That we feel it at all is a tribute to Osment's skill. Law, on the other hand, just feels annoying, as someone raised on terrible routines for insecure women probably would.

But what about the ending, so debated over? I mentioned the film was conceived, (for a time) produced, and very nearly directed by Stanley Kubrick. I think if anything, those last 20 minutes, in the ice of a far distant future, when Stanley conceived them, were like the last 25 minutes of his 2001: a final twist of his knife, a work that wasn't Brian Aldiss (who wrote the short story the film is based on), or Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote the basis for 2001) but his, and only his.

I think it would have carried more weight without any dialogue, any explanation. As the man said of 2010, you don't need to explain everything at the end. The audience can puzzle it out. It would have been haunting, a last trembling voice of hope when everything seems to be over, after the darkness of that false ending 115 minutes in. It would have carried the same impact that in places it has. But there you are. It is what it is. David's odyssey may not be a brother of Dave's, but it is still a pretty good film nonetheless.

Tony

2011-11-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

No I don't want to battle from beginning to end. I don't want to cycle or recycle revenge. I don't want to follow Death and all of his friends.
Coldplay, "Death and All His Friends"

Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God.
Rush Limbaugh

These two quotes ran through my mind when I saw Tony, a film made by Invisible Children about an invisible conflict and an invisible army. But the filmmakers provided a third image that will stay with me far more than those quotes, or the video from Uganda: a group of grassroots activists, no, a mass crowd, flashing peace signs to the sky.

They do this in the face of an army of 400 that is running through Central Africa, destabilizing governments, destroying towns, kidnapping and raping. They are most notorious, however, for their use of children. Since the late 1980s, the LRA, led by a Joseph Kony, has kidnapped children and forced them to kill, rape, and abduct for their rebellion. Invisible Children is trying to end it.

There are many ways I could respond to this film, and all of them are wrong. Brushing this picture off as another charity case would be true, but wrong. Brushing it off with politics and abstractions would be true, but wrong. Seeing it through the Limbaugh quote, which, alas, is the only way many people know about this issue, is understandable but gives voice to the troll instead of the hope he trashes. Saying it wasn't quite shaped into the perfect weapon at our minds and emotions all the way through would be technically true, but in spirit very, very wrong.

Instead, I see it as an unfolding of life. Life much attacked and twisted, but life. All the highs and lows of the story don't follow a neat, tidy pattern. It's ugly. It's an eight year love affair three college guys, and many more soon after, would come to have with a country, a seeming abstraction for philanthropists and object of debate, that would become very real, and very complicated, but perhaps with an optimistic end. I will not reveal who Tony is; you must see for yourself. The movie, in fact, fits in very well with its presentation; the last four minutes will reveal how.

It needs to be heard. Yes, I know it ends with a straight out appeal for money, which will turn out the skeptical and the prickly. Yes, I know it's a grassroots activist project, and not very mainstream, something for the bourgeoisie so many despise. But it reaches a corner of the world you don't get to see that often. The best moment in the entire movie, for me, is when the animation of the context of the situation, typical documentary fodder, suddenly fades into reality. These are not the creations of the artist on the screen, detached, hypothetical. This is real.

Smile, Pinki

2011-11-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

I saw this as a fundraiser for Smile Train, which repairs cleft lip syndrome. It is remarkable. Yes, I know it's just a bunch of footage slapped together. But its handheld style suits the story well. No ponderous narrator tries to "explain" it. There are long stretches where we're just with them, in the room, listening. And it's a subject that needs to be heard. For 30 minutes, wandering among the volunteers through the villages and hospital, we are in another world.

The origin is mysterious, but cleft lip leads to a grotesquely distorted upper lip, sometimes even merging with the nostril. With little more than a dedicated corp of volunteers, basic surgical equipment, and their ingenuity, the doctors repair it. I heard that as of 2003, the healthcare budget in India was four dollars per person. That surgeons can achieve so much under these conditions is truly great.

All the President's Men

2011-11-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

There are two types of shots: the spectacular ones that make you sit up in amazement, and the equally spectacular ones that simply burrow into your brain, unnoticed, until suddenly the trick has been pulled. All the President's Men contains a great many of the second kind. There's a moment where Bob Woodward (Dustin Hoffman) is desperately fielding calls, and we start in a long shot of the newsroom, with all sorts of activity buzzing around us, a secretary in the background talking to him. But by the time the crucial data is dropped, we're steady on his face, everything else has blurred out, there's not a cut in sight, and we didn't notice a thing.

It's one of the greatest strengths of the film. It's not afraid to use long shots and cut slowly. It has a very competent grasp of style, a grasp of the way faces, items, and sets should be oriented, that puts almost every other movie to shame. The skill of its editor is uncanny. But that's not why people watch it. They come back to it for the screenplay, for the wild tangles of investigation that were not simplified or shortened, for the chemistry between Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, and for the feeling of sophistication, of intelligence, and cynicism every inch of the frame exudes.

I suppose I could criticize its length, its baffling depths, its wandering side trips and false flags, its abrupt ending, but anything of the sort would be perfunctory and pointless. This is the political thriller to end all political thrillers, a long, obsessed ride through a barrage of facts, names, interviews, discussions, and frantic research in the Library. If it is wandering, bewildering, endless, and doesn't so much end as come to a demarcated stop, isn't that how it went down in real life? This film doesn't resort to a beautiful three-act structure, discard everything else, and call it a final cut. It is willing to test our intelligence, and go all the way.

As I'm sure many of you already know, it's about the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon administration, and reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), who brought the ugly mess of espionage, corruption, and financial wranglings to light. It is pointless to describe how they did it; only the film can explain it. It's an education in itself. I say that with caution, because every movie has its inaccuracies, especially when based off of real life, but it's hard to come out of those 138 minutes disagreeing. Even the film can't contain it all; we cop out at the reelection and simply get a basic outline of the rest, slammed into print.

Oh, and it has a newsroom set that I think will be one of those spaces in the movies I will remember for a while. The offices consist of one giant newsroom, desks folding into desks, aisles into aisles, chairs into chairs, typewriters into typewriters, just built for director Alan Pakula's camera to track down at a dead run. It is freakish in its accuracy. Every single thing is perfectly in its place, even when the set appears to be a mess, right down to the extras in the background and the editors putting the stories together. Everyone smoked. And the romance of the typewriter. Ugly work, and yet here we are with nostalgia.

Now? They say you can learn a lot about a book by reading the first page and the last page. They also say you can learn a lot from a movie's first and last shots. This one has a doozy. I was going to describe it in gushing detail, but I think the shock is best felt as a surprise.