Wow, I haven't updated this page in forever!
I've been thinking of plenty of things I want to write about over the past several weeks, but my available time has been SORELY lacking. One of the things I wanted to toss up here is a quick run down of several movies I've seen in the last few months. I'm going to write a more in-depth analysis of a couple in particular at some point, but I'll whet your appetite with some bite-sized reviews for now. I'll try to avoid giving anything significant away, but just in case...
...SPOILERS AHOY!!!
The Last Kiss
We saw this last night. It stars Zack Braff and is being marketed as a sort of 30-something follow-up to
Garden State, which couldn't be further from the truth. Ultimately, I severely disliked the film, mostly because it begins by asking interesting questions that the movie finally isn't interested in wrestling with. This is deeply frustrating. Instead, it slips into VERY familiar territory dealing with the aftermath of infidelity. Yawn... I might have wondered what the hell went wrong here, except that I noticed during the credits that Paul Haggis, writer of both
Crash and
Million Dollar Baby, is responsible for the screenplay. That tells the whole tale. Haggis is a guy who writes scripts that are flawless in a mechanical sense. Every character and every scene is set up in such a way that there is always a motivation and prior on-screen occurrence that lends some weight and believability to what you're watching. In short, he understands how to tell a story very very well. The problem is that he doesn't understand how to tell GOOD stories well.
The Last Kiss ends up being undone by some of the same problems that ruined
Crash for me. Haggis creates stories about ethical ambiguities and then simultaneously makes sweeping generalizations that are moral absolutes. What message am I supposed to come away with from this stupid-ass movie? Here's what I get:
We're all too stupid and selfish to know when we've got something good right in front of us. And even if we do figure it out, we're all too weak to do the right thing anyway, but that's okay because really everyone does it and everything will work out okay for you anyway as long as you're willing to make yourself suffer conspicuously for long enough to prove you're really really really sorry for what you did. What? Am I really supposed to feel sorry for some dipshit who just spent the movie screwing his girlfriend, screwing his friends, and metaphorically screwing the other girl that he's also literally screwed? For Christ's sake, spare me the pretentious moral posturing about learning and growing from past mistakes that involve acting like an asshole. Pardon me, but just because you and everyone you know is a philandering piece of shit, don't try to tell me that I am too.
Fuck this movie. End of rant...
Brick Okay, this is more like it. I liked this one a lot. If you haven't heard about it,
Brick is a modern take on the hard-boiled detective stories of the 1930's, but recast in a high-school setting. That's right, a high-school setting! If you know anything about me, you'll know that I hate high-school movies. I mean really HATE them with deep and abiding loathing... So that should tell you something about
Brick. The movie works a far cry better than it has any right to. It has awesome performances, wicked plotting and the dialogue is spot perfect. This is a movie that could have sounded silly very easily, but it turns out that listening to these characters speak is an absolute pleasure. Even the two-bit players have interesting things to say. Volumes are spoken with such economy as to give the words an incredible weight. This is a movie that Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino should take a cue from. It's better than anything either has done, in my humble opinion, and without a tidal wave of exhausting and pointless verbage bogging it down. I won't go into story details because I don't want to spoil the fun, but it's very very clever and well realized. Highly recommended!
Firecracker From the beginning, this had the look of a movie that was custom built for me. It's a small town murder story with a surrealist bent. The reviews that I've seen have been largely positive, including many from well known and respected critics, and have described it as "Lynchian" and "Hitchcockian" and a slew of other great sounding "-ian's." It also features genius singer/musician Mike Patton in duel roles. Sounds like a can't miss, right? Wrong! It's a colossal disappointment. The premise is interesting, but the story goes beyond being quirky and disjointed and heads straight to weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird and totally unhinged. I'm all for non-traditional and ambiguous storytelling, but this thing is just a big confused mess. Some of the performances are decent, but others are outright laughable. Finally, the production quality is plain atrocious. The more forgiving reviews have described the editing style as being "jarring" or "in-your-face", but I would tend to favor "amateurish" and "poorly conceived" instead. Some of the color work is interesting, but overall the whole thing looks like it was made on the cheap. I appreciate a filmmaker taking chances, but it still has to add up to a watchable movie. Overlong. Badly executed. Boring. Avoid...
United 93
Better than I'd hoped. I know it's been said over and over again, but it was very tasteful and not at all exploitive. It's a simple story that's told quietly and effectively. It would have been easy to make this same movie as an emotionally overwrought shlock-fest. The fact is, there's enough real drama here that you don't need to artificially manufacture it with cheap emotional manipulations. Overall, this is well worth checking out, but it won't be one to hold any particularly long lasting mind-share with me, the way that many other films do.
The Wicker ManOkay, this is an interesting one. First off, it is NOT a good movie. Second, even though it isn't a good movie, you will probably have fun watching it. Third, the movie is deeply misunderstood by the masses and the critics who have reviewed it.
In nearly all reviews I've seen,
The Wicker Man is incorrectly treated as a straight horror/thriller hybrid. This movie is satire. The director and co-writer is Neil LaBute, famous for scorching black comedies like
In The Company Of Men and
Your Friends And Neighbors. Put this film into the context of his other work and it suddenly makes a lot more sense. This film, like those, is about gender wars...NOT the absurd mystery or the heroic flatfoot. The trappings of the plot are almost incidental. The important message to get from this movie is that, when it comes to conflicts between the sexes, all women are evil (even baby women) and all men are clumsy, stupid, easily manipulated and totally outmatched. There's a scene that comes soon after Edward Malus, played with a rapturous lack of subtlety by Nicolas Cage, arrives on the island. Here he confronts a group of locals hauling off a big, bloody, twitching burlap sack. He wants to know what's in the bag. Go ahead and have a look say the ladies, full of smug assurance, but he can't force himself to look inside. They laugh at him and walk off. This scene is the key to the whole movie. Edward is willfully ignorant. He isn't interested in learning about the mysteries of the island or achieving some deeper understanding of what's going on around him; he's too scared and too dense for that. He's there because his big, dumb male ego requires him to come to the rescue and take control of the situation. If he was really willing to look into dark scary places, he'd know what we all find out in a later scene mirroring this earlier one...He's the one in the sack. For the length of the movie, we've got Mr. Ed storming around the island on his stolen bicycle, screaming his lines at the locals and bumbling around like a bull in a china shop. It's absurd, deliberately so. And it's really funny too. This film is drawing criticism for being unintentionally hilarious. Again, you have to look a little harder. LaBute has always been masterful with dialogue. The man is quite literally a playwright. Words are his trade. It is beyond unlikely that someone with this background and experience wouldn't have realized what the dialogue sounds like. Of course the dialogue is funny...the Edward character is funny! In fact, he's patently ridiculous. His motivations and actions and reactions and whole manner of being are absurd! The guy is an object for derision and laughter, as is everything that he represents. Then there's the matter of the bear suit, just in case it wasn't obvious enough for you. This is a director trying to let everyone in on the joke, even the slower audience members who haven't got it figured out yet. Come on, people. This is a rubber chicken moment in what is being marketed as a horror film. And as if this wasn't silly enough, when Edward takes the bear suit off again, HE LEAVES THE FEET ON! Oh my God, I laughed so hard! What do you need, people? A neon sign?
Ultimately, there's some stuff to like here and the movie is undeniably fun and humorous. Why then is it not a good movie? The fact of the matter is,
The Wicker Man doesn't go far enough with the absurdist comedic elements and keeps too many of the trappings of the horror and suspense genres that it mines for material. It isn't enough of one thing or the other to really function fully as either. It strikes me as LaBute trying to secretly slide one of his own movies in under the noses of financiers that are expecting a traditional horror remake. In this way, it strikes me as something of a masturbatory effort. It has all the standard LaBute tropes, but without any of the more thoughtful content of previous efforts to it elevate beyond a fairly juvenile point of view. I don't think LaBute is a misogynist, but this movie won't help him shake that perception...Not that he looks on men more kindly here either.
Lemming
I've had some good luck with French films lately and this was no exception. Like
Firecracker, which I mentioned earlier,
Lemming has been cited as having elements of Lynch and Hitchcock, but this one actually deserves and lives up to those comparisons. Some will say it's derivative, but I couldn't disagree more...and I'm a huge Lynch fan. I'd like to get into the details of the story and how it unfolds, but the movie will be that much better if you don't know anything about it in advance. All I'll say is that
Lemming sneaks up slowly and takes turns that will knock you on your ass. There are some great performances too. If you like stuff that's a little out of left field, do yourself a favor and check this one out, but try to avoid having any details given away before you see it. Highly recommended!
The DescentI usually dislike horror movies, but this was something different. On the surface,
The Descent is your standard "hot chicks trapped with scary monsters" flick. The things that set it apart are compelling characters with real back-stories, clever cinematography and visuals that conjure up images and feelings from other great films, and some fresh new action and thrills that really get under your skin. It's odd to find a movie that quotes from other movies so often, but manages to avoid all the cliches usually associated with the genre it occupies. So, this is well worth checking out. It's smart and thoughtful and intense. Just make sure to find the original European ending if you get stuck watching the American cut. It's much better.
A Scanner Darkly
This is a Richard Linklater film and, as such, you should pretty much know what you're getting into ahead of time. It's a fairly cerebral and melancholy exploration of the paranoia and existential conflicts that come with life in drug culture and police states. Like other Linklater films,
A Scanner Darkly tells its story largely through dialogue. This will be a problem for some people. As is becoming more and more common these days, trailers and previews have generally misrepresented what the film is. Those viewers coming in expecting an action film or something akin to
Minority Report or
The Matrix will be sorely disappointed, but the rest of us will find a lot to like. The animation fits perfectly with the subject matter of the movie and the performances convey a desperation and hopelessness that absolutely ring true. Good stuff. Check it out if you're up for something a little more heady than your average Hollywood fare. That goes double if you're a fan of Philip K. Dick.
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Okay, that's it for now. Everything else is good here. We're working on some fun plans for the last part of the year. I'll try to keep to a more regular posting schedule in coming weeks. Check back often. More is on the way soon. Best wishes and lots of love to all...
