So I tried to see all the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture of 2007. My thoughts are on the other film blog I've started keeping, Movies About Steak Sauce. But my thoughts on Atonement eventually began to grow so large that I decided to cut it in half, placing the review parts on the review blog and the ranting parts on the normal blog.
So anyway, Atonement. I don't think I say this often, so let me just say it now. I hate this movie.
Maybe I was influenced by a negative review, leading me to see more negatives than positives. But things started to feel wrong immediately, when the cinematography felt like it was glowing. Why? Maybe it's a childhood memory thing. Who the hell knows. I also remember a jump-scare scene at one point. Here's a tip for filmmakers: If you're not making a horror movie in any form, don't use jump-scares. That might also be good advice for horror filmmakers, but never mind.
The plot involves a lowly gardener in love with a rich woman. He writes an obscene letter to her as a joke, then writes a heartfelt one. He gives it to her little sister to be delivered, but surprise! He's given her the obscene one! After a previous scene where it looked to her like he made the woman undress, she suspects he's a sex fiend; seeing the letter, she becomes more convinced.
I have to stop here. If this movie had been a comedy, the critics would have savaged it. Roger Ebert, my favorite, has a term for this kind of story: The Idiot Plot. In order for the plot to advance, every character must act like an idiot. Apparently, making it a tragic romance suddenly makes this kind of plot better.
Let's examine. The gardener writes an obscene letter, then a heartfelt one. You'd think that he might be smart enough to hide the obscene one, or burn it. But no, he's an idiot. So he actually puts it in an envelope and gives it to someone. Additionally, the little sister sees him and her, and her older sister is undressing, jumping in the water, and getting out. Wouldn't you, I don't know, ask her why she did that? Well, you're probably not an idiot, then.
And if you knew that someone suspected you of having salacious intents on their sibling, would you go and start having sex with the object of your affection? And if you did, would you go into an office and do this? And even if you did, would the woman drop a ring outside, despite it probably being worth a lot of money? I would hope not, because I'd fear for your children, being raised by idiots.
But they do all that, and Little Sister finds the ring and walks in. Later, her niece is raped. She claims that she saw the gardener do it, and so he's taken off to jail. Cut to years later, into World War II. Gardener's now a soldier! Older Sister is now a nurse! Since when is this a war movie!
Another thing I have to talk about here. There's a big long take where Gardener and his fellow soldiers walk around a camp. Apparently, the entire point of the take is to be long; it's just a big stunt, done for no damn reason. Film School 101 here, people: Boogie Nights' long take introduced us to the characters. Touch of Evil apparently uses it for suspense (I haven't seen it yet). The Player uses it to mock long takes. Notice a theme here? They're doing it for a good reason, one that makes sense within each respective film. Atonement basically does it to waste time and draw attention to itself. I felt bad about it in retrospect, because long takes like that are a lot of work, so you'd think that the director would only put his cast and crew through it for a good reason. But no, apparently he just wanted to show off.
Is that what the whole movie is? Showing off? Perhaps. But eventually, I started to get in touch with it. It started to really work, and then... the ending.
This review is meant to be generally readable, so I'm avoiding discussing the ending here. But let me just say, the ending undercut any feeling of enjoyment I'd had and replaced it with the feeling that I'd been tricked, and not in a good way. The ending is only a few steps away from "It was all a dream!" and it's about as infuriating. The idea that this would endear me to it only makes me angrier.
There has to have been something people liked about this movie, but I don't get it. Is it some "Titanic" thing, where if the romance is big and tragic, people feel it's true? Blah. Give me a mundane, unadulterated romance story. It's probably ten times truer than anything in Atonement. And if you know how it ends, that last sentence is probably twice as true.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Reflections in a Golden Eye - The TCM Version
Have you ever seen a movie where the whole thing might have been good, if not for that one little thing that just kept bugging you? Didn't you hate it when it happened? After all, bad movies are usually made up of bad ideas all the way through, and here's one that was maybe a lot of good ideas and one really bad one.
The edition of "Reflections in a Golden Eye" they show on TCM is just such a movie. Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, apparently two of the best actors of their generation, working with John Huston, apparently one of the best directors of his generation, working on a movie about... homosexuals in the army? Weird horse-obsessed women? An odd military recruit who likes to ride horses nude and breaks into Taylor's house to watch her while she sleeps?
Yes, obviously this movie could have gone wrong in so many ways. The amazing thing is that it seems to work. But I can't say whether it did work or not, because I was distracted by one thing throughout.
The color.
Apparently, John Huston's plan was to tint the movie gold, with one object in each scene retaining its normal color. However, test audiences got confused, and Technicolor technicians hated the idea, so it only showed in such a way in major cities while the rest of America got a normal-colored version. The normal-colored version is available on DVD, and maybe I should check it out. But on TCM, they show it with a gold filter in place (without any normal colors anywhere--it's gold or black). And damn, is that ever annoying.
It's rare that I'd side with the test audience and the technicians over the director, but they're right. It's a distraction. The movie is full of parts where people don't talk, but think; the idea is to get the audience to read what they're thinking from their faces. But you're not doing that at the quiet bits. You're thinking, "Why is it all gold, again?"
The filter is a terrible distraction. If it was necessary, there would be better ways to accomplish it. Why not shoot the movie with golden filters on the lights? That way, it looks like it's a part of the picture, and it's more difficult to get rid of it. Or, if the filter was absolutely necessary, why not make it a subtle golden color? Why not just make it lightly golden-hued, as opposed to the all-out attack of gold?
It's a terrible disappointment to see a movie get ruined like that. Here's a movie that sounds like an underrated classic, but you're always distracted. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
The edition of "Reflections in a Golden Eye" they show on TCM is just such a movie. Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, apparently two of the best actors of their generation, working with John Huston, apparently one of the best directors of his generation, working on a movie about... homosexuals in the army? Weird horse-obsessed women? An odd military recruit who likes to ride horses nude and breaks into Taylor's house to watch her while she sleeps?
Yes, obviously this movie could have gone wrong in so many ways. The amazing thing is that it seems to work. But I can't say whether it did work or not, because I was distracted by one thing throughout.
The color.
Apparently, John Huston's plan was to tint the movie gold, with one object in each scene retaining its normal color. However, test audiences got confused, and Technicolor technicians hated the idea, so it only showed in such a way in major cities while the rest of America got a normal-colored version. The normal-colored version is available on DVD, and maybe I should check it out. But on TCM, they show it with a gold filter in place (without any normal colors anywhere--it's gold or black). And damn, is that ever annoying.
It's rare that I'd side with the test audience and the technicians over the director, but they're right. It's a distraction. The movie is full of parts where people don't talk, but think; the idea is to get the audience to read what they're thinking from their faces. But you're not doing that at the quiet bits. You're thinking, "Why is it all gold, again?"
The filter is a terrible distraction. If it was necessary, there would be better ways to accomplish it. Why not shoot the movie with golden filters on the lights? That way, it looks like it's a part of the picture, and it's more difficult to get rid of it. Or, if the filter was absolutely necessary, why not make it a subtle golden color? Why not just make it lightly golden-hued, as opposed to the all-out attack of gold?
It's a terrible disappointment to see a movie get ruined like that. Here's a movie that sounds like an underrated classic, but you're always distracted. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
Skidoo
Note: Yes, it's been about two months since I last updated. Much as I'd like this to be a habitual thing for me, I've yet to force myself enough to really get to doing it without thinking. However, I've seen some movies that seem to be asking for reviews, and so here I am.
Also, I've been thinking about changing the name of the blog. "Staring at the Screen" just feels so stupid.
I heard about "Skidoo" from the Agony Booth. In his recap of Myra Breckinridge, Albert Walker mentioned several "counterculture" movies made by Hollywood. (It's a severely ironic concept to think about: Kids make movies that rebel against the Establishment, so the Establishment tries to mock itself to appeal to kids.) Being interested in the topic, I looked all of them up, and "Skidoo" sounded especially intriguing for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was Groucho Marx, and the fact that it was never released on video or DVD.
Several people on that site have seen the movie. Opinions vary on its quality. The Webmaster, Albert, described it as one of the worst movies he'd ever seen. A forum moderator and a guest recapper seemed to agree that it was bad--and not "so bad it's good," but "so bad it's painful." On the other hand, some people didn't totally scream in agony at it, and some even went so far as to say that they liked it as a "turn-off-your-brain-and-watch" movie. This I had to see.
So it was on Turner Classic Movies recently, and I DVR'ed it. I have finished the movie, and I have to say, is that all there is?
By no means is "Skidoo" a good movie. As plenty of people speculate, the movie feels too heavy to be humorous; reports abound as to director Otto Preminger being a dictator on set. An approach like that can work when you make movies about heroin abuse, courtroom drama, or Joan of Arc. It doesn't work quite as well when you're making a comedy.
"Skidoo" is by no means a good movie. It's not funny, even though it wants to be. But a lot of the jokes simply fall flat; from what I'd heard, I expected to be offended by the humor at least every five minutes. Only a few moments were disturbing or offensive (Carol Channing in bra and panties, a joke about rape), whereas the rest simply felt like they were trying too hard to be funny. Look! They're trying to tow his car away, and he's putting the car in reverse and pulling it back! And they keep pulling each other back and forth! And it keeps going, on and on, for at least a minute, which is just too freaking long for a joke that lame.
The plot would indicate that you're in for pain. Jackie Gleason is a mob hitman who's pulled into prison to kill Mickey Rooney, who apparently knows too much. Or something. I don't remember. While there, he accidentally ingests LSD and goes on a trip that seems too absurd, even for an acid trip. (I've never taken hallucinogenic drugs, but do they really cause you to see things like people shrinking?) He is thus liberated from his ego (however the hell that happened), and thus refuses to kill Mickey; however, that means he's stuck in prison. (Apparently, once he killed Rooney, he'd be out of prison within an hour. I'm reminded of the Robot Chicken joke, "This is Alabama! Fifteen minutes is all you get for touching a child!")
However, the man whose LSD he ingested (The Professor) comes up with an escape plan. It involves stealing a variety of objects from the prison (rope, food wrapping, garbage cans, pressurized oxygen) and putting LSD into the prison's food supply. That last bit is accomplished by dumping his stationery into a pot. (Nothing like paper to give your food that extra kick.) Amazingly, everybody on the prison grounds except the three escapees eat the LSD and subsequently go batty. And I mean everybody--the guards, the prisoners, the cooks, the phone operators, even the warden and a visiting Senator. Who knew you could feed everyone on a prison grounds in only five minutes?
Meanwhile, Gleason's daughter has fallen in with hippies. She's gone to God (Groucho Marx) and found out about his plans, while God tries to get her hippie boyfriend Stash (John Philip Law) to deal drugs for him. Stash gets his hippie friends to invade the boat, along with Gleason's wife, played by Carol Channing, who dresses up as George Washington [!] and sings the movie's theme song [!?!] while invading God's yacht. Meanwhile, Gleason and the Professor land their hot-air balloon (made out of garbage cans and food wrappers) on the yacht. Amazing what can happen in one day.
Somehow, this is all just flat. The whole thing feels leaden. If it were to work, it would need to be fast and snappy, but alas, it just doesn't go. The movie isn't good enough to be funny and isn't bad enough to be agonizing. Overall, it's a disappointment whether you're expecting a good movie or a bad one.
Also, I've been thinking about changing the name of the blog. "Staring at the Screen" just feels so stupid.
I heard about "Skidoo" from the Agony Booth. In his recap of Myra Breckinridge, Albert Walker mentioned several "counterculture" movies made by Hollywood. (It's a severely ironic concept to think about: Kids make movies that rebel against the Establishment, so the Establishment tries to mock itself to appeal to kids.) Being interested in the topic, I looked all of them up, and "Skidoo" sounded especially intriguing for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was Groucho Marx, and the fact that it was never released on video or DVD.
Several people on that site have seen the movie. Opinions vary on its quality. The Webmaster, Albert, described it as one of the worst movies he'd ever seen. A forum moderator and a guest recapper seemed to agree that it was bad--and not "so bad it's good," but "so bad it's painful." On the other hand, some people didn't totally scream in agony at it, and some even went so far as to say that they liked it as a "turn-off-your-brain-and-watch" movie. This I had to see.
So it was on Turner Classic Movies recently, and I DVR'ed it. I have finished the movie, and I have to say, is that all there is?
By no means is "Skidoo" a good movie. As plenty of people speculate, the movie feels too heavy to be humorous; reports abound as to director Otto Preminger being a dictator on set. An approach like that can work when you make movies about heroin abuse, courtroom drama, or Joan of Arc. It doesn't work quite as well when you're making a comedy.
"Skidoo" is by no means a good movie. It's not funny, even though it wants to be. But a lot of the jokes simply fall flat; from what I'd heard, I expected to be offended by the humor at least every five minutes. Only a few moments were disturbing or offensive (Carol Channing in bra and panties, a joke about rape), whereas the rest simply felt like they were trying too hard to be funny. Look! They're trying to tow his car away, and he's putting the car in reverse and pulling it back! And they keep pulling each other back and forth! And it keeps going, on and on, for at least a minute, which is just too freaking long for a joke that lame.
The plot would indicate that you're in for pain. Jackie Gleason is a mob hitman who's pulled into prison to kill Mickey Rooney, who apparently knows too much. Or something. I don't remember. While there, he accidentally ingests LSD and goes on a trip that seems too absurd, even for an acid trip. (I've never taken hallucinogenic drugs, but do they really cause you to see things like people shrinking?) He is thus liberated from his ego (however the hell that happened), and thus refuses to kill Mickey; however, that means he's stuck in prison. (Apparently, once he killed Rooney, he'd be out of prison within an hour. I'm reminded of the Robot Chicken joke, "This is Alabama! Fifteen minutes is all you get for touching a child!")
However, the man whose LSD he ingested (The Professor) comes up with an escape plan. It involves stealing a variety of objects from the prison (rope, food wrapping, garbage cans, pressurized oxygen) and putting LSD into the prison's food supply. That last bit is accomplished by dumping his stationery into a pot. (Nothing like paper to give your food that extra kick.) Amazingly, everybody on the prison grounds except the three escapees eat the LSD and subsequently go batty. And I mean everybody--the guards, the prisoners, the cooks, the phone operators, even the warden and a visiting Senator. Who knew you could feed everyone on a prison grounds in only five minutes?
Meanwhile, Gleason's daughter has fallen in with hippies. She's gone to God (Groucho Marx) and found out about his plans, while God tries to get her hippie boyfriend Stash (John Philip Law) to deal drugs for him. Stash gets his hippie friends to invade the boat, along with Gleason's wife, played by Carol Channing, who dresses up as George Washington [!] and sings the movie's theme song [!?!] while invading God's yacht. Meanwhile, Gleason and the Professor land their hot-air balloon (made out of garbage cans and food wrappers) on the yacht. Amazing what can happen in one day.
Somehow, this is all just flat. The whole thing feels leaden. If it were to work, it would need to be fast and snappy, but alas, it just doesn't go. The movie isn't good enough to be funny and isn't bad enough to be agonizing. Overall, it's a disappointment whether you're expecting a good movie or a bad one.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Black Moon
I recently watched "Black Moon" from Turner Classic Movies' Louis Malle marathon, and could hardly believe that I was really watching it. Something this insane has to be a hallucination. Maybe I'm not far off; as it turns out, Louis Malle was trying to make a movie based on a dream. I wonder if this is the movie Steven Soderbergh was talking about in "Waking Life," the movie that was "a dream within a dream." If so, Billy Wilder was right: He lost two and a half million dollars.
"Black Moon" is practically Zardozian. I haven't seen "Zardoz," the John Boorman fiasco with Sean Connery running around in a red diaper and containing a stone head declaring penises to be evil, but from what I've heard, it's a very well-shot movie that makes no sense whatsoever. "Black Moon" certainly fits that description as well. As Albert Walker put it in his recap of "Zardoz," a movie like this is frustrating because you can tell there's some intelligence, skill and talent behind the camera, but it doesn't matter because you can't tell what the hell is going on.
The story, or what there is of it: A woman named Lily is running away from something. There seems to be a war going on between men and women, but it only matters in a few scenes. (That's a real shame; I can imagine a really vicious satire of misogyny and rabid feminism in the idea of a war between men and women.) She eventually comes upon a house where she finds an old lady who can't or won't get out of bed, and her apparent children, a brother and a sister, who are both silent and named Lily.
That's just the plot. The film is full of images, many of them making no sense. Telling you some of the stuff that happens seems cheap, but I'll do it anyway: Naked kids appear and reappear frequently, usually leading around animals. The daughter of the old woman breast-feeds her, and later, the main character does the same. There's an extended sequence where the main character chases around a unicorn. At one point, she steps on some flowers, which wail in pain. That's right--wailing flowers. For a while, I thought that was a pun on Wayland Flowers.
The movie just keeps going through these weird images, one after another. As I mentioned before, it seems Louis Malle was trying to make a dream-like movie. If so, it doesn't seem to achieve a dream-like feel; it feels like they're trying to make it realistic. On reflection, it feels like a dream (especially in that "did-that-really-happen?" way), but it doesn't succeed while you're watching the movie.
Some people try to defend this movie somehow. They claim it's allegorical. The thing is, if it's an allegory, it's not clear what it's an allegory for. War? Growing up? Crazy glueing-gerbils-together? As Roger Ebert said, if you have to ask what it symbolized, it didn't. The idea of the movie being like a dream is slightly more apt, though it still doesn't answer many of the questions it brings up.
Don't think that I was miserable when I was watching it, though. I wasn't, really. It made me laugh a few times (certainly not the film's intention). In fact, if they hadn't been so clearly trying to make a dramatic art film, it could've been successful as a satire of artsy films and their pretentious meaninglessness. I was almost sad to have to delete it from my DVR; if I could've taped it, it would've made a great joke to play on people, or even better, a recap for the Agony Booth.
Indeed, the movie is almost crazy-lovable instead of crazy-annoying. How can you hate a movie where such random crap happens without the slightest explanation? Well, quite simply, it feels like they're not thinking about it. It's a waste of talent, but if you were forwarned that it was crazy and that you should view it as such, it would probably make for a fun, almost Monty Python-esque time.
This movie is not available on DVD. There may be a snowball's chance in hell that it would get some kind of release from the Criterion Collection (it even has the Janus Films logo before it). If they do release it, I can only wonder how they'll try to justify it on the back of the box.
"Black Moon" is practically Zardozian. I haven't seen "Zardoz," the John Boorman fiasco with Sean Connery running around in a red diaper and containing a stone head declaring penises to be evil, but from what I've heard, it's a very well-shot movie that makes no sense whatsoever. "Black Moon" certainly fits that description as well. As Albert Walker put it in his recap of "Zardoz," a movie like this is frustrating because you can tell there's some intelligence, skill and talent behind the camera, but it doesn't matter because you can't tell what the hell is going on.
The story, or what there is of it: A woman named Lily is running away from something. There seems to be a war going on between men and women, but it only matters in a few scenes. (That's a real shame; I can imagine a really vicious satire of misogyny and rabid feminism in the idea of a war between men and women.) She eventually comes upon a house where she finds an old lady who can't or won't get out of bed, and her apparent children, a brother and a sister, who are both silent and named Lily.
That's just the plot. The film is full of images, many of them making no sense. Telling you some of the stuff that happens seems cheap, but I'll do it anyway: Naked kids appear and reappear frequently, usually leading around animals. The daughter of the old woman breast-feeds her, and later, the main character does the same. There's an extended sequence where the main character chases around a unicorn. At one point, she steps on some flowers, which wail in pain. That's right--wailing flowers. For a while, I thought that was a pun on Wayland Flowers.
The movie just keeps going through these weird images, one after another. As I mentioned before, it seems Louis Malle was trying to make a dream-like movie. If so, it doesn't seem to achieve a dream-like feel; it feels like they're trying to make it realistic. On reflection, it feels like a dream (especially in that "did-that-really-happen?" way), but it doesn't succeed while you're watching the movie.
Some people try to defend this movie somehow. They claim it's allegorical. The thing is, if it's an allegory, it's not clear what it's an allegory for. War? Growing up? Crazy glueing-gerbils-together? As Roger Ebert said, if you have to ask what it symbolized, it didn't. The idea of the movie being like a dream is slightly more apt, though it still doesn't answer many of the questions it brings up.
Don't think that I was miserable when I was watching it, though. I wasn't, really. It made me laugh a few times (certainly not the film's intention). In fact, if they hadn't been so clearly trying to make a dramatic art film, it could've been successful as a satire of artsy films and their pretentious meaninglessness. I was almost sad to have to delete it from my DVR; if I could've taped it, it would've made a great joke to play on people, or even better, a recap for the Agony Booth.
Indeed, the movie is almost crazy-lovable instead of crazy-annoying. How can you hate a movie where such random crap happens without the slightest explanation? Well, quite simply, it feels like they're not thinking about it. It's a waste of talent, but if you were forwarned that it was crazy and that you should view it as such, it would probably make for a fun, almost Monty Python-esque time.
This movie is not available on DVD. There may be a snowball's chance in hell that it would get some kind of release from the Criterion Collection (it even has the Janus Films logo before it). If they do release it, I can only wonder how they'll try to justify it on the back of the box.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Memoirs of a Geisha
"Memoirs of a Geisha" is a movie about looking pretty. The story, of course, is about geisha, women who sell their virginity to the highest bidder. (But they're not prostitutes.) The women put on beautiful make-up and do beautiful dances. The movie is like that, too. The cinematography is stunning, and the women are beautiful. Underneath the cinematography and the women, however, is an overlong, unneccessarily cruel film.
The movie begins with the main character and her sister being sold to someone who, in turn, sells them to different women to be raised as housekeepers/geisha. One of the geisha at our main character's place takes an instant dislike to her, and does terrible things to her, such as forcing her to paint on an expensive dress, resulting in a beating. One day, the main character (I'll be damned if I have to look up what everybody's names are) runs away and contacts her sister, and they plan to run away. When she gets back, she finds the geisha having sex with a man, which is strictly forbidden. (But they're not prostitutes.) As a result, the house is locked up and she never sees her sister again.
Later, a chairman for an unknown company helps the main character by buying her a treat. (For some reason, the chairman is never given a name. It seems to be a rule that a movie that thinks it's better than it is will keep names from the audience just to frustrate us.) This proves to be a pivotal moment in her life: She decides to repay him by becoming a geisha, and trying to become his geisha, despite his dislike of them.
"Memoirs" is, like the 2000 charmer "Chocolat," an example of what I call a 'fauxrin film.' They're movies about far-off countries, produced with local actors in stories that seem specialized to their locales. But they're not foreign films, because they're produced by American studios, made in American English, for American audiences. In fact, "Memoirs" manages to screw up the fauxrin feel by getting Chinese actresses for a Japanese story, and by producing the film on a soundstage in America. There's something odd about the idea of trying to transport audiences to another culture while filming in their own. Nonetheless, I really can't criticize those decisions; there are reasons for them, after all.
What I can criticize is the story. Now, I don't doubt that geishas were bought from poor farmers. I don't doubt that they were put through misery. I don't doubt that any of that kind of thing would happen. Realistically, the miserable parts of the film makes sense.
But the misery isn't the point. The movie isn't intended to be a realistic portrayal of the lives of geisha; it's intended to be a romantic look at geisha-hood. In fact, one gets the feeling that the misery is there to accentuate the (implausible) happy ending; the main character and the audience go through misery just to make the final images shinier. It's a tacky ploy to manipulate the audience into going "aww, how sweet."
The movie is beautiful. There's no doubt about that; spending so much money, it would be difficult to get an ugly film out of it. But there's nothing underneath the surface that drives the film.
The movie begins with the main character and her sister being sold to someone who, in turn, sells them to different women to be raised as housekeepers/geisha. One of the geisha at our main character's place takes an instant dislike to her, and does terrible things to her, such as forcing her to paint on an expensive dress, resulting in a beating. One day, the main character (I'll be damned if I have to look up what everybody's names are) runs away and contacts her sister, and they plan to run away. When she gets back, she finds the geisha having sex with a man, which is strictly forbidden. (But they're not prostitutes.) As a result, the house is locked up and she never sees her sister again.
Later, a chairman for an unknown company helps the main character by buying her a treat. (For some reason, the chairman is never given a name. It seems to be a rule that a movie that thinks it's better than it is will keep names from the audience just to frustrate us.) This proves to be a pivotal moment in her life: She decides to repay him by becoming a geisha, and trying to become his geisha, despite his dislike of them.
"Memoirs" is, like the 2000 charmer "Chocolat," an example of what I call a 'fauxrin film.' They're movies about far-off countries, produced with local actors in stories that seem specialized to their locales. But they're not foreign films, because they're produced by American studios, made in American English, for American audiences. In fact, "Memoirs" manages to screw up the fauxrin feel by getting Chinese actresses for a Japanese story, and by producing the film on a soundstage in America. There's something odd about the idea of trying to transport audiences to another culture while filming in their own. Nonetheless, I really can't criticize those decisions; there are reasons for them, after all.
What I can criticize is the story. Now, I don't doubt that geishas were bought from poor farmers. I don't doubt that they were put through misery. I don't doubt that any of that kind of thing would happen. Realistically, the miserable parts of the film makes sense.
But the misery isn't the point. The movie isn't intended to be a realistic portrayal of the lives of geisha; it's intended to be a romantic look at geisha-hood. In fact, one gets the feeling that the misery is there to accentuate the (implausible) happy ending; the main character and the audience go through misery just to make the final images shinier. It's a tacky ploy to manipulate the audience into going "aww, how sweet."
The movie is beautiful. There's no doubt about that; spending so much money, it would be difficult to get an ugly film out of it. But there's nothing underneath the surface that drives the film.
Vampyr: Der Traum Des Allan Grey
"Vampyr" may not be a complete classic to me, but if so, the fault isn't entirely with the people who made the movie. Rather, it's with the people who presented the film on Turner Classic Movies.
The story, as far as I could figure it out: Allan Grey stops to stay with a family, and encounters a vampire. Well, okay, I don't really know if there's more or less to the story, as it was incredibly confusing at times. The story is not the real point of the film, however; the images are.
Some of the images in this movie are incredible. A man shovels dirt, but the dirt comes towards his shovel instead of flying away. Shadows move around that seem to have no apparent source. The main character briefly turns into a ghost and finds his own body in a coffin. The movie has so many brilliant images that it's worth seeing for them alone.
The director, Carl Theodor Dreyer, seems to have planned the movie out as a silent film, then found himself making it with sound. There is little dialogue, much of it unimportant to the plot. (More on this later.) Much of the soundtrack is musical, with sound effects here and there. There are apparent cutaways to text to explain parts of the plot. It's ironic that his previous film, "The Passion of Joan of Arc," ended up a talkie without sound while this film has sound but is essentially silent at heart.
So if I like the images so much that I can overlook the odd, unexplainable story, why am I not so happy with the film? Quite simply, the presentation is terrible. There's a border around the edges of the screen, which is distracting. The text intertitles don't quite match the print's scratchiness; they're too clean. (This is a problem with lots of not-quite-restored silent movies; the prints are so scratched that it feels like the uber-clean titles have come in from another universe. Is it really that hard to simulate scratches on text?) White dots appear frequently on the screen. The dialogue is muffled and difficult to hear, although really, if it's in another language, I really shouldn't be complaining.
Worst of all, however, are the subtitles. All the text (in English, anyway) is done in an ugly Olde English font that is difficult to read, albeit not impossible. But what really pushes it from bad to horrendous is that the subtitles have black bars underneath them, obscuring the lower third (and sometimes, the lower half) of the screen. Apparently, it's not bad enough that you can't see at least 10% of the frame due to the border; now they have to cut off thirty to fifty percent more. In a mixed blessing, much of the unimportant dialogue is left unsubtitled, so when they're saying "Va! Va!" to each other, you don't have to deal with the black bars. But when a plot point comes up, prepare to be annoyed.
Apparently, the Image DVD of "Vampyr" has the same exact problems. The image is scratchy, the text is rendered in terrible fonts and with black-bars underneath, and the image is cropped. The Criterion Collection has apparently found some decent-looking clips from the movie that don't suffer from those issues and used them in a documentary on Dreyer. (I haven't seen it; the images are on DVD Beaver.) Would it be too much to ask for Criterion or somebody to get to work restoring this movie, cleaning up as much of the scratches and dots as they can, using a clean, Arial-type font for subtitles, and making the sound non-horrendous? A movie like this deserves a good, clean look and feel, and the current presentation is simply a crime.
The story, as far as I could figure it out: Allan Grey stops to stay with a family, and encounters a vampire. Well, okay, I don't really know if there's more or less to the story, as it was incredibly confusing at times. The story is not the real point of the film, however; the images are.
Some of the images in this movie are incredible. A man shovels dirt, but the dirt comes towards his shovel instead of flying away. Shadows move around that seem to have no apparent source. The main character briefly turns into a ghost and finds his own body in a coffin. The movie has so many brilliant images that it's worth seeing for them alone.
The director, Carl Theodor Dreyer, seems to have planned the movie out as a silent film, then found himself making it with sound. There is little dialogue, much of it unimportant to the plot. (More on this later.) Much of the soundtrack is musical, with sound effects here and there. There are apparent cutaways to text to explain parts of the plot. It's ironic that his previous film, "The Passion of Joan of Arc," ended up a talkie without sound while this film has sound but is essentially silent at heart.
So if I like the images so much that I can overlook the odd, unexplainable story, why am I not so happy with the film? Quite simply, the presentation is terrible. There's a border around the edges of the screen, which is distracting. The text intertitles don't quite match the print's scratchiness; they're too clean. (This is a problem with lots of not-quite-restored silent movies; the prints are so scratched that it feels like the uber-clean titles have come in from another universe. Is it really that hard to simulate scratches on text?) White dots appear frequently on the screen. The dialogue is muffled and difficult to hear, although really, if it's in another language, I really shouldn't be complaining.
Worst of all, however, are the subtitles. All the text (in English, anyway) is done in an ugly Olde English font that is difficult to read, albeit not impossible. But what really pushes it from bad to horrendous is that the subtitles have black bars underneath them, obscuring the lower third (and sometimes, the lower half) of the screen. Apparently, it's not bad enough that you can't see at least 10% of the frame due to the border; now they have to cut off thirty to fifty percent more. In a mixed blessing, much of the unimportant dialogue is left unsubtitled, so when they're saying "Va! Va!" to each other, you don't have to deal with the black bars. But when a plot point comes up, prepare to be annoyed.
Apparently, the Image DVD of "Vampyr" has the same exact problems. The image is scratchy, the text is rendered in terrible fonts and with black-bars underneath, and the image is cropped. The Criterion Collection has apparently found some decent-looking clips from the movie that don't suffer from those issues and used them in a documentary on Dreyer. (I haven't seen it; the images are on DVD Beaver.) Would it be too much to ask for Criterion or somebody to get to work restoring this movie, cleaning up as much of the scratches and dots as they can, using a clean, Arial-type font for subtitles, and making the sound non-horrendous? A movie like this deserves a good, clean look and feel, and the current presentation is simply a crime.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Natural Born Killers
Easily one of the most controversial films ever, "Natural Born Killers" isn't an easy film to classify. Is it a good movie? In the sense that I kind of enjoyed watching it, yeah, I guess it's good; I enjoy films with the kind of overt stylization you see here. But I can't say it's a really successful film.
The plot, which I think everybody can start to guess at from the title, involves two serial killers named Mickey and Mallory Knox. After abusive childhoods for both of them that end with their parents' deaths, the two of them go on a killing spree across Route 666. Meanwhile, the news media seemingly condemns them, but that doesn't seem to get into most people's heads: Everybody seems to love the Knoxes, from three boys who declare them the best thing to happen to mass murder since Manson to kids in Japan, London and France who just love them. Tabloid TV host Wayne Gale, meanwhile... well, he's mainly important for later in the film, when he's interviewing Mickey (but not Mallory, for some reason) on live TV after the Super Bowl.
As you may have guessed, it's a satire. Unlike most "satires" nowadays, which seem to consist of trying to shock an audience without really saying anything about the subject matter, "Natural Born Killers" at least seems to have a point: We do tend to pay enough attention to murder and death in the media that we're only a few steps away from idolizing the killers. The thing is, that point is made early on in the film--maybe thirty minutes in. So what's left?
Strangely enough, we get to spend quite a bit of time with Mickey and Mallory. This is odd on several levels--not only because this is supposedly a satire of the media, but because for a movie that condemns the media for idolizing killers, it seems to be doing something close to that. Maybe it's not outright idolizing them--anybody who isn't already crazy enough to start killing is likely to see Mickey and Mallory as evil. But the movie doesn't seem to condemn them for what they've done--even after they supposedly swear off killing anybody who doesn't deserve it, they don't seem to have much of a problem killing anyone who gets in their way.
That's just the two of them. The other main characters in the film also seem to be crazy, and they're the ones who are cast in a negative light. McCluskey (the prison warden who has them locked up in the second half of the film), Wayne Gale (the reporter for "American Maniacs"), Jack Scagnetti (the policeman who catches Mickey and Mallory)--they all seem to be reprehensible maniacs who are just as bad, if not worse, than Mickey and Mallory. Is that another point of the film--that the ones who "protect" us from the maniacs are just as bad as them? I'm not sure. The way I interpreted it was that everybody in the movie who got more than ten minutes of screentime was a psychopath. Maybe that's the point of the film--we're all psychopaths. To hell with it--you could play this game all day. The movie is, as a forum acquaintance of mine once put it, a cinematic Rorschach test--no matter what you see, the filmmakers see their points in it.
Now let's move on to how the film is shot and edited. As I mentioned earlier, it's super-stylized: Many scenes are in both black-and-white and color, with continually changing film stock. Some scenes are shot on videotape (Mallory's life at home is shot as a sitcom, with Rodney Dangerfield getting laughs from a laugh track at his abusive speech). There are various points in the film where we get cutaways to things that barely seem to be connected to the scene in question--in a scene where Mickey and Mallory are stuck in the desert, we get cuts to jumpy time-lapse photography of clouds and dead animals. (We even see Mickey's face distort like he's had a picture taken of him after he watched the videotape from "The Ring.") A lot of the movie seems to be shot at a Dutch angle--the camera is tilted 45 degrees, much like "Battlefield Earth." (Well, at least it kind of makes sense here.) There are quickly-cut bits of "demons" (which, when you pause and look at them, look less like demons and more like people making silly faces at the camera). There are pieces of other movies thrown in, from "Frankenstein" to "Night of the Lepus." I could go on and on about this.
The overt stylization is fun to watch, but what exactly does it mean? It makes sense in very few movies. In "Requiem for a Dream," for example, it resembled the state of mind of the addicts. In "Run Lola Run," it didn't make sense at first (though I still loved the film), but now that I think about it, it also resembles the state of mind of the characters who have to think fast about their situation. Here, I guess it's supposed to resemble the state of mind of an insane person. Yet it's not just applied to scenes with Mickey and Mallory; it's applied to scenes where other characters are shown, and even applied to scenes on TV. I guess it's another instance of the Cinematic Rorschach Test--the idea that everybody is a psychopath. (Well, really, I think it's not so much that as it is that Oliver Stone was high most of the time when he made this film. But never mind that.)
In the end, I guess the movie's a mixed success. If you're looking for a well-thought out idea, it's not successful. But if you want to sit back and have the movie flow into you, it works.
The plot, which I think everybody can start to guess at from the title, involves two serial killers named Mickey and Mallory Knox. After abusive childhoods for both of them that end with their parents' deaths, the two of them go on a killing spree across Route 666. Meanwhile, the news media seemingly condemns them, but that doesn't seem to get into most people's heads: Everybody seems to love the Knoxes, from three boys who declare them the best thing to happen to mass murder since Manson to kids in Japan, London and France who just love them. Tabloid TV host Wayne Gale, meanwhile... well, he's mainly important for later in the film, when he's interviewing Mickey (but not Mallory, for some reason) on live TV after the Super Bowl.
As you may have guessed, it's a satire. Unlike most "satires" nowadays, which seem to consist of trying to shock an audience without really saying anything about the subject matter, "Natural Born Killers" at least seems to have a point: We do tend to pay enough attention to murder and death in the media that we're only a few steps away from idolizing the killers. The thing is, that point is made early on in the film--maybe thirty minutes in. So what's left?
Strangely enough, we get to spend quite a bit of time with Mickey and Mallory. This is odd on several levels--not only because this is supposedly a satire of the media, but because for a movie that condemns the media for idolizing killers, it seems to be doing something close to that. Maybe it's not outright idolizing them--anybody who isn't already crazy enough to start killing is likely to see Mickey and Mallory as evil. But the movie doesn't seem to condemn them for what they've done--even after they supposedly swear off killing anybody who doesn't deserve it, they don't seem to have much of a problem killing anyone who gets in their way.
That's just the two of them. The other main characters in the film also seem to be crazy, and they're the ones who are cast in a negative light. McCluskey (the prison warden who has them locked up in the second half of the film), Wayne Gale (the reporter for "American Maniacs"), Jack Scagnetti (the policeman who catches Mickey and Mallory)--they all seem to be reprehensible maniacs who are just as bad, if not worse, than Mickey and Mallory. Is that another point of the film--that the ones who "protect" us from the maniacs are just as bad as them? I'm not sure. The way I interpreted it was that everybody in the movie who got more than ten minutes of screentime was a psychopath. Maybe that's the point of the film--we're all psychopaths. To hell with it--you could play this game all day. The movie is, as a forum acquaintance of mine once put it, a cinematic Rorschach test--no matter what you see, the filmmakers see their points in it.
Now let's move on to how the film is shot and edited. As I mentioned earlier, it's super-stylized: Many scenes are in both black-and-white and color, with continually changing film stock. Some scenes are shot on videotape (Mallory's life at home is shot as a sitcom, with Rodney Dangerfield getting laughs from a laugh track at his abusive speech). There are various points in the film where we get cutaways to things that barely seem to be connected to the scene in question--in a scene where Mickey and Mallory are stuck in the desert, we get cuts to jumpy time-lapse photography of clouds and dead animals. (We even see Mickey's face distort like he's had a picture taken of him after he watched the videotape from "The Ring.") A lot of the movie seems to be shot at a Dutch angle--the camera is tilted 45 degrees, much like "Battlefield Earth." (Well, at least it kind of makes sense here.) There are quickly-cut bits of "demons" (which, when you pause and look at them, look less like demons and more like people making silly faces at the camera). There are pieces of other movies thrown in, from "Frankenstein" to "Night of the Lepus." I could go on and on about this.
The overt stylization is fun to watch, but what exactly does it mean? It makes sense in very few movies. In "Requiem for a Dream," for example, it resembled the state of mind of the addicts. In "Run Lola Run," it didn't make sense at first (though I still loved the film), but now that I think about it, it also resembles the state of mind of the characters who have to think fast about their situation. Here, I guess it's supposed to resemble the state of mind of an insane person. Yet it's not just applied to scenes with Mickey and Mallory; it's applied to scenes where other characters are shown, and even applied to scenes on TV. I guess it's another instance of the Cinematic Rorschach Test--the idea that everybody is a psychopath. (Well, really, I think it's not so much that as it is that Oliver Stone was high most of the time when he made this film. But never mind that.)
In the end, I guess the movie's a mixed success. If you're looking for a well-thought out idea, it's not successful. But if you want to sit back and have the movie flow into you, it works.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
La Dolce Vita
Well, it's taken me five months of turning it on, getting bored and turning it off, but I've finally done it. I've finally finished "La Dolce Vita." And if that achievement means anything, it means I'll never have to see it again.
Watching this movie was like an endurance test. I'll gladly sit through a six-hour miniseries like "The Best of Youth;" "The Decalogue," ten hours of the Ten Commandments, is at the top of my NetFlix queue, very closely followed by nine hours of Holocaust memories in "Shoah;" heck, I'd even like to see the 15-and-a-half-hour-long "Berlin Alexanderplatz" when they release it on DVD in November. But I could hardly stand a comparatively lean three hours of "La Dolce Vita."
In three hours of screentime, nothing much happens. A self-hating journalist covers various stories, hangs out with his friends, abuses various women, and parties all night long. Somehow, nothing really happens in three hours of screen time. On a discussion board I go to, a lot of people said that "The Great Gatsby" was "a bunch of rich fucks bitching and moaning about how much it sucks to be a rich fuck." I guess that's what "La Dolce Vita" felt like: A journalist covering celebrities bitches and moans about how empty his life is.
I can't tell if the movie had a point, but if it did, it probably has something to do with the cult of celebrity. Apparently, Federico Fellini could see the future of Hollywood and the tabloids, with photographers trying to take pictures of a woman as she learns her husband's gone crazy and killed their kids, or trying to take pictures of various stars. If that's the message of the film, then it's sure irrelevant now, since anybody with common sense knows what sick things papparazzi are. (And yes, I know that "papparazzi" comes from the character "Papparazzo" in this film, and no, I really don't care.) Maybe if the film had a spark of life to it, I could forgive that, but it doesn't. It's simply tedious.
I've tried 2.05 Federico Fellini films (this, "La Strada," and I gave up about five or ten minutes into "I Vitelloni"), and I've disliked them all. Call me a snob, but I don't want to sit through movies by somebody without something to say. (Unless, of course, the movie is entertaining, which I haven't found Fellini's films to be.) In both of the movies of his I've sat through, it felt like the movie wasn't trying to make a point, or if it was, it didn't know what the point was.
All the same, I can't help but think, "Maybe I should watch some more of his movies, just to be sure." Maybe I've been brainwashed by too many readings of Ebert's "The Great Movies" books, but for some reason, I can't just dismiss Fellini off of two movies. Maybe I should check out "Amarcord," or maybe try and finish "I Vitelloni," or maybe I could wait for "Juliet of the Spirits" to show on TCM, or...
No. No, no. Fellini's films are just too slow. Somehow, he managed to make movies where I get bored after watching maybe two or three minutes of it. It's like he went out of his way to avoid having plots in his films. I might try and subject myself to a few more of his films, and maybe I'll find a gem, like what happened when I kept watching Kurosawa films. On the other hand, maybe life is too short to sit and watch movies from people I find dull.
Watching this movie was like an endurance test. I'll gladly sit through a six-hour miniseries like "The Best of Youth;" "The Decalogue," ten hours of the Ten Commandments, is at the top of my NetFlix queue, very closely followed by nine hours of Holocaust memories in "Shoah;" heck, I'd even like to see the 15-and-a-half-hour-long "Berlin Alexanderplatz" when they release it on DVD in November. But I could hardly stand a comparatively lean three hours of "La Dolce Vita."
In three hours of screentime, nothing much happens. A self-hating journalist covers various stories, hangs out with his friends, abuses various women, and parties all night long. Somehow, nothing really happens in three hours of screen time. On a discussion board I go to, a lot of people said that "The Great Gatsby" was "a bunch of rich fucks bitching and moaning about how much it sucks to be a rich fuck." I guess that's what "La Dolce Vita" felt like: A journalist covering celebrities bitches and moans about how empty his life is.
I can't tell if the movie had a point, but if it did, it probably has something to do with the cult of celebrity. Apparently, Federico Fellini could see the future of Hollywood and the tabloids, with photographers trying to take pictures of a woman as she learns her husband's gone crazy and killed their kids, or trying to take pictures of various stars. If that's the message of the film, then it's sure irrelevant now, since anybody with common sense knows what sick things papparazzi are. (And yes, I know that "papparazzi" comes from the character "Papparazzo" in this film, and no, I really don't care.) Maybe if the film had a spark of life to it, I could forgive that, but it doesn't. It's simply tedious.
I've tried 2.05 Federico Fellini films (this, "La Strada," and I gave up about five or ten minutes into "I Vitelloni"), and I've disliked them all. Call me a snob, but I don't want to sit through movies by somebody without something to say. (Unless, of course, the movie is entertaining, which I haven't found Fellini's films to be.) In both of the movies of his I've sat through, it felt like the movie wasn't trying to make a point, or if it was, it didn't know what the point was.
All the same, I can't help but think, "Maybe I should watch some more of his movies, just to be sure." Maybe I've been brainwashed by too many readings of Ebert's "The Great Movies" books, but for some reason, I can't just dismiss Fellini off of two movies. Maybe I should check out "Amarcord," or maybe try and finish "I Vitelloni," or maybe I could wait for "Juliet of the Spirits" to show on TCM, or...
No. No, no. Fellini's films are just too slow. Somehow, he managed to make movies where I get bored after watching maybe two or three minutes of it. It's like he went out of his way to avoid having plots in his films. I might try and subject myself to a few more of his films, and maybe I'll find a gem, like what happened when I kept watching Kurosawa films. On the other hand, maybe life is too short to sit and watch movies from people I find dull.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Babel
So I haven't written any reviews in about six months. Yeah, sorry. I just found what I'd written already pretty lame, and that I also saw very few movies that really needed reviewing all that desperately. (Look at my two reviews of "The Best of Youth," after all.) But I've been thinking about writing some more reviews, and even though I saw this one back in March, it's still fresh enough in my mind that I can write about it.
"Babel" was, as you probably know, a movie that was nominated for several Oscars. I've seen three of the movies nominated for Best Picture this last year, and I am just completely dumbfounded. "The Queen" was all right, but not the absolutely great film people seemed to think. (And for all the hype about Helen Mirren's performance, I didn't really notice it all that much. Now, Michael Sheen as Tony Blair? That was an amazing performance.) "The Departed" felt like a routine cops-and-gangsters film, nothing more. Argue all you want about how it has hidden themes, but usually, there needs to be something about those themes that people can notice.
"Babel," however, is the worst of the lot. I won't go so far as to call it terrible; if I know one thing from hanging out on a forum dedicated to terrible movies, it's that what I think is terrible is quite honestly much better than most direct-to-video monster films. But "Babel" is pretty much a big mess.
It's the story of, well, nothing that I can really tell. That's partly because of the multiple-storyline thing, a premise that really shouldn't be used unless you have a good reason for it. It seems to me like some kind of result of our ADD culture; we can't have just one good story anymore, so we'll take four or five mediocre stories. Hearing that the director of Babel (Alejandro Gonzalez Innarito) has used this for his previous two films, "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," makes me wonder if he's a one-trick pony. I haven't seen either one, and to be perfectly honest, "Babel" makes me want to stay away from them.
But the mess can't really be blamed on the multiple storylines. It should be blamed on the lack of coherence. I'm not going to say that if you use multiple storylines, you should make a good point; "Intermission" didn't make any real point with its various storylines, but it managed to be a good time nonetheless. "Babel," on the other hand, has pretensions of being Art, and it just doesn't work.
Let's look through the stories themselves: An American couple is arguing, but is brought together by the wife being shot. Two brothers (the ones who shot the woman, not really intending to do it) end up feeling guilt over her "death." The couple's children are taken into Mexico illegally, get culture shock, and then end up in the desert. And finally, a Japanese girl feels horny.
The stories on their own might make for a good film, but again, they're supposed to make A Statement About Our World. And that statement is... totally lost on me. Okay, reading about the movie later, I know it's supposed to be about borders and language and all that jazz, but the film doesn't seem to make a point about it. It just says, "Hey, you know how borders and language are impeding us?" and then doesn't really give any solutions or insights.
Worse yet is that if it's talking about borders and language, it seems it wants to shoot itself in the foot. If language is an impediment of some sort, then why do the American kids speak Spanish? Why does the American couple have a translator? If it's supposed to be about borders, what kind of borders do those Middle Eastern kids have to deal with? And the Japanese schoolgirl subplot could've been tossed out for all it does for the film; by the end, I was wondering if maybe the director put it in because he has a fetish for Japanese schoolgirls.
The film also seems to want to be a Topic of Conversation, and thus tries several attempts at starting conversations in coffeeshops. (Warning: Spoilers herein.) There's the third-act revelation that the American kids' story and their parents' story don't happen at the same time. The revelation affects nothing about either one of them. There's a note written by the Japanese schoolgirl that we don't get to find out the contents of. It feels like an afterthought more than an organic extension of anything. The one link between the Japanese plot and everything else is that the schoolgirl's father sold a gun in Middle East-land, which fell into the hands of the kids who shot Cate Blanchett. Now, really, when you're watching the plot about kids shooting a woman, you don't need to know how the guy who sold their father the gun came into possession of it; you need to know what unfolds because of their shooting. So we're getting a bunch of scenes that could've been cut out. Are you taking notes?
The thing that really got me about the film was its Oscar nominations. Why? There weren't any better movies to highlight? (Then again, they nominated "Little Miss Sunshine," so maybe they weren't paying much attention.) I mean, I can't say I've seen a bunch of 2006 movies, but "Babel" is feeble compared to "Stranger than Fiction" or "The Fountain." If they nominated "Babel" because it was trying to say something, why not nominate "The Fountain," which also tried to say something, and managed to be more entertaining and thought-provoking?
In the end, "Babel" felt like it wanted to say something, but it wasn't speaking my language. Which is ironic, to the say the least.
"Babel" was, as you probably know, a movie that was nominated for several Oscars. I've seen three of the movies nominated for Best Picture this last year, and I am just completely dumbfounded. "The Queen" was all right, but not the absolutely great film people seemed to think. (And for all the hype about Helen Mirren's performance, I didn't really notice it all that much. Now, Michael Sheen as Tony Blair? That was an amazing performance.) "The Departed" felt like a routine cops-and-gangsters film, nothing more. Argue all you want about how it has hidden themes, but usually, there needs to be something about those themes that people can notice.
"Babel," however, is the worst of the lot. I won't go so far as to call it terrible; if I know one thing from hanging out on a forum dedicated to terrible movies, it's that what I think is terrible is quite honestly much better than most direct-to-video monster films. But "Babel" is pretty much a big mess.
It's the story of, well, nothing that I can really tell. That's partly because of the multiple-storyline thing, a premise that really shouldn't be used unless you have a good reason for it. It seems to me like some kind of result of our ADD culture; we can't have just one good story anymore, so we'll take four or five mediocre stories. Hearing that the director of Babel (Alejandro Gonzalez Innarito) has used this for his previous two films, "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," makes me wonder if he's a one-trick pony. I haven't seen either one, and to be perfectly honest, "Babel" makes me want to stay away from them.
But the mess can't really be blamed on the multiple storylines. It should be blamed on the lack of coherence. I'm not going to say that if you use multiple storylines, you should make a good point; "Intermission" didn't make any real point with its various storylines, but it managed to be a good time nonetheless. "Babel," on the other hand, has pretensions of being Art, and it just doesn't work.
Let's look through the stories themselves: An American couple is arguing, but is brought together by the wife being shot. Two brothers (the ones who shot the woman, not really intending to do it) end up feeling guilt over her "death." The couple's children are taken into Mexico illegally, get culture shock, and then end up in the desert. And finally, a Japanese girl feels horny.
The stories on their own might make for a good film, but again, they're supposed to make A Statement About Our World. And that statement is... totally lost on me. Okay, reading about the movie later, I know it's supposed to be about borders and language and all that jazz, but the film doesn't seem to make a point about it. It just says, "Hey, you know how borders and language are impeding us?" and then doesn't really give any solutions or insights.
Worse yet is that if it's talking about borders and language, it seems it wants to shoot itself in the foot. If language is an impediment of some sort, then why do the American kids speak Spanish? Why does the American couple have a translator? If it's supposed to be about borders, what kind of borders do those Middle Eastern kids have to deal with? And the Japanese schoolgirl subplot could've been tossed out for all it does for the film; by the end, I was wondering if maybe the director put it in because he has a fetish for Japanese schoolgirls.
The film also seems to want to be a Topic of Conversation, and thus tries several attempts at starting conversations in coffeeshops. (Warning: Spoilers herein.) There's the third-act revelation that the American kids' story and their parents' story don't happen at the same time. The revelation affects nothing about either one of them. There's a note written by the Japanese schoolgirl that we don't get to find out the contents of. It feels like an afterthought more than an organic extension of anything. The one link between the Japanese plot and everything else is that the schoolgirl's father sold a gun in Middle East-land, which fell into the hands of the kids who shot Cate Blanchett. Now, really, when you're watching the plot about kids shooting a woman, you don't need to know how the guy who sold their father the gun came into possession of it; you need to know what unfolds because of their shooting. So we're getting a bunch of scenes that could've been cut out. Are you taking notes?
The thing that really got me about the film was its Oscar nominations. Why? There weren't any better movies to highlight? (Then again, they nominated "Little Miss Sunshine," so maybe they weren't paying much attention.) I mean, I can't say I've seen a bunch of 2006 movies, but "Babel" is feeble compared to "Stranger than Fiction" or "The Fountain." If they nominated "Babel" because it was trying to say something, why not nominate "The Fountain," which also tried to say something, and managed to be more entertaining and thought-provoking?
In the end, "Babel" felt like it wanted to say something, but it wasn't speaking my language. Which is ironic, to the say the least.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The Player
I have to admit that when I heard that Robert Altman died, I was shocked. It's not that I was ignorant of how old he was (though I was clueless about that); it was just that it happened at the same time that I was beginning to get into his work. Sure, I hadn't liked "Gosford Park," but maybe I just didn't have enough patience for it, as Altman has said (he tried to keep kids out of his films because he didn't think they'd have the patience for them).
So I watched "The Player." I definitely liked this one better, though whether it's because it's a better film or a more interesting subject is up to debate--I'm one of those people who dislike Hollywood and think studio executives are like Griffin Mill, the main character.
He's the "writer's executive," yet he blows off writers and never calls them back. He starts an affair with a dead writer's girlfriend without breaking up with his current girlfriend. And he's the "hero" of the film. The "villain" is one of the writers he never called back, and is threatening to kill him.
But the story is not the point of the film. "Satire" of Hollywood is the point, so don't get too wrapped up into the plot and you'll have fun. If you're looking for a smart thriller, this isn't it (and neither is "Gosford Park," come to think of it). If you're looking for a witty Hollywood story, this is it.
(Possible spoiler sub-note: Is it a rule that every Hollywood film has to have a reference to itself near the end? "Singin' in the Rain" implied that they were making "Singin' in the Rain," this one implies that a writer is pitching "The Player" near the end...)
So I watched "The Player." I definitely liked this one better, though whether it's because it's a better film or a more interesting subject is up to debate--I'm one of those people who dislike Hollywood and think studio executives are like Griffin Mill, the main character.
He's the "writer's executive," yet he blows off writers and never calls them back. He starts an affair with a dead writer's girlfriend without breaking up with his current girlfriend. And he's the "hero" of the film. The "villain" is one of the writers he never called back, and is threatening to kill him.
But the story is not the point of the film. "Satire" of Hollywood is the point, so don't get too wrapped up into the plot and you'll have fun. If you're looking for a smart thriller, this isn't it (and neither is "Gosford Park," come to think of it). If you're looking for a witty Hollywood story, this is it.
(Possible spoiler sub-note: Is it a rule that every Hollywood film has to have a reference to itself near the end? "Singin' in the Rain" implied that they were making "Singin' in the Rain," this one implies that a writer is pitching "The Player" near the end...)
Superman Returns
A quick confession: I'm not a big superhero fan. I don't know why; maybe it has something to do with my dislike of action films (at least the ones where the action doesn't do anything different or interesting--there's only so many exposions and uncommented-on deaths you can take before it gets old). I didn't even like "Superman II," and considering that lots of people seem to love that, you should see why I'm not big on it.
Nonetheless, I did give "Superman Returns" a chance. It's all right, I guess (and if I revisited "Superman II," I'd probably say that about it, too), but it's not a particularly important film. It's got some good set-pieces, but there's not enough substance to it.
So Superman returns from Krypton, and I have to wonder about that: How did he survive being around the remnants of his homeworld if, on Earth, those same remnants rob him of his powers? Did he need a spaceship? And why did he need to go back? Did I miss something? Because really, if your father recorded a message that tells you that it's destroyed, I'm not sure why you'd need to check it out.
Anyway, Superman returns, and strangely, it seems Lex Luthor hasn't been up to much in the 5 years since he left. So he's romanced an old lady to her death--would that really take five years? Actually, on second thought, it could. Still, all that and he's only come up with one evil plan to take over the world? I don't know about you, but if I were taking five years off from trying to take over the world, I'd be brainstorming for all sorts of new ways to do it. Heck, that could have been interesting: Lex has so many different plans being put into consideration that Superman has to deal with all at once.
Alas, his superplan now is kinda odd: Krypto-Land floods over America and he's got prime real estate. Ignoring the strangeness of plotting to go into real estate, you have to wonder why he'd use kryptonite if what results is so ugly. Why doesn't he put in some grass? At least then, people would want to live there instead of drowning in America (today!). And I have to ask why they seem to make such a big deal out of Parker Posey's character seeming to realize how evil Lex's plan is when nothing ever comes of it; the way they showed her reactions, I expected her to turn on Lex, but the film seems to forget it. (And why is a Queen of Indie-Film Land doing superhero films like this and "Blade 3?" Does she just accept every script her agent sends her?)
Maybe I'm being picky here, and there are logical explanations for everything there, and that's why I'm not good at reviewing superhero films. Or maybe it's all just Comic-Book Science, and I shouldn't ask why all this happens, as long as it does. Hell, I don't know.
Nonetheless, I did give "Superman Returns" a chance. It's all right, I guess (and if I revisited "Superman II," I'd probably say that about it, too), but it's not a particularly important film. It's got some good set-pieces, but there's not enough substance to it.
So Superman returns from Krypton, and I have to wonder about that: How did he survive being around the remnants of his homeworld if, on Earth, those same remnants rob him of his powers? Did he need a spaceship? And why did he need to go back? Did I miss something? Because really, if your father recorded a message that tells you that it's destroyed, I'm not sure why you'd need to check it out.
Anyway, Superman returns, and strangely, it seems Lex Luthor hasn't been up to much in the 5 years since he left. So he's romanced an old lady to her death--would that really take five years? Actually, on second thought, it could. Still, all that and he's only come up with one evil plan to take over the world? I don't know about you, but if I were taking five years off from trying to take over the world, I'd be brainstorming for all sorts of new ways to do it. Heck, that could have been interesting: Lex has so many different plans being put into consideration that Superman has to deal with all at once.
Alas, his superplan now is kinda odd: Krypto-Land floods over America and he's got prime real estate. Ignoring the strangeness of plotting to go into real estate, you have to wonder why he'd use kryptonite if what results is so ugly. Why doesn't he put in some grass? At least then, people would want to live there instead of drowning in America (today!). And I have to ask why they seem to make such a big deal out of Parker Posey's character seeming to realize how evil Lex's plan is when nothing ever comes of it; the way they showed her reactions, I expected her to turn on Lex, but the film seems to forget it. (And why is a Queen of Indie-Film Land doing superhero films like this and "Blade 3?" Does she just accept every script her agent sends her?)
Maybe I'm being picky here, and there are logical explanations for everything there, and that's why I'm not good at reviewing superhero films. Or maybe it's all just Comic-Book Science, and I shouldn't ask why all this happens, as long as it does. Hell, I don't know.
The Saddest Music in the World
Make no mistake: This isn't really all that sad a film. Despite the title, and the premise (a contest to see who can play the saddest music in the world in 1930's Winnipeg), it's actually kind of a silly film.
It's also bizarre as heck. There's no other way to describe a film where, at a funeral, somebody sadly sings "Skip to My Lou." It's a film where somebody is so drunk, when they have to amputate their love's leg to save her from a car wreck, they cut the wrong leg off first. It's a film where, when they win a round of sad music, contestants get to slide into a vat of beer.
The plot does show why they get to go into a vat of beer: It's 1930's Canada, and the contest is being supported by a beer baronness (the one who got her wrong leg cut off, and now has none until near the end). But why waste beer like that? The film doesn't ask; at only an hour and forty minutes, it doesn't have time to ask about little details like that. Besides, why not?
Few films tend to take strange things like this and take them as seriously as you can while still having them be funny, so I'd recommend that if this sounds like the kind of thing you'd like, you seek it out. If you're into normal films, you may not want to bother.
It's a fun film while it lasts. It's not necessarily a great film, but hey, how many films are?
It's also bizarre as heck. There's no other way to describe a film where, at a funeral, somebody sadly sings "Skip to My Lou." It's a film where somebody is so drunk, when they have to amputate their love's leg to save her from a car wreck, they cut the wrong leg off first. It's a film where, when they win a round of sad music, contestants get to slide into a vat of beer.
The plot does show why they get to go into a vat of beer: It's 1930's Canada, and the contest is being supported by a beer baronness (the one who got her wrong leg cut off, and now has none until near the end). But why waste beer like that? The film doesn't ask; at only an hour and forty minutes, it doesn't have time to ask about little details like that. Besides, why not?
Few films tend to take strange things like this and take them as seriously as you can while still having them be funny, so I'd recommend that if this sounds like the kind of thing you'd like, you seek it out. If you're into normal films, you may not want to bother.
It's a fun film while it lasts. It's not necessarily a great film, but hey, how many films are?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)